When We Play Our Drums, They Sing: The Journey Forward, a Novella on Reconciliation

Publisher's description (McKellar and Martin, 2018): Narrated by 12-year-old Dene Cho and set in the fictional town of Fort Simmer, the story roils with suppressed anger, frustration, and, above all, questions.

Dene is an unhappy boy who feels he doesn’t fit in with the other kids in his small Northwest Territories community. His mom, a residential school survivor, obsessively cleans their house, to the point that everything smells like bleach. His father died following an illness (the story doesn’t make clear exactly when), and Dene is at constant loggerheads with his school principal, who despite living in the community for almost 30 years has made no effort to learn about the local Indigenous culture or language.

When Dene gets hauled into the school office for defiant behaviour he is granted a four-day excused absence (rather than a suspension) to learn as much about his culture as he can and report back. Dene is most angry about the fact that the elders in his community are dying and their history is not being passed down to the next generation. They start learning French in kindergarten, but their own languages are disappearing; they spend hours studying colonial history but not their own traditional ways of hunting, fishing, and celebrating. The shadow of residential schools looms over their daily existence, but they are not taught about the atrocity in class or, in many cases, at home.

Dene spends most of his time away from school with a blind Elder named Snowbird, who teaches him many of the things he wants to know, including words in their Tlicho (or Dogrib) language, what it was like during the time when Indian agents were taking children away to residential schools, and even a traditional drum song that Dene’s father used to sing. By the end of his time with Snowbird, Dene is less angry but no less adamant in his belief that things need to change. Richard Van Camp is First Nations.

Resource format: Novella

Age recommendation: Grades 4 - 9

Keywords: residential schools, reconciliation, community, intergenerational, Dene, Dogrib, language

Year of publication: 2018

Publisher information: McKellar and Martin