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These are my words ruby slipperjack5/21/2023 ![]() ![]() This reading of the role of more-than-humans in Silent Words also identifies Nature’s propensity to share Anishinaabe teachings in subtle and unexpected ways for those who are willing to listen. ![]() Danny achieves this on his journey through the woods while decolonizing and re-indigenizing himself. The Anishinaabe medicine wheel teachings profess that a holistically healthy person seeks to find balance among their intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical self. ![]() With the help of some human interpreters, Danny develops the epistemological tools and the humility to allow Nature to heal his past traumas as well. Danny’s reconnection to Nature and his willingness to listen to its many abstract teachings are central to the reclamation of his indigeneity. The relationship between boy and Nature transcends the boundary between the human and the more-than-human world and becomes that of a student and teacher. When Danny flees his run-down house in a settler-colonial town, he finds limitless support from the plant and animal life of Northern Ontario. This presentation examines the extent of which Nature in Ruby Slipperjack’s Silent Words (1992) serves to reconnect 11-year-old protagonist, Danny, to his Anishinaabe identity. ![]()
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