User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
A glimpse into the culture of the Native Tribes. Frankly, I've always been fascinated with how different pathways would the history have taken, had all those cultures not been wiped but the European barbarians?
Of course, her info on the Ukrainian 'holodomor' isn't correct. It's a best kept secret that during that period hunger took place in many more regions than just Ukraine. In many Russian regions it was even more prolonged and devastating. It's just not publicized in order to make it seem like the Ukrainian people suffered more from the hands of dreadful Russians. Just like the little-known fact that many (if not most) revolutionaries and early Soviet leaders weren't exactly Russian but rather of other nations: Lenin - Kalmyk/Jewish, Radek - German/Ukrainian, Stalin - Georgian, Dzierżyński - Polish... and so on.
The mother's mental health issues: I'm pretty sure they were largely driven my all the involuntary hospitalizations. Seriously: she was tied to a bed there! The father's antics concerning this show he was quite a piece of work. As a matter of fact, he should have been hospitalized as an alcoholic. Maybe it would have taught him something about decency and treating ill relatives.
Epigenetics discourse was pretty much on spot. As well as points about inferior food, abuse, mental illness, repression, social stigma and racial issues.
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We know our cultures have meaning and worth, that that culture lives and breathes inside our languages. ... I’ve heard people say that when you learn a people’s language, you learn their culture. It tells you how they think of the world, how they experience it. That’s why translation is so difficult—you have to take one way of seeing the world and translate it to another, while still piecing the words together so they make sense. (с) So true!
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Literal demonizing of Indigenous people was a natural extension of early tactics used to move colonization along. In 1452 and 1455 the Catholic Church issued papal bulls calling for non-Christian people to be invaded, robbed and enslaved under the premise that they were “enemies of Christ.” Forty years later, when Christopher Columbus accidentally arrived in the Americas, European monarchs began to expand on the ideas contained in those bulls, issuing policies and practices that have been collectively referred to as the Doctrine of Discovery. These new policies dictated that “devil-worshipping” Indigenous peoples worldwide should not even be thought of as humans, and thus the land they had cared for and inhabited for centuries was terra nullius, or vacant land, and Christian monarchs had the “right” to claim it all. The Doctrine of Discovery was such a tantalizing, seemingly guilt-free justification for genocide, even U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson adopted it as official policy in 1792—and we all know how much Americans wanted to distinguish themselves from Europe at the time.
The Doctrine of Discovery is still cited in court cases today whenever Canada or the U.S. want to shut up Indigenous tribes who complain. In an attempt to stop this lazy, racist rationale, a delegation of Indigenous people went to Rome in 2016 to ask the church to rescind these papal bulls. Kahnawake Mohawk Kenneth Deer said that after hearing their concerns, Pope Francis merely looked him in the eye and said, “I’ll pray for you.” Two years later, after the delegation’s second trip to Rome to discuss these papal bulls, they were told the matter was being sent to another committee. Nothing else has been done, though presumably the Pope is still praying for us. (c)
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“Can you imagine going to a funeral every day, maybe even two funerals, for five to ten years?” the chief asks. ...
“What does that type of mourning, pain and loss do to you?” he asks. We reflect on our own losses, our own mourning, our own pain. We say nothing.
After a moment he answers himself. “It creates numbness.”
Numbness is often how people describe their experience of depression. (c)
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The blues coming out of the blue. Go figure. (c)
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I’ve heard one person translate a Mohawk phrase for depression to, roughly, “his mind fell to the ground.” I ask my sister about this. She’s been studying Mohawk for the past three years and is practically fluent. She’s raising her daughter to be the same. They’re the first members of our family to speak the language since our paternal grandfather a handful of decades ago.
“Wake’nikonhra’kwenhtará:’on,” she says. “It’s not quite ‘fell to the ground.’ It’s more like, ‘His mind is…’ ” She pauses. She repeats the word in Mohawk. Slows it down. Considers what English words in her arsenal can best approximate the phrase. “ ‘His mind is…’ ” She moves her hands around, palms down, as if doing a large, messy finger painting. “Literally stretched or sprawled out on the ground. It’s all over.” She explains there’s another phrase, too. Wake’nikonhrèn:ton. It means “the mind is suspended.”
Both words indicate an inability to concentrate. That’s one of the signs of depression. (c)
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Is there a language of depression? I’m not sure. Depression often seems to me like the exact opposite of language. It takes your tongue, your thoughts, your self-worth, and leaves an empty vessel.(c)
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In fact, the Mind Over Mood Depression Inventory could double as a checklist for the effects of colonialism on our people. Sad or depressed mood? Check. Feelings of guilt? Check. Irritability? Considering how fast my dad’s side of the family are to yell, check. Finding it harder than usual to do things? Well, Canada tried to eradicate our entire way of being, then forced us to take on their values and wondered why we couldn’t cope. Definite check. Low self-esteem, self-critical thoughts, tiredness or loss of energy, difficulty making decisions, seeing the future as hopeless, recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts? Check, check, check. (c)
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Our Haudenosaunee condolence ceremony was created by Hiawatha to help a person in mourning after a death. Whoever is conducting the condolence recites the Requickening Address as they offer the grieving person three strands of wampum, one at a time.
