April 8, 2026 • 56 mins
Text me what you think of today’s episode!
A single DNA result can feel like trivia until you chase it all the way back to names, places, and documents that prove a life actually happened. That’s where Joseph Bolton’s story gets gripping. He’s a West Point graduate and retired Army paratrooper who starts digging into his family tree, discovers Indigenous and French-Canadian roots he didn’t fully understand, and then turns that research into Old Grandmother’s Tree, a heavily illustrated folk tale series built on real historical anchor points from 17th-century Quebec.
Joseph explains why he chose the folktale as the “language” for telling his ancestor’s story, how Jesuit records in Trois-Rivières preserve rare details about her life, and how he uses imagination to explore the emotional truth inside documented events.
The conversation goes deeper than books. Joseph shares how connecting with Algonquin community members and other descendants reshapes his sense of identity and belonging, and how Canadian ancestry laws change the way he sees himself in the present, not just the past. If you’ve ever wondered how to research your family history, how to write historical fiction responsibly, or how ancestry can redraw your idea of who you are, you’ll find a lot to sit with here.
Subscribe for more stories like this, share the episode with a friend who loves family history, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.
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SPEAKER_07 (00:00):
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(00:22):
That helps the podcast becomemore visible to other folks who
may enjoy the content as well.
Thanks for listening, and here'sthis week's episode.
Everyday people following theirpassions.
SPEAKER_02 (00:44):
That's probably like one of the highlights of my life
so far.
Just being able to be creativelike that.
I'm able to.
SPEAKER_01 (00:52):
And then I decided to get another hive, and that
turned into a lot of hives.
As long as I can do that, I wantto be a good citizen.
Help people out.
SPEAKER_07 (01:04):
Putting themselves out there, taking chances, and
navigating challenges along theway.
SPEAKER_04 (01:10):
I I absolutely identified with having stage
rides because, you know, anytimeI went on stage, I just felt
like I was having a heartattack.
SPEAKER_03 (01:17):
Very first lap, very first practice session, I
crashed, turned the car upsidedown, made a spectacle of
myself, and I got back on thathorse and started riding again.
SPEAKER_07 (01:27):
As they pursue what makes them happy and brings them
joy.
SPEAKER_00 (01:32):
As long as people are having a good time and I
have the opportunity to putsmiles on people's faces, I love
what I do.
SPEAKER_08 (01:39):
I have done things that I never thought I could do.
SPEAKER_01 (01:43):
To have somebody tell me how real it looks and
how, you know, from their actualmemory.
Because that's telling me Icaptured what I was trying to
get.
SPEAKER_07 (01:55):
Welcome to Assorted Conversation.
I'm your host, Helen.
I'm so glad you're here, andthanks for tuning in.
Have you ever researched yourfamily ancestry?
Um not just a DNA test, butreally researched your family
(02:17):
tree.
Found legal documents, newspaperclippings, old photos, and
tapped into resources otherdistant family members may have
found and made available online.
I'm talking really dug intofinding out, not just the names,
but who your ancestors reallywere.
(02:37):
This week's guest has gone deepinto the research of his
lineage, inspired by the storieshe heard growing up, plus adding
his own creativity and magic,and the voice of folktale, he
takes us on an incrediblejourney as he shares his Native
American and Canadian ancestorswith us while paying homage to
(02:58):
his heritage.
Take a listen to this week'sepisode, and I'll see you on the
other side.
This week's guest was born inPawtucket, Rhode Island, at the
twilight of New England'sFrench-Canadian cultural golden
age, and raised on the richstories of the place we came
(03:20):
from, Quebec.
That early love of heritage andstorytelling would shape his
life in powerful ways.
An Army paratrooper turned WestPoint graduate, he served nearly
two decades in leadership roles,including a combat tour in
Afghanistan with the 10thMountain Division.
Since retiring, he's worked withthe U.S.
(03:41):
Air Force, taught mathematics, arole he calls his most
fulfilling, and authored OldGrandmother's Tree, his debut
book inspired by ancestry,identity, and the landscapes of
New England and Quebec.
Thank you for your service, andI am so happy to welcome Joseph
Bolton to Astor ofConversations.
(04:02):
Hi, Joseph.
SPEAKER_08 (04:02):
Oh, hello.
I'm very happy to be here today.
SPEAKER_07 (04:05):
How are you?
Doing good, doing good.
How are you?
I am well.
I am well.
So let's jump into this.
With your military background,where did writing first become
something you were interested inor something you did?
SPEAKER_08 (04:21):
Well, I mean, like any lot of other kids, I used to
write stories, you know, as achild.
As a teenager and a college, youknow, kid in college, I wrote
poetry.
Wow.
Well, of course, you know,you're young and you're
romantic, you write love poetry,you write poems.
So I did.
(04:42):
And but I really haven't writtena poem in a long, long time.
But once I was in the army, Ireally didn't write anymore
except professionally for youknow operations orders and so on
and so forth.
But my modern, more recentwriting career really didn't
start until after my brotherpassed away with ALS in 2013, my
younger brother.
(05:02):
And it was a terrible disease towitness, and it still haunts me
even to this day.
But right after he died, Idecided to start a blog.
And blog was really for me.
I didn't really have a lot ofambitions.
I would share it.
Sometimes it did some blogs didget picked up nationally a
couple of times, which was nice.
(05:24):
But the topics ranged frommathematics, history,
philosophy, science, familyhistory, my family history.
And then eventually, towards theend, I actually wrote a short
story to talk about mathematics.
And it was a based on Greekfables and Greek mythology.
And it's still a very cutestory, but it's never been, you
(05:45):
know, really finished.
But that's kind of where I said,hmm, I really like this creative
writing stuff.
And so because I liked it,because you can tell an
entertaining story, but youcould also get a message through
at the same time.
And, you know, so it's like alittle bit of spoon, you know, a
little sugar with the medicine,you know.
(06:05):
So it really was an eye-openingthing for me.
So I started liking that.
So I wrote that first, and theneventually I wrote my first
story, which is now part of thewhole series of Old
Grandmother's Tree, which was LaTrope de Sabot.
And I wrote that as part of myFrench class.
I wrote a little short story inFrench, and it was called La
Trope de Sabot, and that becamethe genesis of the whole book
(06:29):
series.
SPEAKER_07 (06:30):
Oh, wow.
I was gonna ask you, what wasthe seed that was planted that
that started you on this thisjourney with the with the
trilogy so far?
SPEAKER_08 (06:38):
Well, you know, sometimes I just like to be, I
don't know, mischievous in mywriting.
So I was told to do some writingfor French by my tutor.
So instead of just doing somewriting or writing some bland
paragraph, I decided I'm gonnawrite this silly story about my
great-great-grandparents' farmin Quebec.
And at midnight, their farmanimals escape out of the barn,
(07:02):
grab a toboggan, go up the hill,and have an adventure going
tobogganing down the hill untilmy great-great-grandmother finds
them.
And but instead of scoldingthem, she hops onto the toboggan
and starts sledding down withthem.
So I wrote that all in French,and it was a cute little story.
But you know, a little you add alittle bit, and then you it's
(07:25):
like anything else, you you addsomething more to the story.
Instead of you just building itup, it actually opens the doors
to other connections and otherstories, and it kind of built up
from there.
And so initially, the very firststory didn't really include
directly my ancestor MarieMateya Weawagwe, who is the
actual old grandmother of theold grandmother series.
(07:49):
But she showed up like in the inthe second story, and she was
more of a like a backstory to mygreat-great-grandmother, who was
you know, her that was herdescendant or ancestor.
But eventually, as I learnedmore about Rima Tea Wewagwe and
a Remarkable Life, her storyactually became the centerpiece
(08:10):
of the whole book series.
SPEAKER_07 (08:11):
Right.
Okay.
All right.
So how how true to life arethese stories?
SPEAKER_08 (08:22):
Well, the the stories are written in the
language of a folk tale.
So that'll include folktaleelements like magic, magical
beings, trickster animalcharacters based on, in this
case, Native American mythology,but none of it was directly
lifted from any existingfolktales.
SPEAKER_06 (08:42):
Okay.
SPEAKER_08 (08:42):
Kind of like inspired by.
So I chose folktales as thelanguage to tell the story about
my Algonquin ancestor and herdescendants because folktales
are a universal languagethroughout the world.
We all enjoy them.
And even though every culture'sfolktales have a different
(09:04):
flavor based on the environmentthat they came from, there's
still a kind of elementalfamiliarity with all of them.
A lot of them have trickstercharacters, a lot of them have
lessons in there, many of themare also extremely entertaining.
That's why many of them haveendured sometimes for hundreds,
if not thousands, of years.
