Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teaching, and Story Medicine by Kim Anderson (review)

When you pack your bag for a desert island include Kim Anderson’s Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine, with its profound foreword by Maria Campbell.

Why is this book a must-carry item?

Because it will tell you how to have joy in spite of being marginalized, an invaluable life skill for some of us. Anderson states in her introductory chapters the undeniable and sorrowful facts: that the last 500 years for Indigenous peoples have been horrific, involving broken treaties, residential schools, inadequate health care, destruction of traditional hunting and fishing patterns.

‘I have painted a bleak picture here because these were bleak years,’ writes Anderson. ‘But it wasn’t all bad!’ The book is about the ‘in spite of’ rituals, teachings, and story medicine that has survived, has evolved, and continues to give life. Chronicling the healing stories is life-giving in and of itself for present and future generations. All women can learn from these memories, as can men. People of colour like me can learn. So can others. The story medicine makes us stronger.

Pack Life Stages because it will give you confidence in the wisdom of many women with the ability to survive and thrive with dignity. We learn from the midwives who usher life into the world, from the healers who cure the sick, from the elder women making major decisions in their communities. Kim Anderson’s knowledge comes primarily from fourteen elders who remember, oral historians born between 1926 and 1954, Métis, Saulteaux, Ojibway, and Cree/Métis.

Read Life Stages because it will give you confidence in the knowledge of men who listen to women. Each chapter begins with a quote from an elder man, Mosom Danny Musqua. Mosom Danny relates how he learned from women at each of Anderson’s stages: from conception to walking; in childhood and youth; the adult years; and from grandmothers and elders. He was able to record the thoughts and actions of wise women and now feels he must pass it on. ‘In the adult world you did community work … you worked with the elders to prepare for winter life, for winter food, clothing, wood … You carried the responsibility for the continuation of the collective as a living, viable community.’

Trust Life Stages because if you are aboriginal you will be able to celebrate that your place in the universe is not destroyed. You can proudly live out the teachings of your unique place. The book is dedicated to Maria Campbell, distinguished Métis writer, age 72. Campbell now understands why as a child she was gifted with the teachings of the old women and, most importantly, that now those teachings must be passed on.

Keep Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine with you because if you are non-aboriginal you will be able to breathe a sigh of relief. We can exhale because in spite of the best efforts of the colonizers, the wisdom teachings were not destroyed. Indeed Kim Anderson makes very good use of the colonizers who recorded rituals, teachings, and practices. She has a second and third source to back up the elders’ memories, their oral histories. Anderson throws nothing away if it is useful.

As you can tell from my enthusiasm, I recommend Life Stages and Native Women even if you are not headed to a desert island and for readers in all manner of urban, rural, and research settings. It is about survival in a modern urban world as well as in the bush. It is about how the marginalized can survive and resist those with crushing power. Life Stages is a life-affirming book.