​The Writer of Canada's Bloodiest Novel Talks About Violence and Cultural Genocide

The Orenda is an epic, gruesome, gut-wrenching book that opens with a bloody massacre that rivals any over-the-top battle scene in Game of Thrones. Replete with graphic scenes of ritualized torture—limbs are hacked, people get scalped often, bodies are slowly burned at the stake and many, many throats are slit—Joseph Boyden's award-winning historical novel set in 17th century Ontario and Quebec is at turns a violent story of struggle, assimilation, and suffering. The book, alongside Boyden's other works like Three Day Road, Born With a Tooth, and Through Black Spruce, has rightly elicited visceral responses from many Canadians. When The Orendawon the Canada Reads prize in 2014, there was a memorably heated battle between Stephen Lewis and Wab Kinew where the former accused Boyden of going too far in his depiction of historical brutality. The novel also faced criticism for what some called the reinforcement of First Nations stereotypes but there's no question The Orendastirred up a livelier conversation about the realities of our Indigenous communities than we're used to having in this country.

Boyden, who is part Metis, revisited some of those realities in a powerful essay for Maclean's about the recent suicide crisis in Attawapiskat and how the legacy of residential schools has shaped what's happening there. In the piece Boyden talks about how his own earlier struggles with depression and suicide were met with almost immediate assistance, the kind you can only get in this country by living in an affluent urban centre. This tiered class system is one of many ways Canada perpetuates inequality and Boyden tackles that issue with much needed passion.

I met up with him in a conference room in the bowels of Greater Toronto to talk about the role artists can play in reconciliation, what constitutes real progress in Indigenous communities and where exactly we go from here.