Elliott - A mind spread out on the ground

A MIND SPREAD OUT ON THE GROUND

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a new lens on Indigenous Canadian literature. Terese Marie Mailhot, author of Heart Berries

The future of CanLit is female, is Indigenousis Alicia Elliott. I anticipate this book to be featured on every best of and award list in 2019, and revered for years to come. Vivek Shraya, author of Im Afraid of Men and even this page is white

Alicia Elliott has gifted us with an Indigenous womans coming of age story, told through engagingly thoughtful, painfully poignant and enraging essays on race, love and belonging. With poetic prose and searing honesty, she lays bare what it is like to grow up Indigenous and exist in a country proud of its tolerance, but one that has proven to be anything but. She opens eyes and captures hearts, leading you by the hand to see our fractured world through her eyes. Alicia Elliott is exactly the voice we need to hear now. Tanya Talaga, author of Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

Incisive. Thats the word I keep coming back to. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is incredibly incisive. Alicia Elliott slices through the sometimes complicated, often avoided issues affecting so many of us in this place now called Canada. She is at once political, personal, smart, funny, global and, best of all, divinely human. Necessary. Thats the other word I keep thinking about. In every chapter, she manages to find the perfect word and the precise argument neededI found myself saying yes, yes, that is exactly it more than once. I am so grateful for her work. Katherena Vermette, author of The Break

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is an astonishing book of insightful and affecting essays that will stay with you long after the final page. Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People

This book is hard, vital medicine. It is a dance of survival and cultural resurgence. Above all, it is breathtakingly contemporary Indigenous philosophy, in which the street is also part of the land, and the very act of thinking is conditioned by struggles for justice and well-being. Warren Cariou, author of Lake of the Prairies

These essays are of fiercest intelligence and courageous revelation. Here, colonialism and poverty are not only social urgencies but violence felt and fought in the raw of the everyday, in embodied life and intimate relations. This is a stunning, vital triumph of writing. David Chariandy, author of Brother

Wildly brave and wholly original, Alicia Elliott is the voice that rouses us from the mundane, speaks political poetry and brings us to the ceremony of everyday survival. Her words remind us to carry both our weapons and our medicines, to hold both our strength and our open, weeping hearts. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is what happens when you come in a good way to offer prayer, and instead, end up telling the entire damn truth of it all. Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves

We need to clone Alicia Elliott because the world needs more of this badass writer. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground showcases her peculiar alchemy, lighting the darkest corners of racism, classism, sexism with her laser-focused intellect and kind-hearted soul-searching. Eden Robinson, author of Trickster Drift

In A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Elliott invites readers into her unceded mind and heart, taking us on a beautiful, incisive and punk rock tour of Tuscarora brilliance. Elliotts voice is fire with warmth, light, rage and endless transformation. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of This Accident of Being Lost

Copyright 2019 Alicia Elliott

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisheror in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Elliott, Alicia, author

A mind spread out on the ground / Alicia Elliott.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780385692380 (hardcover).ISBN 9780385692397 (EPUB)

1. Native peoplesCanadaSocial conditions. 2. ColonizationSocial aspectsCanada. 3. RacismCanada. 4. CanadaRace relations.

I. Title.

E78C2.E47 2019971.00497C2018-905235-X

C2018-905236-8

Portions of the following chapters were previously published in different form: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (The Malahat Review), Half-Breed: A Racial Biography in Five Parts (The Toast), On Seeing and Being Seen (Write and Room), Weight (The Malahat Review), The Same Space (West End Phoenix), Dark Matters (Hazlitt), On Forbidden Rooms and Intentional Forgetting (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts) and Not Your Noble Savage (Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault, Greystone Books, 2019).

Cover and interior art: Aura@auralast

Cover design: Lisa Jager

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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For the people who always made me feel like I mattered: Mom, Dad, Mike

e took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose the way men in movies do whenever they encounter a particularly vexing woman.

Im really confused. You need to give me something here. Whats making you depressed?

His reaction made me think briefly of residential schools, though at the time I couldnt understand why. Maybe it was the fact that he operated his therapy sessions out of a church. That certainly didnt help.

I wasnt sure what to say. Can a metaphor or simile capture depression? It was definitely heavy, but could I really compare it to a weight? Weight in and of itself is not devastating; depression is. At times it made me short of breath and at times it had the potential to be deadly, but was it really like drowning? At least with drowning others could see the flailing limbs and splashing water and know you needed help. Depression could slip in entirely unnoticed and dress itself up as normalcy, so when it finally took hold others would be so surprised they wouldnt know how to pull you to safety. Theyd stand there staringgood-intentioned but helpless. Empathetic, perhaps, but mute. Or, as in the case of this particularly unqualified therapist, angry and accusing. Not that I necessarily blame them. Ive done the same thing.