Book Launch | Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer presents wîhtamawik / Tell Them

Join Cree poet and kêhtê-aya (Elder) Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer to celebrate the launch of wîhtamawik / Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration, a new collection of memoirs, essays, and poems. Louise will be joined in conversation by Omeasoo Wahpasiw.

The event will be held at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in their upstairs lobby. Doors open at 6:30pm, program begins at 7pm.

In wîhtamawik / Tell Them, Louise chronicles her childhood in a cabin on reserve, through the Indian Residential School system, and into her reclamation of her nêhiyaw language, culture, and spirituality.

In Cree, inspiration is described as a sudden insight. It can come from visits from spirit, from the charged reciprocal experience of being taught by Elders and teaching the next generation, from speaking Cree, which allows the poet to “somersault into memory,” and from the practice of observing and being in relationship with the land as it “constantly gives birth to itself.” wîhtamawik / Tell Them is a stunning love song to nêhiyaw ways of knowing—ways which Halfe has spent her life working to reclaim from the violence of colonization, in order to celebrate their survival and share their enduring teachings with future generations.

Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer is an acclaimed nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) poet and writer from the Saddle Lake First Nation in Alberta. She has been the recipient of multiple awards and appointments for her work, including the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal, Saskatchewan Provincial Poet Laureate, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, King Charles III Coronation Medal, and Member of the Order of Canada.

Omeasoo Wahpasiw is nêhiyaw from the Treaty 6 territory located in Kisiskâciwan (Saskatchewan) with the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. She is an Associate Professor in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism and cross-appointed with the School of Indgienous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

Co-sponsored by University of Regina Press.

This event is free and open to all. Please RSVP to help us know how many guests to expect: https://octopusbooks.ca/events/4860920260423