So I took that style and Ioverlaid it, overlaid it the
(09:28):
real story of my oldgrandmother, Mibate Weawagwe.
And she had this very remarkablelife, and as it turns out, not
only did she live a remarkablelife, but her life was
relatively well documentedcompared to other people who
lived in that time in the 17thcentury in Quebec.
SPEAKER_07 (09:48):
Why is that?
SPEAKER_08 (09:50):
Well, I think it's because she lived close to a
Jesuit mission in Taurire, andthe Jesuits were very meticulous
in keeping records.
So the facts of her life, what Ido know, and this is kind of
like what I started with, was Iknow that in 1652, she was about
21, 22 years old.
(10:10):
Wow.
And she was married to anotherAlgonquin man.
His name was Asababish.
And her and Asababish had twosmall children, very young, a
boy and a girl.
And in 1652, Mohawk tribesmenfrom down south, south of in
into New York, came up north,attacked their village.
(10:33):
Her husband was killed in theattack, and her two small
children were taken by theMohawks, and she never saw them
again.
SPEAKER_05 (10:40):
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_08 (10:40):
And she never even knew what happened to them.
They just disappeared.
So at 22, she lost her husbandand her children.
So it's very devastating forsomeone, a woman, young woman,
just barely out of her teens.
Right.
And five years later, shemarried a French settler named
Pierre Cauch.
And Pierre Couch and Rima TeaWewagwe became my ninth great
(11:03):
grandparent.
So that's the second event thatI know about her life.
Then at the end of her life, thepriest in Trois Riviere wrote
this very short but verybeautiful eulogy about her.
So as the priest in TroisRevier, he would record, you
know, birth, baptisms, anddeaths.
(11:26):
And most of the time he wouldjust write the date of a death
of a person.
But in her case, he took thetime to make an extra statement.
And what he wrote was thisMarima Te, Weawagwe lived a full
life with dignity, respect, andlove.
A courageous and lovingAlgonquin woman.
(11:49):
And I always thought that thatis the most beautifully written
short eulogy.
If at her own deaths, at our ownfuneral, if somebody could stand
up and say that about us andthen sit back down, it'd be
perfect, right?
Right.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (12:05):
Simplicity, but it covers everything that's
important.
SPEAKER_08 (12:08):
It does.
It does.
So she had to have had asignificant impact and influence
on the people around her.
Probably not just the fellowmembers of the Algonquin
community around Toyre Vier, butalso the French settlers that
lived there.
For this priest to be able to beso moved to write this about
(12:30):
her, that her life wasnoteworthy.
And remember, this is in 1699when she died.
And women at that time didn'thave a very high status in
society.
Right.
European women.
And you figure that nativewomen, indigenous women,
probably had even less.
We're a little farther down thehierarchy.
So she had to she had to dosomething right.
(12:53):
She had to have lived aremarkable life.
So between those events, youknow there is a story there.
And so what I did was with myworking with my artist, we kind
of filled it up and I reimaginedhow she felt after the attack.
I imagined how her marriage toPierre Cout came about and that
(13:14):
life.
And then I would have, I wouldskip a few generations to like
my great-great-grandparents inQuebec and their children.
And I would talk about how whathappened in the past with her
life, Maribate Weyowagwe's life,still echoes through all the
generations that follow in thatfamily.
(13:35):
And I have uh something kind ofvisual cue in the stories that
kind of connects all the storiestogether.
So obviously, MaribateWeyowagwe, you know, she didn't
live throughout the whole, youknow, into the 20th century and
onward.
But how do we capture heressence of continuity?
(13:56):
Well, what I have is thatMaribate Weyowagwe on her
wedding day was given the giftof a shawl.
And the shawl on her weddingnight was transformed into a
magic shawl by the spirit of herfirst husband that she
encountered on her weddingnight.
And so her first uh the spiritof her first husband, you know,
(14:17):
comfort her, told her it's she'shappy, he's happy that she's
married again, that she's notalone.
And as a g wedding gift for her,he he reached up, grabbed the
northern lights, and then threwit at the shawl.
And so instead of this grayshawl, the gray, the shawl
became this brilliant color ofthe northern lights.
(14:39):
And because it's a magic shawl,it survives and it gets passed
down from generation togeneration.
So you see other characters inthe book, you know, women
characters who are descendedfrom Rimate Weawagwe, they will
be wearing that very same shawlthat was the wedding gift from
(14:59):
Pierre to Ribate Weawagwe.
So that is a symbol of thatcontinuity from old grandmother
all the way through othergenerations.
SPEAKER_07 (15:09):
Yep.
Now, yeah, you mentionedcontinuity.
How many, I only have one.
How many books are there in yourseries?
SPEAKER_08 (15:18):
Only have one?
Oh, you got to catch up.
SPEAKER_07 (15:21):
Only have one.
But I have to tell you, it isthe most beautifully written and
illustrated book.
It's a little more oversized.
I got the, I don't know ifthere's a hardcover edition.
I get the paperback and it'soversized, and it is absolutely
gorgeous.
SPEAKER_08 (15:38):
Well, thank you.
Yeah, it is.
And the artist Natasha, NatashaPelley Smith, who's our
finishing artist, did an awesomejob with those.
And I have to also mentionMasami Kiona, who's a young
woman in Manhattan, who does thestoryboard work.
So she did all a lot of therough sketches and helped plan
the illustrations with me.
Yeah.
Natasha finished them.
It's too big of a project forone artist to do both.
(16:00):
Storyboarding is a separate taskthan doing a finishing.
You can't just go to finishillustration.
You have to plan what you'regoing to do, how it's all going
to work, the whole story.
Yeah.
Anyway, how many books arethere?
Well, right now there are three.
Three books.
And just from this last month,we finally have put out
(16:20):
hardcover editions, which arebeautiful.
And they're and I'm kickingmyself because I didn't do this
earlier.
Because when you hold them,they're so much easier to hold
and read, because you mentionedthese are not small books,
they're they're big.
Yeah.
So the hardcover makes it alittle easier, and they're very
beautiful.
So now we have three books.
(16:42):
I have a fourth one that'salready written.
All the rough sketches are doneby Masami.
And Natasha is going to do thefinished sketch work starting in
May.
And it'll probably take about ayear.
Wow.
So the four books, and we Masamiand I just finished up a 20-page
(17:03):
comic style story.
So it's not like most of thosebooks are really.
So for your listeners, the bookswhen I say illustrated, just so
you understand, there's in thisthree books, there's 700 full
color illustrations, 60,000words of text.
And I can't remember how manypages there are, but these are
big books.
(17:23):
But as it works out, it's almostone illustration per page.
So it's very heavilyillustrated.
So it's a very heavilyillustrated book.
So every time you turn the page,you're going to look at
something, you're going to seean illustration.
SPEAKER_07 (17:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_08 (17:39):
So you know, these these books are, you know, so
anyway, what we've gotten right,but not really a graphic novel
style.
Like a graphic com what we usedto call a comic when we were
kids.
But anyway, Masami and I justcreated a 20-page quote unquote
comic or graphic novel style,which is going to have the text
(17:59):
embedded into the panels, justlike a traditional comic.
SPEAKER_07 (18:05):
Oh, cool.
Is it going to be an existingstory or is it going to be a
complete departure?
SPEAKER_08 (18:09):
It's going to be a very complete departure.
In fact, this story is going totake place at the same Murnier
family farmhouse that you readin the first story.
Uh-huh.
It's going to take place in thesame farmhouse, but in the year
2103.
So about 200 years after theother stories.
But the house will be there.
But it'll be all dilapidated andkind of falling apart.
(18:32):
And it'll be inhabited by thiscute little robot that's the
only inhabitant of the housenamed Beatrice.
And the there's going to be anold man in the story named
Thomas Savoy, who actually is areal person.
He was just born.
Thomas Savoy, my grandnephew,was just born this month, just
(18:53):
within the last week.
Oh, wow.
So in this story, it's him, butit's him at 77 years old.
And visiting the old farmhouse.
And he's going to have anadventure with this robot.
He's going to have an adventurewith the trickster animal
characters that you rememberfrom the very first book you're
reading.
(19:14):
So, and uh there'll be someother surprises in there, and
some humor.
And it's called Bonjour Hello.
And we're probably going topublish it initially as a
separate release.
We're not sure if it's justgoing to be Kindle only or if I
should do it in print becauseit's not very long.
But more than likely we'll addthat to the back of the fourth
volume when it comes out nextyear.
But I do plan on releasing insome form this 20-page comic
(19:38):
this year.
SPEAKER_07 (19:39):
Oh, that I'm looking forward to that.
That'll be cool.
And then now knowing thebackstory to it.
SPEAKER_08 (19:45):
Yes.
