Long-time MMIWG advocate recently releases e-book
By Rick Garrick
PENNSYLVANIA — Wiikwemkoong’s John Fox is looking forward to the upcoming launch of a hardcover version of his recently released e-book, The Fire Within – A Father’s Struggle for Justice. The e-book is currently on sale for $11 at the Dorrance Publishing Bookstore.
“The publisher just put it on e-book for now, but they’re going to hit 350 stores across Canada and the U.S.,” says Fox, who currently lives in Pennsylvania. “It’s about my daughter [Cheyenne] and what happened with her case — when she was about 20 she got murdered in Toronto.”
Cheyenne died in April 2013 after falling from the 24th floor of a high-rise building in Toronto. Police at the time ruled her death was a suicide but Fox believes she was murdered.
Fox presents a “painfully honest” view of his life from childhood to the present day in the book, including his struggles and triumphs, his battle with alcoholism and the loss of his daughter.
“It gives a general history as a youngster growing up and going into foster care and then going into an urban setting and then finally, when the kids were born,” Fox says. “I started it last fall — I started it on Nov. 1 and I finished it on Nov. 30. I wrote it in 30 days, 190 pages.”
Fox says the story was “sitting in my head, sitting right there in front of me.”
“I just started as soon as I came home. I live in Pennsylvania now,” Fox says. “When I was [on a trip] in Canada, my friend was talking to me and she said I should just start writing, so I said, ‘How do I do that?’ and she said ‘Just start, just write. Write and it will come out the way it is supposed to’.”
Fox says the book starts with his story as a young person.
“What I wanted to do was to educate the Canadian and American public on life as a youngster on a reserve, what it was like then 50 years ago,” Fox says. “And I brought it all the way up to now, the way it is today, everything about the issues today as much as I could especially with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the violence, reconciliation [and] the healing that is needed.”
Fox says he quit drinking alcohol about 32 years ago.
“The first time I quit, it took me three years to defog myself,” Fox says. “I was a mess, so now I can qualify myself for talking about this issue and sobriety and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. You are hearing about it from a sober perspective.”
Fox says he has seen some men over the years who say they are not yet ready to go on their healing journey even though they are in their 60s.
“So I thought us men have a long ways to go to address the issues of the way we are,” Fox says. “I was pretty point blank in my book about the way men should be healing themselves and supporting the women and getting behind them.”
Fox says “a lot of people” are looking to purchase the hardcover version of his book.
“They want something physical they can touch,” Fox says. “They want something they can refer to — they want the pictures in the back.”