WINNER OF THE 2020/2021 ALCUIN SOCIETY BOOK DESIGN AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE ROBERT KROETSCH CITY OF EDMONTON BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2023 STEPHAN G. STEPHANSSON AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
WINNER OF THE INDIGENOUS VOICES AWARD FOR PUBLISHED POETRY IN ENGLISH
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE FOR LGBTQ2S+ EMERGING WRITERS
LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD
An Indigenous resistance historiography, poetry that interrogates the colonial violence of the archive
Whitemud Walking is about the land Matthew Weigel was born on and the institutions that occupy that land. It is about the interrelatedness of his own story with that of the colonial history of Canada, which considers the numbered treaties of the North-West to be historical and completed events. But they are eternal agreements that entail complex reciprocity and obligations. The state and archival institutions work together to sequester documents and knowledge in ways that resonate violently in people's lives, including the dispossession and extinguishment of Indigenous title to land.
Using photos, documents, and recordings that are about or involve his ancestors, but are kept in archives, Weigel examines the consequences of this erasure and sequestration. Memories cling to documents and sometimes this palimpsest can be read, other times the margins must be centered to gain a fuller picture. Whitemud Walking is a genre-bending work of visual and lyric poetry, non-fiction prose, photography, and digital art and design.
• For fans of Jordan Abel's NISHGA and Place of Scraps, Joshua Whitehead's Full Metal Indigiqueer, Billy-Ray Belcourt's NDN Coping Mechanisms, and documentary poets Mark Novak and Jena Osman.
• Readers of anti-colonial poetry, ecopoetry, as well as lovers of the visual and documentary poetry movements, will all find much to rave about here. This book spans genres and has something for everyone with 'typical' lyric poetry, images, and more avant-garde poetry.
• Weigel's poetry addresses Indigenous land claims, a subject that is making national news in the United States and Canada.
• Weigel is Dene and Métis (which means he is of both Indigenous and French heritage).
• His previous publication, It Was Treaty / It Was Me, is nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award and won the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award. The Vallum chapbook series also includes such luminaries as Paul Muldoon, Nicole Brossard, and Franz Wright.
• In the author's words: "Much of this work began by thinking through obligations to the land as an Indigenous person trained in ecological science, in times of ecological collapse. Understanding my relations and treaty obligations have been important aspects of my life, as my father raised me to know and be proud that our ancestors signed treaty."
"Whitemud Walking is so smart and so ceaselessly innovative. It represents for me a fully assured instantiation of the Indigenous literary project: a confrontation of history's terrors head on and an articulation in the present of our beauty and indomitability. Weigel refuses the archive's efforts to flatten Indigenous subjectivity and, in so doing, opens up a kind of boundless space to remember and grieve but also to hope and imagine otherwise. A deeply felt accomplishment." –Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body
"Whitemud Walking is a testament to the power of grief and outrage that so much theft has been allowed to bulldoze Indigenous land rights. Matthew James Weigel's passion for research both honours and mourns what has been trampled and lied about. This is a devastating read but one to learn from. Mahsi cho, Matthew. Your grief is our call to action to learn our own histories and build upon our own Indigenous testimonies of what really happened and when and who was there to witness it. Mahsi cho." –Richard Van Camp, Tlicho Dene author
