Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves

“Since nobody has written what I need to read, I’ll have to write it myself,” writes psychotherapist Currie in her powerful debut memoir. A survivor of the Sixties Scoop—a mid-20th century effort on the part of Canadian social services to remove Indigenous children from their homes for adoption by white parents—Currie describes the trauma she experienced after being taken as an infant from her Métis parents, which included not only physical and emotional abuse but also the “psychic wound” of “disconnection” from her Indigenous culture and community. Currie recounts reconnecting with her birth family—which she describes as an attempt at healing that will never be fully complete—and gives fascinating insight into the work she has pioneered as a psychotherapist to other Indigenous survivors of the Scoop and of residential schools, writing that their process of reconnection is complicated by differences in how identity is understood across cultures (“For Indigenous Peoples, the self is inseparable from the community”). Also delving into the history of colonization (including her own French ancestors), and incorporating traditional songs and Currie’s own poetry (“exhaustion takes our tears/ they disappear into the same place/ where all the deep breaths we cannot take/ lay heavy and dense”), this roving narrative is full of moments of sharp clarity. The result is a stirring and hopeful vision of spiritual reconciliation with the ghosts of the past. (Oct.)