NDN Coping Mechanisms

Notes from the Field

Billy-Ray Belcourt

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781487005771
• eBook ISBN: 9781487005788
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

In his follow-up to This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt's Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field is a provocative, powerful, and genre-bending new work that uses the modes of accusation and interrogation.

He aims an anthropological eye at the realities of everyday life to show how they house the violence that continues to reverberate from the long twentieth century. In a genre-bending constellation of poetry, photography, redaction, and poetics, Belcourt ultimately argues that if signifiers of Indigenous suffering are everywhere, so too is evidence of Indigenous peoples' rogue possibility, their utopian drive.

In NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, the poet takes on the political demands of queerness, mainstream portrayals of Indigenous life, love and its discontents, and the limits and uses of poetry as a vehicle for Indigenous liberation. In the process, Belcourt once again demonstrates his extraordinary craft, guile, and audacity, and the sheer dexterity of his imagination.

Treaty 8

queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian commissioner for the said province and the northwest territories; james andrew joseph mckenna, of ottawa, ontario, esquire, and the honourable james hamilton ross, of regina, in the northwest territories, of the one part; and the cree, beaver, chipewyan and other indians, inhabitants of the territory within the limits hereinafter defined and described, by their chiefs and headmen, hereunto subscribed, of the other part: whereas, the indians inhabiting the territory hereinafter defined have, pursuant to notice given by the honourable superintendent general of indian affairs in the year 1898, been convened to meet a commission representing her majesty’s government of the dominion of canada at certain places in the said territory in this present year 1899, to deliberate upon certain matters of interest of her most gracious majesty, of the one part, and the said indians of the other. and whereas, the said indians have been notified and informed by her majesty’s said commission that it is her desire to open for settlement, immigration, trade, travel, mining, lumbering and such other purposes as to her majesty may seem meet, a tract of country bounded and described as hereinafter mentioned, and to obtain the consent thereto of her indian subjects inhabiting the said
tract, and to make a treaty, and arrange with them , so that there may be peace and good will between them and her majesty’s other subjects , and that her indian people may know and be assured of what allowances they are to count upon and receive from her majesty’s bounty and benevolence. and whereas, the indians of the said tract, duly convened in council at the respective points named hereunder, and being requested by her majesty’s commissioners to name certain chiefs and headmen who should be authorized on their behalf to conduct such negotiations and sign any treaty to be founded thereon, and to become responsible to her majesty for the faithful performance by their respective bands of such obligations as shall be assumed by them, the said indians have therefore acknowledged for that purpose the several chiefs and headmen who have subscribed hereto. and whereas, the said commissioners have proceeded to negotiate a treaty with the cree, beaver, chipewyan and other indians, inhabiting the district hereinafter defined and described, and the same has been agreed upon and concluded by the respective bands at the dates mentioned hereunder, the said indians do hereby cede, release, ­surrender and yield up to the government of the dominion of canada, for her majesty the queen and her successors for ever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits , that is to say: commencing at the source of the main branch of the red deer river in alberta, thence due west to the central range of the rocky mountains, thence northwesterly along the said range to the point where it intersects the 60th parallel of north latitude, thence east along said parallel to the point where it intersects hay river, thence northeasterly down said river to the south shore of great slave lake, thence along the said shore northeasterly (and including such rights to the islands in said lakes as the indians mentioned in the treaty may possess), and thence easterly and northeasterly along the south shores of christie’s bay and mcleod’s bay to old fort reliance near the mouth of lockhart’s river, thence southeasterly in a straight line to and including black lake, thence southwesterly up the stream from cree lake, thence including said lake southwesterly along the height of land between the athabasca and churchill rivers to where it intersects the northern boundary of treaty six, and along the said boundary easterly, northerly and southwesterly, to the place of commencement. and also the said indian rights, titles and privileges whatsoever to all other lands wherever situated in the northwest territories, british columbia, or in any other portion of the dominion of canada. to have and to hold the same to her majesty the queen and her successors for ever. and her majesty the queen hereby agrees with the said indians that they shall have right to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping and fishing throughout the tract surrendered as heretofore ­described, subject to such regulations a s may from time to time be made by the government of the country, acting under the authority of her majesty, and saving and excepting such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes. and her majesty the queen hereby agrees and undertakes to lay aside reserves for such bands as desire reserves, the same not to exceed in all one s quare mile for each family of five for such number of families as may elect to reside on reserves, or in that proportion for larger or smaller families; and for such families or individual indians as may prefer to live apart from band reserves, her majesty undertakes to provide land in severalty to the extent of 160 acres to each indian, the land to be conveyed with a proviso as to non-alienation without the consent of the governor general in council of canada, the selection of such reserves, and lands in severalty, to be made in the manner following, namely, the superintendent general of indian affairs shall depute and send a suitable person to determine and set apart such reserves and lands, after consulting with the indians concerned as to the locality which may be found suitable and open for selection. provided, however, that her majesty reserves the right to deal with any settlers within the bounds of any lands reserved for any band as she may see fit; and also that the aforesaid reserves of land, or any interest therein, may be sold or otherwise disposed of by her majesty’s government for the use and benefit of the said indians entitled thereto, with their consent first had and obtained. it is further agreed bet...

Table of contents

• Praise for Billy-Ray Belcourt and NDN Coping Mechanisms
• Also by Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• I.
• A Country Is How Men Hunt
• NDN Brothers
• The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve
• A Lover’s Discourse
• What to an NDN Is the Intrinsic Goodness of Mankind?
• The Wall Clock Caught Fire From Neglect
• I Become Less Of Who I Am By the Second
• Cree Girl Blows Up the Necropolis of Ottawa
• At the Mercy of the Sky
• A Romance of the Present
• I Douche While Kesha’s “Praying” Plays from My iPhone on Repeat
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Duplex (The Future’s a Fist)
• Canadian Horror Story
• Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon
• Canadian Sonnet
• NDN Homo Sonnet
• II.
• Treaty 8
• Ars Poetica
• Flesh
• Melancholy’s Forms
• Hypotheses
• Desire Made Waste Out of Time
• Red Utopia
• Notes From the Field
• Fragments Ending With a Requiem
• I Believe I Exist
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• About the Publisher