Writer tackles new project

Page 11

Writer Marilyn Dumont is really excited about a new project. She'd like to produce a documentary about the descendants of Gabriel Dumont, "What they know about their history, and its impact on their lives."

The documentary is in the developmental stage, but Dumont said, "I feel it will take me somewhere different."

Dumont counts herself among the Metis descendants of Gabriel Dumont, although, "My father never ever spoke about it." The family became aware of the connection in the late 1960s, when Dumont's sister-in-law was researching family history.

Dumont has published two books of poetry: A Really Good Brown Girl and Green Girl Dreams Mountains, both award-winners. She's received the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first collection of poetry by a Canadian writer, and from Alberta, she received the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

Her poems have been published in many anthologies, "more than I can count," she said.

Originally from Alberta, Dumont has worked, studied and read her poems in many parts of Canada. For the past couple of years, she's been in Ontario, first at the University of Windsor and now in Toronto, where she's writer-in-residence at Massey College.

Dumont comes from a large family. Born in 1955, she's the youngest, with nine brothers and sisters, and her parents struggled to support them. To provide food, she said, "My father hunted all the time, even out of season." Her father worked in the bush and her mother cooked at a logging camp. Though she heard Cree spoken when she was growing up, she did not learn to speak it.

She attended college in her early twenties, and then alternated working with going to university, getting a bachelor of arts degree in 1991.

At 40, she headed to the University of British Columbia for a master's degree program in creative writing. The University of British Columbia, Dumont said, "gave me confidence in my writing."

Dumont has an appreciation of traditional skills too.

"My parents were always making something."

She carefully picks up a small white bead with a needle. Bending over a vest, she said, "My mother used to do this, and I wondered how she could do it."

But she's been doing beadwork for three years, and finds "beadwork is a nice complement to working in my head," and a way of "keeping this tradition alive."

Just as carefully crafted are her poems. She uses poetry to comment on Aboriginal history and life in Canada, and feels she is "speaking for relatives who didn't have a chance to say some of these things."

It took almost seven years to assemble her first poetry collection. Dumont called it a "miracle" when it was finished.

For anyone thinking of writing, "Reading is very important. Read what you want to write. If you want to write poetry, read all the poetry you can. Don't do it unless you have a day job."

She likes interacting with people and her ideal day job "would be in student services, helping and coaching people."

Last fall, she led a writing workshop at First Nations House, which she really liked because "I didn't have to mark their papers."

Dumont says politics is not for her.

"I can have more political impact by the writing that I do."

Dumont also "loves to read her poetry." She said that "coming from an oral tradition" she feels a responsibility to keep up that tradition.

While writing is her life's work, right now she's looking forward to the documentary. It's the first one she'll have done from beginning to end as an art project. She worked in video for three years and compared that to writing. "Writing is a very solitary experience. A documentary has a whole crew of people."

Massey College will be home to Dumont for a few more weeks, and then she will be off to her next, and perhaps ideal, "day job."