Click here to return to the series
Today we travel to North America to look at historical and modern Canada, and the environmental, social, and economic cruelty and injustice befallen to its people and land. I talk with Jennifer Dance, author of Red Wolf, Paint, Hawk, and the play Dandelions in the Wind. We’ll concentrate mostly on Hawk here, though the three novels have been bundled together in the White Feather Collection. I stumbled across Jennifer’s novel Hawk recently on a trip up to 100-Mile, BC, as my husband and I had some time to kill on a snowy afternoon and, as is usually the case, ended up in a bookstore.
I found the book immediately gripping, and the subject matter right up my alley. Hawk, a First Nations teen from northern Alberta, is a cross-country runner who aims to win gold in an upcoming competition between all the schools in Fort McMurray. But when Hawk discovers he has leukemia, his identity as a star athlete is stripped away, along with his muscles and energy. When he finds an osprey, “a fish hawk,” mired in a pond of toxic residue from the oil sands industry, he sees his life-or-death struggle echoed by the young bird.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, Hawk has visions of the osprey and other animals that shared his childhood home: woodland caribou, wolves, and wood buffalo. They are all helpless and vulnerable, their forest and muskeg habitat vanishing. Hawk sees in these tragedies parallels with his own fragile life, and wants to forge a new identity — one that involves standing up for the voiceless creatures that share his world. But he needs to survive long enough to do it.
I had studied what was going on with Canadian oil sands, which I’ll provide a background for after the article. For now, here is my conversation with Jennifer.
Mary: Can you briefly describe your thoughts on each novel (Red Wolf, Paint, and Hawk)?
Jennifer: All three books use an animal to help shed light on a sensitive human problem. Although each is an independent story, when taken as a whole, they join the dots between the colonial policies of the past and the situation that Canada finds herself in today, regarding both the environment and racism against indigenous people. They open the door to reconciliation as well as to activism, and as such, they have a place in classrooms across Canada, from middle grade up. Having said that, these books are not just for children. They are equally suitable for adult readers. Red Wolf for example is the adventure story of an orphaned timber wolf and the First Nations boy who raises him, but on a deeper level it’s about colonialism, the Indian Act of 1876, and the residential school system that grew out of that legislation. Paint, set in that same era, is the story of a mustang on the prairies at a time when settlers are moving West. Through the life experiences of the horse we see that greed and racism virtually eliminated both the buffalo and the Plains Indians, and made irreversible changes to the grassland itself, ultimately leading to the Dust Bowl.
Hawk, rooted in that same colonial past, fast forwards to today, to the Alberta oil sands. The story compares the struggle for survival of both fish hawks and humans who live downstream of the industry. Racism rears its ugly head again. Sure, the Canadian economy is benefitting immensely from the oil sands industry, but what if the Athabasca River ran the other way? What if instead of flowing north to a few First Nations and Metis communities, it flowed south to Edmonton and Calgary. What if people there were getting sick? And what if the last hundred years had taught you that the government would do nothing to help you. The honest answer to that question brings us back around to Canada’s endemic racism toward indigenous people, racism that was seeded by colonialism and fed by residential schools.
Mary: What inspired you to write these novels?
Jennifer: All three books were inspired by the subject matter. Writing is my form of activism. I write, to tell people about the shameful things, past and present, that I see happening in Canada, things that my peers don’t know or understand. I write to inspire today’s youth to take a stand for justice or equality or the environment, or any other cause that’s important to them. Our youth are the leaders of tomorrow, they are the ones who will win justice and equality for indigenous people in this country. They are the ones who will clean up the environmental mess that my generation has caused, but only if they know about it and only if their hearts have been touched. I try to educate young and old about the issues without leaving the after-taste of a history lesson. I try to pull at their heart-strings, in a story that keeps them turning the page, and helps equips them to make the world a better place.
