TORONTO — Artists Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon say a Governor General’s Literary Award nod for their latest collaboration suggests their gleeful recentring of Indigeneity is entering the mainstream.
"The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island," is among dozens of finalists for the prestigious book awards announced Tuesday morning.
"We've been making art to challenge the dominant narrative," Monkman said in an interview.
In Monkman and Gordon's work, Miss Chief pokes fun at the gravitas and inevitability with which white settlers treat the colonial project by reminding the writers of history that Indigenous people were here all along, not as observers or victims but as participants.
"So this recognition is rewarding because it means we've managed to crash through," Monkman said.
Miss Chief is something of an alter ego for Monkman, in both his visual and performance art. He paints the provocative gender-fluid character into scenes from Canada's pre- and post-colonial history, and so her memoirs serve as a retelling of that history with Indigeneity at its centre.
According to her memoir, Miss Chief was present for the creation of Turtle Island, mourned the beavers killed for the sake of the fur trade and was there for Confederation.
The book is one of five finalists in the English-language fiction category, though it eschews conventions of that classification. Monkman and Gordon packed it full of citations and consulted with four Cree knowledge keepers to ground the writing in their wisdom and cosmology.
Gordon said she hopes that the categorization of this book as fiction leads readers to question whether the history taught in the classroom is really fact.
The Canada Council for the Arts named 70 finalists across seven categories in both English and French on Tuesday. The 14 winners, who each receive $25,000, will be announced Nov. 13.
Also up for the fiction prize is poet Canisia Lubrin for her work, "Code Noir," another book that straddles categories. The series of 59 linked stories is named for the set of historical decrees passed by King Louis XIV outlining the conditions of slavery in the French empire.
Lubrin is a past winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and "Code Noir" is also up for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Rounding out the fiction finalists are the novel "Empty Spaces" by Jordan Abel, the short story collection "Her Body Among Animals" by Paola Ferrante and "Naniki," a novel by Oonya Kempadoo.
Non-fiction finalists include Niigan Sinclair for the essay collection "Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre," Danny Ramadan for "Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir" and Helen Knott for "Becoming a Matriarch."
"The Walls Have Eyes" by Petra Molnar and "The Age of Insecurity," Astra Taylor's book accompanying last year's CBC Massey Lectures, round out the finalists in that category.
The poetry finalists include Bren Simmers for "The Work," Barbara Tran for "Precedented Parroting," Brandi Bird for "The All + Flesh," Bradley Peters for "Sonnets from a Cell" and Chimwemwe Undi for "Scientific Marvel."
The Governor General's Literary Awards will also dole out honours for drama, writing and illustration in children's literature, as well as French-to-English translation. There are separate French-language categories for francophone writing.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