One: soft, white deer cloth is used to wipe the tears from their eyes so they can see the beauty of creation again.
Two: a soft feather is used to remove the dust from their ears so they can hear the kind words of those around them.
Three: water, the original medicine, is used to wash away the dust settled in their throats that keeps them from speaking, from breathing, from reconnecting with the world outside their grief. (c)
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I had no clue my father was having problems weaving himself into the tapestry of white suburban bliss. (c)
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... when I first read Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, activist and teacher Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Islands of Decolonial Love. Every sentence felt like a fingertip strumming a neglected chord in my life, creating the most gorgeous music I’d ever heard. (c)
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Reading Simpson’s stories ultimately gave me permission to write my own. (c)
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That is the crucial problem with the push for “diversity” in publishing—something I’ve known my whole life but have only recently been able to articulate. “Diversity” is not about letting those who aren’t white make whatever art matters to them and their communities. (c)
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If you can’t write about us with a love for who we are as a people, what we’ve survived, what we’ve accomplished despite all attempts to keep us from doing so; if you can’t look at us as we are and feel your pupils go wide, rendering all stereotypes a sham, a poor copy, a disgrace—then why are you writing about us at all? (c)
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Run through these streets, my instincts say, run your fingertips over each brick of each building. Feel the roughness, the sturdiness, the strength. Feel the sun and the particular way it cuts through the trees, warming your neck, your arms, your legs before its unblinking attention becomes too much and you go home sunburnt. Hear the night, which is never totally silent—raccoons hissing or late-night, liquored-up strangers laughing or street sweepers rumbling or delivery trucks beeping while backing up. See the night, see how its darkness always has an escape hatch—a streetlight or lit-up store sign to guide you home, even when the city’s radiance blocks out the stars. Place your hand over this neighbourhood’s heart, feel it beat against your palm. Love its perfection. Love its imperfection. Feel home again. (c)
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Instead of attempting to explain any of this to any friends, I learned how to fake intimacy. Turned out that as long as you were funny and fun, people would want to spend time with you; as long as you were willing to listen to their problems, they didn’t notice you weren’t telling them any of your own. I knew so much about my friends. They knew almost nothing about me. This was how I created a double life: no matter how awful things were at home, I could go to school and, from nine to three, pretend that nothing at all was wrong. But once 3:01 hit and I got on the bus home, I could no longer stop myself from wondering what awaited me when I got off.
There was a problem with this strategy that I didn’t anticipate. The longer I went without talking to my friends about my problems, the harder it was to talk to them when I actually needed to. If I had slowly unspooled my life for them, as they had for me, they would be prepared when something particularly difficult came up. They would already know the context. Now, if I wanted to talk to them about anything, I would have to explain everything—all the truth I’d tried so hard to keep from everyone. I had no idea how to go about that, so instead I just continued on as I always had: the girl without a family or past, who you could always rely on to keep all your secrets because she kept her own so well. (c)
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In my diaspora class we often talked about the experience of diaspora: remembering your past in your former home and constantly measuring it against your present in your current home, knowing you can never again re-enter the time and space you left, knowing you have lost access to that possible future forever ... (c)
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My body was sharp glass I dutifully held together. (c)
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The reason junk food is so much cheaper than nutritious food is the U.S. government. This is not a conspiracy theory; it’s a fact. The U.S. government subsidizes what are called “cash crops”: wheat, corn and soybeans. They push farmers to overproduce these crops, which farmers then sell at a deep discount to companies that turn them into high-fructose corn syrup, hydrolyzed soy protein, refined carbohydrates—all the primary ingredients in food poor families rely upon, both in Canada and in the U.S. ...
By encouraging farmers to overproduce cash crops, the U.S. government has ultimately helped corporations create a food economy where poor, racialized communities depend upon unhealthy food to survive. And because poor diet has been linked to health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart problems, cancer and stroke, this would also mean that the U.S. government has been essentially paying for poor, racialized people to become sick through its crop subsidy program. In some ways this is to be expected. Capitalism always prioritizes profit over people. But it raises the question: if these crop subsidies disproportionately affected white people’s health and well-being the way they disproportionately impact racialized people’s health and well-being, would they still be in place? (c)
Q:When I advocate for my right to forget about my sexual assault, I’m advocating for the same right my assaulter has been given. I’m advocating for people to believe me with the same blind faith people believed my assaulter. I’m advocating for the right to move on with my life, the same way my assaulter is allowed to move on with his. I’m advocating for the right to be occasionally happy, the chance to achieve my goals, to be considered more than someone’s victim. Had I taken my assaulter to court, his lawyer would have made the same argument about him: that he has the right to be happy, to achieve his goals, to be considered more than someone’s assaulter. That argument would more than likely get him cleared. Even though only the strongest sexual assault cases even go to trial, only 42 percent come back with a guilty verdict. Sexual assault has one of the smallest conviction rates of violent crime in Canada. (c) And not just in Canada.
