Interview with Canadian author Drew Hayden Taylor – Part 1

Interviewed by: Sriram Chadalavada and Sowmya V.B.
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Drew Hayden Taylor is a famous First Nations (indigenous people of Canada) author who has a very diverse body of work with a recent book of science fiction short stories called “Take us to your Chief” written from a unique Aboriginal perspective and a melange of pathos and humor (Reviews of this book in pustakam.net in English and in Telugu). We interviewed him on behalf of pustakam.net and are delighted that he agreed for an interview.

We met at Louis Cifer Brewworks located in downtown Toronto on October 7th 2018, as suggested by Drew. When we started with a disclaimer that we may unknowingly ask some culturally inappropriate questions as non-first nations people, here is the response we got:

We are presenting a transcribed version of the interview in a question-answer format below (the audio recording was quite noisy, and we also left some parts out considering the length of the interview). Note: Drew Hayden Taylor is abbreviated to DHT.

Sriram: What is a good term to address the Native Canadian people?

DHT: In my 56 years on earth, we’ve gone from Indian to Native to Aboriginal to Indigenous to First Nations. I came up with this term in some of my writings called the NAFNIP – Native Aboriginal First Nations Indigenous People. We use the term “Indian” amongst ourselves, but it is not used in Canada these days in general.

 

Sowmya: Can you tell us about how you got into writing, how you found your first publisher etc?

DHT: I originally wanted to write when I was a teenager, but I was discouraged. My English teacher said there is much point being a writer. My mother didn’t think there is much point being a writer. So, I gave it up for 10 years. Following a bizarre series of circumstances, I came back to being a writer in my mid and late 20s. I was always in the arts though. I worked for native arts organization, Indian office. I did the sound on a couple of documentaries on native culture. I worked on project which is a series on the events taking place in a native community. So, I was always involved in the arts with native issues. But I was never a writer. I ended up doing an interview once, while trying to write an article for a magazine on adapting native stories, and talked to the story editor of a popular television series in Canada at that time, and one of us suggested that I submit some ideas just for the hell of it. I did. They got my first one. I got a chance to write an episode – they filmed it, broadcasted it, and I started working on other television series. Then, I got involved in theatre, creative non-fiction, fiction and so on. So, I didn’t get into writing until late 20s, by then it became obvious that I was meant to be a writer, and my art was waiting for me to realize that.

 

Sowmya: Why do you want to write about first nations people in your writing?

DHT: I grew up on a reserve. I have half-first nations ancestry, but I don’t know my white half. So, culturally, I am a 100% native. The dominant culture/settlers have been writing their stories for 3000 years, but we’ve only been writing our stories in book form for the past 30-40 years. I grew up reading fiction from all over the world, and thought “wouldn’t it be cool if I write stories about my people which will be read all over the world?”. One tends to write, when you are starting off, what you know. That is the native community on the reserve – the urban native community. Someday I may write something that has nothing to do with a native community, my dream someday is to write a Star Trek episode.

[At that point, when we mentioned that there is a native American character in one of the Star Trek series, here is what we heard back]

 

Sowmya: Who do you write for? Your people or the others?

DHT: I write for both. 90% of the people who see my stuff are non-native. Just look at the population ratio. So I have to keep that in mind. I like to introduce the native perspective to others. So, I have to make it cross-cultural. So, in some of my stuff, there are jokes only native people will get. Occasionally, there are some only non-native people will get.

 

Sowmya: Do you have readers in other parts of the world?

DHT: Yes, I am well-known in Germany. I am about to go on my 18th lecture tour to Germany. I did a documentary recently “Searching for Winnetou” …

Sowmya and Sriram: Yes, we saw that on CBC.

(conversation drifted into German fascination about Native Americans)

DHT: Anyway, my novel “Motorcycles and Sweetgrass” got translated into Spanish, one of my plays is translated into Czech, my vampire novel got translated into Slovenian.

 

Sowmya: You wrote in different genres (plays, stories, novels etc)

DHT: I am always interested in expanding the indigenous story-telling voice. A lot of native plays and novels follow three traditions: they are either victim narratives, historical narratives or dealing with what I refer to as Post Contact Stress Disorder. They are usually negative, dealing with dysfunction, whereas I like to be more upbeat. I like to celebrate the indigenous experience. So, I tend to write positive stuff, or atleast not as tragic. And I think I have a lot of fun with it.

 

Sriram: We also have a lot of fun. We keep revisiting “Take us to your chief” short story collection regularly.

DHT: Native science fiction. I went to three publishers with that book and nobody wanted to do it because native people and science fiction don’t go together. But after it got published, a few more books inlcluding a collection of Indigenous LGBT sci-fi short story collection also came out. Native sci-fi has now taken off and I was the first.

 

[Our conversation moved into themes in both the cultures that make good stories, Role of turtle in native cultures, One of the dasavatharam being a tortoise etc., which are not perhaps not of specific interest to pustakam.net readers]

 

Sowmya: I saw that you collaborated on a Graphic novel. Usually, when we see a graphic novel, the author is the illustrator. How did it work for this – you are the writer, and someone else is the illustrator?

DHT: I’ve never even met the illustrator. The novel was, and still is very successful. It sells at 1000 copies a year, which is pretty good for a 10 year old novel. So, I got a call 5-6 years ago from a publisher asking if I would be interested in turning it to a graphic novel. I agreed, but it is a different way of telling a story. I tried, but I did not adapt it to the graphic form. They hired both the illustrator and the person who adapted the text to the graphic novel.

 

Sowmya: So, do you plan to work on more graphic novels in future?

