If Nya can dream it, Nya can do it . . . with a little help from her loving mother.
In Raeann Brown’s debut book Bedtime in Nunatsiavut (Arsenal Pulp Press), an Inuk girl’s curiosity transforms into powerful dreams of fancy. One night at bedtime, Nya wonders out loud to her Anânak, “why can’t I fly?” Her mother gives Nya a kunik (nose-to-nose rub) to help her dream. Nya soon drifts off. In her dreams, she transforms into a goose that runs alongside the rapids of Postville, Nunatsiavut . . . and takes flight. On subsequent nights, she transforms into a salmon, fox and bear.
During a conversation over Zoom, Brown, who is a Nunsatsiavut Inuk, relates how she first conceived this story for her youngest daughter. It was a way to describe her hometown of Postville, a community of 250 people in Nunatsiavut, located in the Kaipokok Bay. Their family had planned a trip there to visit relatives in 2020, but they had to cancel it because of COVID-19 restrictions. Disappointed, her daughters kept asking more and more questions about Postville. “I had been really excited about going home, and I thought, ‘What better way to explain to a four-year-old what a place is like than writing a story?’”
The story poured out “from start to finish” in just three days. Then Brown created simple illustrations to accompany it.
“My children loved it!” she beams. And after hearing it a few times, they started to memorize the words. When they began reciting it, she knew that she “had something there”—even though she “never ever intended it to become a book. That wasn’t my plan. It was just something that I had done for my own children!”
The story originates in Inuk folk stories that Brown told her four daughters at bedtime. This family ritual may help explain why the text has the effortlessly soothing narrative tone of a story being told. Her great achievement is conveying complex ideas with sparse prose, which her vibrant illustrations complement beautifully.
Though on the surface they are simple, Nya’s dreams are much more than the whims of a child’s imagination. They encompass a desire for independence: a yearning to defy limitation and to strive instead for what seems fantastical. The promise and possibility in Nya’s nightly journeys will inspire young people – especially young girls – to take chances, believe in themselves, and pursue their dreams. After all, whatever Nya yearns to do, her Anânak offers the affirming encouragement “maybe you will”: a simple, powerful expression of parental love and faith in her child’s potential.
The summer when she created the story, Brown discovered a contest on CBC Books, a site she loves. With her completed story at hand, and emboldened with the thought, “Why not?”, she submitted it. Six months went by, and she forgot about the submission, assuming that the contest had finished.
“It was actually on my birthday, March 5, that I received an email informing me that I had made the long list.” Though she was excited, she did not know what this news meant. She assumed that her story might merit “a little snippet put on a website”. Still, being longlisted was “pretty neat” . . . and she was surprised when, within two days, phone calls and emails started to stream in with requests for interviews. It turned out that “not one, but two publishers wanted to publish the book. So that was really exciting.”
With a smile, Brown admits that, “even at this point, I didn’t realize how hard it was to actually become a published author until I became one. Then I was told that it’s pretty rare to have publishers come looking for you. It’s usually the other way around!”
In the end, her publisher of choice was British Columbia-based Arsenal Pulp Press – for the simple reason that the company stayed true to her story and did not seek to change a single element: “They gave me creative freedom to re-do my illustrations. This book and the words in it were all things that were connected to my Indigenous culture, my childhood – and every picture meant something to me.” Brown is deeply appreciative of Arsenal Pulp’s faith in her vision: “They’d seen it from my point of view, and they stayed true to me and to the story that I was trying to tell. They’ve been amazing. I’m so happy about that decision!” In particular, she credits designer Jazmin Welch for putting the book together in a way that, in her wildest dreams, she had tried to imagine. “But it’s even more beautiful in person!”
In addition to the story, teachers and parents will find the back matter helpful in deepening young readers’ appreciation of the story’s nuanced layers. One of Brown’s best friends, Rebecca Ash, an Early Childhood Educator who is Indigenous, contributed a study guide. Also included is a map of the communities in Nunatsiavut and a glossary of Inuttut words with translations into English created by elder Sarah Townley. “A lot of people have told me that they had never heard of Nunatsiavut until this book, “ notes Brown. “So that’s nice, to put that place in there!”
