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A review by dfparizeau
Nishga by Jordan Abel
5.0
Teachers from high school through post-graduate studies, take note: this book belongs in the classroom.
What does it mean to be dislocated? What does it mean to only have access to your personal and familial history through fragments and scraps--some of which you aren't even aware are connected to you in the moment? These are some of the questions that Jordan Abel confronts in NISHGA.
While it's true that from the standpoint of commercially available biographies/mempirs, what Abel is doing here is novel. However, I think that it is important to acknowledge that for many Indigenous folks, it is a reality that they cannot conceptualize their personal histories in a non-linear manner.
This is an important book because it gives Indigenous and non-Indigenous people a concrete visual of what it is like to try to piece together a history, when a person and their people have been displaced and directly targeted by colonial genocide.
What does it mean to be dislocated? What does it mean to only have access to your personal and familial history through fragments and scraps--some of which you aren't even aware are connected to you in the moment? These are some of the questions that Jordan Abel confronts in NISHGA.
While it's true that from the standpoint of commercially available biographies/mempirs, what Abel is doing here is novel. However, I think that it is important to acknowledge that for many Indigenous folks, it is a reality that they cannot conceptualize their personal histories in a non-linear manner.
This is an important book because it gives Indigenous and non-Indigenous people a concrete visual of what it is like to try to piece together a history, when a person and their people have been displaced and directly targeted by colonial genocide.