Healing through Storytelling

Jun 27, 2008 – Prairie Fire Review of Books

By Mary Barnes

In a scholarly paper written in 1998, Jim Dumont, a Traditional Teacher and an Ojibway-Anishinabe, writes: "I think this is what... these stories can do, used to do: bring the life of things in, make it so you can see and hear and touch it, give it face and a voice, take this care of it, bring it home like this. They can make a home out of the world. This is their power" (16). Dumont is referring to the narration of Aboriginal stories here.

Dracc Dreque's memoir has a face and a voice, and despite his book being fraught with spelling errors, copy editing instructions and poor grammar not attended to by the editor and the publishing company, his story rings true.

When the long shadow of white colonialism pushed indigenous peoples from their time-honoured communities, language and traditions disintegrated. Storytelling though is a powerful instrument; it has to do with memory, it has to do with bringing people together, and cannot be diminished. Dreque's narrative is a painful one, and an attempt to follow the traditional way of keeping an account of his life. Iliarjuk is a disturbing read; it is also a tremendous effort written by someone who can only be called a survivor.

Dracc Dreque, a pseudonym for Gideon Enutsai Etorolopiaq, becomes an orphan when his parents die from eating spoiled seal meat. Claimed by Harriet Dreque, his mother's sister, he enters his auntie's house on 11333 Catalyst Cove in a town on Baffin Island. His life in the house is horrendous. Sexually assaulted by one cousin, beaten by another, verbally abused by his auntie and uncle, he soon discovers he is an outsider in this family. He might as well be in exile. A bed-wetter early on, he is left to stay in urine-soaked clothes day in and day out, week after week, month after month.

Mute from the abuses, Dreque finds comfort on the town streets and at the dump. Often hungry, he scrounges the dump with friends and finds food which he eats with gusto. The dump becomes a treasure trove filled with the discarded just as he is. But the streets are not the haven he craves, not "the sweet roads of home" he longs for (79). He gets into fistfights, is introduced to glue-sniffing, gasoline sniffing, and thievery. His life is not a happy one and as time passes, Dreque's existence appears as one hard ball of abuse.

But there are glimmers of light. He has a passion for hockey at which he excels, and plays the game whenever he can. His forays into the wilderness to set up a hunting camp with his adoptive family--where he invariably ends up with all the hard work--are often lyrical; he flourishes here. The wilderness defines him as a human. He learns the skills of a hunter though it takes him several years. If he had stayed, he might have grown into a different person.

But the book has one too many fistfights. After awhile they become tedious and mind-numbing. The sexual exploits (he becomes obsessive about sex) are graphic and one wonders if they are all warranted. Yet the narrator's tale is compelling.

And Dreque's account has eloquent moments: his description of outrunning the 'monster' of the Northern Lights is vivid and joyful; his tale of looking for mermaids makes one wonder if they actually exist. There are lyrical passages too: "softened by sorrow" when he speaks of eating bread and "Summer was only a song away" (33), and "darkness would stretch its wings" (50) to make up for all the gratuitous interruptions. Despite the distractions, Dreque's story does have power and the story moves forward from childhood into adolescence and early adulthood. And this troubled young man's story serves as a witness to a way of life in indigenous communities that is much too prevalent, too often ignored. His story illustrates the bestiality that occurs when humanity no longer exists.

Dreque, we hope, has found home through the telling.

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