Dr. Bonita Lawrence will be joined by guests Marie Battiste, Sean Hillier, Cathy Martin, and Sings to the Forest at this Atlantic Canada launch of her novel, a virtual event. (Link to join below.)

N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England is an historical novel beginning in 1497 that takes the reader on a series of vignettes through five centuries of interconnections between Mi’kmaq people and London. Each character begins their story in different regions of the Mi’kmaq world, and they end up in London for various reasons—ranging from being kidnapped or enslaved in early years of contact, to being impressed into the British Navy or to attend university. The novel encompasses descriptive scenes of London in different eras, alternately addressing the eroticism of lovers, the wide-ranging lives of whalers and sailors, the horrors of nursing during World War I and the overwrought world of heroin users in late 1970s East London, interspersed with occasional short pages of intellectual commentary. Ultimately, it is a labour of love for homelands lost. (Taken from austinmacauley.com)

Dr. Lawrence is a professor in the Department of Humanities at York University and is a founding member of the Indigenous Studies program. She is of Mi’kmaq, Acadian, and English ancestry. In addition to this novel, she has authored two academic books, Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario and “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Race Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood. With Kim Anderson, she co-authored a collection of essays entitled Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival.

Thursday, February 11, 7 p.m. (AST)
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