Deninu Kųę́ author pieces together her identity with vibrant collage in children’s book about loss | CBC News

It’s in the mundane activities within her dreams, like waiting in a grocery store lineup, that Lisa Boivin said her late father could appear to her.

Boivin said she’ll think about things that she would want to share with her dad or things that he would likely have found funny.

“And then … he’ll come to see me,” she said, adding it usually happens in passing.

“It’s like a lot of people’s dreams, you know, like an ancestor will pop up in a weird way, right?”

Boivin was raised in Edmonton with a northern father. She writes children’s books that broach themes of death, loss and Dene wisdom.

The Deninu Kųę́ First Nation member and author’s latest children’s book has recently won a national award for promoting Indigenous voices and experiences.

The award was from Periodical Marketers of Canada for her children’s book, We Dream Medicine Dreams, which came out of her own experience with death, she said.

The book is about a young girl who loses her grandfather, part of illustrating and writing this book was about saying goodbye to her own father. 

“When my father died, I had to lean on his teachings to heal and I would look to animal wisdom in my waking life or pull those lessons from my dreams,” she said.

“I would also call to my father throughout the day and hope he would visit me in [my] dreams and, sometimes he does, and it’s wonderful to see him.”

Boivin is now a PhD candidate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at the University of Toronto Faculty Medicine.

She said teachings from animals has played a meaningful part in her life, especially when it comes to healing from loss. 

For example, she sees hawks from her Toronto high-rise and remembers a teaching about gratitude her dad gave her about the birds.

“When we see hawk, and she circles the sky, she takes a really, really wide view, and she sees everything. And when she’s able to take a wider view, she can see all of the gifts that she has been provided in her lifetime,” she said.

“It’s also this wide view that keeps her open to new gifts. And so she’s grateful for the wide view in the present, being aware of the past gifts, and then she honoured that present gift by keeping yourself open for the future.”

She said that perspective is especially useful when somebody passes on.

“We’re so stirred up or moved to sadness … we have to remember the gifts that our loved ones have provided us in knowing us,” she said.

“But then also our loved ones, they want us to go on, move through our life in a good way. So we can’t shut down from the pain we have to keep ourselves open to new relationships.”

‘Piecing together my identity’

The book is animated with bright colours, animals, flowers, people and landscapes. It’s created in a digital collage style, she explained, with various textures including leather.

Boivin said there’s something about texturizing, layering and cutting that helps a person heal — it’s about putting things into place.

“Now that I’m thinking about it in retrospect, in a way to kind of piece together the loss of losing my dad, but also not being up North; in being in an urban setting,” she said.

“So, this idea of piecing together my identity or my relationship with my dad with the tools that I had around me.”

She said her books were created to bring about healing for her audience too. 

“And I guess when the book reaches the reader, if healing is not possible at that moment, the book brings … a general reminder that our ancestors and the earth love us,” Boivin said.

“That’s a way to comfort ourselves when we have experienced a loss.”