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The People Who Own Themselves
by Andrea Currie
Forcibly removed from her Indigenous family as a child, Andrea Currie journeys back to her Nation and the truth of who she is.
Otipemisiwak is a Plains Cree word describing the Métis, meaning "the people who own themselves."
Andrea Currie was born into a Métis family with a strong lineage of warriors, land protectors, writers, artists, and musicians—all of which was lost to her when she was adopted as an infant into a white family with no connection to her people. It was 1960, and the policy of removing children from their Indigenous families was firmly in place. Together with her younger adopted brother, also Métis, she struggled through her childhood, never feeling like she belonged in that world. When their adoptions fell apart during their teen years, the two siblings found themselves on different paths, yet they stayed connected. Currie takes us through her journey, from the harrowing time of bone-deep disconnection, to the years of searching and self-discovery, into the joys and sorrows of reuniting with her birth family.
Finding Otipemisiwak weaves lyrical prose, poetry, and essays into an incisive commentary on the vulnerability of Indigenous children in a white supremacist child welfare system, the devastation of cultural loss, and the rocky road some people must walk to get to the truth of who they are. Her triumph over the state's attempts to erase her as an Indigenous person is tempered by the often painful complexities of re-entering her cultural community while bearing the mark of the white world in which she was raised. Finding Otipemisiwak is the story of one woman's fight—first to survive, then to thrive as a fully present member of her Nation and of the human family.
"Fascinating insight into the work [Currie] has pioneered as a psychotherapist to other Indigenous survivors of the Scoop and of residential schools ... A stirring and hopeful vision of spiritual reconciliation with the ghosts of the past." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Finding Otipemisiwak is an at times gut-wrenching but always honest account of a time in this nation's history that for too long has been overlooked. Combining fact and personal history, Currie brings us into the story of a country willing to sacrifice the welfare of Indigenous children for reasons we still struggle to understand. We should all pause and sit with Currie and her words and join her in the vulnerability she places on the page. We will be better for it." —Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers
"In this rigorous and beautiful debut, Currie's unfaltering pursuit of complicated truths lifts into the light the possibility of healing, as she seeks and finds her own lost family, writing her story into theirs. Finding Otipemisiwak is a necessary, searing, and luminous gift of a book." —Rebecca Silver Slayter, author of The Second History
"Finding Otipemisiwak is a beautifully written story of tragedy and triumph, as well as one of escape from a false family into the embrace of a loving one. Threading through Currie's remarkable tale is a heart-wrenching bond between her and her adoptive brother, Rob. This book contains a story that desperately needs to be told." —Frank Macdonald, author of A Forest for Calum
This information about Finding Otipemisiwak was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andrea Currie is a writer, healer, and activist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and currently living in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is a psychotherapist working in Indigenous mental health and has accompanied the We'koqma'q Residential School Survivors on their healing journey for the past twenty years.
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