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sense of wrongness once one considers how contradictory those parts are. If I were to make a list of descriptors that could define my mother in order of what I consider to be most important to her, it would look like this:
- Mother of eight
- White (ex)wife to Tuscarora man (Race supposedly not important to her, but important nonetheless.)
- Fervent Catholic (Could explain 1.)
- Computer genius (Offered a job by NASA, turned down so my older sister with cerebral palsy could stay at the facility she was in.)
- Kung fu master (Sixth-degree black belt, to be exact.)
I could add other things, like her star athleticism and resultant eating disorder in high school, or her contradictory food bingeing and weight gain in married life, or the history of mental illness in her family (her closest brother committed suicide; her youngest brother struggled with addiction for over twenty years; her mother dealt with dementia; I suspect her father had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, since he was prescribed Lithium, but there’s no one left who will tell me). I could bring up the isolation she felt being dragged from America to the Six Nations reserve in Canada without any legal protection or permission. All of those are only parts. (c) Wow!
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But then I’d mention things she’d rather forget. The time she tried to rip our thirty-two-inch TV from the wall because it was evil. The time she trashed our house with the destructive artistry of an entitled rock star. The time she thought demons were in our trailer. She threw a knife at the couch right next to me in an attempt to “kill them.” If I bring this up with her, she tells me that she didn’t think there were demons at all; she was just really angry; I’m making it all up. I wonder whether she really believes that or if it’s something she has to believe. ...
She’d talk even if it was two in the morning and the person she was talking at was trying to sleep. It didn’t faze her. After all, she wasn’t having a conversation, not really. She was delivering a sermon. ...
if you were to tell us that the excitement and energy we loved so much were part of Mom’s mania, that her hard work and hustle were at their height when she was manic, that she was at her most hilarious, fun and focused then, we’d probably say her bipolar was awesome, too. It was always awesome until it wasn’t. (c) Wow!
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As a child, and even as a teen, when my father told me the signs that my mother’s mental health was deteriorating, I believed him. I believed that identifying these signs, collecting them like baseball cards, and shoving them before her face to stare at when she was at her most argumentative—or most depressed—was being a good partner. I believed that forcing her into a car, turning on the child locks so she couldn’t jump out and shuttling her over the border, where New York laws would allow her to be involuntarily admitted to the mental hospital, was the only way to support a mentally ill person.
I began to question these assumptions when I grew up, primarily because I became the partner of a person with severe clinical depression. Mike had a rough time with his depression in university and barely finished his classes. He would cry in bed almost every day the last year of school, saying awful, untrue things about himself, often wanting to hurt himself, even kill himself. I had no idea what to do. My experience with my mother hadn’t prepared me for this. I only knew how my father would approach the situation: forced hospitalization and medication. But I also remembered how traumatized my mother was by those hospitalizations; I remembered when she couldn’t recall simple words because her medication interfered with her brain too badly, how she’d eventually erupt in frustrated tears. I didn’t want those things for Mike. I didn’t want them for her, either. Instead of getting cops or doctors involved, I tried to talk Mike through his depression, countering the negative self-talk in his head with all the evidence his depressed brain wouldn’t let him see. You’re not a bad person. You’re not a burden. You are not your depression. I looked up how to talk to suicidal people, learned the crucial difference between passive thoughts of dying, thoughts of suicide and active plans for suicide. Somehow, despite my fumbled attempts to support him, Mike managed to pull himself out of the depression—and somehow I managed to convince myself that his depression was a one-time thing. (c)
Rating: really liked it
Wow, do I ever live in a Canadian bubble, well just a bubble in general. I am just now reaching out of that bubble to learn more about the world around me by reading more non-fiction. Well, Canadian Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott has opened my eyes to a few subject matters with her powerful, thoughtful, honest and moving collection of essays.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is my first experience reading a collection of essays from an author, and I had no idea how much I would find essays as interesting, insightful and enjoyable as I did theses. Alicia Elliott covers a bit of ground here with the subject matter she explores. I usually would find that a bit overwhelming, but I enjoyed the format with a single subject matter per essay. I took my time reading and stopped to think about each essay and take notes along the way. I thought Alicia Elliott gave her personal opinion and argument well with thoughtful insight, depth, wit and heart. Her brilliant use of metaphors adds some understanding and depth to her thoughts on the subject matters. She draws on her own experiences as she explores colonialism, racism, mental health, abuse, sexual assault, poverty, malnutrition, capitalism parenthood and writing. There is a recurring theme of colonialism throughout it that is brilliantly weaved in through them. The essays flowed smoothly and connected well into each one.
Alicia Elliott's voice is gentle, informative and understanding with her frustration and anger. Her words are deeply moving, and it was easy to pick up on the mood of each essay and her attitude towards each subject matter. She is boldly honest with her truths and her insight about each subject and she gave me a bit to think about with each essay. She shares a part of herself with us while sharing her thoughts on each subject matter. Her writing is inviting to form our own thoughts, and she invites us to challenge our assumptions. At times I did want to argue with her in my head with some of my assumptions; however, I reminded myself these are her experiences, her opinions, thoughts and arguments, not mine. So I silenced that noise in my head and listened to what she had to say. I am so glad I did. I highly recommend it.
I received a copy from the publisher on NetGalley!
