by Drew Hayden TaylorKnopf Canada
~ Review in Halifax Herald, April 2010
In Ojibway mythology, Nanabush is a trickster, sent to earth to teach, to impart some wisdom to his people. He is the stuff of legends and the seemingly quiet Anishnawbe community of Otter Lake didn’t take the legend very seriously, at least not at first.
Maggie Second inherited her role as chief of Otter Lake when her husband died. Surprisingly, the Canadian government has granted a piece of land to the band and everyone has an opinion of what to do with it. A new casino is high on some lists but low on Maggie’s. Others want a golf course. Her job demands most of her time. Her son, Virgil, is skipping school, and her mother, Lillian, is dying. Maggie is barely keeping her head above water.
Into town breezes John Smith, a cute blonde guy in black leather, riding a well loved Indian motorbike, a classic. He stays with Sam Aandeg, a survivor of a residential school whose lifelong response to his trauma was to speak only Anishnawbe in Shakespearian iambic pentameter. “… he’s a few strands short of a full dream catcher … but he’s better than television.” Smith’s eyes are green. Actually, they’re hazel. Or perhaps brown? It’s hard to pin down. He’s been summoned by Lillian, who exacts a promise from him before she dies. He offers Maggie a lift and she is smitten.
But Virgil is suspicious of the newcomer and his ever changing eyes, whose arrival is marked by a sudden influx of raccoons to the area. He consults his uncle Wayne, who lives a secluded life on an island and practices a powerful self-developed native martial art. They resurrect the legend of Nanabush, a shape-shifting mischief maker, and together they set out to expose the new white boy on the block.
Motorcycles and Sweet Grass is a cultural blend of legend, magic and modern community life. Land claims form a focus of community debate, a definitely modern twist on traditional land ownership. Taylor’s humour is farcical as he gently prods at the silliness, the politicking of modern day life, the structures imposed by a government far from the reserve. Into this comes the trickster, Nanabush, stalked by an ever increasing band of raccoons bent on revenge for wrongs penetrated on their ancestors.
The revenge of the raccoons is a delightful twist on legend, in which Nanabush ate one of their ancestors for dinner. The raccoons did not take this lightly, and their ancestral memory is long. They heap indignities on John Smith’s beloved motorbike in the long standing tradition of animals everywhere! Merely the beginning of revenge, it seems.
Drew Hayden Taylor is an Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations. He is a stand-up comedian, and award-winning playwright, scriptwriter and author. Motorcycles and Sweetgrass is his 21st book and first adult novel, and he travels the world lecturing on native literature and culture.
