Book review: Surviving the City Vol. 2: From the Roots Up
Reviewed by Karl Hele
Tasha Spillett and Natasha Donovan’s second contribution to the Surviving the City series From the Roots Up returns us to the world of Dez and Miikwan and introduces us to two new characters, Riel and Kacey.
This edition addresses Two-Spirit challenges within the Indigenous community. We learn that Dez is Two-Spirit and struggling with her identity and romantic interest in fellow Two-Spirit Kacey. Riel is introduced as a young man whose brother was murdered by the police, and becomes Miikwan’s love interest.
Riel creates a ruckus both in class and in the culture programming after school. In class he refuses to rise for O Canada and explains that his refusal to rise is tied to Canada’s lack of respect for Indigenous people. This causes a disruption in class which the teacher simply ignores. Later, he disrupts the cultural programming by openly inviting Dez to join the drum group – something that the male Elder who teaches drumming opposes. Unlike the teacher, a female Elder who runs the program is open to Riel’s suggestion and recognition of Two-Spirit people. She invites a Two-Spirit person to speak to the students and dance in the upcoming school powwow. This openness and acceptance is based on Kitchi Manitou welcoming and creating people as well as the fact that cultural teachings’ most important lessons are about love, acceptance, and relationships. Before we come to that point, Riel’s Two-Spirit aunt, the guest speaker, offers a lesson in how colonialism tried to destroy people who were different, how this continues to fracture families and communities that lead to Two-Spirit people being at greater risk of suicide, murder, assault, and homelessness. The solution, the aunt and by extension the authors argue, is to welcome everyone into the circle. This is a powerful and beautiful lesson.
The graphic novel also briefly touches on racism within the state authorities. After arresting Dez for graffiti, the police swap negative comments about Indigenous people. The social worker, while managing to convince the police to give Dez a warning, is highly annoyed, both via the text and visually, that the Indigenous-run group home refuses to punish Dez immediately. She fails to recognize or even grasp that Dez is having a difficult time because of his two-spirtuality combined with the death of his Kokum. Punishment instead of understanding is the focus of both the police and social worker.
The graphics of this second volume are fantastic. Donovan’s style nicely adds context, subtext, and fills silences between the words. Images of the nuns and priests adds to the narrative of repression when the aunt speaks of colonialism with forlorn looking children and black spirits following them. The power of the Indigenous spirit is represented though the teens and particularly the light blue Manitou of those who have passed.
Volume 2 of the Surviving the City series is a masterfully engaging story with text and graphic combining to create a powerful lesson of acceptance and love in the face of colonialism. At its heart, the story is about how we are all relatives and need to accept one another for who we are. This novel is accessible for young readers through adults. It is a powerful tool to address issues of acceptance, discrimination, racism, and decolonization. It is certainly a page turner and a wonderful conversation starter for the classroom or home.
Tasha Spillett and Natasha Donovan, Surviving the City Vol. 2: From the Roots Up (Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2020).
ISBN13: 9781553798989