So, you know, we talked aboutfolk tales and we talked about
the past as you know, storiestake place in the 1600s and
early 1900s.
I deliberately set the storiesthat I'm writing now, like the
fourth volume has a chapter, anepilogue that actually takes
place 40 years from now.
And also I have, and if youlooked at Dance of Creation, is
(20:09):
the third book, which youhaven't seen yet, that actually
takes place a framing story.
The narrator is actually set inthe year 2126.
But he's narrating the creationof the world.
He's telling his grandchildrenabout the creation of the world.
But that framing story takesplace a hundred years from now.
And the reason why I do that ordid that is because I want to
(20:31):
remind the readers that they areinside the story.
The story is around them, thestory is unfolding around them.
So some parts of the storyhaven't happened yet.
So, in a sense, even thenreading the books is part of the
story, the immersion of thestory itself.
(20:51):
And in the fourth volume, at thevery end, that you know, the one
that the chapter, that finalchapter takes place in 2064, one
of the characters actually beholding the Dance of Creation
book, and she's going to betalking about it.
She's going to meet thetrickster animal characters.
So it's very meta in a way.
(21:12):
So it's to remind the readersthat hey, you're part of this
story.
You are in this story,especially if you are a
descendant of Ribite Weawag.
So that's why I kind of set someof it in the future.
But even in the even in thedance of creation book that
takes place a hundred years fromnow, the grandfather is telling
the story of the creation of theworld.
(21:34):
So that circles all the way backto the beginning of the story
when the trickster animal animalcharacters in the first book
that you read were created.
So the whole series is designedas a big circle.
As you go through, it alwayscircles back on itself.
SPEAKER_07 (21:49):
So book one in a nutshell, what does that set up
or explain?
SPEAKER_08 (21:56):
Well, in the first two books, first two stories, so
it's about I don't care.
Five stories in there, I think.
The first two stories are aboutMarie Bate Weawagwe.
The first story is about how hergrandparents worried about her,
knowing that it's five yearssince she's she's been a widow
now for five years, believe thatshe should not be alone and her
(22:18):
grief, and not and not justhers, but everyone still
grieving for the losses from theattack five years earlier, that
her grief is kind of bringingthe whole village down.
And so he reaches out to her andreaches out to the man that he
knows that she loves and knowsthat he loves her, Pierre Cauch,
(22:39):
and he brings them together.
And then in this the next story,we'll show their wedding, Pierre
Cauch or Mimite Wewagwe'swedding.
Yeah.
And their wedding night, they'retalk, they're kind of pillow
talk, so to speak, as they'relooking at the stars or camping
on their wedding night, andlooking at the stars and talking
about that.
And then the appearance ofAsababish as a ghost spirit, the
(23:01):
spirit of her first husband.
Yeah.
Then so that's the first twostories.
And then after that, it shiftsto the Murnier family farm,
where we start shifting likeabout six generations ahead, and
we deal with that part of thefamily as they kind of discover
and start remembering who MarieMatewi Awagua is.
SPEAKER_07 (23:20):
Now, are you in any of the stories since this is
your family's heritage andlineage?
SPEAKER_08 (23:26):
Not yet.
Not yet.
SPEAKER_07 (23:29):
Well, if your grandnephew is 77 and the one
you're working on, I'm thinkingyou're gonna have to rewrite
something to get yourself backin the story.
SPEAKER_08 (23:37):
Well, I picked, I for example, in the Dance of
Creation, there's a very shortpiece of the story at the very
end that shows a tricksteranimals skiing on Mount Orford
in Quebec, where I go skiing.
And the date is March 5th, 2064,which is my which will be my
100th birthday.
So I do track that.
But I am thinking that now thatwith the new Canadian
(24:01):
immigration law, that I've I'vegotten the now, I've gotten the
uh I'm now a Canadian citizen orpeople who have like descent
ancestors in Canada can beCanadian citizens.
So I was thinking that I'm goingto have a little cartoon of me
opening up my certificate ofCanadian citizenship.
(24:22):
So I think that way it kind ofties into you know the family
leaves Quebec, it leaves Canada,but now we're starting to come
back a hundred years after weleft.
So I think that's probably a wayI may put myself in there.
SPEAKER_07 (24:36):
Oh, very cool.
Very cool.
Did what what influenced thethemes you chose to explore in
the folktales?
SPEAKER_08 (24:46):
Oh gosh, many, many different themes.
Certainly there is somereligious aspects in the stories
themselves.
Um I'm a Catholic, and I dothink some Catholic uh thinking
does go into the stories,Catholic thinking of, you know,
about family, about faith.
Interesting enough, the word theword Catholic is nowhere in the
(25:09):
books at all.
Uh-huh.
But I also think that's true toMarie Mateo Wagwe's character
because she was baptized aCatholic.
And I also think that the priestwould not have written that
eulogy about her unless she wasa you know a devout practicing
Catholic when she died.
Although the priest doesn't saythat, it just seems very common
(25:31):
sense that if she wasn't, heprobably would not have felt as
inspired to write that abouther.
Right.
As yeah, so that was also partof the story.
So that is definitely part offaith, is part of it.
I think family, familysupporting each other.
I have one story in the secondvolume, which you have, you
know, when you get a chance tolook at it, it's called Brothers
and Sisters, and it talks aboutthe relationship between
(25:55):
siblings.
In the second book, I've gotthat really focuses on the
relationship between UncleMcKeish and his nephew, Poco the
Moose.
They go on an adventure in thevillage and get into all sorts
of kind of trouble together, butit's kind of a nephew-uncle
story, and so we'll talk aboutthat as well.
And also talks about transitionbecause at the end of the second
(26:17):
volume, my ends with mygreat-grandmother, Isala
Mernier, and her soon-to-behusband, Philius Savoie, are
leaving Quebec to go settle inWinsocket, Rhode Island.
So that's where that book ends.
So it's also about transitions.
SPEAKER_07 (26:35):
How did you go about researching your family and the
territory and the heritage tomake this realistic?
SPEAKER_08 (26:45):
Well, I used modern tools like Ancestry.com and DNA
tests to do that.
So I what information I had, Ididn't know who who my
great-great-grandparents were,my French Canadian
great-great-grandparents.
I knew about where they were,but I didn't know anything about
them.
But I didn't know anything pastthat as growing up.
But once I got the modern toolslike Ancestry.com, Genie.com, I
(27:09):
was able to start building thattree and discovering them.
The DNA test, though, helpedbecause it helped, for one
thing, it showed us that we didhave Native American ancestry
when we weren't really aware ofthat in our family.
But I gave this DNA test to mymother and five of her siblings,
and they all showed this DNAthis Native American ancestry.
(27:33):
And it took me two years to findthem, who they were.
But I found four gateway NativeAmerican ancestors.
One of them was Penoscott fromMaine, another was Mick Ma from
Nova Scotia, and then there was,of course, Marie Mateo Weawagwe,
an Algonquin woman from Twitterof the Air.
(27:53):
And then there's one, probablythe most mysterious of those
native ancestors, and theclosest one to me,
generation-wise, is my mygrandfather's father's
grandmother.
Okay, if you can think about mymy grandfather, his father's
grandmother.
Okay.
She was native, but she wasn'tfrom Quebec.
(28:13):
She was from Missouri.
When she was a small child,about a year and a half old, the
Jesuits who were doing a missionin Missouri sent her to Quebec
and she was adopted.
So I'm not even certain whattribe she is, but she was
adopted into Quebec fromMissouri.
From my research, knowing whichtribes were mostly had most
(28:36):
contact with the Jesuits at thattime period, she was most likely
Osage.
But only thing I know about, Idon't even know what her
original native name was.
I just know her French name.
The only thing else I know abouther was that she was literate,
she could write.
SPEAKER_07 (28:53):
Oh, how do you know how do you know that?
SPEAKER_08 (28:54):
Did her signatures, yeah, but her husband could not,
but she could.
Probably what happened, she waseither either her parents passed
away and the Jesuits sent herback to Quebec, or she was sent
to a school to be educated andtaught how to you know read and
(29:15):
write in Quebec.
And but we don't know why.
Yeah, was it because she was anorphan?
Did the parents willingly giveher up, which I have a hard time
kind of comprehending that, orwas she taken?
I don't know.
We don't know.
It's a mystery, and I I maynever get an answer to that.
Those were all the answers.
So, anyway, that's that's how Ikind of did the research.
(29:39):
And then research in particularfor this book, there was a uh
there was there was a lot ofresearch done on Rimatewi
Awadway's life that I didn't do,but was already done ahead of
time.
And there was a gentleman namedNorman Lavalle in in Rhode
Island, who's also a descendantof her, old grandmother, and he
(29:59):
did all this research and hecompiled all these records from
the Jesuits.
