Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist and documentarian NoiseCat's ambitious debut ruminates on generational trauma and resilience among Indigenous communities in North America. The book opens with a night watchman's horrific discovery at St. Joseph's Mission, an Indian residential school in British Columbia: a Salish newborn, NoiseCat's father, abandoned in the garbage, "the only known survivor of the school's incinerator." With this harrowing legacy at the heart of his narrative, NoiseCat traces his family's history, including his father's achievements as an artist and struggles with alcoholism, and reflects on Coyote Stories, the oral tradition centered on the famed trickster. This inventive combination generates moving parallels between myth and reality, particularly regarding the complicated relationships between fathers and sons--not only NoiseCat and his father, but also his grandfather Zeke, who fathered at least 19 children ("almost single-handedly bringing our people back from a genocide," NoiseCat quips). However, the account loses some steam as NoiseCat switches in and out of straightforward reportage on issues like Deb Haaland's historic appointment as first Native American secretary of the interior. While these sections are illuminating, they can feel lifted from another project. Still, NoiseCat's attempt to cover as much territory as possible so that "these places, stories, and ancestors come full circle to carry us back to where we belong" results in a powerful archive of Indigenous pain and persistence. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Activist, journalist, and maker of the Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane, Noisecat now offers his first book, a kaleidoscopic exploration of identity, family, community, and the rich cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. Noisecat never shies away from the brutal realities that people such as those in his Shuswap community have faced and continue to face, including the erasure of the history of the First Peoples of this land. Yet this bitter pill is always cut with his tender and thoughtful interweaving of individual stories of Indigenous resilience and hope. By interspersing throughout the book the myths of the Coyote (the trickster deity of the Shuswap) and critical histories detailing everything from the evolution of the Salish language to the colonization of Canada, Noisecat manages to entertain and inform in equal measure. Every tale, whether myth or history, is imbued with a beautiful honesty that will surely move readers. VERDICT A genre-bending work of nonfiction written with immaculate composure, this book will find a broad audience in libraries everywhere.--Collin Stephenson
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A member of a Canadian Native nation writes skillfully of daily life and the transcendent power of traditional stories. Filmmaker and writer NoiseCat opens on a horrifying note: His newborn father was almost murdered at one of Canada's infamous residential schools, "cast into the incinerator to be burned with the garbage." Fortunately, a night watchman rescued "Baby X," who returned to his band in British Columbia and its small reservation. "Our rez looks the way you might imagine a rez looks," writes NoiseCat, "cars up on blocks, free--ranging dogs, horses here and there, the occasional cousin getting around on a bicycle pieced together out of spare parts." His father would become a famed artist, but at the cost of leaving his family behind and, for many years, battling alcoholism. Drawing on "tspetékwll," or etiological stories, NoiseCat portrays his father as Coyote, "a great creator, terrible demolisher, and downright hilarious hellraiser." In other words, as the author elaborates, Coyote is neither all good nor all evil, just as life is something both to endure and to celebrate. And, he adds, Coyote was well aware, too, that "he was a failure and a laughingstock." NoiseCat is both eloquent and plainspoken: When signing a condolence book at the death of Canada's monarch, he writes simply, "You take care, Queen Elizabeth," but his language more often sings: "If you know where to look and who to listen to, you might just run into some of the raucous Indian stories, new and old, to which this land and its humans truly belong." Along with those traditional and raucous stories, NoiseCat recounts some key moments in modern Native Canadian history, including the successful campaign on the part of the Inuit to create a self-governing territory that takes in a third of Canada's landmass. Thoughtful, informative, often entertaining, and just as often saddening, NoiseCat's is a book to remember. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
