by Chelsea Vowel
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
2022/$21.95/342 pp.
When Chelsea Vowel’s new book Buffalo is the New Buffalo was released, I’d been away from the home Métis territories for about a year. In Vancouver I craved the openness of prairie sky and the landscapes, stories and community that held me as a child and then as an adult. When I heard the book was out, I immediately got a copy.
From the first story, “Buffalo Bird,” I knew I had found home within the narratives that Vowel so carefully crafts. I’ve always been a fan of her work. I’ve sat in on live podcasts that she and her co-host Molly Swain have done for Métis in Space. I’ve taught extensively from her first book, Indigenous Writes. And I constantly refer to the way Vowel centres kinship networks of the Métis and Cree peoples in the Lac Ste. Anne area. When we hosted speaker sessions at the Indigenous Student Centres I’ve worked at, she would show up two hours early to sit and drink tea and visit with the students and Elders. Then after the talk she’d be answering questions and creating community within the Indigenous spaces. That’s the kind of person she is.
But outside of all that, Buffalo is the New Buffalo stands out for how Vowel continues to teach and educate everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike. A lot of intense, in-depth research went into this book, expressed in a way that centres the Métis and Cree matriarchal experiences, and gives ownership back to community through the accessibility of the story form. These are stories that can be told around the campfire late at night when the aunties howl back at the wolves. These are stories that can be taught in a graduate level seminar on Indigenous literatures. Whatever that means.
Vowel includes a commentary on each story, which brings the educational experience full circle. These commentaries provide a deeper dive into Métis storytelling traditions, bringing out the subtle nuances of language, thought and process, with insight on where we stand as Indigenous peoples in relation to colonialism, futurisms and the past. Vowel shows a world where the prairies return to old (but not gone) Indigenous alliances, where we all speak nêhiyawêwin, where the urban and rural landscapes are reformed to a sustainable/natural place and where we return to Indigenous governance systems.
Buffalo is the New Buffalo continues Chelsea Vowel’s work of breaking down tropes, stereotypes and misconceptions of Indigenous peoples, more specifically, Métis peoples. It inspired me to reflect on how western social constructs and colonial systems have imposed boundaries on my own way of relating as a Métis person. I hope future generations of Métis youth pick up this book and find home within its pages just as I have.
Conor Kerr is the author of Avenue of Champions (2021).