It was a valuable resource.
Sadly, by the time I found hisresearch and learned all about
the information that he hadabout her in a remarkable life,
and it really inspired me.
By the time I found that andtried to find him, like where he
was located, it turns out he haddied like maybe a month or two
(30:22):
before I found that.
And he only lived, he lived inRhode Island, so he's only about
maybe an hour, hour and a halfaway drive.
And it's a shame that I nevermet him.
But he definitely is aninspiration for the book, his
work is.
And it's on my website too.
So all that research is there soyou can look at it yourself.
So that's one of the researcheswe did.
(30:44):
And of course, we also, asworking with artists, we had to
research the period clothing,clothing and and home styles
that people lived in, whetherthey were Native American,
Native tribes, Algaguans, orFrench.
SPEAKER_06 (30:55):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_07 (30:57):
What what uh what from both pieces of your
heritage do you incorporateincorporate in your life now?
SPEAKER_08 (31:05):
You know, it's interesting you say that,
because when I first startedwriting the books, and you
probably read my introduction,and I'm in a totally different
place from where I wrote that.
When I wrote that back in 2022,I was very much like, hey, I
have a Native American ancestor,but it's way in the past.
Hey, I have French-Canadianancestry, but I'm an American, I
(31:29):
don't live there.
I visit there, but I don'treally feel totally part of it.
You feel connected, but you'renot not really totally connected
and yet.
Now, since that time, I havevisited, made connections with
the Algonquins up in Pembroke,Ontario through this book.
Met other descendants of MimaTea Waguay up in Pembroke,
(31:51):
Ontario.
And the director of theAlgonquin community there told
me, from their perspective,because of your ancestry, you
are Algonquin.
So that was a real game changerfor me to be told, well, you are
Algonquin, you are native.
Even if it doesn't matter,percentage doesn't matter from
their point of view.
It's like, are you a descendant?
(32:13):
Yes or no.
It's a black, it's a simplequestion.
And now with this newimmigration law that Canada just
came up with, where if you havea Canadian ancestry, in my case,
my great-great, mygreat-grandparents were born in
Quebec, then you are Canadian.
And so recently I met animmigration lawyer out of
Toronto, and she told me, yes,by statutory law, you are a
(32:37):
Canadian citizen.
So wow.
I've gone from an outsider to Iam Algoquin and I am Canadian,
and all that kind of thoughtthinking and thoughts are going
to go into the introduction tothe fourth book.
SPEAKER_07 (32:51):
Oh, cool.
Good.
Good.
How did you balance thehistorical accuracy with
storytelling artistry?
SPEAKER_08 (33:02):
I don't think there was like a real conscious trying
to balance it.
I think I I had the basic factsof, for example, me Matei
Wewagwe's life.
There were anchor points, and Ibuilt a story around it.
Uh-huh.
And there are, for example,there are a lot of people who
have notable ancestors that maywrite about a historical fiction
(33:26):
about their ancestor.
But I didn't do that.
So this is a totally differentstyle.
What I did was use the languageof a folk tale to dive deeper
into how my ancestors felt andexperienced the world around
them.
Okay.
So it was a tool to kind of digin.
So I wasn't concerned abouttrying I'm not trying to do
(33:47):
historical paper.
I'm trying to have a story thattells a deeper meaning about
their lives and who they were.
So that's probably the way, thebest way I would describe how I
balance that.
SPEAKER_07 (34:00):
Okay.
And and did you have the planfor more books when you wrote
the first one?
Or oh no.
SPEAKER_08 (34:12):
Oh no.
So I had the first story, andthen I said, hey, that shawl
that my great-grandmother inthat La Trope de Sabot, the very
first story, she was wearing theback of the shawl.
The shawl actually made itsappearance there.
And then I started thinkingabout the shaw where it came
from.
And I said, wait a minute, she'sa descendant of this remarkable
Algonquin woman.
Maybe I can make that shawl thatshe's wearing the same shaw that
(34:35):
belonged to her ancestor,Mimateo Wankwe.
So that is the first part itkind of built off that, kind of
blossomed off.
And so I really just startedwriting stories, and I had no
idea when I was going to finish.
And the very first book that wedid, the first attempt we did to
try to publish it, I tried topublish all the stories in the
(34:56):
first two volumes in one massivepaperback book.
Oh.
It was Amazon, the Amazonself-publishing service just
kind of spit it right back at meand said, This is too big.
Yeah.
Split it into two volumes.
So I had a volume one and avolume two.
But so there's a new kind ofinsight.
If we have a volume one and youhave a volume two, well, that
(35:18):
means you can do a volume threeand a volume four, so forth.
So that idea was like, well, nowwe have two volumes, it's going
to be a series.
It's not going to be a one-offbook.
SPEAKER_07 (35:27):
See, that was a blessing in disguise.
SPEAKER_08 (35:29):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, a crisis isyou know, you can be defined as
crisis in with two words, dangerand opportunity.
That was the opportunity.
SPEAKER_07 (35:40):
Yep.
Yep.
Agreed.
What was the most challengingpart of bringing this book to
life?
SPEAKER_08 (35:47):
It took a lot of work.
It took thousands of hours, nothundreds, thousands of hours of
work for just me.
It took thousands of hours ofwork for the artist to do that.
Trying to, you know, work withmanage the artists, their
expectations and their workschedule with other projects
(36:08):
that they had to work wasdefinitely a challenge.
Cost was a tremendous challengebecause if you're going to do a
book like this, I determinedright off in the beginning this
book is going to be done right.
So I I hired editorial services,I hired a translation service to
translate the books into French.
So that also all costs money.
(36:30):
And uh so you just can't takethe story and throw it into
Google Translate and then it'snot gonna work.
So so I didn't go the cheaproute.
And all the illustrations arebeautifully done as you
remarked.
So there's not a half stepthere, meticulously designed.
So think how much time it takesto go through and design and
approve and check 700illustrations.
(36:54):
Yeah.
So the scope of the project ismassive.
And I think that's probably thebiggest challenge.
It was just very resourceintensive.
And I think it's one of thereasons why you don't see too
many books like this.
You don't see an illustratedbook.
You see graphic novels, but thathas a different style.
(37:14):
And and they're not as big.
No, no, they're not.
And this thing is almost at tothat level of detail, but
there's a lot of text in theretoo.
Yeah.
You don't see books, illustratedbooks this size.
It's just not economical to do.
It's very difficult to pull itoff.
SPEAKER_07 (37:33):
The only other book I've seen this size is a
gentleman I had interviewed.
He hiked the Appalachian Trailat the age of 72.
And he took pictures along theway.
There has to be a thousandpictures in the book of
beautiful landscapes, scenery,animals, some of the, you know,
(37:54):
results of the falls he had anddifferent things like that.
But it's this, it's the samesize book.
It was a big book, and it wasphotographs instead of
illustrations.
And these are the only twobooks, yours and his, that have
ever seen that size.
SPEAKER_08 (38:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (38:10):
So it it's kind, it's kind of nice.
It's almost like a coffee tablebook that is portable if you
have a backpack.
SPEAKER_08 (38:19):
His book, right?
SPEAKER_07 (38:20):
Yeah.
Yeah, your yours and his becausethey they are the exact same
size.
SPEAKER_08 (38:25):
Yeah, they are big.
But here's what I gained bydoing it this way.
These stories, all together now,are ready-made to be produced
into like a limited runstreaming television show.
That's awesome.
Because it's already part of themost of the early storyboard
(38:48):
work is already done.
It's done.
Yeah.
So if it was just text and yousaid, hey, make this into a
movie, well, first you're goingto design all the characters.
Yeah.
Start going to do some roughillustrations about how the
story is going to flow in avisual medium.
Well, that part is already done.
So the first two couple of stepsare already done.
So this project is ready to gofor and to be made into a
(39:13):
streaming service.
And I am seriously going tostart working on marketing that
as such, primarily in Canada,but I'll we'll see, we'll see
where it comes.
Oh, no, no, no.
Don't chip us.
What?
Don't chip us.
Yes.
But I do think it's ready.
It's just asked to get in frontof the right person.
SPEAKER_07 (39:32):
Yeah.
And you know, I'm another happyaccident having the book laid
out the way it is.
For me as a reader, it justhelped get swept up even more
into the story.
And it kind of, you know, forfolk, I listen to a lot of
podcasts, I listen to a lot ofaudible books because it's
(39:54):
quicker and easier.
But if I want to be told thestory, I want the book in my
hand.
And I want to get swept up intothe characters and swept up into
the storylines.
And your book, it's almost likewatching a movie as you're
reading.
(40:14):
It is.
It is designed that way.
