kāciwīkicik = The Move

In kā-āciwīkicik = The Move, a bilingual Cree/English picture book, young readers encounter an elderly Cree couple who have just recently moved to a newly constructed house in a brand new subdivision. To this point, theirs is the only house in a rocky landscape devoid of trees and other vegetation. While the husband has adopted an “it-is-what-it-is” attitude, his wife remembers their previous home:

Their old house stood along the river and was close to the lake. The land all around them was covered with trees. There were many kinds of trees in the old place, brush and meadows too. The ground was not rocky there.

As the story progresses, several times the old woman calls on the spirits who respond to her memories of activities that she and her husband used to engage in at their old home. The spirits’ responses take the form of the appearance of different types of vegetation that are needed to complete a remembered activity. When the woman recalls smoking moose hides and game meat, the spirits provide the needed ash trees. Later, when she remembers the springtimes when the two of them used to make maple syrup and create birch bark baskets, the spirits produce maple and birch trees. Her summertime memories turn to berry picking, and the spirits respond with saskatoon bushes.

As part of each of the three memory scenarios, the authors provide readers with some details about how the couple used the various trees’ raw materials. For example, in creating the birch bark baskets, the old man harvested pieces of birch bark and dug up spruce roots which he then cleaned and split so that his wife could use them as “thread” in sewing the bark pieces together to form baskets. As well, visits from the couple’s many grandchildren allow the grandparents to pass on their traditional knowledge and skills to a new generation. With their new home now situated in a familiar setting, the elderly woman concludes the text by stating: “‘It’s good here,’ she said. ‘We will provide for ourselves. That is all.’”

kā-āciwīkicik = The Move was shortlisted for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young Peoples Literature (Illustration), a well-deserved recognition of the quality of Alyssa Koski’s artistry. Koski is particularly effective in illustrating the stark contrasts between the lush environs of the couple’s former forested home and the bleak landscape surrounding their current house that has yet to become a home. A double-page spread showing the elderly woman standing at the window of the new house, her hand placed against the pane, poignantly captures her unhappiness in this setting

The “why” of the couple’s unhappy move to this new housing subdivision is not shared in the main text but is found in a closing “Authors’ Note” where Doris George and Don K. Philpot explain that, in the early 1960s, members of the Chemawawin Cree Nation were relocated from their ancestral lands in Manitoba to a new community called Easterville in order to accommodate the building of the Grand Rapids hydro dam. This note also explains the back and forth process the two authors used in creating the bilingual text. Equipped with this information, youngsters can reread the text with new appreciation and understandings.

Though kā-āciwīkicik = The Move is a picture book, its subject matter contents would not be out of place in high school classrooms.