Stars author Lucy Haché on Indigenous resilience, identity, and inspiration

All Lit Up: CBC Books named your collection Stars one of the top Canadian works of poetry in 2018—congratulations! Can you tell us about your book and how it came to be?Lucy Haché: Thank you! I’m beyond grateful that CBC chose Stars to be on the list of top works of poetry of 2018. Stars is about the strength and resilience of Indigenous women, and the continuous labour they do to make our world a better place in the face of constant oppression. As I was writing it I was working through a lot of grief from losing four immediate family members in tragic and unexpected ways. As I worked through my grief I realized that I was also working through inter-generational trauma, which was really a result of colonization.I was grappling with all this while also being a full-time student at the University of British Columbia—a deeply colonial institution, which in many ways serves to perpetuate colonialism. UBC is also really lacking in support for Indigenous students. During that time I came pretty close to dropping out of school. But I found support from the Indigenous women at UBC who are working tirelessly to support Indigenous students. These women had roles in administration, counselling, and as professors. My friends—a group of incredibly inspiring and resilient Indigenous women, also uplifted me through these hard times.Finally, I found strength in remembering the hard work that my own matriarchs—my mother, grandmothers, and aunts—had done before me. I realized that because of their love and hard work, I was protected and nurtured in ways that allowed me to rise above my trauma…rather than becoming engulfed by it.This book is the result of navigating my pain and realizing that the love we as Indigenous women have for our families, our people, our culture, the land and the waterways…that love runs deep as the roots of a spruce tree. As a result we have a strength and softness, which causes us to feel too much and hurt too much, and work too hard. It can often feel like a burden, but it is also a gift. And I think when we see that, honour that, and continue to uphold each other, then our burdens are a little lighter.ALU: Stars is your second book in the Overhead Series with visual artist Michael Joyal who drew the illustrations for the books. How did you begin working together to create the illustrations that populate both Clouds and Stars? What was your experience like?LH: Interestingly, Michael and I met for the first time this year. I live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and he lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. For our first book, Clouds, our publisher, At Bay Press selected Michael to illustrate, before he had read my work. Clouds was really a result of me navigating my Kwakwaka’wakw, Métis and European ancestry. Because I grew up in a Kwakwaka’wakw community, I consider myself mostly Kwakwaka’wakw. Yet, it’s important to know where you come from in order to know who you are. When I read the book with Michael’s illustrations, I realized that the clouds and the sky he had drawn was the sky my Métis granny saw when she was a child. Yet I had never seen that perspective of the sky before.Writing Clouds and Stars eventually led to an opportunity to be part of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival in 2018. That was my first time seeing Winnipeg, the place where my granny was from and where my father was born. I visited the area where my family once had a farm (near the Forks) and I visited my ancestors’s graves. I think our bodies remember where they come from because I had never been there before, but it felt like home.Michael’s illustrations are really lovely. They add another layer of depth to my words. The result is a really beautiful little book.ALU: What book(s) are you currently reading?LH: I just started Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson. It’s the second book in Robinson’s Trickster series. I love her writing because she weaves magic and comedy and tragedy and culture into her storytelling so well. I find it all so relatable because I grew up on a rez, and so many of her characters are familiar to me.ALU: What, outside of other books/writers, inspires your writing?LH: My identity, family, community, culture, the land and the sea…that all inspires me. But I am also inspired by pain and tragedy and the injustices that are so pervasive in our society. I find inspiration there because it’s how I know how to translate it into healing. Maybe even something that can lead to positive change. Not just for me, but for the people who read my work. I truly believe that the more we as Indigenous people have the power and the space to tell our own unique stories, the more that we will heal. We have always known that there is a transformative power in storytelling. * * *Excerpt from Stars * * *Lucy Haché, writer and adventurer of Kwakwaka’wakw/Métis and Scottish/Irish descent. She is a member of the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nations, a Kwakwaka’wakw Community on the Northern tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Much of her life has been spent in the forest or on the sea. When she’s not surrounded by nature she writes about it. She also writes about contemporary and historical Indigenous issues.