Writers’ group encourages Aboriginal peoples to tell their stories

If there is one thing Larry Loyie is passionately against, it’s books on Aboriginal people written by non-Aboriginals who have no real knowledge of First Nations’ ways.

“Our culture was written wrongly,” Loyie said. “When I do research, I can’t find very many books that are accurate. People got their degrees on First Nations ‘culture,’ but it goes so much deeper than that; it’s a philosophy, a way of life. When we, First Nations people, tell stories, the philosophy is what is being taught.”

Loyie would like to see libraries filled with books written by Aboriginal people. To help that dream along, he and Constance Brissenden created the Living Traditions Writers Group in 1993.

 “When Larry and I first got together, he said ‘I want people to talk to their parents, grandparents, to their Elders, and write the stories of their culture; the history, what’s going on today; every aspect of it.’ This is where the name for the writers group came from. He was talking about the Living Traditions,” said Brissenden.
Loyie’s passion for storytelling was reinforced during a workshop at Simon Fraser University some years ago when the question was posed, Why do First Nations oral traditions remain while what’s learned in the classroom disappears?

 “It’s simply because different stories tell about the same thing, the same way of life, in a different way; so it’s always there,” said Loyie.

Loyie grew up living a traditional Cree life until he was taken at age 10 to St. Bernard’s Mission, a residential school in Grouard. He left the school at 14 to work on farms and in logging camps. At 18, he joined the Canadian Forces, living in Europe before returning to northern British Columbia and Alberta where he worked for over 25 years in fishing, logging and Native counseling. In the ’80s, at age 55, he went back to school to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, and has published several award-winning children’s books since.
Part of being a writer, in Loyie and Brissenden’s view, is to encourage others to tell their stories. To that end, they travel the country encouraging children to read, study hard, and write the stories of their families and communities down. Through talks and creative writing workshops, Living Traditions teaches varying writing skills, reviews participants’ work, and gives advice on how to get stories out there.

“When we go to classrooms, the important things we always stress are vision, value, voice and truth. If you don’t know, then do your research, ask your parents, your grandmother or grandfather, the Elders to see if what you have written is correct. Make sure that whatever you do, whatever you write, it’s always truthful, the true way of our cultures,” said Loyie.

 Loyie and Brissenden have conducted more than 1,000 classroom visits and presentations on writing for all ages. While the pair shares their experiences about the editing and publishing process, and the tough work of promoting books afterward, their main advice is that publishing is not necessarily the beginning and end all of writing.

 “Lots of people have some thing they want to get down on paper,” said Brissenden. “Don’t think getting published is the end you want; you can just write a good story to share with your family; print off a copy for your friends, share it with fellow students at school or start a blog.”

Photo Caption: Award-winning Alberta Cree author Larry Loyie and partner Constance Brissenden with a poster showing two of Loyie’s residential school-related books (As Long as the Rivers Flow and Goodbye Buffalo Bay), which were chosen for major distribution in 2010 by the Durham District School Board in Ontario.