Rating: really liked it
In the style of memoir essay, award winning and bestselling Canadian author Alicia Elliott shares her riveting debut collection: “A Mind Spread Out On The Ground” (2020). Ms. Elliott has received acclaim for her voice in North American and Indigenous Literature, her articles and short stories have been featured in several notable publications including the Washington Post, she lives in Brantford, Ontario.
The Haudenosaunee indigenous Confederacy extends from a Syracuse N.Y. region into Aboriginal Ontario Canada. Ms. Elliott was raised in a large family by her Haudenosaunee father, often on the Six Nations Reservation. Elliott’s white devout Catholic mother, considered it as an advantage if her children passed for white. The family was impoverished and moved frequently, her mother’s mental illness didn’t help. When Elliott’s mother was well, she lavished her children with attention; meals were cooked, the laundry and household chores were completed. Elliot’s father didn’t hesitate to have her mother hospitalized when she became irrational, delusional, and paranoid. Her family lived in constant fear of coming under scrutiny of Social Services, which targeted indigenous people. It was unfortunate that her entire family was banned from their grandparent’s home, due to untreated head lice, which further traumatized her childhood.
Food insecurity is a known fact for poor and indigenous families. American farmers receive government subsidies to grow wheat, corn, and soybeans that also contribute to vast corporate profiteering in the manufacture of high fructose corn syrup, hydrolyzed soy protein and refined carbohydrates. Cheap inexpensive foods flood the market that feed the poor throughout the U.S. and Canada found in the unethical fast-food and grocery industry. “Food Inc.” (2008) a documentary highlighted diet related conditions of obesity, diabetes and heart disease: Elliott recalled peanut butter and food bank cereal that sustained her family and how poor families self-medicate with sugar and junk food the way other people do with alcohol and drugs.
Elliott raised awareness of racial injustice against indigenous people, including an incident involving her own rape. All charges that she reported of violent criminal felony acts were dismissed. A Canadian indigenous mother of three, Cindy Gladue, was viciously murdered (2015). At the court trial she was further victimized and her family traumatized. The murderer was acquitted of all charges. Due to public outcry over so much racial injustice against people of color, leading to mass protests and social unrest across the U.S. and Canada, there remains a hope for change. ~ **With appreciation to Melville House Publishing via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.
Rating: really liked it
***Shortlisted for the 2020 First Nations Communities Read Indigenous Literature Award***
Non-fiction/A biography....
“Can a metaphor or simile capture depression? It was definitely heavy, but could I compare it to a weight? Weight in and of itself is not devastating; depression is”.
When what was left of Alicia’s family— they moved to the Six Nations of Grand River reserve in Ontario, Canada. They lived in a two bedroom trailer. She and her sister in one small room, and her three younger brothers in the master bedroom. Her parents had no bedroom, no bed. They slept in a living room on the couch and recliner.
Alicia’s mother had been diagnosed and re-diagnosed many times. Postpartum depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, or post traumatic stress disorder, depending on which doctor you talked to.
For she and her siblings —those diagnosed words meant that their mother‘s health was on a timer. They never knew when the timer would go off, but when it did, they’re happy, playful, hilarious mother would disappear behind a curtain and another word emerge: alternatively angry and mournful, wired and lethargic.
Their mother often was very still and quiet during those times — hard to know where their mother floated off to.
Alicia‘s childhood was chaotic, and heartbreaking.
Not only did her mother suffer with mental illness, but her father was abusive. Add a tribe kids—all crammed into a small trailer, and my god.... there is a lot of seething and suffering going on.
But this book —is beautifully and powerfully written.
Alicia examined her own life—as adults do—( especially if they came from dysfunctional families) by putting pieces of the puzzle together... as a way to gain a greater understanding and compassion for herself and others.
Alicia’s chapters were not only written as autobiography...
“They’re meant as lenses through which the author and reader can can view what would otherwise be too vast to take in at once: the ongoing cultural catastrophe Indigenous people have experienced under colonialism”.
Alicia weaves together the development & devastation of her own broken family with that of a broken nation—the genocide perpetrated by the United States government on Indigenous people.
“Can you imagine going to a funeral every day, maybe even two funerals, for 5 to 10 years? the chief Haudenosaunee chief asks.
He’s giving a decolonization presentation, talking about the way colonization has affected our people since contact. Smallpox, tuberculosis, even the common cold yet our communities particularly hard. Then, on top of that, we had wars to contend with—some against the French, son against the British, some against either or neither or both. Back then death was all you could see, smell, hear or taste. Death was all you could feel”.
“What does that type of mourning, pain and loss due to you? he asks. We reflect on our own losses, our own mourning , our own pain. We say nothing”.
“After a moment he answers himself. It creates numbness”.
“Numbness is often help people describe their experience of depression”.
This book may sound depressing but my goodness I could not put it down —it’s educational and eye-opening as well.
Alicia shared about feeling alone in a trailer filled with family. But more than loneliness or grief, she felt anger. She wrote her first suicide note at age 16. Tears fell onto the paper faster than she could write— she was writing and crying .... so hard —so fast —
until she exhausted herself... disgusted herself...then eventually collapsed onto her bed and listened to the radio.
