- May 29, 2014
Please join University of Manitoba Press for the Toronto launch of the new critical edition of Devil in Deerskins: My Life With Grey Owl.
When: Thursday, May 29, 7:00 pm
Where: Type Books (883 Queen Street West)
Cost: FREE
Featuring Devil in Deerskins editor Sophie McCall, Sam McKegney, and Lesley Belleau (author of Sweat: A Novel)
About the Authors
Anahareo (1906-1985) was born Gertrude Bernard in Mattawa, Ontario. For her work in conservation she was admitted into the Order of Nature of the Paris-based International League of Animal Rights in 1979 and received the Order of Canada in 1983.
Sophie McCall is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University.
Sam McKegney is the author of Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community After Residential School and Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood as well as numerous articles on Indigenous and Canadian literatures. He is an associate professor of English and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.
Lesley Belleau is an Anishnaabekwe writer from Ketegaunseebee Garden River First Nation (Ojibwe), near Bawating/Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. She is a PhD student in the Indigenous Studies Department at Trent University in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough), Ontario. Her 2008 collection of short fiction, The Colour of Dried Bones, was published by Kegedonce Press.
About the Book
Anahareo (1906-1985) was a Mohawk writer, environmentalist, and activist. She was also the wife of Grey Owl, aka Archie Belaney, the internationally celebrated writer and speaker who claimed to be of Scottish and Apache descent, but whose true ancestry as a white Englishman only became known after his death.
Devil in Deerskins is Anahareo’s autobiography up to and including her marriage to Grey Owl. In vivid prose she captures their extensive travels through the bush and their work towards environmental and wildlife protection. Here we see the daily life of an extraordinary Mohawk woman whose independence, intellect, and moral conviction had direct influence on Grey Owl’s conversion from trapper to conservationist. Though first published in 1972, Devil in Deerskins’s observations on indigeneity, culture, and land speak directly to contemporary audiences.
Devil in Deerskins is the first book in the First Voices, First Texts series. This new edition includes forewords by Anahareo’s daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell, an afterword by Sophie McCall, and reintroduces readers to a very important but largely forgotten text by one of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal writers.
