5 BOOKS WRITTEN BY TWO-SPIRIT/INDIGIQUEER AUTHORS

3. NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field by Billy-Ray Belcourt

In the follow-up to his Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection, This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt writes using the modes of accusation and interrogation. He aims an anthropological eye at the realities of everyday life to show how they house the violence that continues to reverberate from the long twentieth century. In a genre-bending constellation of poetry, photography, redaction, and poetics, Belcourt ultimately argues that if signifiers of Indigenous suffering are everywhere, so too is evidence of Indigenous peoples’ rogue possibility, their utopian drive.

About the author: Billy-Ray Belcourt is a Two-Spirit writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation.

Photo: House of Anansi Press

4. Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez"--and his former life--to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's life is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages- -and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life. Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.

About the author: Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1).

Photo: Arsenal Pulp Press

5. Fireweed by Tunchai Redvers

Fireweed is a collection of poetry that explores the rawness, trauma, and realities of adolescence compounded with the experience of being a young, Indigenous, and two-spirit intergenerational residential school survivor. Rooted in the symbolism and growth of fireweed, a flower native to the northwest of Canada, this collection takes readers through the hurt, healing, love, and spreading that encompassed the first twenty-three years of the author's attempt to find the truth, safety, and connection. Grounded in the simplicity of words and the illustration of the north, this book is a powerful window into the process of finding oneself while reclaiming culture and identity.

About the author: Tunchai Redvers is a two-spirit writer of the Deninu K’ue First Nation.

Photo: Kegedonce Press

About the Gwaandak Theatre: Gwaandak Theatre, the Yukon’s only Indigenous-centered theatre company, was founded in Whitehorse in 1999 by theatre artists Leonard Linklater and Patti Flather. Gwaandak Theatre’s vision is to illuminate Indigenous and Northern stories around the world. Gwaandak Theatre develops, produces and tours plays for both youth and adults. Their programming also includes new play workshops, readings, and training for theatre artists. This list of books written by Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer authors was curated for Gwandaak Theater by Léa Roy-Bernatchez, who is the Artistic Producer for Gwandaak Theatre. Léa is a movement artist, stage manager, and producer who was born and grew up in Gaspésie, on unceded Mi’kmaq territory. She identifies as a white Queer woman who also acknowledges her mixed French, Basque, and Mi’kmaq ancestry. She has been involved with Gwaandak Theatre since 2015 as a production stage manager, assistant producer, and performer–and since July 2019 as Artistic Producer.

For more information about Gwaandak Theatre, visit www. gwaandaktheatre.ca.