WINNER OF THE 2020/2021 ALCUIN SOCIETY BOOK DESIGN AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE ROBERT KROETSCH CITY OF EDMONTON BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2023 STEPHAN G. STEPHANSSON AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE FOR LGBTQ2S+ EMERGING WRITERS
LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD
WINNER OF THE INDIGENOUS VOICES AWARD FOR PUBLISHED POETRY IN ENGLISH
An Indigenous resistance historiography, poetry that interrogates the colonial violence of the archive
Whitemud Walking is about the land Matthew Weigel was born on and the institutions that occupy that land. It is about the interrelatedness of his own story with that of the colonial history of Canada, which considers the numbered treaties of the North-West to be historical and completed events. But they are eternal agreements that entail complex reciprocity and obligations. The state and archival institutions work together to sequester documents and knowledge in ways that resonate violently in people's lives, including the dispossession and extinguishment of Indigenous title to land.
Using photos, documents, and recordings that are about or involve his ancestors, but are kept in archives, Weigel examines the consequences of this erasure and sequestration. Memories cling to documents and sometimes this palimpsest can be read, other times the margins must be centered to gain a fuller picture. Whitemud Walking is a genre-bending work of visual and lyric poetry, non-fiction prose, photography, and digital art and design.
"Whitemud Walking is so smart and so ceaselessly innovative. It represents for me a fully assured instantiation of the Indigenous literary project: a confrontation of history's terrors head on and an articulation in the present of our beauty and indomitability. Weigel refuses the archive's efforts to flatten Indigenous subjectivity and, in so doing, opens up a kind of boundless space to remember and grieve but also to hope and imagine otherwise. A deeply felt accomplishment." -Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body
"Whitemud Walking is a testament to the power of grief and outrage that so much theft has been allowed to bulldoze Indigenous land rights. Matthew James Weigel's passion for research both honours and mourns what has been trampled and lied about. This is a devastating read but one to learn from. Mahsi cho, Matthew. Your grief is our call to action to learn our own histories and build upon our own Indigenous testimonies of what really happened and when and who was there to witness it. Mahsi cho." -Richard Van Camp, Tlicho Dene author of The Lesser Blessed and Moccasin Square Gardens
"Whitemud Walking is a textual ecology, that through archival troubling, sampling, and reframing, allows the material, human, truly cellular historicity of treaty to enter as a living presence in our contemporary moment. Weigel writes, 'Here treaty means reciprocity and obligation. Here, treaty lasts forever'. This book is not the document you may hold in your hands but the shift in consciousness it foments within you. It is a gift." -Liz Howard, author of Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent
"Echoing the caw and grackle of magpies, Matthew James Weigel's Whitemud Walking lives the sound of Treaty 6. Voices whisper sanctuary in creekbeds, papers rustle precedence in archives; there's a buzz in your ear, a catch in your throat - listen." -Derek Beaulieu, Banff Poet Laureate
Industry Reviews
"Weigel's formal experimentation expands the role of the 'writer' within the bookmaking process as he integrates layout and typesetting into the creative work of the text." - Ben Robinson, Hamilton Review of Books
"In
Whitemud Walking, Weigel attempts to articulate the breaks even as he seeks his own way through them, writing a space deliberately broken through colonialism and ongoing governmental interference." -
Rob Mclennan"In opposition to the colonial archive, Weigel's poetics turn to the body and the land, and his techniques extend from the line to erasures, photographic alterations and visual and conceptual pieces." - Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, The Winnipeg Free Press
"Matthew James Weigel's debut book of poetry weaves itself around and through words, interrogating spaces beyond the page, and text." - Tyler Pennock, Prairie books NOW
"In Whitemud Walking, Matthew James Weigel unsettles the archive, deconstructs the myth of treaty, and restores the history of his family through a series of mournful, visionary, and sometimes darkly funny interventions using text, image, sound, silence, and the kinetic energy that arises from his perfectly calibrated juxtapositions, rearrangements and inventions. A powerful and moving book." - VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award judge, Susan Olding
"A remarkable work of resistance historiography, Whitemud Walking tracks the poet's deeply personal investigation of colonial violence and erasure. The book is a masterclass in experimental form that tracks an "all-or-nothing calling" of witness through the literal deconstruction of colonial archival documents, the uncovering and re-visioning of family stories and the poet's loving and attentive relationship with a particular place. You do not just read this book but experience it with your mind, heart, and spirit." - Gerald Lampert Memorial Award Jury Statement
"Whitemud Walking is exceptional both in its experiments and design but even more so in its power to bring the personal to the textual and the archive to the search for self." - Shane Rhodes, Arc Poetry
"Whitemud Walking is a deeply moving book that takes readers into the heart of the colonial archive and makes possible a personal and creative freedom. Its scope and ambition are hard-won and achieved through its emotionality and care." - Indigenous Voices Award Jury Citation
