Anishinaabe storyteller bares his soul at Thunder Bay book launch

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — Injichaag: My Soul in Story, Anishinaabe Poetics in Art and Words author, Rene Meshake, appreciated a challenge from the audience to produce an opera during a Nov. 8 book launch at Lakehead University. Meshake and Injichaag: My Soul in Story, Anishinaabe Poetics in Art and Words contributor Kim Anderson performed music and read from the book during the book launch at The Study Coffeehouse.

“That challenge really got me — in two years, I’ve got to produce an opera or a musical in Anishinaabemowin,” says Meshake, an Anishinaabe artist, storyteller, author and flute player whose parents were from Long Lake #58 and Aroland, both located northeast of Thunder Bay. “So I’ve got to deliver that — it gave me that kind of challenge when they all said go for it.”

The book shares Meshake’s life story using stories, poetry and Anishinaabemowin word bundles. It is organized thematically around a series of his paintings and provides a glimpse of traditional Anishinabek life ways and worldview.

“The main thing I wanted to do was give a witness or a testimony of what God can do [for] a homeless guy like I was, homeless and broken from the Indian residential school,” Meshake says. “I ended up homeless in Toronto but after some sobriety this book came together — I’m about 27 years sober now — to let the young people know, of all ages, of all cultures, that there is hope.”

Meshake enjoyed performing on the flute while Anderson read from the book during the book launch.

“We never know what kind of stories to tell but we just roll with it,” Meshake says. “It kind of grows organic and it becomes spiritual. We never tried that before. So that is development — creativity is what is the most important to me. It keeps the story alive.”

Anderson, a Cree/Métis author, editor, educator, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships and associate professor at the University of Guelph, says she has worked with Meshake on a variety of projects about oral history over the years.

“So I’ve been interviewing him for years and years and [I’m] just really captured by his stories and his storytelling,” Anderson says. “I just wanted to work more with him around pulling his stories and all the types of work that he does together in a book.”

Anderson says that she loves the work in the book, which was published by the University of Manitoba Press on Oct. 11.

“Even though I’ve worked on it and worked on it, every time I open it up or read different pieces from it, I gain so much,” Anderson says. “And I think it’s because the stories have a real depth to them that each time you go back you can discover something else, so that’s really been a blessing to me.”

Lana Ray, a Red Rock Indian Band citizen and Lakehead University assistant professor who organized the book launch, says it was important to hold the book launch in Thunder Bay because it is in Meshake’s home territory.

“A lot of what he is offering in terms of his book is related to personal experiences [and] stories about place,” Ray says. “So they are really specific and important to the people who are from this area too.”

Ray says the audience “really enjoyed” the performances and readings by Meshake and Anderson.

“I can only talk from my experience — I felt it so it spoke to me, not just intellectually, it touched my heart,” Ray says. “I learned a lot from it.”