From Nightmare into Light

Given the flood of disheartening reports in the national media this past year (and every year since the Canadian colonial project began), including the not-guilty verdicts of Gerald Stanley in the death of Colten Boushie and Raymond Cormier in the death of Tina Fontaine, which have dealt emotional and political blows to reconciliation efforts between the Canadian settler state and the Indigenous communities it has long sought to silence and erase, Halfe's counsel-sôhkeyihta, stand strong in the face of adversity-remains urgent. In this collection, Halfes fierce and incandescent poetry and voice, which have resonated with readers since the 1990s, are amplified and (if possible) intensified by her biographical afterword, in which she charts her writing life, her work to address legacies of pain, and a process of "spiritual enlightenment, intellectual observation, and emotional healing." Gaertner illuminates Halfe's integral place in a body of Indigenous writing that is working to push back against and break colonial narratives and structures that have sought to silence Indigenous voices, and foregrounds her work to "bear witness to the violence of residential schools and settler colonialism writ large," while listening attentively to the silence of those who have been rendered voiceless.