 The University of Manitoba is re-publishing Devil in Deerskins this month, the book Anahareo wrote about her years with pioneering Conservationist, Grey Owl. It became a Canadian bestseller when it was released in 1972. It was an inspiring book to me personally and helped me immensely when I wrote Anahareo's biography. Now, under the careful editorial supervision of Sophie McCall, this new publication contains a critical review of the book and introductions by Anahareo's daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell. It is part of University of Manitoba's project to bring back under-recognized books by First Nations. Sophie McCall is a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver but has been familiar with Grey Owl and Anahareo's activities for some years. The interest in their work and the inspiration Anahareo provided for her she describes below during my interview with her. Devil in Deerskins is available from the University of Manitoba Press and can be purchased through Amazon or their website http://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/devil-in-deerskins  What in particular drew you to select ‘Devil in Deerskins’ for your project? Like many of us I first met Anahareo through the pages of Grey Owl’s book, Pilgrims of the Wild. It was not until much later that I read Anahareo’s own book, Devil in Deerskins (1972). Although Grey Owl portrays her as an intriguing and independently minded woman, she’s a lot funnier, more down-to-earth, and more knowledgeable and accomplished than she comes across in Grey Owl’s writings. The title says it all: her mischievous, freedom-loving spirit, her wry sense of humour, and her defiance of the social conventions of the day. All of these qualities attracted me to her and to her writings. She is also exceptionally photogenic! She conveys a lot of strength of character, as well as roguish fun, through her images.  Anahareo in 1940 Can you explain a bit about the project behind this publication? This edition of Devil in Deerskins is part of a series, @First People, First Texts, conceived by Warren Cariou, a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Manitoba. The idea of the series, which is published by the University of Manitoba Press, is to generate a list of the most important and underrecognized books by Indigenous authors that have gone out of print, and then to republish critical editions of these books that situate the texts in their Indigenous cultural contexts. Up until very recently, Anahareo was known primarily as Grey Owl’s wife (with some important exceptions of course—you being a pathbreaker in carving out her family history and biography from that of Grey Owl’s). She was rarely recognized as an author in her own right and her Mohawk identity was not well understood. In fact she was usually understood as an Indigenous woman who, as a result of displacement and acculturation, had become alienated from her people’s traditions and heritage. But a closer look at Devil in Deerskins reveals that Anahareo drew upon her knowledge of her Mohawk heritage, learned primarily from her grandmother, in very tangible and important ways. This series aims to reveal how, in spite of the many challenges facing Indigenous people, their lives and ways of knowing having survived and thrived. Another important aim of the series is to reconnect these unjustly neglected classics with their authors’ home communities. A very rewarding and important part of this project has been to get to know Anahareo’s family, particularly her daughter Katherine Swartile, who has been immensely helpful in bringing this project forward. Is there anything distinctive about Anahareo’s writing that is different from other women authors in general or First Nations/Native American women authors in particular? Anahareo was a rebel who always led her life on her own terms. From a very young age, Anahareo resisted the social roles she was expected to fill as a girl growing up in a Catholic working-class neighbourhood in Mattawa, Ontario. Some of her gently sarcastic, eye-rolling comments in Devil in Deerskins suggest that she did not always see eye-to-eye with her sister, who comes across as more conservative. The most important person to Anahareo as she was growing up was her grandmother who, although staunchly Catholic, was also someone very grounded in her sense of herself as an Algonquin woman who married a Mohawk man and who very deliberately passed on her knowledge, stories, and craftsmanship to her granddaughter. When Anahareo left Mattawa to meet up with Grey Owl, ultimately staying with him unchaperoned in the bush for 2 months, she precipitated almost total loss of contact with her family for the next three decades. Throughout her life, Anahareo had to deal with the often contradictory and punishing stereotypes about Indigenous women that prevailed at the time, but that did not deter her from creating her own pathway in life. As her daughter Katherine says, she was a woman ahead of her time, who defined her own ways of living as a mother, a prospector, an author, a defender of animal rights, and an environmentalist.  