My passion for justice and equality goes back to when I was 17, to that pivotal moment in 1966 when I met the boy who I would later marry. He was black and I was white. To put that the context of the times, it was still two years before the assassination of Martin Luther King. I was naïve and I really thought that we could make a difference, and show those around us that skin colour didn’t matter! The reality was harder than I imagined. The day-to-day racism that we experienced as a couple culminated in an unprovoked attack by Skinheads. Keith was left with a fractured skull and broken ribs. It took a while, but he recovered and we came to Canada looking for a safer place to raise our mixed-race children. Shortly after we got here, Keith died – unexpectedly – a complication from the earlier head injury. I was 30. Our daughter was 3, our son not yet two and I was 5 months pregnant. It was hard. But I came through it with an even greater passion for fighting racism. I know for a fact that without Keith’s influence on my life, these stories would never have been written. So, looking back, I guess Keith was my inspiration.
Mary: You also wrote the play Dandelions in the Wind. Can you talk some about that?
Jennifer: Dandelions in the Wind is a musical drama, and it’s my life’s work. It contains much of my own experience as a young white woman married to a young black man during the sixties and seventies. But I set my personal story into the backdrop of the United States to raise awareness about the Civil Rights struggle and the countless young people who bravely confronted hatred with love. Fifty years later, that struggle is far from over, making Dandelions in the Wind really timely.
With this musical, as with my books, I try to make a difficult subject suitable for both youth and adults. Spoken Word acts like a pair of bookends, sandwiching more traditional genres of music, and asking where are we are now, as individuals and as a people? Are we still in chains, still bound by racism, or are we free?
The show has been performed in both Canada and England. I dream that it will become part of Black History month for school audiences throughout North America. The biggest problem however is money. It takes a fortune to stage a fully professional show of this calibre.
Mary: Can you explain the title Dandelions in the Wind?
Jennifer: Imagine dandelion parachutes blowing in the wind. That imagery represents the diaspora of the African people, blown all over the world by slavery and racism. But more importantly, it represents a powerful, personal memory. The day of Keith’s funeral, I took my children to the park. Our three-year-old daughter picked dandelions that had gone to seed, gathering them in a bunch to give to her daddy. The funeral had taught her that flowers mean ‘I love you’, but she was perplexed as to how to give them to her father. I blew some of the parachutes heavenwards. She watched them float back to earth, her bottom lip trembling. And then she said, ‘If I think really hard, can I think the flowers to daddy?”
Mary: This spotlight focuses on Hawk, as we travel to the Albertan oil sands in Canada and see the effects of Big Oil on Aboriginal residents. What’s going on up there?
Jennifer: It’s hard to even verbalize without using curse words! It’s appalling. It’s devastating. It’s heart-breaking. I still cannot fathom it, and I’ve been there! I’ve driven through it, at least the parts that I was given access to. And I’ve flown over it, all of it! Flying is the best way to grasp the extent of the devastation. The boreal forest has been stripped bare from horizon to horizon, and replaced with a heart-wrenching mess. Or it has been carved up by seismic lines which don’t look as bad from the air but which fracture the habitat for wildlife and are equally devastating as clearcutting and surface mining. Even talking about it now, makes me upset again!
The problems are immense and I have only just touched the tip if the iceberg with my story, but I hope it raises awareness at least. I was stunned that the processing plants are right on the edge of the Athabasca River. It makes sense of course, because the industry uses hot water to separate the bitumen from the sand. In fact, more water is taken from the river each day than is used by the entire city of Toronto. As if that’s not bad enough, they then pump the dirty water along with the carcinogenic waste (called tailings) into enormous open ponds to evapourate down. These tailings ponds are lined with packed clay. Some are literally right on the edge of the river, so if they leak or seep, the carcinogenic petrochemicals end up in the river. And the river goes north.
First the water floods into the Peace-Athabasca Delta – a precious wetland named by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. The world recognises this delta as an environmentally significant area, yet hardly anyone in Canada knows about it, or realizes that it’s right downstream of the oil sands industry! And people don’t know that it’s on the migration route of literally millions of birds.
