Celebrating Indigenous storytelling: Insights from Audible’s Writers’ Circle panel

By Jeremy Appel

(ANNews) – Audible’s Indigenous Writers’ Circle, a six-month program which connects emerging First Nations, Inuit and Métis writers with mentors, hosted an Oct. 29 panel on Indigenous storytelling, featuring a recent program alumna speaking alongside two established Indigenous writers. 

Poet and novelist Joshua Whitehead, a Two-Spirit Oji-Cree member of the Peguis First Nation, moderated the discussion between 2023 writers’ circle participant Gin Sexsmith, National Gallery of Canada senior director Reneltta Arluk and Indigenous Literary Studies Association president Niigaan Sinclair. 

Sexsmith, a writer and musician from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario, published her debut novel, In the Hands of Men, last year. 

Arluk, who is of mixed Inuvialuit, Dene, and Cree descent from Fort Smith, N.W.T., is the author of the 2012 book Thoughts and Other Human Tendencies, as well as the former director of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. 

Sinclair is an Anishinaabe author and academic who writes a regular column in the Winnipeg Free Press and leads the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. 

Whitehead began the conversation by asking the panelists how they bring characters to life in their work and how their writing is influenced by traditional storytelling methods. 

Sexsmith said she attempts to provide her characters with the depth of a person she’s trying to get to know in real life, which “within fiction is way less intrusive.” 

“I like to fully look at their biggest fears, their dreams, what makes them tick, their upbringing,” she said.

Sexsmith added that she doesn’t consciously try to tell her stories in a traditional way. 

“Any story we tell is an indigenous story, because it’s through our lens,” she said. 

Whitehead agreed that “what makes an Indigenous story Indigenous” is that it’s told by an Indigenous person. 

Arluk said her writing tends to be rooted in a particular place, which leads her to research that place and interview community members before sitting down to write. 

“Once it’s time to create the fictional version of that, that’s when I tend to dive in,” explained Arluk. 

Sinclair noted that his writing style is different from his co-panelists. 

“Fiction and nonfiction are just made up terms and categories, and so, of course, our people don’t adhere to these kinds of silly, arbitrary categories, but my writing is different than the typical writer in that I mostly write columns for newspapers,” said Sinclair. 

While his writings for the Free Press are firmly rooted in a sense of place, the timeline of daily newspaper writing inhibits him from deeply exploring specific characters. 

“The way that I work is I get a topic at 10 a.m. at the story meeting and … I gotta get 800 words done by 4:30,” said Sinclair. 

“I’m not [one of] these kinds of long-term writers that are working on something for this one character and just cycling it through over and over again, although I have written that, but badly.”

Being able to “pump out” an 800-word article in a few hours, however, has helped him grow as a creative writer, Sinclair added.

He said he attempts to find the “breath and motion,” or “life and how it moves,” in whatever he’s writing about.

“I know that sounds a little bit weird, but what I do is I just go to things, and eventually something impacts me, usually emotionally, often spiritually, sometimes in terms of piquing my interest, and I’ll start to spend time with it,” said Sinclair. 

“Almost immediately, there’s something that emerges that is what I write about.”