As I read the personal aspects of Alicia‘s life—real raw—honest—heartbroken herself... I was pausing to contemplate what she was teaching...messages she wanted readers to take away.
She says:
“Writing with empathy is not enough”.
“Empathy has its limits—and, contrary to what some may think, it is possible to both have empathy for a person and still hold inherited unacknowledged racist views about them and their worth”.
Maybe it was good that Alicia grew more angry than depressed —she directed that anger — and rather than turn her frustrating infuriating rage on herself — she set out to educate and make a difference.
The effects of colonization has ballooned so much that as of 2013, suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading cause of death for native people living in Canada under the age of 44.
A 2019 study revealed that, since 1999, the suicide rate among Native men living in the U.S. has gone up 71%.
The suicide rate for Native women is an even more staggering 139%.
Native youth in America face a suicide rate 2 1/2 times the national average, with suicide being the second leading cause of death for Native Youth between the ages of 10 and 24. For LGBTQ2S + Onkwehon, there was no data.
The less Canada maintains its historical role as the abusive father, micromanaging and undermining First Nations at every turn, the better off people are—In other words the center of suicide prevention found lower rates of depression and suicide among communities that exhibit cultural continuity.
There was much less suicide found in communities were more than 50% of the people spoke their Indigenous language.
Alicia drives home the value of language and culture.
It’s been said that when you learn peoples language you learn their culture. That’s why translation is often so difficult you have to take one way of seeing the world and translate it to another while still piecing words together that makes sense.
Page after page, swipe after swipe on my kindle — I felt as though I was getting a better understanding of the struggle against colonialism— in the same way against depression.
Revolution, rebellion, the struggle of American democracy, complex understandings of leadership, diplomacy, and responsibility...
no wonder this book was titled “A Mind Spread out on the Ground”.
...Part history, (Canadian relations to Indigenous people, White supremacy and racism)
...Part coming-of-age, identity, memoir (tragedy and love)
...Part essays,
...Part political,
...Part poetry,
...Part family legacy,.....
Alicia writes:
“Being both Haudenosaunee and white ( daughter of a Catholic mother and Haudenosaunee father), wasn’t a curse meant to tear me in two; it was a call to uphold the different responsibilities that came with each part of me”.
I’m not if the truth shall set you free... but it’s it’s a great place to start from.
Beautiful written debut, by a wonderful Mohawk writer....
a bestseller in Canada and shortlisted for the Hillary Weston Prize for nonfiction.
I look forward to reading Alicia Elliot’s next book.
Rating: really liked it
An intense book! Super intense. So many gems and real points. Review to come.
--- update: review -/----
You know what’s crazy... that publishers didn’t think it was important in the past to publish diverse voices telling their own stories from way back when. Now that white people are going out of style and we ain’t trying to really hear none of their morally bankrupt and dry stories, literary diversity is becoming the in-thing.
Okay, I’m being a little cheeky, but what I mean is that on one hand I’m sick that we’re just getting these stories out now and on the other hand I’m glad more and more BIPOC first-person accounts and BIPOC & LGBTQIA fiction & nonfic is coming to the forefront.
Something like this shouldn’t just exist now. Iterations of this book spanning decades should exist and should be easily accessible; but there’s no one to blame but racist publishing practices from the top down. There should be hundreds of books like this — spanning decades. I want to compare a book like this to a book like this from the 1950s/1960s. I want to read about progress and progression. I want to experience the breadth of these experiences through reading, I want to read about people like me and these books need to exist for girls and boys who need to see themselves in history and it should have always existed. I'm repeating myself but
I’m not talking crazy — representation matters. It makes you feel less crazy. It’s Indigenous History Month and I feel so lucky to get to experience Alicia Elliott’s book. The title captured me and is what made me want to read this work. I shouldn’t feel
“lucky” — more writing from black and brown writers need to be centered and should have always been centered in the public discourse. I commend Alicia Elliott's writing, putting truths out there detailing real Canadian history juxtaposed with current relatable content and topics from her personal life, lived. She broke down huge truths on trauma, colorism, white-passing privilege, capitalism, greed and the murder and rape of not just indigenous culture and people but the inefficacy of the justice system and the perpetuation of racism and genocide. She served up truths on truths and truths and quite literally gave us space to ask ourselves questions and challenge our own biases. She wasn't pulling any punches and I could follow her lead and her lines like they were charted out on the wall, true-detective style.
This book was PROPER. It brought about the same feelings in me that I felt reading Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper, the same way feelings I felt reading When they Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors. I'm just inspired that there are women out here claiming space in the literary world telling our distinct stories.
This is a must-read!
Rating: really liked it
Many things came back to me while reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott, things I hadn’t even realized I’d half repressed (childhood summers full of lice) and made me realize what I’d taken for granted (a mother masterfully skilled at banishing them from my scalp.)
These essays had me rejoicing in solidarity. Here was someone who shared many of my thoughts, beliefs and even my experiences which I suppose isn’t surprising because Elliott is correct: the effects of colonialism are ongoing, and many Indigenous children have had similar experiences because of it. Whether it be lice, food instability, unhealthy family dynamics, sexual trauma (the list goes on,)
Elliott refuses to tip toe around these experiences, in speaking truths.
