Indigenous authors and publishers share their stories at library panel

On June 11, authors from two Indigenous-owned publishers, Ojistoh Publishing and Kegedonce Press, shared excerpts from their books in celebration of Indigenous Heritage Month at the Dana Porter Library.

The event also featured January Rogers, owner of Ojistoh Publishing, and Richard-Yves Sitoski, marketing and publishing coordinator for Kegedonce Press, who each presented two of their authors.

Mohawk physician Karenna’onwe Hill saw her new book The Good Mind, in print for the first time as she unboxed copies of it at the event an hour and a half after they were ready for pick-up. Released by Ojistoh Publishing, Karenna’onwe’s book is about her late mother, born and raised in the territory of the Six Nations of the Grand River. “There’s a piece of me that didn’t realize the beauty of my mother until after she was gone,” the author shared. “After my mom passed, I wanted to fulfil her dream of writing a book.” She wrote The Good Mind in hopes of inspiring Indigenous people to embody the traditional teachings and knowledge of their people, like her mother did.

Daniel Lockhart, who publishes under D.A. Lockhart, presented his book Commonwealth. It is a poetry collection published with Kegedonce Press that explores the Lenape population’s migration to Indiana. Through this book, Lockhart reclaims spaces of Indiana through his ancestral heritage. He hopes for non-Indigenous readers to acknowledge that wherever it may be in North America, Indigenous culture is always present. He stressed, “[Our language is] developing alongside everybody else… [I]t’s important to not only hear those songs, those stories, but to know that if I’m doing that, you likely have similar ones, and I want those to be shared.”

Onodaga clinical social worker Dawn Cherry Hill followed with her book Memory Keeper. Another release from Ojistoh Publishing, this memoir tackles Dawn’s journey with her Indigenous identity and trauma as a residential school survivor. She touches on the patrilineal system imposed by the Canadian government which disregards the matrilineal inheritance practiced by many Indigenous cultures and how finding out that she is actually Onodagan and not Mohawk shaped her perspective on her identity. “This is not the ending of my story. It’s the beginning of a new chapter,” Dawn said. “One rooted in truth, in lineage, and in the strength of Hodinashoni women, who carried our clans long before any government tried to rewrite them.”

Coltrane Seesequasis, an author of Cree heritage, followed with his book Secrets of Stone. This book is the first of his four-part-fantasy series A Wolf in the Sun, published with Kegedonce Press. It follows the tale of a young wolf named Silversong and is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have gone extinct and are replaced by animals. He describes the subtle ways in which his people influences his approach to storytelling. “Themes of community, of ideas and knowledge and wisdom being passed down from one generation to the other; themes of spirituality and how everything is just an interconnected web … came into it, like subconsciously,” Seesequasis said.

Sitoski, who represents Kegedonce Press, touched on the Canadian literary landscape for Indigenous writers and how their publishing houses support these authors. He reported that Indigenous literature is “having a bit of a renaissance right now,” but emphasized that there are still issues to address in the literary space for Indigenous creators, such as the lack of representation and the claiming of Indigenous identity by non-Indigenous people. He also mentioned how they hire Indigenous people at all stages of book production to protect authors’ voices. “I am of settler descent … so I don’t do any substantive role when it comes to things like editing,” Sitoski elaborated. “In translations that need to be done, we always approach Indigenous translators of Indigenous descent. We consult with elders when necessary,” he explained.