For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son
By Richard Wagamese
Doubleday Canada,
228 pages, $32.95
Richard Wagamese has led a horrid life. And he's not afraid to let you know that. It began 43 years ago when, at the age of 4, he was taken away from his family and placed in a succession of white foster homes.
As was often the case with native children, the results were catastrophic on a personal and cultural level. He lost touch with most of his Ojibway heritage and, as a result, found himself lurching for decades through repeated bouts with alcoholism, frequent run-ins with the law and occasional flashes of success.
It has been said that the palace of wisdom lies on the road of excess; perhaps that's why Wagamese received a National Newspaper Award for his columns in The Calgary Herald, and his award-winning first novel, Keeper'n Me, helped establish him as one of Canada's major new literary talents.
In For Joshua, he travels a different road, one of redemption through confession. Using the concept that experience is the best teacher, Wagamese has put his five decades of misadventures into a teaching tool for everybody. But more important, it is for Joshua, his estranged six-year-old son. The book is an attempt to connect and explain his absence in the boy's life.
"I do not know if or when we will be together. Because of the way I chose to live my life, the price we've paid is separation. I am neither a hunter nor a trapper. I am not a teacher, healer, drummer, singer or dancer. Nor am I a wise man. But I offer this book as a means of fulfilling that traditional responsibility. I want to introduce you to the world, to Creation, to the landscape I have walked, to some of the people who have shaped my life."
What follows is literally and literarily a vision quest. A close friend named John takes Wagamese out to a deserted spot, where he leaves the writer for four days to find himself. Wagamese reflects on his life and how he made the decisions that led him both to that lonely hillside just outside of Calgary and separation from his son. The book's chapters are broken down into those four days.
It is revealing, open and tragic. It is also a remarkably touching and well written journey.
Keeper'n Me was a thinly veiled biography of his reintegration into the native community. In this follow-up non-fiction book, the story is more honest, more real; those familiar with the native community will be nodding heads in understanding. Those not very familiar will get a 228-page snapshot of the darker side . . . a darker side with a light in the distance that Wagamese seems constantly trying to find.
Wagamese, a former journalist, writes his story with the spirit of a poet. In particular, the presence of Charles Bukowski can be seen coaching his prose from the sidelines as Wagamese revisits old haunts. "You drink your way down to dank, dark rooms where conversation is a mumbled order for one more round, and downward further to one-room mansions where a jug is the only furniture needed, and then downward to the riverbanks, back alleys and isolated places where solitude is a virtue."
If there is a flaw, it's the writer's occasional foray into New Age pseudo-psychology, making you think of some cheesey Kung Fu episode. As part of his healing process, Wagamese details his exploration and understanding of pivotal native ceremonies like sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies. And during some of these truly enlightening episodes, omni-cultural words of wisdom can be found: " 'The toughest direction of all,' the old man said. 'You have to travel inside yourself, not down long, narrow roads like this one.'
"As parents and teachers we need to tell our children this -- that you can never be less then who you were created to be. You never have to qualify. You never have to prove yourself. You just need to be." But this is a small complaint when the book offers so much. It's hard to argue with a man revealing his soul to the world, and leaving behind a testament for his absent son.
For Joshua is the latest in a series of native biographies that provide some cultural soul-searching; Thunder in My Veins,by Greg Scofield, and Halfbreed,by Maria Campbell, come to mind. They are all grim reminders that there is still much healing left to be done in the aboriginal community. Drew Hayden Taylor is a Toronto-based writer. His most recent book is Furious Observations of a Blue-Eyed Ojibway .