She has carved out a safe space for Indigenous women/2Spirited folk within these pages, this was evident to me as I read. I felt I’d found an ally, someone I knew wouldn’t judge me or grimace if I were to tell them the darkest parts of my life growing up as an Anishinaabe woman, because this Haudenosaunee has experienced her own darkness and managed to create words for her people to hold onto as well as words for non-Indigenous people to learn from. I’m going to be recommending this book to everyone I talk to.
(Especially Margaret Atwood if I ever run into her. *cringe*)
I never recommend anything I don’t personally love and I can say wholeheartedly that you need to read this book. This is required reading. There is a lot to learn from it.
Miigwech
Rating: really liked it
I've heard one person translate a Mohawk word for depression to, roughly, “his mind fell to the ground”. I ask my sister about this. She's been studying Mohawk for the past three years and is practically fluent. She's raising her daughter to be the same. They're the first members of our family to speak the language since a priest beat it out of our paternal grandfather a handful of decades ago.
“Wake'nikonhra'kwenhtará:'on,” she says. “It's not quite 'fell to the ground'. It's more like, 'His mind is...'” She pauses. She repeats the word in Mohawk. Slows it down. Considers what English words in her arsenal can best approximate the phrase. “'His mind is...'” She moved her hands around, palms down, as if doing a large, messy finger painting. “Literally stretched or sprawled on the ground. It's all over.”
In the collection of essays, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott begins with a title piece on depression (from which she suffers) and it suitably sets the tone for what is to come: a frank examination of Elliott's life, focussing on the ways that colonialism, capitalism, and intergenerational trauma intensified the challenges of having been raised in a family plagued by poverty, abuse, and mental illness. My reaction to this provocative collection wasn't really crystallised until the final essay, “Extraction Mentalities”, in which Elliott writes about domestic abuse and the systemic abuse of First Nations, then asks questions, complete with room for readers to record their answers (Elliott states that those who don't actually write out answers are saying a lot, too). At one point Elliott writes, “Do you see where I'm going with this? Am I moving too fast?”, and that's pretty much the tone of the whole thing: Elliott is articulate in her anger, and she demands a response from the reader; this isn't a passive reading experience. However, just because an author is intelligent and emphatic in laying out their “facts” doesn't make them indisputable; this
is a vital record of a lived experience, from which its author has drawn personal conclusions, and that is necessary and valuable. But anyone who doesn't agree with Elliott's black and white premises – that First Nations are universally opposed to resource development, that every Indigenous child would be better off outside the foster care system (no matter the home conditions), that systemic racism is the only explanation for the under-representation of Indigenous writers in Canadian publishing – wouldn't find anything persuasive here; Elliott is stating her subjective facts, not joining a debate. And for that unpersuaded reader, the obstreperous tone is just a further turn off. As for me – I respect what Elliott has crafted here, I appreciate what experiences have led to her beliefs, but I was constantly jarred by her conclusions; even so, it adds a necessary voice to the national conversation and this collection deserves to be widely read. (Note: I was fortunate to have received an ARC and quotes may not be in their final forms.)
When Elliott writes about racism in the Canadian publishing industry – taking swipes at Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro, deriding Joseph Boyden (and the witless Canadians “who read
The Orenda and it, like,
changed their lives”) – her main point seems to be about blood quantum and the nerve of those in positions of power who think they have the right to determine who is an “authentic” Indigenous voice. This, naturally, fends off any noting of the fact that Elliott herself has a white mother – and while I totally accept Elliott as a Haudenosaunee writer, it seems disingenuous for her to repeatedly write about what “they” did/do to “us”, when she is as responsible for the actions of the colonisers as she is heir to their effects (she also has several justifiably angry comments to make about the Catholic Church, despite her Catholic mother attempting to raise her children in the faith). Provocation seems to be the point of these essays, though, so I'm going to note a few passages that gave me pause. On being caught trying to steal convenience store pastries as a child:
The cost of our attempted theft was no more than five dollars. Probably closer to three. It was almost nothing but it was enough. We were no longer an eight- and ten-year-old under this woman's gaze; we were not sad kids trying to cope with poverty and abuse. We were thieves, criminals. Not-quite-humans who would one day get what we deserved. But what did we deserve? To go to some juvenile detention facility and have our responses to poverty punished? How would her reaction have changed if we were visibly Indigenous? Would she have called the cops then and there, as opposed to giving us a chance to leave and “wise up”? Did our white skin give us a chance at redemption my brown cousins wouldn't have gotten under the same circumstances?
Not only do I object to framing theft as a “response to poverty”, but Elliott ends on an angry hypothetical that adds nothing to her actual experience. The following is from the essay “Scratch”, in which Elliott describes her family's years-long struggle with lice and efforts to hide it (and other signs of neglect in their overcrowded trailer without running water) from visiting social workers:
Our parents were far from perfect, but their main barriers to being better parents were poverty, intergenerational trauma and mental illness – things neither social workers nor police officers have ever been equipped to deal with, yet are both allowed, even encouraged, to patrol...Even as a kid (I intuited that Indigenous children have more reason to fear government care than they do their parents' poverty.) I knew it was bullshit that social workers and cops had so much control over our family, that they could split us up the moment we didn't cater to their sensibilities. Knowing this then made me hate social workers and cops. Knowing this now makes me hate the systems that empower them – systems that put families in impossible situations, then punish them for not being able to claw their way out.