SPEAKER_08 (40:16):
And the other interesting thing about how the
books are designed is if you hadall three volumes, you'd notice
this effect more.
But the stories, remember, Itold you the whole story is
written as a circle, kind ofcircles around.
Yep.
You can jump into any volume ofthis book series, and you can
start with any story that youwant.
(40:38):
And you can read those storiesin any order that you wish, and
it'll still make sense to you.
Because every story is designedto stand on its own, even though
it will refer to characters andevents that happen in other
stories.
It's not that information is notso it's going to destroy your
enjoyment or you can't followwhat's going on in that
(40:59):
particular story.
You do not have to read thesestories like in order.
You can read them in any orderthat you wish.
And the fun effect of that is ifyou start reading the stories
all over the place in anyvolume, it's really like you're
taking you're taking littlepieces of glass and you're
pasting on the wall and you'rebuilding this mosaic one story
(41:20):
at a time.
Yeah.
As you complete all threevolumes in any order that you
wish, a much grander story willemerge naturally from that.
And that'll that effect willhappen no matter what story you
start with.
So that's the part of the magicof the way these books are
designed.
SPEAKER_07 (41:38):
Very cool.
Was there a story, a particularstory, or even a piece of a
story that was especiallyemotional for you to write or to
write about?
SPEAKER_08 (41:54):
Well, this of course we're only audio, so everybody
can't see, but I'll let you lookat it.
This is the cover of the fourthbook.
SPEAKER_07 (42:01):
Oh, beautiful Campfires in the Sky.
SPEAKER_08 (42:04):
Yes.
So it's our file.
So maybe what I could do is Icould read this one section of
it.
Sure.
This so as I'm turning to thepage, well, I'll set your
readers up.
So in this story, Campfires ofthe Sky, the fourth book that's
going to be coming out nextyear, Marie Mateya Weawagwe is
(42:26):
retelling the story of theattack what happened when she
was a young woman.
And she's telling that story toher granddaughter.
And in this section, I'm goingto read to you, it's going to be
the part where MarimateaWeawagwe discovers that her
(42:47):
husband, not only was herhusband died, but she quickly
discovered right afterward thather children were gone.
And this is going to describehow she felt.
And this was very emotional.
And it also shows you that theseall these stories have different
tones.
Stories in this book series arethoughtful, you know, profound a
(43:07):
little profound, make you think,philosophical.
Some of these stories are justplain farcical.
They're kind of simple.
That's okay.
But that's how real life is.
It has different changes.
This is this has sections of thestory that are probably a little
bit darker because we're talkingabout a real event and it was
rather tragic.
(43:28):
So what happens is that whenMarine Bate Weawagwe heard that
her husband was mortallywounded, she left her care the
children in the care of hersister.
And she ran to her husband whojust died as as she got there.
So I'm going to pick up fromthere and start reading.
Okay.
(43:49):
After this is her narrating.
After I left my children in thecare of my sister, I ran to
where Asababish had fallen inthe fighting.
But he died of his wounds,moments.
Before I arrived, Asababish dieddefending your grandfather
Pierre, and he himself took theblow that was meant for Pierre.
(44:10):
As I stood there in shock, Iremembered my children, and I
ran back to my house.
When I got there, they weregone, along with my sister
Kahenta.
At that moment, I realized thatI had lost everything.
(44:31):
My children, my husband, and mysister.
There was so much emotion withinme, without any outlet or way to
express how I felt.
I collapsed to the floor andjust stared into the dim
(44:53):
emptiness in front of me.
Her granddaughter responds, Iwish.
I I don't know how or how Icould understand.
Her grandmother responded, Ipray that you never do
understand, my dear one.
(45:15):
The grandmother gently placedboth her hands on Marguerite's
cheeks.
I was only a bit older than youare now.
And up until that moment, I wasa naive and innocent girl who
knew nothing of violence or war.
That innocent girl, that girlthat was me, died on the floor
(45:37):
of that empty longhouse, and Ihave mourned for her for the
rest of my life.
And kind of it'll you'll you getto see it.
I'm sorry, everybody else, butthat's her collapsing on the
floor of her longhouse while thechildren and their sister gone.
SPEAKER_07 (45:54):
Yeah.
Holy cow.
SPEAKER_08 (45:58):
So that's an upcoming vibe that'd be coming
up next year.
SPEAKER_07 (46:03):
Were there moments like that when you're writing
that, or maybe even writinganother another story where you
felt that the the folks you werewriting about were guiding you?
SPEAKER_08 (46:15):
Oh, absolutely.
All through this process, allthrough this process.
I remember very early on when wewere doing the initial character
sketches for Rimatei Weawagwe,old grandmother, my ancestor.
And at the time I had found thispicture of my great-grandmother,
uh Izala Mirny, at her wedding.
(46:37):
And on her in her weddingpicture, she was wearing just on
her neck a little necklace andhad a small cross.
And she was wearing that in thepicture.
And as I was looking at it, Iheard this voice in my head as
I'm looking at this picture ofReima Tiwiwagwe.
And the voice said, I want youto draw me with that cross.
(47:00):
And so if you look at theillustrations of Marima Tiwagwe,
notice that she's wearing anecklace and she has a small
cross.
SPEAKER_07 (47:08):
Wow.
SPEAKER_08 (47:10):
So that's one example.
SPEAKER_07 (47:12):
Yeah.
Give me another one.
SPEAKER_08 (47:15):
Another one.
Okay.
I believe that physically, Ithink we physically captured her
essence.
I believe that she tended to beon the shorter side.
I believe that she was verystrong and loving, you know,
strong in the sense ofresilience.
I also believe that she liked tocarve.
She liked to carve wood.
(47:36):
And that she was an artist.
And she was also a healer.
And it was also very importantto her to pass on her Algonquin
heritage to her grandchildren.
It was very important to herthat she thought of herself as
Algonquin even after she marrieda French settler.
And she never lost that feelingand that part pride in her own
(47:57):
culture.
And she wanted to pass it on toher children.
So those are things that I thinkare definitely in there.
The other aspect I felt verystrongly inspired by was her
this was her first husband,Asababish.
The way he is drawn in this bookis that he is shown as a very
gentle and kind man andcompassionate man, a brave man,
(48:20):
but he wasn't necessarily amighty warrior, but he was a
very good man.
And that's how he is portrayedin these stories as well.
SPEAKER_07 (48:29):
What what do you hope readers feel when they
finish one of the oldgrandmother stories in any of
the volumes?
Or maybe even when they finishall of them.
SPEAKER_08 (48:40):
I think it's better to say when you finished all of
them.
I think that you're going tofeel like you've been immersed
inside this magical world ofstory and you're going to feel
like you're part of it.
You're also going to feel likeyou're in you're still within
it, and you can pick up thestory again and start over.
Like a story doesn't really end.
(49:02):
Definitely one way you're goingto feel.
And I also think that if you arenot French Canadian or you're
not a descendant of MarieMateoagwa and you read these
books, you're going to feelinspired to research your own
family heritage as well.
SPEAKER_07 (49:15):
What have you gotten out of this whole experience?
I mean, you're ahead of all ofus because you've already gotten
that fourth volume written.
So you know the next piece tothis.
But what has this meant to you?
SPEAKER_08 (49:30):
Well, I think, like I said, you know, earlier, I
started out feeling like I wasan outsider for these heritage.
Uh-huh.
I wasn't Algonquin.
In fact, I wrote introduction inthe very beginning of my first
two volumes, says, hey, youknow, I just want to let you
know I'm not claiming membershipin an Algonquin tribe.
And, you know, and they havethey have every right to
determine who is is and is notpart of their community.
(49:53):
And that and that's still true.
But I kind of regret it nowbecause I wrote it as an
outsider, and I don't feel likean outsider to that community
anymore.
I've been very much evolved.
That's true.
So I think feeling thatconnection and rediscovering
that Algonquin heritage, and Ithink in that sense, I am
fulfilling the desires and thewish for my that my old
(50:16):
grandmother, Mimi Taywi Awagwe,had for her children and her
descendants, that we would notforget that we are also
Algonquin.
So I think that's one aspect.
And I think it also ties in withwith the French Canadian and the
Canadian side.
I, you know, I talked about howI felt like I was a welcome
stranger up in Quebec.
(50:36):
Now that I know that I am aCanadian citizen, although I'm
still working on thedocumentation to get that
documented, but I am.
Right.
You know, last time I visitedCanada, I said, you know what, I
belong here too.
So I think I I have finishedwith a greater understanding of
my ancestors and my place.
I think also I have a sense ofbelonging in both those
(51:00):
communities that I did not havebefore.
SPEAKER_07 (51:04):
That's wonderful.
So after the fourth installmentcomes out, will there be a
fifth?
