Welcome to author Kristin Gleeson, who is going to talk about her controversial biography of Anahareo, an Algonquin/Mohawk girl who grew up in a small Ontario town during WW1 and became famous for her marriage and conservation partnership with the man known as Grey Owl.
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| Amazon book link |
Originally from
Philadelphia, Kristin lives in Ireland,
in the West Cork Gaeltacht, where she teaches art classes, plays harp, sings in
an Irish choir and runs two book clubs for the village library. She holds a
Masters in Library Science and a Ph.D. in history, and for a time was an
administrator of a national denominational archives, library and museum in
America.
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| Kristin's website |
Kristin ’s multi-talents include services to other authors and I can highly recommend the partnership she has formed with two other published writers; these are people I trust. Check out Famelton Writing Services - their prices and services are clearly stated.
Kristin Gleeson is better
known for her historical novel ‘Selkie Dreams’ so it makes a change for her to be interviewed about 'Anahareo', which was published the same year as 'Selkie Dreans', 2012, but with a different publisher, Fireship Press.
Welcome to my blog,
Kristin.
Your book sparked off all
kinds of questions! What made you write about Anahareo? Many people will be
saying ‘Who is she?’
I was brought to the story oddly enough by seeing the film 'Grey Owl'
(with Pierce Brosnan) one Christmas at my mother-in-law's in Cornwall.
My husband Dave and I talked about it afterwards and he pointed out that
Anahareo was the story that should be told and I should tell it.
How did you go about the
research? You must be really pleased that the family love the book but did that
give constraints on what you could write? Did you have enough material?
My Ph.D. focussed on
women's history and I also have a lot of experience documenting and
writing about Native American experiences. Then began a five year journey
trying to get to the sources and tease them out. It isn't always easy
working with Native Americans/First Nations because many have a great distrust of outsiders of course and
since Anahareo had short shrift in the past (and Grey Owl) they were naturally
suspicious of me and my motives at first. It took a great deal of time to
build trust. Also, I am living in Ireland and though I took trips to
Canada, when I was there I was always working against the clock at an archives
or with a family member who would dole out the material a little at a
time. I had bad luck with the national archives because they brought the
wrong boxes from across the river which meant that instead of 3 days examining
the material I only had 2. I was also financing it myself since, not
being Canadian or Irish, I had no chance of getting grants to support the work.
So I didn't examine every piece of evidence. That is for others, because
now the papers are safely deposited in the Glenbow Museum. My goal was to
get her story out there, not put in the minute details.
How amazing that you took
the project on after seeing the film - I'd imagined you must have had a request
from the family or some such personal connection. The practicalities of
research are fascinating too.
Anahareo has been
described as ‘the great woman behind the great man’. Is that how you see her?
I think Anahareo can stand in her own right. Though she did inspire Grey Owl, she was also
a woman whose own singular outlook and manner challenged the stereotypes society
held about Native Americans. She didn’t wear a fringed buckskin dress or have
her hair in long braids. She was stylish
with her bobbed hair and would on occasion wear makeup. She never wore a dress, though. She wore breeches and lace up boots and
still managed to look a million dollars.
Few women would dare to wear that in those times, and fewer First
Nations women. She also was a
prospector, could survive on her own in the bush and could paddle a canoe as
well as any man. She was campaigning for
animal rights in her fifties, sixties and seventies, long after Grey Owl was
dead.
What’s your take on Grey
Owl? Many people saw him as a con-man when they found out, after his death, that Archie was really British, with no First Nation heritage at all.
I think Grey Owl truly believed that the best way to get his message out
was to allow everyone to think he was First Nations. He recognized that people, especially the
British, would be more likely hear the message of the danger of the
disappearing wilderness if it came from a First Nations man who they saw as close
to nature. He was under that spell to a
degree, too (unlike Anahareo) and felt a great empathy for the issues First
Nations people faced.
Anahareo did finally gain
recognition. She was invited to join the Order of Nature in 1979 by the
International League for Animal Rights, an honour previously only given to
Albert Schweitzer and in 1983 she was given Canada’s highest award, the Order
of Canada. Why do you think these awards were given at this time?
Anahareo was awarded the
medal of honour because of the guilt I think they felt for belatedly
recognizing her contribution and Grey Owl's. She campaigned hard in
the 1960s and 70s for animal rights and for environmental issues. Though
I mentioned some of her appearances in detail, I didn't have the time to gather
information for every appearance and felt that if I put it all in it would slow
down the narrative.
What came over to me was
how hard Anahareo had to fight just to stay alive. Your book gave a new meaning
to the term ‘pioneering spirit’ and I had no idea so many women prospected for
gold (including Anahareo) But I found the poverty and alcoholism depressing.
It is a depressing story
and the whole First Nations and Native American story is depressing. I
could go on and on why. They are no more prone to alcoholism and drug
addiction than anyone else, it is just that they face extreme poverty and its
attendant health care issues, as well as unemployment, cultural restrictions
and racism and many many more subtle obstacles. The average life span of
a Native American on the reservation is 45 for men and 48 for
women. With nowhere to go, nothing to do, why would you care if
alcohol is bad, or eats your money, damages your kids? I'll stop now!
