2005 Community Writing and Arts
Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival
Dialogue sans frontière / Can we talk?

Participants:

Lisa VanEvery and writers from Six Nations Writers (Brantford, ON)

The Six Nations Writers formed as a community group almost three years ago in the Brantford area and now has approximately fifty members from Six Nations. The group does community projects and encourages writers to read and to write. In their fourth summer of coordinating writing projects in 2004, they focused on monologue writing. They have produced a spoken word CD, and for the past year, have had a weekly literary radio show. Currently they are working on an arts magazine and a theatrical production in partnership with a Brantford theatre.

They describe themselves as follows:

Although the people of Six Nations of the Grand River are ancestrally a people of oral tradition and have a strong storytelling history, we are also a community of writers. We believe writing our stories is just a natural extension of our oral storytelling tradition.

For a long time, our stories have been fictionalized, romanticized and told by writers other than ourselves. As a result, historic misconceptions about us have weaved their way into the fabric of society's consciousness. We believe that it is time to correct these misconceptions and write our own stories.

We are the Six Nations Writers…[individuals]from all walks of life. We are published and aspiring writers who all have strong voices and want our voices heard. We are poets, novelists, academic and technical writers. We are journalists, essayists, cartoonists and comedians. We are short story writers, playwrights and songwriters. We are the storytellers of today and we are varied as the nations and clans that are our heritage.

Source: www.sixnationswriters.com

Larry Loyie & Constance Brissenden from Living Tradition Writers Group
(Vancouver, BC)

Award-winning Cree writer Larry Loyie and his partner, writer and editor Constance Brissenden, formed Living Tradition Writers Group in 1993 to encourage First Nations people to write about their lives and history. As Long as the Rivers Flow, Larry’s first children’s book, received the 2003 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. In 2001, Larry Loyie received the Canada Post Literacy Award for Individual Achievement (British Columbia). Larry and Constance give talks, readings, and creative writing workshops across Canada. See www.firstnationswriter.com

Larry was born in Slave Lake, Alberta, where he spent his early years living a traditional Cree life. From the age of 10 to 14, he attended St. Bernard’s Mission residential school in Grouard, Alberta. He is the author of Ora Pro Nobis (Pray for Us), a full-length play about residential school, short stories, and children’s stories dealing with native traditions, literacy, and residential school.

Constance Brissenden is an award-winning freelance writer and editor. She is the author of 12 books of travel and history. Larry and Constance live in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Larry and Constance’s second children’s book, When the Spirits Dance, will be published soon. They are completing two more books, the story of Larry’s transition from residential school to the working world at age 14 and a history of residential schools for children.

Nancy Cooper (Toronto, ON) & Rita Buffalo (Thunder Bay, ON)

Nancy Cooper is a writer, poet, teacher, researcher and coordinator whose work has focused on aboriginal communities. She has taught in First Nations adult education, been Literacy Coordinator of the Native Women’s Resource Centre in Toronto, and a Field Consultant in the Native Stream at the Alphaplus Centre in Toronto where she worked with twenty-seven Native Literacy programs throughout Ontario on culture-based curriculum development. She has worked as a publishing coordinator at Ningwakwe Learning Press overseeing production of Native literacy publications. More recently, as a graduate student in the Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology Aboriginal Education Specialization at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Nancy has done research and developed a workshop for OISE Aboriginal literacy practitioners focussing on research in practice and Indigenous Research Methodologies. Nancy has published reflective essays, photographs and poetry and for more than a year been performing her poetry at various Toronto venues. As a volunteer, she has worked on many arts-related projects including Mayworks! Festival of Working People and the Arts, from 2002-2004.

Helen Woodrow, Agnes Walsh & Millie Johnson (Newfoundland)

Helen Woodrow is a founder of the Adult Basic Education Writing Network. The Network supports writing initiatives with ABE instructors, literacy workers, students and elders. Helen has also edited collections of oral histories from harvesters and workers in the fishing industry, and written short articles on the use and production of oral histories in ABE classrooms. She was a presenter at the 1999 Blue Metropolis Literary Festival and Centre for Literacy's Community Writing Workshop. (www.pkp.ubc.ca/literacyconference/viewabstract.php?id=92)

Agnes Walsh is an independent cultural worker, playwright, theatre director, poet, storyteller, and cultural animator. She encourages literacy through oral history research.

Millie Johnson was born in Little Catalina in 1922 and describes herself as a ‘young’ 83. She writes poetry, short stories and historical articles and has attended workshops offered by the ABE Writing Network. She shares many stories with tourists, particularly visitors to Port Union, the home of the Fisherman’s Protective Union and the first union-built town in Newfoundland.

Kathy Richan and Laurel Thomson from Literacy in Action (Sherbrooke, QC)

Literacy in Action is a volunteer literacy organization based in the Eastern Townships, founded in 1980 as the St. Francis Literacy Council. They offer free one-on-one tutoring for adults who want to improve their literacy skills, and they have several family literacy animators working in homes throughout a large region. They try to develop innovative programs to reach and meet the needs of both their rural and urban clients. The creative writing project with young adults is such an initiative. To raise public awareness, they organize an annual musical/literary event in July, Words on a String, a festival of music and words for literacy.

Hazel Lapointe and students from The Chateauguay Valley Literacy Council (Chateauguay, QC)

The Chateauguay Valley Literacy Council serves the area between Chateauguay and the American border and has 30 trained tutors who offer free tutoring to adults.