Saddle Lake Cree Nation

Cree poet and kēhtē-aya Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer’s genre-bending collection chronicles her childhood in a cabin on reserve, through the Indian Residential School system, and into her reclamation of her nēhiýaw language, culture, and spirituality.

My parents taught us the art of observation. I learned to hunt, skin, and butcher game through non-verbal methods. I also watched my grandparents work on the land and live their spirituality. I helped gather, dry, and grind their medicines. I inhaled the medicines’ power and ingested it. When I left for residential school all this fell asleep.

Poet Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer tells the story of how she woke up from the trauma of separation in these never-before-collected essays and new poems about her life and the source of her inspiration: her culture and the land. 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 in the practice of observing and being in relationship with the land as it “constantly gives birth to itself.” wītāmōwik / Tell Them! is a stunning love song to nēhiýaw ways of knowing—ways which Halfe has reclaimed from the violence of colonization to celebrate their survival and share their enduring relevance with future generations.

Reviews
“Louise Halfe, with great generosity and insight, draws us into her lodge where a person can begin to receive what she calls ‘spiritual intelligence.’ One of Canada’s most remarkable poets, she takes us through the trauma of residential school and its corrosive aftermath, through racism and injustice – she is one of our leaders and we are in good hands.” -Tim Lilburn

Additional Information
288 pages | 5" x 8.03" | Paperback 

In this new edition of her powerful debut, Plains Cree writer and National Poet Laureate Louise B. Halfe - Sky Dancer reckons with personal history within cultural genocide.

Employing Indigenous spirituality, black comedy, and the memories of her own childhood as healing arts, celebrated poet Louise B. Halfe - Sky Dancer finds an irrepressible source of strength and dignity in her people. Bear Bones and Feathers offers moving portraits of Halfe's grandmother (a medicine woman whose life straddled old and new worlds), her parents (both trapped in a cycle of jealousy and abuse), and the people whose pain she witnessed on the reserve and at residential school.

Originally published by Coteau Books in 1994, Bear Bones and Feathers won the Milton Acorn People's Poet Award, and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award.

Reviews
"With gentleness, old woman's humour, and a good red willow switch, Louise chases out the shadowy images that haunt our lives. She makes good medicine, she sings a beautiful song."— Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | Paperback