“Hating the systems” is a running theme, and anti-capitalism/anti-corporations is a frequent focus:
Since empty calories are both cheap and widely available, it should be no surprise that the biggest indicator of obesity is a person's income level. And since so many Western countries are built on white supremacy, it should also come as no surprise that the biggest indicator of poverty is race. In Canada, a staggering one in five racialized families live in poverty, as opposed to one in twenty white families. This puts many poor, racialized families in the position where they have no choice but to rely on cheap, unhealthy food and, as a result, support the same companies that have converted their poverty into corporate profit in the first place.
Which brings us back to the final essay, “Extraction Mentalities”:
Under capitalism, colonialism, and settler colonialism, everything Indigenous is subject to extraction. Words from our languages are extracted and turned into the names of cities, states, provinces or, in the case of Canada, an entire country. Resources from our traditional territories are extracted and turned into profit for non-Indigenous companies and strategic political donations. Our own children are extracted so that non-Indigenous families can have the families they've always wanted, so our families will fall to ruin and our grief will distract us from resisting colonialism.
The book ends with the following questions:
What do you want? Are those desires based on extraction? Are they dependent upon capitalism or colonialism? If the answers to those last two questions are yes, please revisit the first question. I don't see capitalism or colonialism being reversed as the official “systems” at work in Canada, so I really don't know what Elliott is asking here. On the other hand, I don't deny that the First Nations haven't thrived under these systems and things need to change; I do wish this book had some workable ideas for what those changes could be.
Rating: really liked it
I received this book in a book exchange - you can hear my thoughts in a Booktube video!
Rating: really liked it
It's hard not to just write, "Holy s**t! This is an incredible book." So I guess I did write that. And I stand by it. What a stunning collection. Alicia Elliott is a master of the essay form and such a deeply intelligent writer. This book is beautiful, haunting, funny, emotionally astute, and captivating with every turn of the page. I will come back to these essays often. What a gd work of art.
Rating: really liked it
I have been alternately reading and talking about this essay collection for the past two weeks. At one point I interrupted a conversation to fetch this book, opened it to the appropriate page, and said "Read." And read he did, all 18 pages. I can't remember that ever working before.
I consider myself fairly well read on First Nations experiences. Alicia Elliott writes essays that challenge you to reshape what you thought you knew, to broaden and complexify your perspective. Herein we find: a cogent essay on how unhealthy diets are a direct result of residential schooling; a narrative of a childhood of head lice, beacon of shame; a take-down of anyone trying to pigeonhole native writers; a brilliantly structured inquiry into the nature of abuse. That's just a quick sampler. Every single essay was good, hard reading.
Rating: really liked it
First of all, if I could give this book more than 5 stars I would.
Secondly, I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and I thank the author and publisher for the opportunity to read this gem and give a review.
I must admit in the essence of being truthful, that I, like author Alicia Elliott, am a member of the Haudenosaunee Nation. I am Oneida on my paternal side. Therefore, I took this book in a different way than many other readers may, because I can relate to it on so many levels. I am also 1/2 Italian on my maternal side, so I live with one foot in both worlds so to speak. It is a balancing act sometimes.
That being said, I highly recommend this collection of essays to each and every single one of you. It brilliantly - and brutally - talks about indigenous issues, problems, prejudices, and the remaining (albeit mostly hidden) deep-seated hatred that still reigns within, and against, indigenous populations not only of Canada and the U.S., but of the world.
It isn't an easy read, nor should it be. The time for sugar coating such things is long gone, and the time for brutal honesty is here.
Many people believe that racism against indigenous people is a thing of the past. That is woefully incorrect. All you need to do is check out MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) to see that a missing Native woman will never get the publicity as would a woman or child of another race. The same, unfortunately, holds true for other peoples of color. Racism is a terrible disease that is far from being tamed, or even lessened, although the present situation with people of African descent in this country is finally being given the publicity it deserves.
Take this book, immerse yourself in it, see if you see yourself in it either as a minority or as a person who wants to know more about the issue of racism against your friends, neighbors, and members of your family.
The book also speaks about health issues - it is not widely known about the diseases that are much more prevalent in people of color, or the lack of proper treatment available to them. Educate yourself. Start here.
Rating: really liked it
This book is everything to me. I feel comforted - in my love, in my anger, in my identity..
