Manitoba’s NDP leader celebrates Indigenous heroes with kids’ book
In the 1800s, Te-Wau-Zee and her family were forcibly relocated from the Ponca Nation to Oklahoma, part of what was known as the Trail of Tears. Soldiers told her she could bring only what she could carry. So Te-Wau-Zee, whose name means Yellow Buffalo Woman, hid four rocks in her belongings and carried them hundreds of miles to her new home.
Thanks to her efforts, her descendants still practice their Ponca culture nearly 150 years later.
“To me, that was an amazing story,” says Wab Kinew, leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party and author of the new children’s book Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes. “It always inspired me.”
Te-Wau-Zee is not the highestprofile hero in Kinew’s new book, which is illustrated by Joe Morse. But it could be argued that all of the figures in the book are somewhat under-celebrated. Kinew took the title from a pep talk told to Sac and Fox Nation Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe by his father.
The stories of Thorpe, Te-WauZee, Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington, Lewis and Clark expedition guide Sacagawea, Ulkatcho First Nation NHL goalie Carey Price and Oglala Lakota war chief Crazy Horse are among those Kinew chronicles in his book.
He was inspired by U.S. president Barack Obama’s inspirational Of Thee I Sing, which he would read to his own sons. In that book, Obama highlighted his own heroes.
“I looked to my own community and realized there are a lot of powerful stories of people who have done some great things that are sometimes overlooked,” says Kinew, who will be in Calgary on Sept. 25 for a WordFest event. “I thought this might be a good format to share those tales of resilience and really robust people.”
Influenced by K’naan’s song Take a Minute, in which the Canadian rapper gives shout-outs to Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Kinew also decided he wanted the whole thing to unfold as one long hip-hop verse.
Kinew was born on the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario before moving to Winnipeg as a child. Hip-hop, of course, has been a part of Kinew’s past. This occasionally has come back to haunt him since he entered politics.
Go Show the World is Kinew’s second book following 2015’s The Reason You Walk, a memoir that covered his troubled private life and early years.
Among the controversies that have dogged Kinew since he entered the political arena was the surfacing of hip-hop lyrics he wrote while part of a group called Dead Indians that were seen as demeaning to women, gays and lesbians. He took responsibility for them and apologized repeatedly.
While he has been a journalist, activist and Aboriginal leader, he admits that entering public life as a politician has made him more aware of the power of words. Kinew also says he believes being exposed to tales of Indigenous heroes would have been inspiring when he was a child.
“To see these heroes validated in pop culture would have meant a lot to me and would have sent a signal to me as a young person that not only are people from my community validated and valued by society but also that I as an individual was valued and validated by society,” he says.
“I think that would have really been important to me. I think I did experience overt racism but I think I also experienced subtle forms of discrimination, like maybe turning on the TV and the only representation I saw of Indigenous was the old cowboys and Indians and then the Oka crisis.
“I’m a kid trying to go to school with kids from other backgrounds. How does that help me relate to anyone else in my class? It didn’t really provide a space for me.”