Anahareo with beaver kit, c. 1929 How does Anahareo compare as an author to First Nations men? Is her approach any different, her topics? Anahareo describes in a deceptively off-hand manner her talents and accomplishments that revolve around what is usually referred to as ‘women’s work’ – for example, making clothes, beading, tanning, cooking, caring for kids (or beaver kits!), etc. Grey Owl claims that he taught her everything he knew about the bush but I think she taught him more than he acknowledges. What really comes through in Anahareo’s writings is that she knows more than she lets on. A lot of the humour in the book revolves around her internal commentary that reveals significant differences from Grey Owl’s opinions. That sly sense of humour, based on the disjuncture between what is said internally and what is said out loud, and often considered a hallmark of women’s writing, is beautifully exemplified in Devil in Deerskins. Do you see anything about her First Nations background influencing how she speaks? The book is a series of anecdotes that are not separated into chapters, creating a continuous flow of stories, which may reflect her intention to recreate her early childhood education through storytelling from her grandmother. Her daughter Katherine says that storytelling was a huge part of her own growing up, and she was often spellbound by her mother’s stories. The style in which Devil in Deerskins is written, particularly the humour and the use of expressions, is very original and distinctive, and is one of the real pleasures of the book. Was there anything in particular about Anahareo’s story that specifically resonated with you or touched you? I love animals of all kinds (with a special soft spot for rodents, ever since my kids adopted two gerbils into our home) and I deeply admire Anahareo’s heartfelt invocation of their lives, tastes, and preferences, as well as her defense of their rights. Let me share with you a particularly funny and endearing section from the book that describes the antics of McGinty, one of the beavers that Anahareo had rescued as a kit, and the same beaver that ultimately led Grey Owl to give up trapping for good. In this scene, Archie (aka Grey Owl) is preparing to make some bannock: With a flourish he heaped the bowl with flour, added salt, and rummaged in the grub-box for the baking powder. While his back was turned, McGinty, the opportunist, spied the abandoned bowl. She came at a dead gallop, zoomed through the air, and landed plop in the middle, sending flour in all directions. Archie’s shocked surprise convulsed me, but I didn’t dare laugh, because it was awful thing for McGinty to have done. Then a wild and noisy battle erupted. Archie shouted her name and mine alternately as he tried desperately to pull her away, but McGinty had a firm grip on the bowl and was determined to stay. Archie was at his wit’s end, for it was like fighting a whirring electric fan in a tub of feathers. The overwhelming speed with which Mac propelled her webbed hind feet through the flour forced Archie to let her down. The atmosphere was so thick with flour that I could barely see them. The scuffle ended at last in victory for Archie, and McGinty ambled off in a huff. She was not in the least repentant. She cast malignant glances at Archie as she sat back, cleaning her flour-clogged nostrils with clenched fists. Such was the stand the beaver invariably took to preserve their rights.  Anahareo, 1972, at the time of 'Devil in Deerskins' Publication What other publications are in the works for this project?
There are a number of exciting projects at various stages of development, but none has been officially announced yet so I would be spilling the beans if I told you. The editorial collective of First People, First Texts have discussed many possibilities, including The Fourth World by George Manuel (Secwepemc), Forbidden Voice by Alma Greene (Mohawk), The Ways of My Grandmothers by Beverly Hungry Wolf (Blackfoot), Voices of the Plains Cree by Edward Ahanekew (Cree), Potlatch by George Clutesi (Nuu-chah-nulth), and Indians Don’t Cry by George Kenny (Anishinaabe). What audiences do you hope to reach? When Devil in Deerskins was first released in 1972, it became a bestseller, and I know it has tremendous potential to reach a wide audience again in 2014. As the groundswell of opposition to tar sands development (particularly on Indigenous lands) continues to grow in Canada, and as awareness of climate change continues to deepen, Anahareo’s environmental and animal rights messages have renewed urgency and relevance. Devil in Deerskins will also find its way onto university curricula. As a professor at Simon Fraser University, I am certainly looking forward to teaching Devil in Deerskins in my classes, and I have colleagues at SFU and at other universities across North America who have expressed their strong interest in teaching it as well. Thank you, Kristin, for giving me this opportunity to talk a little about Anahareo’s book!