DHT: Not exactly, right now, I am working on two novels. Now, I am working on a CBC commissioned script writing assignment and we need to decide if it goes into a television series. It is about a Mohawk cop on an Ojibwe reserve, it is what is called a procedural. There is a guy in Nova Scotia who is trying to make one of my short stories as a movie. The one with time travel..

Sriram: Petropaths

DHT: Ya, that one. He wants to make that one as a movie.

Sriram: Oh, that is a pretty visual story

DHT: Not a lot of characters.

Sowmya: Even “Dreams of Doom” doesn’t have a lot of characters… the one with the dream catchers?

DHT: Its amazing they are paying me to be silly. One of my favorites is “I am ..am I”, the one with the AI.

Sowmya: Actually, that was what made me read your short stories. I was walking in the library of the university where I worked one day, and saw your book in the new arrivals. I am a researcher in AI related topics, and I started reading the book after seeing the mention of this story.

Sriram: We discuss a lot about this book.

DHT: Thank you very much. It is not really funny. It is one of the serious ones, unlike the last one in the collection “Take us to your chief”

Sriram: That was just hilarious. Very funny. That would make a good video.

Sowmya: Most of the stories in this collection make good videos.

DHT: I work in theatre.. I am a visual writer. So, yes, definitely possible.

 

Sowmya: So, can we say writing plays or visual form of writing is your favorite?

DHT:  They are all different. In theatre, you can make the audience laugh and cry and you can see their laughter and tears. I really like that and you can do things in theatre that you can’t do anywhere else… your imagination is more open. With film, you can watch it 10 years later, and it pays a lot better. But, the drawback with that is, the more money involved in any project, the more people have a say in what you write. The television series I am writing, … … it has to go through multiple steps before it gets approved. .. …. It is like my story, filtered through 5,6 different people, 2,3 times.

Sriram: So, does the creative vision still relatively stay the same after all this?

DHT: It does sometimes when you are the creator. But sometimes, it has to fit into the larger show, and sometimes you sacrifice your voice. One of the sayings in series television is “The writing is important, but the writer isn’t” … … When you are writing a novel, it is usually just you. Ofcourse, you have an editor. .. .. I think the novel is the purest form of writing. In the movie its different.

Sowmya: I think it is common everywhere across the world. Toronto International Film Festival featured a movie “Manto” on an Indo-Pakistani author Saadat Hasan Manto. He worked for films in the 40s. There is a similar scene in the movie where the producers change his story to suit their needs.

DHT: That is why writers drink.

(all of us laughed)

 

Sowmya: Okay, you said your writings got translated into other languages. I am assuming you don’t speak those languages?

DHT: No, I don’t.

Sowmya: So, how do you make sure the translation is good?

DHT: I just have to rely on them. There is nothing I can do about it unless I go out of my way and spend 8 months to learn Slovenian.

Sowmya: If I translate your story, how will you decide whether it is good or bad?

DHT: In to what? Which of the 600 in India?

Sowmya: Telugu, the language spoken in Hyderabad and places around there.

Sriram: It is spoken in two states (provinces in Canada) – Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and there is diaspora around the world.

DHT: I have friends – Mukherjees of Indian descent, who are academics, and they translate. One of the things I am envious is that Indians speak multiple languages. I will get them to read it.

Sowmya: If it is a Mukherjee, they perhaps don’t know Telugu. 🙂 It is even a different script.

DHT: Okay, then, I have to trust you. But, do you think something like that would go in India?

Sriram: May be in cities?

DHT: So, will I be big in Bangalore? Will they recognise me if I walk on the street?

 

Sowmya: In terms of finding publishers, do you think it is any different because you write on native themes?

DHT: I have different publishers for different things I write.  .. ..

Sowmya, Sriram:  That is perhaps because you are already a well-known writer. If a new writer from an indigenous community wants to write about their people..  how do they find their voice?

DHT: How does anybody find their voice? That’s a very good question. You have to know what you want to say, how you want to say it, and what’s special about your perspective. That’s why I tell people – I try to choose interesting characters, that have interesting stories, and try to take the audience on an interesting journey. That’s basically the basis of everything I do. So, everybody has to find their own way of incorporating that formula into their own writing.

 

Sowmya: I visit the CBC books section regularly, and they keep publishing some list or the other  every week or so. I find them much more diverse in terms of themes and author backgrounds than what I used to see when I lived in the US.

DHT: Oh, I completely get it – this year alone, there are first nations authors on all the awards lists. It has been happening for the past few years, but now, it is no longer an exception to the rule.

Sowmya: Yes, it seems to be so. In the US, I took a lot of time to find out more about indigenous writers there and I managed to find a few, but here, there are so many of them in these CBC lists.

Not just indigenous authors, ofcourse, people of diverse origins.

Sriram: There is this native Canadian youngman who won this music award recently

DHT: Yes, yes. He is from New Brunswick I think. He is recording old music from this community from 50-70  years ago and re-envisioning it.

Sowmya: Are we going to have an alien invasion because of that? [This is  related to the theme of the story: “A culturally inappropriate armageddon” by Drew Hayden Taylor]

DHT: May be.

 

DHT: There was a science-fiction magazine called “Amazing Stories” which started in 1920s. It  was the foremost magazine of science fiction. All the great American sci-fi writers started out there. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury – they all started by publishing there. Then, it started to decline in 80s and 90s and I think it died. They restarted it now – the very first issue after restarting came a month ago, and I am in it. That is my first short story after “Take us to your chief”

Sriram: Is it science fiction?

DHT: No, it is fantasy

[TO BE CONTINUED]

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