Four Faces of the Moon by Amanda Strong.
Title: Four Faces of the Moon.
Author: Amanda Strong.
Genre: Fiction, graphic novels, fiction based on real life, Native American, Métis.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2010.
Summary: On a journey to uncover her family’s story, Spotted Fawn travels through time and space to reclaim connection to ancestors, language, and the land. In the dreamworld, she bears witness to a mountain of buffalo skulls, a ghostly monument to the slaughter of the buffalo-a key tactic to starve and contain the Indigenous People onto reservations. Spotted Fawn must travel through her own family history to confront the harsh realities of the past and reignite her connection to her people and the land. Her darkroom becomes a portal, allowing her glimpses into the lives of her relatives. Guided by her ancestors, Spotted Fawn’s travels through the past allow her to come into full face-like the moon itself. Adapted from the acclaimed stop-motion animated film of the same name, also by the author, the story brings the history of the Métis, Cree, Nakoda, and Anishinaabe Peoples alive on the page.
My rating: 7/10.
My review:
♥ New Moon
We walk with our ancestors, tracing their steps with our own. We come together and carry the stories forward.
Ki pimohtânaw kânakataskîtwâw kiwahkômâkanak ahci, î pimt'sahama otahkiskîwinowâwa. Kimâmawintonaw mîina âtayohkêwina kikanawihtînaw.
♥ Half Moon
We plant with the moon in ground that once shook with thunder. Aiming, piercing, moving, we work with the changes. We work like arrows to rise again.
Keyakum kistikananaw, tapiskoch oskipesim ota aski, misiweh kaki petakusicik pehasewak ittuhikewak, sapoostawaowak, wawapehsewstun ehatoskatamak, tahto kikway kakweskimakak ehatoskatamak, tapiskooch uk'uskwuk kasipwehacik assay mina.
♥ Three-Quarter Moon
Victory was left unsatisfied, unsavory. They would not stop until everything became unrecognizable, unbalanced. Enemy crushed, fleeing into the costume of survival.
Ó'ohiye wacî'iyôgipibiši, iyógišija inážibiši žehágeh owá iyégiyepijaši, ošíjaga tóga wicágasódabi wókoyage níbi stéĥ onápabi.
♥ The plains buffalo once rattled the ground in large herds.
Sixty-five million strong, spreading out across the land, transcending borders.
But things rapidly changed.
Métis men were hired to clean up the bones that covered the prairies.
When I am out on the land, I think about the buffalo storming across the earth. Their spirits moving in rhythm across time.
..
..To them, a dead buffalo equaled a dead Indian.
..
They would not stop until everything became unrecognizable.
The settlers stood upon the piles of bones as a testament to their manifest.
..Enemies crushed, fleeing into the costume of survival.
I am overwhelmed by what has been lost.
♥ Full Moon
We walk trapped in the moon's shadow. Tracing time on skin, digging up the medicine to heal and grow stronger.
Gii bimoseyang, dasoozo biinde dbik giizis agawaatey aazhawewesijige zhigwa gigishkaw, moon'a-ash-kikiwe aabaakawizii miinawa izhigi mashkawizi.
♥ The railway was championed as a tool for connection, but its arrival created disconnection between the land and its beings.
♥ Your blood recognizes the spirit of home. Remember your spirit's name.
♥ When I was 14 years old, I was given the name Gidagaakoons in a ceremony. It means Spotted Fawn.
Shortly after receiving the name, I had a vivid dream...
I was standing alone in a forest lit by a crescent moon. I felt like I was inside a painting.
The land was still and everything was asleep...
Then, the calm was broken by a small fawn crashing through the forest.
An arrow emerged behind the fawn, pursuing... Gaining ground with each step.
I followed the hunt and soon realized it was me who was being chased.
When I woke up, I knew that something had changed with me.
..My dream with the fawn taught me to release my fears.
I was being taught to move with the arrow.
..My name is Gidagaakoons. I am still learning. I owe everything to those who came before me.
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♥ The story of the Métis begins with the fur trade, and the (mostly) French and British men who worked as traders, clerks, laborers, and voyageurs. Many married Indigenous women and had children. But the Métis are so much more than this simple origin story.
There are many Indigenous people of mixed descent, and they aren't all Métis. Many children of mixed heritage were welcomed into the nations of their mothers and grandmothers, and their descendants are Nehiyawak, Anishinaabe, Dakota, and Dene. Their fur trade ancestors are often remembered in their surnames, and they acknowledge the Métis as relatives.
♥ Destroying the great herds was a political act. Millions of Buffalo were killed between 1860s and 1880s. Building railroads was an important strategy to join settlements on the eastern and western coasts of North America and "open the West."
Railroads running east to west divided the Buffalo and blocked their natural migration flow. Organized lines of hunters' camps along key rivers shot the Buffalo as they came to drink. Thousands were killed for only their hides or tongues.
Most of this decimation was undertaken by the American military, and "sport" hunters enthusiastically joined in. Train passengers shot Buffalo out their windows, leaving the carcasses to rot. While the American government proclaimed this as policy, the new Canadian government (established om 1867) was quietly supportive. The plains were covered with bones. Proud Métis hunters were reduced to gathering bones for a few pennies to feed their families. The piles of skulls haunt the Prairies.
~~from Afterword by Sherry Farrell Racette.