“I needed to understand the good, bad, the complicated, and beautiful of every person in the story,” Indigenous author Chyana Marie Sage says about the family members she wrote about in her memoir. “Because that is the full truth of the human experience.”
“Soft As Bones,” Sage’s debut project that drops on May 27, is a prose-driven exploration of generational trauma that stems from the systemic breakdown of her own family unit largely due to the Sixties Scoop, an era during which Canadian child welfare policies allowed for the forceful removal thousands of Native children from their families (they were rehomed to white households).
Her storytelling, in a format she calls a “braided spiral” because of its interwoven cultural mythology and tendency to loop back to the central plot, is both poignant and whimsical. It’s with this balance that Sage, who has previously written for HuffPost, is able to confront the agonizing and multilayered betrayal by her father — and create a new space for her family to heal.
Throughout the book, especially in the passages of vibrantly detailed folklore and magic realism, there is a levity of spirit that reflects the type of Indigenous resilience that comes with time and reflection. Sage’s message, as we come to understand toward the end, is that the wealth of community is powerful enough to rebuild what’s been torn down in the past. And the concept of “returning home” is more about releasing pain and trusting our agency than anything else.
There’s been an influx of Indigenous art, during the past five years or so, that’s helped inform and educate non-Natives. How has that affected how much you explain your culture in your book?
There’s a lot more awareness today, especially in Canada. Going into the memoir, you know that I’m an Indigenous person and this is an Indigenous story so I did ground the reader on the personal experience and in our story and our truth. But I am trusting the reader to make these connections. There’s no moment when I say, “And this is why…”
I think it’s clear to see how those cycles of abuse [within my community] began and how they passed down. My goal as a storyteller and a writer, as some who lived this experience, is not to beat the reader over the head with this information but just to lay the images and facts out and have them see it for themselves.
One thing I wanted to address in my writing is this ignorant rhetoric that exists: “It happened so long ago, how could it still be affecting us today?” By telling these stories, I am showing how the residential schools are still impacting my generation and even my nieces and nephews.
You dedicated your book to all the children who never made it home from the residential schools. What do you want us to know about how these schools drastically changed the course of history?
The most important thing to know is that these institutions severed the connection of our culture, lineage, and oral tradition — which is a core means for communication in our culture. Everything is taught and passed down orally and through our cultural practices which requires you to be physically present with each other on our native land.
And so these schools took Indigenous children away from their parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles who had the knowledge and tools to pass down to them. This severance of the family – removing the child from the family – was the goal of the schools. And while you could never take the Native out of the Native person, the schools caused a rupture in the lineage and that rupture created cycles of harm and was very traumatizing for not just the child but for the parents. It was government-orchestrated kidnapping.
But then what happened in the schools was another thing. Being forbidden to speak our languages, being outlawed to practice our dances and sing our songs. And so the schools are very largely responsible for a lot of the harm, the substance abuse that happens in our communities, the cycles of trauma that we are still seeing play out in our communities today, especially the large percentage of Indigenous homeless people we’re seeing in Canada.
What has writing this book — and being so forthcoming about your experiences — taught you about finding stillness in discomfort?
I believe that in order to process and heal from something, we have to confront the dark thing that haunts us. Of course, I had done therapy, different healing ceremonies, and Indigenous healing practices for years before I wrote the book, but the process of writing this book meant making space for myself to allow for all of the different emotions that were coming up in surprising moments.
Some of those surprising moments, for me, that brought up tears and hard emotions were listening to my sister’s experiences from our childhood and seeing the impact they had. Processing that now as an adult and having those conversations — it was a necessary difficulty. And I didn’t shy away from those emotions when they came up. I made sure to hold space for not just myself but my family members to feel those emotions.
I would write or transcribe part of an interview and cry at my desk and maybe lay on my bed for a little bit. And then I’d maybe go for a walk by myself down by the river and sit there and just be still with those emotions and let them wash over me and through me. And when they moved through me, that’s when the release happened.
For you, are healing ceremonies and similar practices ways to reclaim what was effectively stripped of your ancestors?
Absolutely. It’s kind of a catch-22 because Indigenous people were so spiritual and all of our ceremonies are forms of prayer — the connection to Creator. And it’s interesting when thinking about our resilience and the Indigenous resurgence, claiming our languages and ceremonies again, the core of our culture that existed before colonization is actually the thing that’s allowing us to heal from colonization.
There are so many revealing nature and animal metaphors in the book. One of my favorites is Pretty Girl, your childhood pet cat, who would go off on her own for months at a time but always come back — sometimes with battle wounds.
Pretty Girl was this fighting, strong, powerful animal that went off on her own all the time and faced her own battles but would always come back to the family unit. Her spirit is part of me too; I’ve had to leave my hometown and my family and go off on my feeling journey but I always go back.
We always go back to where we’re connected. What’s interesting about Pretty Girl, too, is that she came back to our land to pass away. And when thinking about our ancestral homelands, that’s what it’s all about. When can we go home? That internal desire to go home will always be there and it represents our connectedness with the land.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.