Columnist turns talents to fiction

Page 10 Anyone who reads a story or column written by Richard Wagamese knows he is a man who speaks from the heart. A long-time columnist for Windspeaker and other papers, he has dropped regular column-writing in papers like the Calgary Herald, concentrating instead on writing a novel. It's one of two books by him that are expected to be in book stores by next spring. "I had to decide what kind of a writer I wanted to be: A newspaper writer, a columnist, a short story writer or a novelist. I opted for fiction and it takes up all my energy," he explains. Wagamese has spent many years writing short stories. However, time and energy were scarce when it came to development and completion because of his other writing commitments. Now he is celebrating the opportunity to develop Keeper n' Me, the title of his novel that first began as a series of short stories and has grown into a full-length novel. "I feel a lot happier, a lot more alive...I feel like I made the right decision for myself. I wouldn't trade anything about the last months. I've had time to look at what's important to me, I've gotten to know myself a whole lot better...what's important, what's relevant." Wagamese claims that, although the framework of the book is partially autobiographical, there are a lot of different people's stories from across the country incorporated into its theme. Keeper, the old man, helps the young man, a storyteller, rediscover his Indian identity after he's been away from his family for about 20 years. "He gets taken away at a young age and put into foster homes and the adoption system and he comes back when he's 25 years old, not knowing how to be an Indian." This is where the similarity between the narrator and Wagamese blends. The story now takes on its own identity, he explains. According to Wagamese, the reason Keeper and the young guy get together is because Keeper spends a lot of the time drinking and not actually living the traditional way. "It's not a serious "I got lost and found my way home novel,' rather it's 'This is what happened to me, and we had a lot of laughs trying to be Ojibway again.' That's the kind of feel the whole thing has." As far as Wagamese is concerned, he sees humor and the traditional storyteller ways of doing real experiences within a story an effective way to deal with sensitive issues. "Our stories, the oral traditional storytelling, was always that way. The most "impactful" stuff that you passed on to people was really charged with your own experiences and always humorous. "I think our elders knew a long time ago that the only way that you could get peoples' full attention was to get them laughing and get them involved in what they were talking about. "I think the most important part of writing this novel and working in fiction, for me, is to try and carry on those traditions. I saw humor as a real big part of all our legends and stories and so, it's only natural for me to try and use that to tell those kinds of stories." Wagamese looked at the link between humor and experience within his own culture and decided that it would be his way of writing about sensitive and difficult issues. "The thing that I notice with Native people is that when anything that has happened in their life, an issue that comes up that they have to deal with, they've always been able to find some element of humor in it that's given them the ability to cope and then find a resolution. "You really hear people laughing about what's happened to them and it's really tragic stuff, really dramatic things, but they've found a way to laugh about it and that laughing is the coping mechanism to deal with it. "It is the humor element that has allowed us to survive." Wagamese has been the recipient of at least six awards for his newspaper writing and although he claims he is not "an awards oriented Indian", he does feel good about the work he did at the Calgary Herald. "When I was writing in the Herald, to a largely non-Native audience, whatI was trying to do on a week-by-week basis was bridge the gap that separated people from each other. "I do feel I actually made some headway in helping other people understand us." He accomplished this by taking really difficult hard-core issues and totally unwrapping it from politics and making it a people thing, he explains. "Using the language of the living room, instead of the language of the board rooms, so people could understand and connect on an emotional level," he added. Wagamese tackles his novel in the way way. "I feel a responsibility to write in a way that non-Native peoples will be able to access easily, understand and follow through and not clutter up with a bunch of terminology and a bunch of political rhetoric." Stories told in an accessible way that people can laugh at and at the same time say, "Wow, there's something to this," is the approach he chooses. "So, with a lot of luck and hard work, I'll have two separate titles in the stories by next spring. Keeper n' Me, published by Doubleday, and a collection of newspaper columns by Warwick Publishing."