Storyteller

 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Becoming a writer was something I had to postpone when I arrived in Canada—learning two different languages does that to your mind. Yet, as my songwriter daughter says, I am “a writer whose strongest tongue was art.” I suppose I turned to art as a way to communicate. Storytelling is innate in me, and for a time, I lived by the saying a picture is worth a thousand words—until I was able to write.

My mentor, Susan L. Scott, has guided me for years with her editing. I met Susan after she heard my first CBC interview with Peter Gzowski. She gave me the confidence to believe I had something worth saying in writing, even with what I call my broken English. Being invited to The Thursday Think Tank with Brian O’Dea and Randy Boyagoda, along with Sheilagh Rogers' Sounds Like Canada, reinforced that there was a place for a voice like mine.

I now have three publications under my belt:

2019 “I Am Karenahti:ne,” in Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers, edited by Susan Scott (Caitlin Press).

2011 “Counter Dancing,” in Minority Reports: New English Writing from Quebec, edited by Claude Lalumière and Elise Moser (Véhicule Press).

2006 CBC Radio’s Outfront; “DEAR MICHELLE: Carolina Echeverria left Chile twenty years ago to escape the Pinochet dictatorship. Since then, her head has been full of disturbing images from the Chile of her youth. But if Chile's new President, Michelle Bachelet, who was imprisoned and tortured during the Pinochet regime, could come to terms with the past, then maybe Carolina could, too. The only way to find out was to fly to Chile and try to meet Michelle Bachelet.” 

My recent memoir, Native-Immigrant: A Personal Journey into Our Home and Native Land, is set for publication. It tells the story of discovering that, as an immigrant, I have much more in common with First Nations than I ever imagined. Immigrants are the Last Nations; together, we are the ongoing human flow of the displaced, the multicultural offspring of colonization.

While my journey is a memoir, it is also a proposition—an invitation to see where we stand, but through a different lens. I have woven my story around questions from ongoing conversations with my friend Ateronhiatakon (Francis) Boots, War Chief of the Mohawk People. What does it mean to re-root in a new homeland? Are you a people if you cannot explain the cosmos? What do Native peoples want? Who are my people, after all, and how can I find them?

In my search for answers, I hope to illuminate who we can become as a nation.