Nishga by Jordan Abel

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First, I absolutely adore the structure of this book. It’s a memoir, a scrapbook, a poem, an art piece.
I feel like my brain works this way - with quotes, pieces of information, personal connections and tying threads together between them. 

Jordan Abel is a poet whose work I was already a fan of, and reading Nishga provided so much more insight into the structure of his work and the layered ways to read it. Nishga began as a work of “writing his way home.” Abel uses unconventional structures to write about his journey of finding answers about his family and ancestry, and forming connections to his own identity and experiences. Exploring the impacts of intergenerational trauma, Residential School legacies, disconnection and dispossession, Abel is vulnerable with his words and art.

One moment in this book that struck me, as a settler reader, is a conversation about the idea of witnessing. How can we witness Indigenous literatures? What does it mean to do that? I will definitely be reflecting on that question.

It makes me sad that so many Indigenous works require authors to expose their pain and trauma, whether it be for education or healing or both. And it’s also beautiful that the space is finally there for these works to exist. Nishga is a beautiful book that addresses identity as well as colonial understandings of literature, and should be a required read for all Canadians with ‘reconciliation’ in mind. 

Reading Journal Questions

• How important are your parents to your own identity?

• Do you think Abel's choice of stylistic elements are important for the work?

• How did you feel reading this book?

• Thinking about the idea of witnessing, what does it mean for you to witness Indigenous literature?