Alicia Elliott is profoundly intelligent, and her way with words - the way she inventively weaves the personal with the political, her private memories with social commentary regarding Indigenous issues - is just beautiful. The essays in this book cover so many topics. From racism, colonialism, residential schools, intergenerational trauma, violence, mental health, sexual abuse, the law, food insecurity and health, diversity in literature, urban indigeneity; to anger, love, forgiveness, and responsibility. Each and every one of these essays is powerful and honest and thought-provoking, and Alicia is unflinching in her observations of the world around her and in examining her experiences from her childhood, teenage years, and now as an adult woman. She's simply a great writer, and the sincerity in her words is palpable. What's more is she clearly writes for an Indigenous audience. This isn't yet another installment (let's be real, usually by non-Indigenous writers) of Native Tragedy Porn 101 For White People Half-Assedly Interested In ~*✧Reconciliation✧*~. That doesn't mean non-Indigenous people shouldn't read this book though - actually, you really,
really should read it.
I spent a lot of time with each of the essays, some of which made my eyes so full of and blurry with tears I couldn't read the words on the pages anymore. To say this book is important is an understatement. It's a remarkable piece of literature - one that I am proud to have in my personal collection, and one that I will no doubt come back to, champion, and recommend.
Rating: really liked it
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a powerful collection of personal essays written by the Iroquoian author, Alicia Elliott. Each essay leverages Elliot's personal memories and reflections to make poignant, vulnerable and raw social critiques on the inequality, discrimination and experience faced by Indigenous Canadians.
Elliot's writing is beautiful and compelling. She touches on internalized racism, sexual assault, mental illness, motherhood, food deserts and stereotypical depictions of Indigenous communities and celebrations. The examples that Elliot uses are so relatable yet unimaginable which further emphasizes the role of deeply entrenched oppression in producing such disparate realities. For example, in one essay, Elliot describes her battle with lice. For nearly ten years the young woman and her sister were ostracized and humiliated due to their inability to get rid of their head lice. As a reader, I felt both deep sympathy and uncontrollable rage as she described her trauma over something that could have been so easily avoided.
This book is a poetic and personal illustration of the individual and inter generational consequences of systemic racism.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground should be required reading for all non-Indigenous folk.
Rating: really liked it
Alicia Elliott is a survivor. She has faced more challenges in her young life than many of us face in a lifetime. These challenges include but are not limited to: poverty; homelessness; family violence; teen-age pregnancy; depression and a parent with major mental health problems. I want to start off my review by recognizing her strength and resilience.
A Mind Spread out on the Ground is a collection of essays. These essays are excruciatingly personal in parts, but written with a surprising detachment. At first I wondered whether this might be a consequence of Elliott’s depression or perhaps tied to culture. The more I thought about it, though, the more it struck me that perhaps it was a kind of literary device. Elliott doesn’t want these essays to be about her so much as she wants them to shine a light on the ills of society and so she keeps a distance. Elliott sees herself as an activist and above all these essays are meant to champion Indigenous rights.
The problem is, although the more autobiographical parts of her essays are fully engaging, she often loses me when she extrapolates to society at large. This tends to happen when she makes grand statements that are written as fact with no footnotes or meaningful evidence to support them. It’s obvious there are biases/ assumptions that underpin her ideas, but she does not share them with the reader. There’s a lack of transparency. This makes me distrust her.
For example, in the essay “Sontag, In Snapshots” she writes:
"Capitalism always relies upon exploitation to create profit, and therefore it must always rely upon differing valuations of people’s humanity."
I suspect this statement is based on Marxist theory, but there’s no way of knowing based on what she provides in the text. The point is, she writes it as though it is fact when it most certainly isn’t and there are conflicting theories that argue the opposite.
Another example is on page 25 when she mentions that “colonialism, racism, and sexism have systematically kept Indigenous women out of the literary community” once again written as though it is well documented fact. Grand statements like these don’t sit well with me unless there’s some evidence to back them up. It wouldn’t be hard to test out her hypothesis and doing so would make an excellent research thesis in a women’s studies program. All it would entail is submitting the same piece of writing to various publishers under different names, some names clearly Indigenous, others not, some female, some male and tracking the acceptance/rejection rates. Alternatively, one could submit short stories that include Indigenous stereotypes versus similar stories with real Indigenous people and track the acceptance/rejection rates.
Thinking the way she does, though, I wonder how she accounts for the success of her own book and the fact that it remains a top seller close to a year after its publication. Personally, I suspect there is much more at play than a straight forward case of oppression when it comes to Indigenous women and the literary community. The Indigenous cultures have an oral tradition of storytelling. Could there be some reluctance on their part to embrace a written tradition of storytelling they associate with the colonizing culture? Would it indicate an acceptance of assimilation to them at some level? It seems a reasonable question. Perhaps part of the answer would be for the Canadian Arts community not to focus only on books but to expand to include oral forms of literature.
Bottom line, there was much to like about these essays and many interesting questions raised but Elliott seemed too bogged down in blame to come up with much in the way of suggestions and/or solutions. I would have liked more nuance. Maybe next time.
Rating: really liked it
I enjoyed anecdotes about the author's life and hearing about the Canadian context in current nonfiction. However, I didn't find this book or the author's thoughts groundbreaking, and I found them instead repeatedly problematic. I think she is at the beginning or middle stages of thoughts on these topics. I wouldn't mind this but for how influenced people seem to be by a book that falls victim to logical fallacies, some bad science, and cognitive distortions. It is not well reasoned in many parts though it sounds compelling on its surface.