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| amazon book link |
Your novel ‘Selkie
Dreams’ portrays a 19th century love affair between a feisty Irish girl and an
Alaskan Native American man who embodies the culture. What draws you to write
about that cross-cultural enrichment?
I’ve always been fascinated by other cultures and family seem to embody
that cross cultural link with links now
to Thailand, Cuba, South America, Native Americans and the Jewish culture in my
family. I was tame and married a
Cornishman and lived in the UK and now I live in Ireland, picking up on my own
heritage.
With regard to writing
more generally, you have an exciting new venture in Famelton Writing Services. What are you
offering writers?
I am really excited about being asked to join my two colleagues in
offering consulting services to various writers. We know from our own experience how tough it
can be to break into the publishing world and we would like to help writers
achieve. Whether it’s someone who would
like to have an experienced person review their manuscript to ensure that it’s
has the important elements to make a good novel or non-fiction work or they
just need someone to go through and help them polish it, we want to ensure their
final manuscript is as perfect as possible.
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| Famelton Writing Services |
What are your top tips
for writers?
It may sound like a cliché but my very top tip for writers is to read as
much as possible in the genre/type of novel/non-fiction work you feel drawn to
write. You’d be amazed at how much you
can absorb that way in terms of good writing.
Do you seek outside input
on your own writing? Is there one piece of advice that you feel has improved
your work?
I think it’s so important to get a few different pairs of eyes on your
writing. It’s amazing what you can’t see in your own work that you can see in
others'. But it can also assure you that
you are on the right track too. As for
one piece of advice— other than repeat read, read, read—is to write, write,
write. Long ago I was told that
ensuring there is a clear goal in the work—whether it is non fiction or
fiction, is key to a successful narrative.
Your main character should have a clear goal in a novel and the
non-fiction book should as well.
You have two traditional publishers at the moment,
Fireship Press for ‘Anahareo’ and Knox Robinson Publishing for ‘Selkie Dreams’;
what are your views on traditional v self-publishing?
I think there is room for both in the market, though it’s changing so
rapidly it’s difficult to make a reading.
Self publishing is becoming more difficult for those good writers who
want to rise and become noticed. I don’t
think the cream rises to the top that easily.
There are just too many indies out there all trying to market their
books, good or not. Traditional
publishing is fighting its own battles against Amazon and others who undercut
the market with heavy discounts so that whether you are traditionally published
or self published the author must promote virtually on their own. That takes a lot of time.
Thanks, Kristin!
Thanks for such considered
reading of the biography on ‘Anahareo’. I feel sometimes like it doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Like Anahareo herself!
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Contact Kristin here
MY REVIEW of 'ANAHAREO'
When I was a little girl, crazy about animals, I had a Puffin edition of Grey Owl's book 'Pilgrims of the Wild' and I loved the story of wilderness, beavers and conservation. Later, I found out that Grey Owl was really Archie from England and his story became even more interesting. Knowing a fair bit about
Grey Owl, I was curious about another aspect to his story as represented by this biography of Anahareo. I think this was the wrong attitude and I'll read it again - as Anahareo's story.
This is one of the dilemmas, not just in the book but in Anahareo's life; her husband was famous. Kristin Gleeson judges well how much to indulge our curiosity about Grey Owl while always focusing on Anahareo as the main character. The tempestuous marriage in log-cabin isolation through bleak Canadian winters was the backdrop to a revolution in thinking about animal welfare. Both Anahareo and Grey Owl were trappers, and the detail of trapping turned my stomach - as happened to Anahareo herself. She influenced her husband, and he influenced the world, to seriously consider the scarcity of animals such as beavers and start conservation projects. From prey to pets, the couple's beloved beavers became a symbol of changed attitudes. It’s one of the paradoxes about books on conservation that they inevitably detail animal cruelty/environmental disasters – horrible reading. That transition from trapper to animal lover is tough on the reader’s imagination, if you love animals, but it is real history.
Ironically, I never quite invested in Anahareo
as a character in her own right, because I started with too much knowledge of Grey Owl and lost a little interest when he died - my fault, not the author's. I would have liked to know more
about what exactly she did that won her the praise and medal towards the end of
her life. The hardest thing about the book for me was that I found Anahareo’s
life deeply depressing. I was expecting a
pioneering spirit – and there was some of that (the rebel, bucking stereotypes)
– but what came over to me was the poverty, loneliness, prejudice, alcoholism,
loss of her children – and I was cut up by her and Grey Owl’s ignorance about
animals (realistic, I know) and loss of the animals too, as they learned animal care by painful trial and error. Anahareo's life was hard.
I have had to rethink my naive, sentimental view of what 'pioneering spirit' actually means, especially for a woman who fought racial as well as gender prejudice in the early 20th century. I am in awe of Anahareo's physical endurance and survival skills. She was a beautiful young woman who dressed and worked like a man. She was capable of travelling alone for months by canoe and trek (carrying her canoe)to look for work - and she found it. Her father nicknamed her 'Pony' because she always needed to run free.
A thought-provoking book; reading it will make your own life look different.
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