Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water

Kazim Ali returns to Jenpeg Winnipeg to recall his typical Canadian childhood of full-body, zip-up snowsuits, tobogganing, x-country skiing, and slamming screen doors into multiple homes. He's not sure if he's coming back as a poet, journalist, ethnographer, scholar, or memoirist, or even if he can ultimately answer the underlying question of what does it mean to be from? What is it he thinks of when he thinks of home?

His father worked at Manitoba Hydro, building the hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River that brought his family to this tiny little outpost. But returning decades later he meets the local Pimicikamak community who have had to deal with the devastating ecological impact, and broken promises brought about by the dam. As Kazim is welcomed by the community, he learns about the long history of erasure — indigenous nations reduced to European style names, residential schools to “kill the Indian in the child”, physicians experimenting with Indigenous children, and restrictions on free passage and trade. Kazim begins to understand that his family as immigrants had more access to Canada than Indigenous people. Another interesting exploration of the project that is Canada.