I Just Want to Watch my People Smile and Laugh

Blog Writer // Pilialoha Gaudiello

Popularized media of Indigenous people often includes aspects of an overwhelmingly colonial narrative. Although these are representations founded in the reality and history of various Indigenous and Native communities–ranging from Turtle Island to small islands in the Pacific–the amount of space we take up in the colonial narrative can at times feel suffocating. 

Indigenous Peoples’ Day seems to mark a time for everyone to think of colonialism not as a past experience, but something that people grapple with now. These ruminations are necessary and individuals should learn more about the people experiencing said colonialism. Literature exists as an educational tool, yes. However, when we’re existing in literary spaces which focus on marginalized communities, the dominating narrative should include the humanity of these communities. Some of my favorite books by Indigenous authors often carry an overarching theme of healing and growth. 

The novel Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly surrounds two Russian Māori siblings, Greta and Valdin, and their experiences with family, love, and everything in between. It’s extremely domestic. Both siblings have emotionally tumultuous experiences over the course of the novel, but Valdin’s story in particular contains aspects of healing. 

In the novel, Valdin experiences multiple breakdowns as a result of spending years in an industry he never really wanted to be in. Before discovering the cause of these outbursts, his ex-boyfriend Xabi breaks up with Valdin, believing he is the origin of said discomfort. Almost a year later, Valdin now works in the television industry, where he is often the only Māori person in the office. With the odds against him, Valdin inadvertently continues to raise awareness about Māori issues on the TV show and gets great satisfaction from this. 

However, the show sends him to Buenos Aires, where Xabi now lives, and he finds he needs to confront his complicated feelings surrounding their relationship, which he never truly healed from. This disquiet causes Valdin to ask his family more questions about their origins and he regularly confides in his mother when he’s in distress. This is a level of emotional maturity he has yet to reach. 

“I think that my time of being a dramatic, emotional young man is coming to an end, and I’m okay with that.”

– Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

In reconnecting with his family and Xabi, Valdin starts his healing journey. The novel includes aspects of a neo/postcolonial Pacific Islander experience, but portrays a complex narrative where that is not the entirety of the novel. Rather, these politicized experiences are a fact of life, but don’t take up all of the characters’ lives. 

Another novel which utilizes these tools in a similar way is Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead. Jonny Appleseed follows a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer narrator who has to return home after the death of his step-father. He must raise money in order to make the journey home, and finds his funds through sex work. 

Jonny regularly grapples with the way both white Canadians and other Native members of his community view his Two-Spirit identity. In contrast to Reilly’s novel, Whitehead’s book tackles aspects of the neo/postcolonial experience in more overt ways, as he often faces discrimination and fetishization in his sex work. However, healing is also an extremely present theme. 

Over the course of the novel’s pages, Jonny discusses his relationship with Tias, a man from the reservation he grew up with, and the love they’ve built. Although their relationship is far from explicitly defined, the moments the two of them share are extremely tender, and offer the both of them solace. 

“Instead of saying we liked or loved each other, we just lay there on our backs, our brown skin shiny in the rosy light that poured in from the evening sun. We surveyed each other’s body: him seeing the scar above my clavicle from when I fell down the stairs as a kid, and me seeing the patch of hair missing from his scalp. I knew then that I loved him.”

– Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

When Jonny finally returns home, he ruminates on the extremely important relationship he shared with his kokum (grandmother) and how it shaped him as a person. Growing up, kokum was always a grounding figure for Jonny, and he never truly coped with her death. But after returning to the reservation, Jonny experiences an intense emotional catharsis when he visits her grave, and in paying tribute to her memory, takes the first steps of the healing process. 

The idea of healing is a complicated one in certain texts, as it may not be explicitly stated. Often in Indigenous literature and experiences, this can mean reconnecting with the land, spending time with family, or working on your identity. These aren’t the expected hero’s journey or getaways to a foreign country we see in Westernized media, but the novels allow for growth for the Indigenous characters of the novels by accurately representing embodied Indigenous experiences. 

These stories center Natives building space for each other and their kin, illustrating the complexity of tending to those relationships. They’re hardly removed from the colonial narrative, as that’s an aspect of most Indigenous people’s lives, but these authors focus on recuperating from said traumas, instead of existing only within them, in a refreshing lens on Indigenous literature.