by Richard Van Camp, University of Regina Press, 2021/$19.95/162 pp.
Stories are medicine, and Richard Van Camp’s Gather is medicine Canadians need right now. The book is imbued with joy and playfulness and is the perfect companion read on our journey back to each other as we emerge from COVID-19. What Gather does best, however, is inspire readers to find and share our own stories by grounding us in the wisdom of the Indigenous elders of this land, who exemplify survival and resilience. Van Camp’s efforts to record the oral histories of Indigenous elders—which started during his stint as a volunteer Handi-Bus driver in his hometown of Fort Smith, NWT—make him one of the most important historians of our day.
Van Camp is a prolific and award-winning writer of novels, comic books, graphic novels and short stories. But he is also a highly sought-after storyteller. Gather invites readers to explore for themselves how oral “storytelling = connection = community = joy and comfort = health and survival.” Van Camp urges us to connect by sharing food, listening, volunteering and using technology for its “forces for good.”
Gather offers 23 tips on how to be a good guest in an elder’s home, including bringing tobacco, your help and “your homegrown magic from your garden.” Van Camp covers matters of respectful guest behaviour and Indigenous protocol. He makes 28 suggestions on how we can all reconnect, including sending care packages, attending open mic storytelling events and going to live music. “No small talk,” Van Camp advises. “You can start slow but build quick.” He has plenty of advice on becoming a seasoned storyteller: honour your audience, be present, don’t scold or lecture, find a mentor and dress for success, among many others.
Van Camp writes as if he’s sitting across from you, smiling warmly with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, telling stories about miracles and the circle of life. But he doesn’t shy away from hard truths. In Gather he balances a joyful journey with well-placed stopovers to examine the enduring consequences of colonialism. He shares his mother Rosa Wah-Shee’s story about residential school and elder Glen Douglas’s stories of serving in the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, and the war in which, he quotes Chief Dan George, “the white man has taken all my weapons away.” “It will take generations to come out of the shadows of residential schools and the legacy of extinguishment we’ve all survived,” says Van Camp. Gather lays the groundwork for a way forward, and enlists all of us, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to help find the light. Stories can heal, and Van Camp is a generous, thoughtful guide in our search for our own stories, togetherness and reconciliation.
—Doreen Vanderstoop is the author of Watershed (Freehand).