In terms of the book’s eight illustrations, Brown points out details which could lead the readers to learn more about Inuk culture and, more generally, Indigenous experiences. For example, Nya wears orange pajamas which read ‘Every Child Matters’ and have 215 white stars on them. “I intentionally did that”: the 215 stars on Nya’s pajamas honour the children whose remains were found on the grounds of a residential school in Kamloops, BC in 2021. “Since then, the number has risen drastically. Nobody’s talking about it, but it’s almost 1500 now, and that’s just 10 schools.”
People often ask Brown how young is too young to talk to children about residential schools and the attempted genocide of Indigenous cultures. “It’s not so much that the younger children wouldn’t really understand,” she notes “but I think at any age, children are really open to learning.” And her specific answer to the question is uncompromising: the children in those unmarked graves were as young as three, so children as young as three are old enough to learn about it. Her perspective is deeply personal: “I’m 36 years old, and I was nearly 20 before I knew that my own mother was a survivor of residential school because we didn’t talk about it in our culture. So much was taken from us that it took years and years and years and new generations before people spoke about what happened to them.” Brown adds that her mother was a part of the reconciliation a few years ago, when Justin Trudeau came and made his apology. “They were left out of the Canadian apology, and then it took about 15 years for them to finally get that, after speaking of going to court, and telling people what happened to them.”
So yes, “it is a children’s book, but at the same time, it has messages in there that can lead to bigger conversations.” Another illustration shows Nya’s mother wearing a pair of beaded earrings with a red hand on it. This represents missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. “And that’s another conversation,” offers Brown. “I didn’t experience any of that with my female family members, but I did have an uncle who was murdered in Montreal nearly 10 years ago, and there’s never been justice for it. We don’t have just missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We have boys and men too. So that was a piece I really wanted to put in there.” Yet another intentional “little touch” is Nya’s owl, who appears in each picture. “This is an uppik, and we make those out of seal skin,” Brown explains
All in all, “there are lots of illustrations in the book that could lead to deeper conversations. The simplest ones are in the back of the book that has the guide for teachers and parents. I think children will really enjoy that part of it, but if teachers just look a little bit deeper into the pictures, then they can start bigger conversations on their own with their students, as well.”
Brown, who currently resides in Labrador City (in west Labrador on the Quebec border), leads a rich artistic life outside of the world of print. She sells etched-glass of her original hand-drawn designs at Inuky Glass Arts and Engraving, a business she began at her kitchen table, and which in 2020 grew into a stand-alone retail shop that she operates with her husband. Since January, Inuky Arts has expanded even further into a larger retail space, and now employs two staff members. Over the years, she has built relationships with collectors from all over the world and shipped pieces as far away as the Netherlands. She recently procured a contract to do all the merchandising for Cain’s Quest, a biannual snowmobile endurance race held in Labrador City that hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. “It’s a really big thing!”
And yet despite this apparent valuing of Indigenous art and culture, just a few weeks ago, her 11-year old daughter brought home a troubling research assignment for her grade 5 Social Studies class. “It was all about the history of past Indigenous people. And Inuit was on that list. It was like ‘Inuit was”, “Inuit were‘. “Why?” asked Brown — “they don’t exist anymore? This blew my mind! I looked at my daughter, and I said, ‘you do realize that this is not right’. She said, ‘I know. I was wondering why they keep referring to them like they don’t exist anymore.’ So I made a bunch of notes that I put on the assignment for her teacher.”
Which brings us back to Bedtime in Nunatsiavut – and why this simple, gorgeous children’s book matters.
“It’s important for Indigenous and non-Indigenous to see an Indigenous child in a book and know that it wasn’t 100 years ago. It’s from the present day, and we are still here. We still have those aspirations, just like everyone else. We dream, and we love and share. Mother and child share a bond just like everybody else. Even though I’m Indigenous, I’m still the same. We might have different cultures and beliefs and traditions, but at the end, we’re all the same. We still love the same.”
“We dream the same, you know?”
Bedtime in Nunatsiavut releases on April 26 and will be welcomed and beloved by dreamers young and old.
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022
