Masculindians by Sam McKegney

Author:Sam McKegney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 2014-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

INDIGENOUS NATIONHOOD IS MORE THAN SIMPLE POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE OR THE EXERCISE OF A DISTINCTIVE CULTURAL IDENTITY; IT’S ALSO AN UNDERSTANDING OF A COMMON SOCIAL INTER-DEPENDENCE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, THE TRIBAL WEB OF KINSHIP RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES THAT LINK THE PEOPLE, THE LAND, AND THE COSMOS TOGETHER IN AN ONGOING AND DYNAMIC SYSTEM OF MUTUALLY AFFECTING RELATIONSHIPS. —DANIEL HEATH JUSTICE, “GO AWAY, WATER!”

14 February 2011

Conversation between Daniel Heath Justice and Sam McKegney in Sam’s office at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

DANIEL HEATH JUSTICE is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He is the author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and numerous critical essays in the field of Indigenous literary studies. With James Cox, he is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature (Oxford, 2013). He’s also the author of the Indigenous epic fantasy novel The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles (University of New Mexico Press, 2011). He is currently chair of First Nations Studies at University of British Columbia.

SAM MCKEGNEY: What influences were most significant to your maturation and development as a Cherokee man, and how have those influences informed your critical sensibilities as a scholar and a creative writer?

DANIEL HEATH JUSTICE: Really, it was my parents more than anything and then radiating circles of influence beyond that. But I grew up as my dad’s youngest child and my mom’s only. My mom’s his fourth wife. They’ve been together forty-two years now, forty-three years—a long time. And they had been married seven years before they had me, so I’m my mom’s only, my dad’s baby, and so I have all of the flawed personality traits of an only child and the youngest child.

SM: [Laughter]

DHJ: I was very spoiled. I like to say I was spoiled with love. And I was, I really had a pretty Edenic childhood—with my parents. Outside of that, I didn’t have much of a social circle in school, and I was bullied quite a bit. But my folks were and continue to be wonderful and completely supportive. Doesn’t mean that there weren’t issues—my dad was a very heavy alcoholic until I was six, when he quit drinking, and then we had mortgaged our house so my mom could have a restaurant. Four years later we lost the restaurant and lost the house, so we kind of bounced from house to house for a while and it caused a lot of strain in my parents’ relationship. And I kind of became my mom’s emotional support because my dad was not a particularly supportive husband at the time. He’s since become very sweet and loving. So it was a vexed relationship in that way, but my folks were always really loving and supportive to me—there was never a time when I didn’t feel loved at home.

And they were very encouraging of my nerdiness and my love of books. I would go hunting with my dad and I’d lean up against a tree with a novel and read, and he was good with that.

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