Monday, December 30, 2013

“The Orenda” by Joseph Boyden, Hamish Hamilton Canada, 2013,490 pp., $32.00



There are a number of excellent reviews of this book available; this is not a review but  are just some of my reflections after reading it during Christmas week.

Forty or so years ago when my husband and I lived in Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island, we became friendly with the Jesuit fathers who ministered to the Anishinabek (Odawa) of Wikwemikong First Nation.  I remember them telling us that it took 17 years for a man to become an ordained member of the Society of Jesus, and part of that time – perhaps about one year – would be spent in a place like Wikwemikong so the “scholastics”, as they were called, could learn how to engage in their Roman Catholic ministry in places that were culturally different from what they would have experienced when growing up.

So I was fascinated to read about Joseph Boyden’s description of those early years of the Jesuit missionary work among the Huron, recognizing the kind of faith position that motivated young men like Christophe to leave comfortable homes in France in the 17th century to come to the New World to Christianize the “sauvages”, Christophe’s word.

I have said, in recent years, that if we, as Christian missionaries, had been able to listen to the “Indians” we met here when we first came to this territory, we would not have found ourselves setting up residential schools, but “The Orenda” points to my naiveté, for there is no way, with the vast differences in our cultural understanding of who we were at that time, whether First Peoples or settler/immigrant/missionaries, we could ever have been able to listen to one another – not with a view to living peaceably together, anyway, until we had spent a long time learning how to listen effectively.  And I suspect that the zeal of those days simply would not have allowed for the kind of listening that today, we know is crucial to our learning to live together.

For me, Joseph Boyden has written in masterful prose the story of two separate cultures which were always going to struggle to find common ground, as we still do today.  Of interest to me also is the way in which, as the two peoples begin to interact, there is some willingness on the part of each to learn the language.  I have studied the Ojibwe language for over 40 years, because out of that same naiveté, I suppose, I sensed that if I wanted to know how to understand the First Peoples, I should learn the language.  And for me, that has been true.  Over the years I have gained immeasurable knowledge about the humanity and the spirituality of Anishinabe brothers and sisters, since in many ways, to me the language is the people. 

That does not seem to be the reason the Jesuits learned the language.  They had only one purpose in mind, and that was to bring the “sauvages” souls to Christ, and they were happy to die in the attempt.  I find it interesting to think of how I view my understanding of my Christian faith as I live out my life into its ninth decade, compared to the purposeful way in which Christophe and his fellow “crows” lived their lives in the 1700’s, according to Boyden’s meticulous research, which incidentally, undergirds the whole book.

At least one book reviewer has admitted she could not read in full the descriptions of torture, which was why I almost didn’t attempt to read “The Orenda” at all.  I had tried to read Boyden’s earlier books: “Three Day Road” and “The Black Spruce” and I could not read past the first two or three pages because I could not take the descriptions of violence.  I haven’t met Boyden in person, but on TV he looks and sounds so gentle and kindly, I could not imagine him as a violent person.  And yet, the images of torture are so exquisitely written as an integral part of the whole story, so why can his mind write those descriptive passages and my mind can’t let me read them?  Then I remember that doctors and soldiers and emergency workers on battlefields and accident and terrorist sites also see the same kinds of damage done to the human body, so I have to believe that the difficulty lies with me, the reader; not with the author.

So while I find myself relating to the Jesuit characters through my understanding of my Christian faith; my sense of relationship to the First Peoples characters happens simply as human being to human being.  As I know myself to be woman, daughter, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, niece and aunt, and as I recognize all the feelings of joy and pain, serenity and anxiety, satisfaction and hunger, and of being once young and now old; so I relate directly to the women, especially, but to the men as well, simply as fellow-human beings.  As the lives of Snow Falls and Gosling, Bird and Fox, and their families unfold, I feel the same kind of love, anger, trust, hope and longing in my heart and mind as I feel it is in theirs.  That is simply part of the human condition.

This is far too long, and does not do justice to this elegantly crafted book, but I offer these thoughts just from my own reflections, with my gratitude for the creative genius of writers like Joseph Boyden.

Jean Koning,
Peterborough ON,
December 30, 2013.  


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