Orenda’s mystical vision,
Historical epic illuminates shadowy moments of Canada’s inception
The Orenda, Joseph Boyden’s stunning historical epic, is set in mid-17th-century Huronia, during a period of brutal skirmishes between the Huron and the Iroqouis, just as the Catholics launch their campaign to convert aboriginal peoples.
Boyden’s previous novel, the Giller Prize-winning Through Black Spruce, examined aboriginal life in contemporary times. Before that, Three Day Road chronicled the experiences of two Cree men who fought in the First World War.
In The Orenda, Boyden sets out to dramatize the forces that led to the decimation of Canada’s First Nations culture, an outcome the novel suggests was by no means inevitable.
One scene, a quarter of the way through the novel, isolates a moment when events might have taken a different path, a moment when the Huron and Iroquois might have united to confront the greater enemy.
In it, Bird, a warrior and a leader of the Wendat (Huron) nation, has agreed to return a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) girl kidnapped in battle. He has also promised a gift of wampum in restitution for the girl’s murdered family. But on the journey through Iroquois territory, the wampum goes missing.
Laments Bird: “The wampum we were to present (their leader) took our most talented artisans weeks of intense work, the weaving of our stories and of our hopes and wishes and especially of our promises, each single, hand-polished bead cut and shaped from foreign shells, drilled for the thread to pass through, each bead glittering and weighing almost nothing but immeasurable in price when it’s chosen and sewn next to the other so that our hopes and our history emerge into something that can be held …
“I have lost my people’s story,” he continues, “my gift to the ones who are my enemy in the hope of changing that course.”
Bird and his clan are so preoccupied with war they do not take seriously the presence of the village priest, a Jesuit named Christophe. But it is his faith that poses a deeper threat to the clan’s survival, the way he uses their own language to attack their beliefs.
When Christophe first arrives the village is still quite prosperous, but bloody battles, recurring drought and illness diminish the size and strength of the community. Eventually, the Huron are forced to accept shelter from the Jesuits, the very people who have infected their bodies and their culture.
The story is told by three rotating voices. The vengeful Bird, whose beloved family was murdered by the Iroquois; the equally vengeful Snow Falls, the Iroquois girl he kidnaps partly to assuage this loss; and Christophe, sent by his superiors in New France to convert the natives.
The Huron only accept Christophe’s presence to maintain their alliance with the French. At first they ridicule his feeble physique, his stinking black robe (they call him Crow) and his inability to speak their language.
They dismiss his faith in one God, while Christophe disparages the natives belief in the Orenda — the spirit force that occupies everything.
Boyden’s innate respect for his characters — aboriginal and European — translates into a powerful and convincing depiction of both faiths. Although Christophe is ignorant and narrow-minded, we fully grasp the depth of his commitment.
At the same time Boyden masterfully evokes the Orenda — in the healing ceremonies in which poison flies out of the sick like specks of sand; in the faces of deceased relatives lovingly conjured in snow; and in drawings on a cliff wall that provide entry into an ancient world. The most common magic are dreams that foretell the future, reveal the past or simply offer guidance.
Indeed, the entire novel unfolds like one of the Huron’s mystical visions. We experience their world in such tremendous detail, the result of Boyden’s awesome ability to transmute research into story. We come away with a sense of intimacy and respect for a people.
It is nearly impossible, however, to reconcile our affection with their unspeakably brutal military practices. This is a very violent work, full of the most grotesque descriptions of ritualized torture that I’ve ever encountered: fingers hacked off, eyes poked out, casual scalping and slow burnings at the stake. To be honest, some of it I could not get through.
Boyden includes passage after passage (after passage) of gruesome acts. Some readers will wonder why. The simple answer is that he believes he must; he wants to tell the full truth. And we believe him, if only because his representation of daily village life is equally thorough.
Much more controversial is the idea that First Nations, by allowing the missionaries into their villages, are partly to blame for the devastation of their culture. I don’t know about that. It sounds like a bit of masculine pride. Certainly there is more power in accepting blame than in laying it, but that does not make it true.
Many readers will comment on the timeliness of this novel, arriving as the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings into the treatment of aboriginals in residential schools is yet unfolding, and as First Nations vow to be Idle No More.
The word timeliness may suggest that the work’s relevance will pass, but I doubt that very much. The Orenda illuminates the shadowy moment of our inception as a country. It forces us to bravely consider who we are.
The Orenda is much more than a timely novel. It is a timeless one, born a classic.