3 Comments
 In the month that marks the 75th anniversary of Grey Owl’s death and the 125th year since his birth the environment challenges still make this man’s life a testimony to our need to take steps to take better care of our world. To paraphrase Grey Owl’s own words, ‘you belong to nature, it doesn’t belong to you,’ tells us something about his concerns and our responsibility to the environment. Grey Owl’s life was controversial to say the least, but his love for the wilderness and concern over its future cannot be disputed. It was a message he delivered over and over again in the 1930s as he toured Britain and speaking before the king, and later in the USA and Canada: the wilderness is not endless, it needs to be preserved and cared for. In his lifetime he’d witnessed beaver and other furbearing animals in Canada decline to alarming numbers. He’d seen large swathes of wilderness cut down under the axe and saw blades that clear cut their way across Ontarios and Quebec in the great thirst for timber to feed the building of ships, houses and all manner of man made goods. The wreckage left in the wake of such tree felling took its toll in the rapid decline of the wildlife deprived of its habitat and the First Nations people who subsisted in those areas.  Anahareo, Grey Owl and friend Grey Owl, born Archie Belaney, came to the Canadian wilderness from Hastings England after a childhood enthralled by tales from James Fennimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ernest Thomas Seton. Barely eighteen, he headed straight to the Quebec side of Lake Temaskaming and fell under the tutelage of veteran woodsman, Bill Guppy. Under Guppy’s eye he learned essential bush skills including paddling and portaging a canoe, important in a region filled with lakes and waterways. Archie spent much time with Guppy until one summer he met a young Anishnabe woman from Bear Island, Angele. Though she knew little English they managed to communicate and he met her extended family and became her acknowledged boyfriend. Less than a year later he married her and lived with her and her family on Bear Island. She bore him a daughter and within a few months of her birth Archie’s restless temperament compelled him to depart in search for new wilderness and adventure. For the next few years he acted as a fire ranger in summer and trapper in winter, sending money to Angele sporadically. In addition to that he became known as an inveterate storyteller, his skin browned in the sun and his chiselled face and dark hair all contributing to the occasional mistake that he was an Aboriginal. Just before the war, in 1913, he met a young woman Marie Girard and invited her in the bush after a drunken tear. The pair emerged in November and a short while later Archie enlisted in the army and was sent overseas, probably before he knew tha Maire was pregnant with his son. War did not deal kindly with Archie, neither physically or emotionally. Trained as a sharp shooter he was exposed to mustard gas and suffered a crippling wound to his foot. Sent back to Hastings to recuperate, he fell into the company of a childhood friend, Ivy Holmes, a stunningly attractive former dancer who had toured Eastern Europe. Under the encouragement of both families the two married, since none but Archie knew of his prior marriage to Angele and he remained silent. But not for long. A short while later, he made his way back to Canada and wrote to Ivy, before she joined him there and explained the situation. She divorced him. Back in Canada, the exuberant inquisitive storyteller transformed after the war into a morose drunken brawler, his lungs and missing toes preventing him from any sustained activity. Slowly, while under the care of an Anishnabe family, The Espaniels, he regained enough physical strength to work some of the year and eventually resumed his fire ranger duties and trapping and occasionally guiding. It was in 1925 while guiding at Camp Wabikon that he met the woman who was to change his life. Anahareo.  He courted and wooed Anahareo carefully; she was only nineteen and he was in his thirties. But he was smitten in truth by her feisty spirit, her young beauty and her quick mind. All this made him take her to the wilderness and her own joy of it and his patient (and not so patient) tutoring kept her there with him. She’d grown up in a town next door to the wilderness, but not in it and so she attacked her lessons in bushskills with all the energy and enthusiasm of someone who needed to make up for lost time. That the two were bonded over this love of the outdoors and all the creatures it contained could not be doubted as they accumulated whiskey jacks, a moose, squirrels and various other creatures around their various homes. Such love compelled Anahareo to relinquish her new trapping regime, the cruelty it sometimes imposed was too much for her. It was the two little orphan beaver kits that brought their concern and care for wild animals sharply into focus and Anahareo encouraged Archie to write his observations of the wilderness down. How could they not be charmed by the energetic McGinty who took Archie’s mackinaw out for a nice long swim while Anahareo and Archie chased her frantically. Or McGinnis’eager assistance when he ably cut down a pole for them, the pole that supported their humble tent. They were also won over by ‘their sneezes and childish coughs, their little whimpers and small appealing noises of affection, their instant and pathetically eager response to any kindness….’ All those and many more things filled Archie’s writings which later became published in Pilgrims of the Wild and other of his works. The stories and ideas soon found great popularity in Britain, Canada and even the USA as Archie was continuously asked to speak about his work with the beavers. The expanding Parks Canada recognized Archie’s work as an opportunity to link their own efforts at building a national park system for the nation and asked Archie and Anahareo to implement their plans to establish a beaver colony in one of their new parks. The public began to see and hear of Archie’s work under the name ‘Grey Owl’ a choice he made in the light of some assumptions made by some of the media and his own efforts to bring a persona into play that he thought would be most effective. Who better than an Indian to speak about the wilderness?  It was a choice that would resonate down through the
years and raise the spectre of ‘fraud’ shortly after his death in 1938 when the truth of his real heritage was published. It would cast a shadow over his work in conservation, put into doubt the truth of his message and render ineffective his very timeless message that ‘we belong to nature, nature does not belong to us.’ But today we can and must see beyond the controversy and puzzle that was Grey Owl’s life and look once again at what he was trying to tell us. You can read more about Grey Owl and Anahareo's story in my biography, Anahareo: A Wilderness Spirit, published by Fireship Press. |
AuthorKristin Gleeson is a writer, artist and musician who lives in the west of Ireland in the Gaeltacht. 
Recieve a free novella prequel to Along the Far Shores when you sign up for the mailing list on the homepage
Archives
February 2018
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed