The National Arts Centre (NAC) launched its first virtual Indigenous book club Jan. 27.
The project, entitled “Our Stories: Indigenous Book Club,” is a six-month collaboration between the NAC’s Indigenous Theatre program and the Ottawa Public Library (OPL).
The first in the series of book club events featured a one-hour Facebook Live discussion with Two-Spirit Ojibwe and South Asian performer and playwright Yolanda Bonnell on her play, Bug.
Bonnell said it is important to highlight and share Indigenous literature and creative work because of its reparative nature.
“For so long our stories have been hidden or wrapped in trauma or told from the white settler lens,” Bonnell said in an interview. “Taking control of our narrative is integral to how we document our actual lived experiences and history.”
Mairi Brascoupé, Indigenous Cultural Resident for NAC’s Indigenous Theatre program and one of the leads on the project, said the goal of sharing Indigenous narratives was the inspiration for the book club.
“The purpose of the Indigenous book club is to engage our audience with Indigenous storytelling,” she said.
The inspiration to launch the book club also came from the success of previous events hosted by the OPL, including the community e-read of Crow Winter by Karen McBride in June 2020 for National Indigenous History Month.
Alison Blackburn, OPL’s manager of program development, said the opportunity for a collaboration between the library and the NAC was hard to resist.
“It was a super easy ‘yes’ from us when Mairi approached us for a partnership,” she said.
Blackburn said a shared community purpose and the opportunity to reach a broader audience during the lockdown was another incentive to launch the book club.
“Libraries, like theatres, play an important role in creating inclusive and welcoming spaces in the physical and virtual realm where people can come to experience the stories,” Blackburn said. “To bring people together to read, to listen and to engage in conversation about stories is firmly rooted in what both do.”
In choosing the six featured titles for the book club, OPL’s Content Services created a robust list of potential titles for the NAC, ranging from poetry, fiction, memoirs and plays. The titles were narrowed down based on the availability of authors and moderators.
“We aim to provide exposure to books and authors from smaller publications,” Blackburn said. “In order to bring awareness of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to the literature … we are providing a nice mix that people wouldn’t necessarily pick up themselves.”
So far, the book club has been a hit with community members, boasting around 100 attendees for the first live talk. All titles are available at the Ottawa Public Library in print and ebook format.
According to Blackburn, the request list and the number of people borrowing the books are steadily growing, which she said is an indication of the program’s popularity.
“There is a lot of digital fatigue, so we made sure that our audience does not have to be online for the entirety of this program,” Brascoupé said.
“They can read the book offline and then have the opportunity to come online to engage with the author and answer reflection questions with other readers or watch the recorded livestream.”
Both Brascoupé and Blackburn said they would be interested in expanding the program for different age groups in the future. For now, the organizers are looking forward to the next live stream on Feb. 24.
Bonnell said she is happy to see the program expand to support Indigenous narratives.
“We need these types of programs to give us a platform to demonstrate the importance and diversity of Indigenous voices,” she said.
Featured graphic by Etta Gerrits.