Or do you think you may move onto different type of
storytelling or explore otheraspects of your family or your
heritage?
SPEAKER_08 (51:17):
Well, I mean, I do have this, I had this really
good story idea for that Greekmythology, which was something I
started way, way, way back andnever finished it.
But I don't know if I'm evergoing to get to it, to be quite
honest.
I have ideas for two other booksthat I could put in the old
grandmother's tree series.
But it's very resourceintensive.
(51:38):
And at this point, I'm I'm kindof reached the end of my
resources that I can put intoit.
So now that these four bookswill be done, the next thing is
to get it shopped around so thatit can be taken up to the next
level.
And that's really where myeffort needs to go.
If they do, if and when they arepicked up for a series, and that
I can get a little bit of theflow of cash coming back to me
(52:02):
that'll help resource, I will doother books.
But at this point, for financialreasons, I can't really do any
more right now.
So that's why I really have tosay, take a pause.
It's a pretty good story as itis.
It's kind of has a sense ofcompleteness as it is.
So I think it's time to justtake it to that, focus on taking
(52:22):
it to that next step, whichwould be a film or a TV show.
And that's where my effort'sgoing to be.
SPEAKER_07 (52:53):
And it's when I can take the time to sit down and
just get swept up in it andmarvel at the pictures that just
so perfectly reflect the writtenword.
SPEAKER_08 (53:04):
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, Natasha did a wonderfuljob on those.
SPEAKER_07 (53:08):
So, Joseph, thank you so much for all of your
time.
SPEAKER_08 (53:11):
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
And I would just, if I may, justinvite people to look up my
website, oldcrammotherstree.com.
SPEAKER_07 (53:18):
Yep.
SPEAKER_08 (53:19):
And in there you'll find my biography, Natasha's
biography.
You'll find backgroundinformation from the first from
the research of Norman Lavalliabout Rimate Wiague.
And I also have a characterWikipedia.
So if you really, if you go tothe website, you can read a
character Wikipedia, give a lotof background information, and
(53:41):
also little tidbits that are notin the books.
SPEAKER_07 (53:44):
So I will make sure to have that linked in the show
notes.
SPEAKER_08 (53:48):
Yes.
Yes.
So a lot on that on thatwebsite.
So I encourage you to take alook.
And you can also order the bookson Amazon.
SPEAKER_07 (53:57):
Perfect.
I'll have links to those aswell.
SPEAKER_08 (53:59):
Great.
Great.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_07 (54:01):
All right, Joseph.
You have a great night.
SPEAKER_08 (54:03):
Uh, you too.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_07 (54:12):
What's up to you from this conversation?
I love the interest anddedication he has for
researching his lineage.
He went back decades and manygenerations to fact-find and
bring his ancestors to life.
But my favorite part of Joseph'sstory is the deeper sense of
(54:33):
inclusion and connection he nowfeels with both his Canadian and
Native American heritage.
You can hear it in his voicethat the feeling of belonging
and truly understanding thespirits of those that came
before him really have an impacton him.
If you're interested in learningmore about Joseph's work,
(54:54):
picking up any or all of hisbooks before the fourth
installment comes out, jump downto the show notes for all the
links.
And while you're there, don'tforget to connect with me.
All links to my socials areincluded as well.
And there's a new featureavailable to connect with me.
(55:14):
Use the drop-me-a-text link atthe beginning of the show notes
to say hi or share your thoughtson any of the episodes.
I'd love to hear from you.
As always, thanks for listening,and I'll see you in two weeks.
Just a reminder, don't forget to hit follow or
subscribe wherever you'relistening to this podcast.
And two small things you can dothat'll have a big impact on the
podcast.
Tell a friend about assortedconversations.
And consider leaving a five-starwritten review wherever you
download your podcast.
(00:22):
That helps the podcast becomemore visible to other folks who
may enjoy the content as well.
Thanks for listening, and here'sthis week's episode.
Everyday people following theirpassions.
SPEAKER_02 (00:44):
That's probably like one of the highlights of my life
so far.
Just being able to be creativelike that.
I'm able to.
SPEAKER_01 (00:52):
And then I decided to get another hive, and that
turned into a lot of hives.
As long as I can do that, I wantto be a good citizen.
Help people out.
SPEAKER_07 (01:04):
Putting themselves out there, taking chances, and
navigating challenges along theway.
SPEAKER_04 (01:10):
I I absolutely identified with having stage
rides because, you know, anytimeI went on stage, I just felt
like I was having a heartattack.
SPEAKER_03 (01:17):
Very first lap, very first practice session, I
crashed, turned the car upsidedown, made a spectacle of
myself, and I got back on thathorse and started riding again.
SPEAKER_07 (01:27):
As they pursue what makes them happy and brings them
joy.
SPEAKER_00 (01:32):
As long as people are having a good time and I
have the opportunity to putsmiles on people's faces, I love
what I do.
SPEAKER_08 (01:39):
I have done things that I never thought I could do.
SPEAKER_01 (01:43):
To have somebody tell me how real it looks and
how, you know, from their actualmemory.
Because that's telling me Icaptured what I was trying to
get.
SPEAKER_07 (01:55):
Welcome to Assorted Conversation.
I'm your host, Helen.
I'm so glad you're here, andthanks for tuning in.
Have you ever researched yourfamily ancestry?
Um not just a DNA test, butreally researched your family
(02:17):
tree.
Found legal documents, newspaperclippings, old photos, and
tapped into resources otherdistant family members may have
found and made available online.
I'm talking really dug intofinding out, not just the names,
but who your ancestors reallywere.
(02:37):
This week's guest has gone deepinto the research of his
lineage, inspired by the storieshe heard growing up, plus adding
his own creativity and magic,and the voice of folktale, he
takes us on an incrediblejourney as he shares his Native
American and Canadian ancestorswith us while paying homage to
(02:58):
his heritage.
Take a listen to this week'sepisode, and I'll see you on the
other side.
This week's guest was born inPawtucket, Rhode Island, at the
twilight of New England'sFrench-Canadian cultural golden
age, and raised on the richstories of the place we came
(03:20):
from, Quebec.
That early love of heritage andstorytelling would shape his
life in powerful ways.
An Army paratrooper turned WestPoint graduate, he served nearly
two decades in leadership roles,including a combat tour in
Afghanistan with the 10thMountain Division.
Since retiring, he's worked withthe U.S.
(03:41):
Air Force, taught mathematics, arole he calls his most
fulfilling, and authored OldGrandmother's Tree, his debut
book inspired by ancestry,identity, and the landscapes of
New England and Quebec.
Thank you for your service, andI am so happy to welcome Joseph
Bolton to Astor ofConversations.
(04:02):
Hi, Joseph.
SPEAKER_08 (04:02):
Oh, hello.
I'm very happy to be here today.
SPEAKER_07 (04:05):
How are you?
Doing good, doing good.
How are you?
I am well.
I am well.
So let's jump into this.
With your military background,where did writing first become
something you were interested inor something you did?
SPEAKER_08 (04:21):
Well, I mean, like any lot of other kids, I used to
write stories, you know, as achild.
As a teenager and a college, youknow, kid in college, I wrote
poetry.
Wow.
Well, of course, you know,you're young and you're
romantic, you write love poetry,you write poems.
So I did.
(04:42):
And but I really haven't writtena poem in a long, long time.
But once I was in the army, Ireally didn't write anymore
except professionally for youknow operations orders and so on
and so forth.
But my modern, more recentwriting career really didn't
start until after my brotherpassed away with ALS in 2013, my
younger brother.
(05:02):
And it was a terrible disease towitness, and it still haunts me
even to this day.
But right after he died, Idecided to start a blog.
And blog was really for me.
I didn't really have a lot ofambitions.
I would share it.
Sometimes it did some blogs didget picked up nationally a
couple of times, which was nice.
(05:24):
But the topics ranged frommathematics, history,
philosophy, science, familyhistory, my family history.
And then eventually, towards theend, I actually wrote a short
story to talk about mathematics.
And it was a based on Greekfables and Greek mythology.
And it's still a very cutestory, but it's never been, you
(05:45):
know, really finished.
But that's kind of where I said,hmm, I really like this creative
writing stuff.
And so because I liked it,because you can tell an
entertaining story, but youcould also get a message through
at the same time.
And, you know, so it's like alittle bit of spoon, you know, a
little sugar with the medicine,you know.
(06:05):
So it really was an eye-openingthing for me.
So I started liking that.
So I wrote that first, and theneventually I wrote my first
story, which is now part of thewhole series of Old
Grandmother's Tree, which was LaTrope de Sabot.
And I wrote that as part of myFrench class.
