Matthew Anderson

Cover Reveal-the NEW Our Home and Treaty Land!

Vancouver School of Theology’s Dr Ray Aldred and I penned Our Home and Treaty Land just two years ago. The book clearly met a demand – we quickly lost track of how many book clubs and church groups had adopted it. And we were delighted when the United Church of Canada placed the book on their recommended reading list.

But our timing was off! Unfortunately our publisher, Wood Lake books, ceased printing physical copies of all books within the year. Ray and I cast around for a new publisher. After some expert advice from kind professionals in the industry, we decided to self-publish. And now…..here we are.

Our Home and Treaty Land: Revised and Expanded is bigger, and better. It features an additional new chapter by Ray. We took time to fix up copy-editing mistakes we found in the first edition. And the icing on the cake is our new cover, created by Ray’s daughter, Cat Aldred! (Cat is an accomplished artist whose stunning creative work can be seen and purchased at https://posiscreativeart.square.site/ ).

To learn more about the book, see Friesen’s website at https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000392818407/Raymond-C.-Aldred-and-Matthew-R.-Anderson-Our-Home-and-Treaty-Land . The book will be available there, and on Indigo, Amazon, and all the usual venues. Look for an announcement within a couple of weeks. And in the meantime, enjoy that cover. We sure do!

Review of “Our Home and Treaty Land”

I was delighted to discover, recently, a review of the book Dr Ray Aldred (Vancouver School of Theology) and I put out last year, “Our Home and Treaty Land.” The review is on the blogsite of “Dim Lamp” (Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson). Garth did a great job of summarizing and encapsulating the book. It was a delight to read, and I know Ray (below) will enjoy the review as well.

In fact, it’s interesting how sometimes, what a reviewer pulls out reminds you, as a writer, of what you were trying to accomplish. That’s really gratifying, and I’m thankful to Dim Lamp for that!

Professor Aldred in his Preface speaks of both Indigenous peoples and settler-descended Canadians living in exile because of colonization. Then he states the purpose of this book: “This book is about “being alive well,” or “journeying well,” for settler-descended Canadians, in relation to us Indigenous people.
p.9 Our Home and Treaty Land

In fact, sometimes as an author, you wonder if folks will get the main point of what you’re writing. Occasionally, a good reviewer will go beyond that, to show the links between subjects you might only allude to. For instance:

It was on walking pilgrimages “…that eventually led (Rev. Dr. Anderson) to meeting, listening to, and learning from Indigenous activists, scholars, artists and friends, including Rev. Dr. Aldred, Richard Kotowich, and Louise Skydancer Halfe (p. 17).” His walking pilgrimages were mostly on Treaty 6 and Treaty 4 lands.

To read the full review, you can go to Dim Lamp’s blog HERE. To order the book, it’s best to visit the website of The Curious Cat Tea and Books, who will happily take your order and mail you a copy! (Better to order from The Curious Cat as Wood Lake will discontinue its book shipping as of June or July 2023).

I’ll leave the last word to “Dim Lamp.” (Again, you can read the full review HERE.):

All settler-descended Canadians would benefit from reading this volume… Highly recommended!
Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

Our Home and Treaty Land – my new book with Ray Aldred!

It says something about our busy lives that I had a book come out this fall and never blogged about it. And it’s a book I’m so proud to have co-authored!

I love the title: Our Home and Treaty Land. My co-author for the book is Dr Raymond Aldred. Ray is my friend. He’s also the head of the Indigenous Studies Program at Vancouver School of Theology. As co-authors Ray and I are a good Venn diagram, with some overlaps and some differences. We are both from the prairies—me from Treaty Four and Ray from Treaty Eight. We are both Christian pastors, although we represent different denominations, myself a Lutheran and Ray an Anglican. But I am settler-descended (from Norwegian and other backgrounds) and Ray is nêhiyaw (Cree), and this is what created space for the dialogue that is this book.

For years Ray and I would sometimes meet for breakfast in downtown Montreal on one of his trips to the city on speaking engagements or family visits. Before long we realised that though we shared the prairies in common, as a settler and an Indigenous person we had starkly different experiences of growing up there.

From these meetings a book was born. In addition to teaching, pastoring, and administration (he took a turn as Dean), Ray has been increasingly invited to give public talks to audiences across Turtle Island the last few years. The book translates those insightful, funny, and powerful talks into an Indigenous-Settler conversation. The chapters take turns between Ray’s reflections and my responses.

