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Healing Imagination
Beth Cuthand Voices in the Waterfall. Theytus E#$.'(
AmberLee Kolson Wings of Glass. Theytus E!".""
Lee Maracle First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style. Theytus E#5.'(
Reviewed by Madelaine Jacobs
Do excruciating e&orts to bring about truth and reconciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples lack imagination? Beth Cuthand's Voices in the Waterfall, AmberLee Kolson's Wings of Glass, and Lee Maracle's First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style demonstrate that imagination is not frivolous. Rather, imagining is critical to understanding and fundamental to life. It o&ers hope for healing and restoration. Indigeneity must be respected with imagination because Indigenous identities do not lie imprisoned in fusty glass cases. Within the borders of the Canadian state, Indigenous persons live and change even though they are not necessarily bound by its mapping.
Beth Cuthand is a Cree author, Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and Anglican minister. Cuthand's Voices in the Waterfall is a captivating collection of poetry with a dash of prose. In four parts, "Our Sacred Spaces," "Invasion," "Revolution," and "Return to Our Sacred Spaces," Cuthand shi%s between blunt and enigmatic voices as individuals and communities grapple with pivotal choices. Although these voices have a predominantly feminine ring, masculine expressions are featured. The discovery of a page of Louis Riel's oration juxtaposed against the chorus of a lodge of Orangemen is stimulating. Cuthand also dedicates a poem to her dad, who admonishes her not to heed "people who / say the stories have to be told / exactly the way they're / given to you . . ." because "[t]hat...