From the delta, the water trickles into Lake Athabasca and to the First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan where Adam in my story grows up. The residents of Fort Chip have lived a traditional life style for eons, eating fish, duck, geese, moose etc., everything coming directly or indirectly from the river. And for twenty years or more, people there have been getting sick. These days most of the people have a family member working in the oil sands industry. It’s the only way they can afford to eat imported “safe” food and water. I try to show all these issues in my story.
Then there’s the land reclamation. The lease agreements between the oil companies and the government guarantee that the mined land will be reclaimed once all the bitumen has been removed. The industry proudly advertises their reclamation successes, directing you to visit an area where tress have been planted and buffalo have been reintroduced. Only three species of tress had been planted and the buffalo were nowhere in sight – they are kept in paddocks most of the time, so they don’t over graze the land. The reality is that the land is never going to be like it was before. Wetlands called muskeg, will be gone. Thousands of species of flora and fauna will be lost for ever. Woodland caribou are already probably past the point of salvation. And even after all this time, the industry still doesn’t have a good long-term plan for what to do with the sludge from the tailings ponds. Right now, they are mixing it with gypsum to solidify it into “rocks” which they put onto the mined land as the first stage of the reclamation process. They then cover it with sand and topsoil, and plant trees. But gypsum is the same stuff they use in plaster casts, and I know that it crumbles when it gets wet. (One of my kids was in a body cast when he was still in diapers!) So, won’t these “rocks” crumble in the damp soil and release the toxins into the ground water? And won’t it all end up in the river?
Going up there – meeting the people of Fort Chipewyan, hearing their stories, seeing it all for myself – was a challenging experience, but one that impacted me greatly. As a scientist, I had hoped to find a balance between opposing views of the industry, but I discovered families, just like Hawk’s, trapped between earning a living and losing their health and traditional lifestyle. If you visit my website www.jenniferdance.ca you’ll find a photo journal of my trip.
Mary: I agree about this completely heart-breaking subject matter. I’m curious, what inspired your character Adam?
Jennifer: I wanted Adam to be a regular kid, one that non-native readers could relate to, but I also wanted to show the generational effect of residential schools on Adam’s family, and the positive impact of a loving grandfather.
In the first draft of Hawk, Adam was a girl. I figured that the protagonists in both Red Wolf and Paint were boys, so it was time for a change. But although I tried hard, I couldn’t create a believable girl! I don’t quite know why. Perhaps because I was never a girly girl myself. I was always out playing in the woods, riding ponies, and befriending hurt animals. Back in my own parenting days, there was not much material for boys to read, and based on my own experience, boys don’t take to reading the way girls do, so, I worked hard at keeping boys engaged in the story.
In developing Adam’s character, I tried to verbalize his emotions as he faces leukemia. Keith was an inspiration here. He was in a coma for the last month of his life. Sitting at his bedside, I often wondered if he had already left his body and was flying free… getting a glimpse of heaven. That’s why I was able to write Adam’s out-of-body experiences as well as find suitable reactions and emotions for Adam’s friends and family as they sat and watched, helplessly.
Mary: Thanks so much, Jennifer. I can’t even begin to express my sympathy for your losses. Your activism through art is an amazing accomplishment.
Background: Dil-bit (from author Mary Woodbury)
My immersive knowledge of the area in which I live now–which is the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations–began over ten years ago, when one of the first things I did when I moved to Canada was to go to Burnaby’s Shadbolt Theater to see a presentation with Ian McCallister, of Pacific Wild, and Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Slick Water, Tar Sands, and other books. They talked about Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal, which sought to build twin pipelines from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat, BC. Ian discussed the danger to the northern rainforest’s wildlife, and Andrew covered the ins and outs of mining and extracting bitumen. I was so moved by their knowledgeable presentation that I went home and read all I could about the oil sands operations in Alberta. This was over ten years ago, when the Northern Gateway project was still a thing. Back then I was learning all I could. The Northern Gateway had so much opposition. And rightly so.