Ray’s main point is that Canadians who are well-meaning but unsure about our path to Truth and Reconciliation are searching for an origin story that’s has been right there in front of us all along: Treaty. Treaty is the reason we are in this place. Treaty tells us how we came to be here. It defines what our right relations should be. Treaty reminds us of the obligations our Settler ancestors agreed to, how we and our governments have neglected and tried to duck from them, and what we can do to now walk the good path and honour them.

Did I mention I’m very proud of this book? I’ve learned a lot from Ray over the years, and in writing my sections of it I learned more. I am still learning. The book itself is an example, for me, of the kinds of Treaty relations Ray outlines. It is a starting point for Canadians (especially Christian-background Canadians, but it isn’t written in an exclusive way) who want to learn to walk (sometimes literally) a shared Creation story. It has some humour, some history, some advice, some resources, and lots of practical tips to take that first step or that next step towards Treaty relationship on this Land. As Ray would say, may this Land let you live.

To read some reviews, see https://www.woodlakebooks.com/search/results/inventory/eBooks/All-eBooks/Our-Home-And-Treaty-Land#reviews

For e-copies of Ray and my book, search Our Home and Treaty Land on Amazon. For a copy you can hold in your hands, look here: (unless you’re in Antigonish Nova Scotia, where it’s in the local bookstores, The Curious Cat and the Five Cents to a Dollar). If you want the full URL for ordering the book directly from Wood Lake Books, here it is: https://www.woodlakebooks.com/search/results/inventory/eBooks/All-eBooks/Our-Home-And-Treaty-Land . By the way, check out some of Ray’s amazing public talks!

Irish Unsettling

Since arriving in Dublin, I often stumble across reminders of how the Irish were also a colonized people. Sometimes it’s graffiti: “Royalists not welcome,” scrawled on brick. Sometimes it’s living culture, the fact that Irish (the traditional Gaelic) is an official language, but so few Irish students, at least in Dublin, can speak it. While walking along the Royal Canal I came across bronze shoes (below) commemorating the “National Famine Way.” This marks the 19th century families forced, starving, toward Dublin Harbour. Once there they shipped out on British “coffin ships” in hopes of a better life in Quebec and other destinations. Ireland and Quebec are bound together in many ways.

Many died en route or of sickness in quarantine (as at Grosse-Île, QC).

History is thick here. Last week on my way to the dentist I was surprised by another example. This is Croke Park behind me. Even though our apartment is a kilometre away, when 80 thousand fans are cheering a Gaelic games competition, you can hear it loud and clear from our living room.

Croke Park (Croker, to the locals) didn’t always look like a spaceship. On November 21st, 1920, the stadium was the scene of Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola). In reaction that morning’s assassination of British intelligence operatives, British soldiers and auxiliaries opened fire indiscriminately on players and spectators at an afternoon Gaelic football match. Fourteen people were killed and at least 60 injured. As with settler-Indigenous history where I was born, imperialism is always violent. Bloody Sunday remains a crucial moment in Irish history.

These folks would hear the games even better

There are spots like this all over Dublin, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, places where the land is marked by tragedy, hate, and death. In 2020, a century after the horrific events, this little stone bridge beside Croke Park was renamed “Bloody Sunday Bridge.”

“dark pilgimages” (to sites of tragedy) intersect and overlap

The Royal Canal can be a bit rough here (another good reason for biking this section). But when I stopped and went up for a minute to pay my respects on the bridge, people were walking back and forth to their business at Croker. The Irish seem to be good at this kind of redemption. They don’t hide the past but build new and better on it just the same. During the pandemic Croke Park was turned into North Dublin’s vaccination site.

Where once lives were lost by hate, they are being saved by how the Irish care for themselves and their neighbours, even those from elsewhere.

Like me.

Why We Need Historians (a third pandemic poem)

It’s Hillary behind COVID. That reject.

And Bill Gates – here he swallows, the saliva

pools. And I think about how far spite,

like infected droplets, spools and projects.

They engineered the virus with China,

To keep Trump from re-election.

Otherwise (his finger to the camera)

You tell me! How could this happen?

I would, but he won’t, stop. I’d start

with the Golden Rule, maybe. Or to not bear false witness.

I’d remind him that the death that struck the Byzantines

came first from fleas, not Muslim armies.

Or maybe this so-called Christian would speak less,

knowing Martin Luther in his preaching

warned Wittenbergers against public meetings

during the days of Black Death.

You’re Sheeple, he interrupts, his history

flat-screen empty. You’re cows.

How can you talk to someone for whom there is no time but now?

