Description
Inconvenient Skin / nayêhtâwan wasakay authored by Shane Koyczan is a dual language English and Cree poem and art book. It includes the artwork by Kent Monkman, Joseph Sánchez, Jim Logan and Nadia Kwandibens. The Cree translation is provided by Solomon Ratt. With Inconvenient Skin / nayêhtâwan wasakay, Koyczan hopes to continue the conversations after the polarizing 150 years celebration of Canada as a nation. He has learned through his experiences traversing the silence with his father, a residential school survivor, that there were chapters missing in his life and with this current work he hopes to heal a wound. In this work Koyczan’s 48 point poem resonates with words and images that prods the normalcy of memory, apologies, promises, trust, faith, love, togetherness, education, culture, forgiveness, history, values, future, progress, and balance. This poem and the parody, folksiness and gender fluidity in the artworks and photos give power and strength to what is unsaid in this 150 year history – injustice, ignorance, ill-faith, poverty... It is a call to be better than this, to hear the drum, to respect dignity, to give Indigenous culture its identity and not shed this off like an inconvenient skin.