I wrote a little short story inFrench, and it was called La
Trope de Sabot, and that becamethe genesis of the whole book
(06:29):
series.
SPEAKER_07 (06:30):
Oh, wow.
I was gonna ask you, what wasthe seed that was planted that
that started you on this thisjourney with the with the
trilogy so far?
SPEAKER_08 (06:38):
Well, you know, sometimes I just like to be, I
don't know, mischievous in mywriting.
So I was told to do some writingfor French by my tutor.
So instead of just doing somewriting or writing some bland
paragraph, I decided I'm gonnawrite this silly story about my
great-great-grandparents' farmin Quebec.
And at midnight, their farmanimals escape out of the barn,
(07:02):
grab a toboggan, go up the hill,and have an adventure going
tobogganing down the hill untilmy great-great-grandmother finds
them.
And but instead of scoldingthem, she hops onto the toboggan
and starts sledding down withthem.
So I wrote that all in French,and it was a cute little story.
But you know, a little you add alittle bit, and then you it's
(07:25):
like anything else, you you addsomething more to the story.
Instead of you just building itup, it actually opens the doors
to other connections and otherstories, and it kind of built up
from there.
And so initially, the very firststory didn't really include
directly my ancestor MarieMateya Weawagwe, who is the
actual old grandmother of theold grandmother series.
(07:49):
But she showed up like in the inthe second story, and she was
more of a like a backstory to mygreat-great-grandmother, who was
you know, her that was herdescendant or ancestor.
But eventually, as I learnedmore about Rima Tea Wewagwe and
a Remarkable Life, her storyactually became the centerpiece
(08:10):
of the whole book series.
SPEAKER_07 (08:11):
Right.
Okay.
All right.
So how how true to life arethese stories?
SPEAKER_08 (08:22):
Well, the the stories are written in the
language of a folk tale.
So that'll include folktaleelements like magic, magical
beings, trickster animalcharacters based on, in this
case, Native American mythology,but none of it was directly
lifted from any existingfolktales.
SPEAKER_06 (08:42):
Okay.
SPEAKER_08 (08:42):
Kind of like inspired by.
So I chose folktales as thelanguage to tell the story about
my Algonquin ancestor and herdescendants because folktales
are a universal languagethroughout the world.
We all enjoy them.
And even though every culture'sfolktales have a different
(09:04):
flavor based on the environmentthat they came from, there's
still a kind of elementalfamiliarity with all of them.
A lot of them have trickstercharacters, a lot of them have
lessons in there, many of themare also extremely entertaining.
That's why many of them haveendured sometimes for hundreds,
if not thousands, of years.
So I took that style and Ioverlaid it, overlaid it the
(09:28):
real story of my oldgrandmother, Mibate Weawagwe.
And she had this very remarkablelife, and as it turns out, not
only did she live a remarkablelife, but her life was
relatively well documentedcompared to other people who
lived in that time in the 17thcentury in Quebec.
SPEAKER_07 (09:48):
Why is that?
SPEAKER_08 (09:50):
Well, I think it's because she lived close to a
Jesuit mission in Taurire, andthe Jesuits were very meticulous
in keeping records.
So the facts of her life, what Ido know, and this is kind of
like what I started with, was Iknow that in 1652, she was about
21, 22 years old.
(10:10):
Wow.
And she was married to anotherAlgonquin man.
His name was Asababish.
And her and Asababish had twosmall children, very young, a
boy and a girl.
And in 1652, Mohawk tribesmenfrom down south, south of in
into New York, came up north,attacked their village.
(10:33):
Her husband was killed in theattack, and her two small
children were taken by theMohawks, and she never saw them
again.
SPEAKER_05 (10:40):
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_08 (10:40):
And she never even knew what happened to them.
They just disappeared.
So at 22, she lost her husbandand her children.
So it's very devastating forsomeone, a woman, young woman,
just barely out of her teens.
Right.
And five years later, shemarried a French settler named
Pierre Cauch.
And Pierre Couch and Rima TeaWewagwe became my ninth great
(11:03):
grandparent.
So that's the second event thatI know about her life.
Then at the end of her life, thepriest in Trois Riviere wrote
this very short but verybeautiful eulogy about her.
So as the priest in TroisRevier, he would record, you
know, birth, baptisms, anddeaths.
(11:26):
And most of the time he wouldjust write the date of a death
of a person.
But in her case, he took thetime to make an extra statement.
And what he wrote was thisMarima Te, Weawagwe lived a full
life with dignity, respect, andlove.
A courageous and lovingAlgonquin woman.
(11:49):
And I always thought that thatis the most beautifully written
short eulogy.
If at her own deaths, at our ownfuneral, if somebody could stand
up and say that about us andthen sit back down, it'd be
perfect, right?
Right.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (12:05):
Simplicity, but it covers everything that's
important.
SPEAKER_08 (12:08):
It does.
It does.
So she had to have had asignificant impact and influence
on the people around her.
Probably not just the fellowmembers of the Algonquin
community around Toyre Vier, butalso the French settlers that
lived there.
For this priest to be able to beso moved to write this about
(12:30):
her, that her life wasnoteworthy.
And remember, this is in 1699when she died.
And women at that time didn'thave a very high status in
society.
Right.
European women.
And you figure that nativewomen, indigenous women,
probably had even less.
We're a little farther down thehierarchy.
So she had to she had to dosomething right.
(12:53):
She had to have lived aremarkable life.
So between those events, youknow there is a story there.
And so what I did was with myworking with my artist, we kind
of filled it up and I reimaginedhow she felt after the attack.
I imagined how her marriage toPierre Cout came about and that
(13:14):
life.
And then I would have, I wouldskip a few generations to like
my great-great-grandparents inQuebec and their children.
And I would talk about how whathappened in the past with her
life, Maribate Weyowagwe's life,still echoes through all the
generations that follow in thatfamily.
(13:35):
And I have uh something kind ofvisual cue in the stories that
kind of connects all the storiestogether.
So obviously, MaribateWeyowagwe, you know, she didn't
live throughout the whole, youknow, into the 20th century and
onward.
But how do we capture heressence of continuity?
(13:56):
Well, what I have is thatMaribate Weyowagwe on her
wedding day was given the giftof a shawl.
And the shawl on her weddingnight was transformed into a
magic shawl by the spirit of herfirst husband that she
encountered on her weddingnight.
And so her first uh the spiritof her first husband, you know,
(14:17):
comfort her, told her it's she'shappy, he's happy that she's
married again, that she's notalone.
And as a g wedding gift for her,he he reached up, grabbed the
northern lights, and then threwit at the shawl.
And so instead of this grayshawl, the gray, the shawl
became this brilliant color ofthe northern lights.
(14:39):
And because it's a magic shawl,it survives and it gets passed
down from generation togeneration.
So you see other characters inthe book, you know, women
characters who are descendedfrom Rimate Weawagwe, they will
be wearing that very same shawlthat was the wedding gift from
(14:59):
Pierre to Ribate Weawagwe.
So that is a symbol of thatcontinuity from old grandmother
all the way through othergenerations.
SPEAKER_07 (15:09):
Yep.
Now, yeah, you mentionedcontinuity.
How many, I only have one.
How many books are there in yourseries?
SPEAKER_08 (15:18):
Only have one?
Oh, you got to catch up.
SPEAKER_07 (15:21):
Only have one.
But I have to tell you, it isthe most beautifully written and
illustrated book.
It's a little more oversized.
I got the, I don't know ifthere's a hardcover edition.
I get the paperback and it'soversized, and it is absolutely
gorgeous.
SPEAKER_08 (15:38):
Well, thank you.
Yeah, it is.
And the artist Natasha, NatashaPelley Smith, who's our
finishing artist, did an awesomejob with those.
And I have to also mentionMasami Kiona, who's a young
woman in Manhattan, who does thestoryboard work.
So she did all a lot of therough sketches and helped plan
the illustrations with me.
Yeah.
Natasha finished them.
It's too big of a project forone artist to do both.
(16:00):
Storyboarding is a separate taskthan doing a finishing.
You can't just go to finishillustration.
You have to plan what you'regoing to do, how it's all going
to work, the whole story.
Yeah.
Anyway, how many books arethere?
Well, right now there are three.
Three books.
And just from this last month,we finally have put out
(16:20):
hardcover editions, which arebeautiful.
And they're and I'm kickingmyself because I didn't do this
earlier.
Because when you hold them,they're so much easier to hold
and read, because you mentionedthese are not small books,
they're they're big.
Yeah.
So the hardcover makes it alittle easier, and they're very
beautiful.
So now we have three books.
(16:42):
I have a fourth one that'salready written.
All the rough sketches are doneby Masami.
And Natasha is going to do thefinished sketch work starting in
May.
And it'll probably take about ayear.
