The Glass Lodge

John Brady McDonald, MBSFA, a Nêhiyawak-Métis multidisciplinary artist and writer from Treaty Six Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada, is an award-winning author of multiple books who has presented at literary festivals around the world. Before all this, however, he was a young, urban Indigenous youth, struggling with addictions, the streets, and the pain and turmoil of intergenerational trauma as a residential school survivor and the child of residential school survivors.

These raw, lyrical poems are a glimpse of the birth of a poet, recklessly using language and words with abandon and without restraint. It is the poetry of an individual experimenting with the language, mixing the influences of Shakespeare and Jim Morrison with the teenage-Goth writing style of youth-the base metals from which a lifetime of words was forged.

Originally published by Kegedonce Press in 2004, The Glass Lodge was presented across Canada and the United States at esteemed festivals. Chosen for the First Nations Communities Read program, it was also nominated for the Anskohk Aboriginal Book of the Year in 2005.

Now, here is that seminal work in a brand-new edition, re-edited and restored, illustrated with images of many of the original, handwritten poems, and with author’s notes providing frank, fascinating insight into what gave rise to each of these verses: the outpouring of language that marked the birth of a remarkable writer.

AUTHOR

John Brady McDonald

John Brady McDonald is a Nehiyawak-Metis writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak. The great-great-great grandson of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, as well as the grandson of famed Metis leader Jim Brady, John’s writings and artwork have been displayed in various publications, private and permanent collections and galleries around the world, including the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. John is one of the founding members of the P.A. Lowbrow art movement, and served as Vice President of the Indigenous Peoples Artists Collective for nearly a decade. John also served a term as vice-chair of the Board of Directors for Spark Theatre, and as a Senator with the Indigenous Council Committee of CUPE Saskatchewan. The author of several books, John studied at England’s prestigious University of Cambridge, where in July 2000 he made international headlines by symbolically “discovering” and “claiming” England for the First Peoples of the Americas. John is also an acclaimed public speaker, who has presented in venues across the globe, such as the Anskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival, the Black Hills Seminars on Reclaiming Youth, The Appalachian Mountain Seminars, the Edmonton and Fort McMurray Literary Festival, the Eden Mills Writers Festival and at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Hi artwork and writing have been nominated for several awards, including the 2022 Saskatchewan Book of the Year Awards, the 2022 High Plains Book Awards, and the 2023 Lambda Literary Awards. John was awarded the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (Saskatchewan).

Reviews

“The Glass Lodge transcends all the cliches of the angst-ridden Urban Indian. McDonald’s verse is a brilliant fusion of the brutality and hope that is inherent in the Aboriginal experience. I have never read poetry that so closely resembles my own experience as a First Nations man.” – Darrell Dennis, Writer, Tales of an Urban Indian, Moccasin Flats