Between 2010 and 2013 I wrote an 11-part series about the Great Bear Rainforest, which looked at how bitumen was produced; how it would be dangerous to ship the oil via supertankers in the storm-ridden and sometimes narrow Pacific Ocean channels leading to and from Kitimat, BC; how unsafe pipelines and oil spills could be; how having supertankers on the west coast of BC could challenge and utterly destroy natural ecosystems at work; how well-to-wheel emissions of dil-bit were 18-21% higher than U.S. conventional crude; how economically infeasible this long-term investment would actually be; and how awful this project would be ecologically–using so many natural water resources, total destruction of much of Canada’s Boreal forests, dangerous chemicals, and tailings pond waste. I explored the flora and fauna it would affect: black and grizzly bears, wolves, old growth rainforests, thousands of salmon-spawning waterways, and marine life (including a chapter on wild salmon). I also wrote two chapters about people of the rainforest, including an interview with a college student arranging a paddle around the islands to raise awareness of the pipeline proposal.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rejected the Northern Gateway, but lately has been supportive of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which also transports diluted bitumen (dil-bit) from Alberta. Oil sands transport is not new. Albertan oil deposits were discovered in the late 1940s, with the first Trans Mountain pipeline completed in 1953. In 2004 Kinder Morgan built a second pipeline, beginning at Hinton, Alberta and running to Hargreaves, BC. After this project was completed in 2008, Kinder Morgan filed another expansion application in 2013, which would run between Strathcona County in Alberta to Burnaby, BC, increasing the amount of oil transport from 380,000 barrels a day to 890,000 barrels a day, and also requiring 12 new pumping stations. The expansions do not speak well for transitioning off fossil fuels or any climate treaties, and in fact, according to Vice, the oil sands in Canada could collapse by 2030. The federal government, however, is buying Kinder Morgan for 4.5 billion dollars. Imagine putting that much into research and development of cleaner energy and the jobs that could come with it.
About Jennifer
Jennifer’s life has demonstrated her passion for justice and racial equality. She has experienced first-hand where racism can lead.
“Looking back, it has made me more sensitive to the pain of others. It has driven my creativity.”
Jennifer has a B.Sc. (Agric) from the University of the West Indies. Before coming to Canada in 1979, she worked in medical research at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, England. She lives on a small farm in Stouffville, Ontario and knows how to milk a cow by hand, make cheese, butter and yogurt. When her children were young, Jennifer was a stay-at-home mom, feeding her family off the land. These days she buys food from the store but is still able to indulge her life-long love affair with horses, as well as write books for young people, hoping to make the world a better place by inspiring the next generation of young activists.
Award-winning Canadian author and playwright Jennifer Dance’s Civil Rights era musical, Dandelions in the Wind, addresses black-white racism and is based in part on her own life story. The three books of her White Feather Collection — Red Wolf, Paint, and Hawk address the issue of racism, both past and present, against Indigenous people in North America. These novels are fiction, but they present the truth in a way that creates compassion and understanding, joining the dots between the colonial policies of the past and the rift of mistrust that still exists. They open the door to reconciliation.
Reconciliation is not an aboriginal problem, it is a Canadian problem. It involves all of us.
These words spoken by Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, compel us ALL to become involved with reconciliation. But as non-natives how can we reconcile, or make something right, if we don’t know what’s wrong? Armed with the truth, Jennifer believes that today’s youth will stand up for justice and equality, and lead us to reconciliation.
Personal achievements
Jennifer Dance was awarded the 2016 Ontario Senior Achievement Award, for making a significant contribution through her writing and presentations in the schools and community. Jennifer was also honoured to be nominated as a Woman of Excellence in the J.S. Woodsworth Awards for Human Rights and Equity.
During Black History month of 2017, Jennifer was thrilled to bring her civil rights era musical to the Toronto Stage. It is her dream to see Dandelions in the Wind used across Canada as part of school teaching on anti-racism.
