Debutiful

As an Indigenous person on Northern Plains in Canada, I never understood why my home couldn’t be the setting of a mystical Western like the ones I’d read, seen, played, heard all about. The most important components of a fantastic Western were everywhere—larger-than-life landscapes that only larger-than-life people could survive. Big sun, big water, big trees, big animals, big prairies, big sky, big history, big problems. My home had it all. My grandpa’s home in Saskatchewan had it all too.

I think all Indigenous people have uncomfortable fondness for Westerns. No other genre features us so integrally. Yet no other genre is predicated on the legend of the extermination of an entire people. If Indigenous Peoples’ fight for existence is the foundation of the Western, why can’t Indigenous Peoples tell Westerns from our perspectives too? If overwhelming landscapes produce overwhelming characters, who better to tell those stories than the characters indigenous to that land?

Because of its Indigenous history, Saskatchewan has an outsized footprint on the history of the Northern Plains. In fact, some of the most consequential violence in Canada happened in modern Saskatchewan—including the North-West Rebellion, which was the largest authorization of deadly force against Indigenous Peoples in Canada that left a monumental scar across the Northern Plains. Wouldn’t that be perfect for a Western?

For my debut novel, Treat Them as Buffalo, I wanted to return to my family and my grandpa’s home in Saskatchewan—the land, the people, and the history. Here are six books that help me understand somewhere as historical and mythological as Saskatchewan.