Overview
George Kenny is an Anishinaabe poet and playwright who learned traditional ways from his parents before being sent to residential school in 1958. When Kenny published his first book, 1982’s Indians Don’t Cry, he joined the ranks of Indigenous writers such as Maria Campbell, Basil Johnston, and Rita Joe whose work melded art and political action. Hailed as a landmark in the history of Indigenous literature in Canada, this new edition is expected to inspire a new generation of Anishinaabe writers with poems and stories that depict the challenges of Indigenous people confronting and finding ways to live within urban settler society. Indians Don’t Cry: Gaawin Mawisiiwag Anishinaabeg is the second book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or underappreciated texts by Indigenous artists. This new bi-lingual edition includes a translation of Kenny’s poems and stories into Anishinaabemowin by Pat Ningewance and an afterword by literary scholar Renate Eigenbrod.
Reviews
“Indians Don’t Cry is a powerful text of cultural survivance and it is perhaps more relevant today than it was when it was first published. Readers interested in Aboriginal history and culture will gravitate toward this remarkable story.”
Warren Cariou, Director, Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, University of Manitoba
“Indians Don’t Cry ultimately reflects the thoughts and feelings of George Kenny, a man who has lived both on a reserve and in an urban setting – a man possessed some would say – but a man who, more than many, accurately reflects the alienation, frustration, hopes and dreams of urban natives in this small but important book.”
Nick Ternette, City Magazine
About the Authors
Table of Contents
Translator’s Note
by Patricia Ningewance
INDIANS DON’T CRY
Rain Dance
Rubbie at Central Park
Indians Don't Cry
Poor J.W.
Lost Friendship
The Bullfrogs Got Theirs
On the Shooting of a Beaver
How He Served
Welcome
Death Bird
The Drowning
I Don't Know this October Stranger
Just Another Bureaucrat
Second Beauty
Summer Dawn on Loon Lake
Folk Hero: Gerald Bannatyne
Track Star
Death Is No Stranger
Legacy
Broken, I Knew a Man
To: My Friend, the Painter
Sunset on Portage
Old Daniel
Kenora Bus Depot
Pine Tree
In-Family Tribal Warfare
Mahkwa
Soft and Trembling Cry
Bottles
Gulls
Dirty Indian
Picture of my Father
Ojibway Girl
Think on
For Most of Thirteen Years
Afterword
George Kenny – Anishinaabe, son, and writer
by Renate Eigenbrod
Bibliography