No victims but us? It may be a novel virus,

but it’s not novel. The Spanish flu didn’t need Obama to do

what it did back then. Each time, it seems, we try witches, name

evil eyes, put the homes of Gypsies and Jews to flame,

afraid of one virus only to be infected by the other;

the real conspiracy, the tragic legacy of those who claim

we’re only safe when someone else is to blame.

May 3, 2020

Pandemic Pears (a second poem)

I poached the pears in maple syrup.

Saving their browning skins, together with

a wizzled orange and a hardening lemon

my first miracle; the carmelized marmalade,

hot and sweet from our spoons,

the second. Who could have known

tetris-ing perishables would be so satisfying?

Those old hotel soaps slivered

to avoid unnecessary outings,

toilet-paper rolls on door handles,

the plastic that once cossetted chocolates

cut for ice-cube trays.

I suppose it won’t be long before normal

is normal, again. Remind me, then,

please, some evening we’re out for dinner,

our garbage-bins full,

the song-birds muted,

just how good these pears tasted.

Matthew R Anderson

April 30, 2020

Chilwell (Nottingham)

Each Thursday at Eight

Liturgy for a Pandemic

second floor in sunlight

Each Thursday at eight, we stand at our lintels

to clap for care-workers we hope never to meet.

Behind the fence, unseen neighbours bang pots.

When the antiphon dies, I linger outside.

A blackbird trills. From the hushed street its partner answers.

In our city the pandemic spikes, aloof as the cats

who watch our prayers from behind the glass.

Matthew R Anderson April 25, 2020 Chilwell (Nottingham)

They Know Not What They Do

They Know Not What They Do – Jussi Valtonen (London: Oneworld, 2017)

Reading They Know Not What They Do by Jussi Valtonen, is a bit like looking in on a group of observant and smart people, who share thoughtful, even profound, observations on love, disappointment, and American and Finnish culture, but who just happen to be on a sinking ship. You – and they – can never forget that things are only going to get much worse. Set against Helsinki’s endlessly brooding winter skies, and the droning of cicadas in Baltimore’s summer heat, a feeling of inescapable doom hangs over this dystopic novel as its flawed characters meet, mate, and make mistakes. The book feels somewhat long at 470 pages, but perhaps that’s just because, while there are lots of surprising plot twists, tragedy never feels far away.

They Know Not What They Do is an apt title. Joe, the ambitious American protagonist, Samuel, his estranged Finnish son, Alina, Samuel’s mother, and others in the novel seem to lack self-awareness in a normal, bumbling, struggle-through-the-day kind of way. However, they’re not lucky in life. None is able to escape the extraordinarily tragic consequences of failings that seem, in the end, fairly ordinary. This is part of the novel’s power. We’ve all made these mistakes, and if we haven’t met such tragedies, perhaps we’ve just been fortunate. The inside back cover states that Valtonen is not just a fine author and an exceptional wordsmith, but also a psychologist. He clearly knows day-to-day human weakness. Although he’s sympathetic, he’s a realist. The often very funny black humour will keep the reader going, even while a sensitive reader sometimes wants to put the book down rather than go through yet another looming misunderstanding, disappointment, or mistake.

If anything marks the book as Finnish, perhaps it’s this close attention to failure. As a Canadian reader, I’m familiar with literature where simple survival is victory. Finnishness and Americanism are presented as opposites, and are played up in the novel. But the stereotypes are presented only to be subverted: the American protagonist ends up paralyzed by indecision and fate, while the Finn achieves a sort of resolution.

The language throughout is clear, crisp, and its observations razor-sharp: the reader would never know the book was originally published in Finnish (translator Kristian London). Valtonen won the Finlandia Prize for this book, and it’s not hard to understand why. It’s exceptionally observant, and extremely well-written. Academics will recognize their foibles in its sharp-eyed observations of university politics, but so will fatigued young parents, adolescents just entering college, and the middle-aged trying to decide if they’ve accomplished anything with their lives. They Know Not What They Do was written by someone who very definitely knew what they were doing: if you can handle the coming tragedy, it’s well worth getting to know these people as well.

Watching The Good Place during the Month of the Dead

To mark the month that for Christians begins with All Saints and All Souls’ days, Dr Christine Jamieson and I wrote an article about the NBC/Netflix ethics comedy “The Good Place.” It was picked up by Salon! Here’s the article:

“The Good Place”: Ethics comedy asks if there’s a second chance at life

The Good Place

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Unsettled Words

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