The Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols and Modern Storytelling by Eden Robinson (review)

The Sasquatch at Home is Eden Robinson’s three-part Kreisel Lecture, presented in Edmonton in 2010. (Appropriately, Henry Kreisel was one of the few non-Natives in Canada who strongly supported Native rights during the 1950s.) The Sasquatch is an excellent companion to Robinson’s widely popular novel Monkey Beach, explaining more about—and especially how Robinson herself learned about—the traditional teachings embodied in the novel, especially those of the small fish, oolichan, and the powerful herb, oxuli. More important, this is a perfect demonstration of how seamlessly “traditional lore” is embedded in 21st century Haisla and Heiltsuk—and by extension all First Nations—life.

Each of the three sections combines the contemporary with the traditional, something that has been going on for a long time, as Robinson establishes with a quotation from Russian anthropologist Ivan Lopatin, who had done most of his research in Kitimatin in 1930: “I was surprised to discover that the Indians carried on a rather extensive correspondence with the department stores in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Montreal . . .” (3). The text proper begins on the next page with Robinson’s introduction of herself, her parents, her lineage, and her Beaver Clan Haisla name. She also explains the Indian names of her sister and her mother. And then she tells of taking her mother, Sea Monster Turning the Other Way, to Graceland. (Monkey Beach readers will remember that the heroine is named Lisa Marie for Elvis’s daughter.) The book ends with Eden Robinson and her father happily exploring “Monkey Beach,” the Sasquatch homeland that is both the title of the novel and the setting for its final, ambiguous scene. Eden’s father explains to her that, while some people think the Sasquatches are extinct, “They’re up in the mountains somewhere, and they’ve built a mall and they’re too busy driving around and shopping to visit us anymore” (39). As they leave, still no Sasquatches in sight, her Dad says, “They must be at home . . . writing” (41).

In between, Robinson describes her process of learning the traditional knowledge that she would inscribe into her first novel. She is, she explains, better at book learning than at learning by doing, yet she is thrilled to participate as a reporter in a Haisla Rediscovery Camp where teen boys fish and gather and learn the histories of the people of the area. Inspired though she is by the experience, she realizes that her subsistence abilities are low. Meanwhile, the young campers suffer electronics withdrawal, “so most of their cultural sharing involved recreating scenes from the recently released Wayne’s World” (33). It’s definitely an oral culture produced by Haisla artists—of a sort. But the chance to move around with elders eager to pass on their knowledge, like the unstudied participation of her parents in both ceremonial and subsistence life, has sent Eden Robinson, like the Sasquatches, home to write, and we are all the beneficiaries of her craft.