I don’t know why I picked up Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese. But I’m glad I did. It’s one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read in a long time. And that is just one of its many riches.
Had I read a brief synopsis of the book, or even a review, I might have rolled my eyes, thinking, “Not another one of those.” I’d have expected another book about the struggles of marginalized people, presented with great earnestness, and phenomenally tedious in the process.
That ain’t this book.
“You gotta spend time gatherin’ what you need. What you need to keep you strong. He called it a medicine walk.”
The story is set in the 1950s. Franklin Starlight is sixteen. He has been raised by a someone referred to as “the Old Man.” That man’s not indigenous; he’s white. He refers to himself as Frank’s ‘guardian.’ After Franklin kills his first deer, the Old Man smears the animal’s blood in lines on Frank’s face.
“Them’s your marks,” he said.
The kid nodded solemnly. “Because I’m Indian,” he said.
“Cuz I’m not,” the old man said.
The old man also says,
I can’t teach you nothing about bein’ who you are, Frank. All’s I can do is show you to be a good person. A good man. You learn to be a good man, you’ll be a good Injun too.
His father by blood is Eldon Starlight. Over his sixteen years, Franklin has only met him a few times, all of which are disastrous. Then he gets a call from Eldon. The father wants his son Franklin to take him to a ridge in the mountains. He’s dying and wants to go out the ‘warrior way.’
Franklin knows nothing about his past but has a need to know. He never knew his mother. There’s an empty space where his family’s background should be. And he knows nothing about his father except that the man is a hopeless drunk. Franklin says at one point, “Well, he don’t know nothin’ about bein’ a father and I don’t know nothin’ about bein’ a son. Kinda makes us even, I figure.”
Partly from a sense of obligation, but perhaps more from a need to uncover his past, Franklin agrees and he and Eldon head out. As their journey progresses, the story of Eldon’s life, which he has never been able to tell anyone, largely due to shame, comes out. And Franklin discovers his own family’s story. For Franklin, it’s a medicine walk. As it is for the reader.
Your grandparents were both half-breeds. We weren’t Métis like the French Indians are called. We were just half-breeds. Ojibway. Mixed with Scot. McJibs. That’s what they called us. No one wanted us around. Not the whites. Not the Indians.
Frank also learns a little about his mother and her relationship with her father. She was Cree. She was a storyteller.
A friend referred to Wagamese as a prose poet and I think this is true. The writing is beautiful. It’s physical in its description of the landscape, muscular and tender at the same time. And the writing is true in the dialogue: taciturn characters who don’t have the language to articulate their meaning, yet somehow do. Vague though the term is, it’s plain speaking. What Wagamese creates is remarkably vivid images you can feel and smell, and his characters are of blood and bone.
The story is dark but ultimately redemptive, though not in any easy way. And redemption isn’t really what this book is about.
It’s about reconciliation. There is no salvation; just a coming to terms. The past can’t be changed, but it can be known and the way that it becomes known is through our stories. The mother Franklin will never know, the woman who was a storyteller, says, “It’s all we are in the end. Our stories.”
In a Globe and Mail article, Richard Wagamese is quoted as saying, “The story of Canada is the story of her relationship with native people … If we lean over the back fence and share part of that story with the person on the other side of the fence, we bring each other closer.”
We should be grateful he leaned over the fence and shared Medicine Walk with us.