Wow.
So the four books, and we Masamiand I just finished up a 20-page
(17:03):
comic style story.
So it's not like most of thosebooks are really.
So for your listeners, the bookswhen I say illustrated, just so
you understand, there's in thisthree books, there's 700 full
color illustrations, 60,000words of text.
And I can't remember how manypages there are, but these are
big books.
(17:23):
But as it works out, it's almostone illustration per page.
So it's very heavilyillustrated.
So it's a very heavilyillustrated book.
So every time you turn the page,you're going to look at
something, you're going to seean illustration.
SPEAKER_07 (17:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_08 (17:39):
So you know, these these books are, you know, so
anyway, what we've gotten right,but not really a graphic novel
style.
Like a graphic com what we usedto call a comic when we were
kids.
But anyway, Masami and I justcreated a 20-page quote unquote
comic or graphic novel style,which is going to have the text
(17:59):
embedded into the panels, justlike a traditional comic.
SPEAKER_07 (18:05):
Oh, cool.
Is it going to be an existingstory or is it going to be a
complete departure?
SPEAKER_08 (18:09):
It's going to be a very complete departure.
In fact, this story is going totake place at the same Murnier
family farmhouse that you readin the first story.
Uh-huh.
It's going to take place in thesame farmhouse, but in the year
2103.
So about 200 years after theother stories.
But the house will be there.
But it'll be all dilapidated andkind of falling apart.
(18:32):
And it'll be inhabited by thiscute little robot that's the
only inhabitant of the housenamed Beatrice.
And the there's going to be anold man in the story named
Thomas Savoy, who actually is areal person.
He was just born.
Thomas Savoy, my grandnephew,was just born this month, just
(18:53):
within the last week.
Oh, wow.
So in this story, it's him, butit's him at 77 years old.
And visiting the old farmhouse.
And he's going to have anadventure with this robot.
He's going to have an adventurewith the trickster animal
characters that you rememberfrom the very first book you're
reading.
(19:14):
So, and uh there'll be someother surprises in there, and
some humor.
And it's called Bonjour Hello.
And we're probably going topublish it initially as a
separate release.
We're not sure if it's justgoing to be Kindle only or if I
should do it in print becauseit's not very long.
But more than likely we'll addthat to the back of the fourth
volume when it comes out nextyear.
But I do plan on releasing insome form this 20-page comic
(19:38):
this year.
SPEAKER_07 (19:39):
Oh, that I'm looking forward to that.
That'll be cool.
And then now knowing thebackstory to it.
SPEAKER_08 (19:45):
Yes.
So, you know, we talked aboutfolk tales and we talked about
the past as you know, storiestake place in the 1600s and
early 1900s.
I deliberately set the storiesthat I'm writing now, like the
fourth volume has a chapter, anepilogue that actually takes
place 40 years from now.
And also I have, and if youlooked at Dance of Creation, is
(20:09):
the third book, which youhaven't seen yet, that actually
takes place a framing story.
The narrator is actually set inthe year 2126.
But he's narrating the creationof the world.
He's telling his grandchildrenabout the creation of the world.
But that framing story takesplace a hundred years from now.
And the reason why I do that ordid that is because I want to
(20:31):
remind the readers that they areinside the story.
The story is around them, thestory is unfolding around them.
So some parts of the storyhaven't happened yet.
So, in a sense, even thenreading the books is part of the
story, the immersion of thestory itself.
(20:51):
And in the fourth volume, at thevery end, that you know, the one
that the chapter, that finalchapter takes place in 2064, one
of the characters actually beholding the Dance of Creation
book, and she's going to betalking about it.
She's going to meet thetrickster animal characters.
So it's very meta in a way.
(21:12):
So it's to remind the readersthat hey, you're part of this
story.
You are in this story,especially if you are a
descendant of Ribite Weawag.
So that's why I kind of set someof it in the future.
But even in the even in thedance of creation book that
takes place a hundred years fromnow, the grandfather is telling
the story of the creation of theworld.
(21:34):
So that circles all the way backto the beginning of the story
when the trickster animal animalcharacters in the first book
that you read were created.
So the whole series is designedas a big circle.
As you go through, it alwayscircles back on itself.
SPEAKER_07 (21:49):
So book one in a nutshell, what does that set up
or explain?
SPEAKER_08 (21:56):
Well, in the first two books, first two stories, so
it's about I don't care.
Five stories in there, I think.
The first two stories are aboutMarie Bate Weawagwe.
The first story is about how hergrandparents worried about her,
knowing that it's five yearssince she's she's been a widow
now for five years, believe thatshe should not be alone and her
(22:18):
grief, and not and not justhers, but everyone still
grieving for the losses from theattack five years earlier, that
her grief is kind of bringingthe whole village down.
And so he reaches out to her andreaches out to the man that he
knows that she loves and knowsthat he loves her, Pierre Cauch,
(22:39):
and he brings them together.
And then in this the next story,we'll show their wedding, Pierre
Cauch or Mimite Wewagwe'swedding.
Yeah.
And their wedding night, they'retalk, they're kind of pillow
talk, so to speak, as they'relooking at the stars or camping
on their wedding night, andlooking at the stars and talking
about that.
And then the appearance ofAsababish as a ghost spirit, the
(23:01):
spirit of her first husband.
Yeah.
Then so that's the first twostories.
And then after that, it shiftsto the Murnier family farm,
where we start shifting likeabout six generations ahead, and
we deal with that part of thefamily as they kind of discover
and start remembering who MarieMatewi Awagua is.
SPEAKER_07 (23:20):
Now, are you in any of the stories since this is
your family's heritage andlineage?
SPEAKER_08 (23:26):
Not yet.
Not yet.
SPEAKER_07 (23:29):
Well, if your grandnephew is 77 and the one
you're working on, I'm thinkingyou're gonna have to rewrite
something to get yourself backin the story.
SPEAKER_08 (23:37):
Well, I picked, I for example, in the Dance of
Creation, there's a very shortpiece of the story at the very
end that shows a tricksteranimals skiing on Mount Orford
in Quebec, where I go skiing.
And the date is March 5th, 2064,which is my which will be my
100th birthday.
So I do track that.
But I am thinking that now thatwith the new Canadian
(24:01):
immigration law, that I've I'vegotten the now, I've gotten the
uh I'm now a Canadian citizen orpeople who have like descent
ancestors in Canada can beCanadian citizens.
So I was thinking that I'm goingto have a little cartoon of me
opening up my certificate ofCanadian citizenship.
(24:22):
So I think that way it kind ofties into you know the family
leaves Quebec, it leaves Canada,but now we're starting to come
back a hundred years after weleft.
So I think that's probably a wayI may put myself in there.
SPEAKER_07 (24:36):
Oh, very cool.
Very cool.
Did what what influenced thethemes you chose to explore in
the folktales?
SPEAKER_08 (24:46):
Oh gosh, many, many different themes.
Certainly there is somereligious aspects in the stories
themselves.
Um I'm a Catholic, and I dothink some Catholic uh thinking
does go into the stories,Catholic thinking of, you know,
about family, about faith.
Interesting enough, the word theword Catholic is nowhere in the
(25:09):
books at all.
Uh-huh.
But I also think that's true toMarie Mateo Wagwe's character
because she was baptized aCatholic.
And I also think that the priestwould not have written that
eulogy about her unless she wasa you know a devout practicing
Catholic when she died.
Although the priest doesn't saythat, it just seems very common
(25:31):
sense that if she wasn't, heprobably would not have felt as
inspired to write that abouther.
Right.
As yeah, so that was also partof the story.
So that is definitely part offaith, is part of it.
I think family, familysupporting each other.
I have one story in the secondvolume, which you have, you
know, when you get a chance tolook at it, it's called Brothers
and Sisters, and it talks aboutthe relationship between
(25:55):
siblings.
In the second book, I've gotthat really focuses on the
relationship between UncleMcKeish and his nephew, Poco the
Moose.
They go on an adventure in thevillage and get into all sorts
of kind of trouble together, butit's kind of a nephew-uncle
story, and so we'll talk aboutthat as well.
And also talks about transitionbecause at the end of the second
(26:17):
volume, my ends with mygreat-grandmother, Isala
Mernier, and her soon-to-behusband, Philius Savoie, are
leaving Quebec to go settle inWinsocket, Rhode Island.
So that's where that book ends.
So it's also about transitions.
SPEAKER_07 (26:35):
How did you go about researching your family and the
territory and the heritage tomake this realistic?
SPEAKER_08 (26:45):
Well, I used modern tools like Ancestry.com and DNA
tests to do that.
So I what information I had, Ididn't know who who my
great-great-grandparents were,my French Canadian
great-great-grandparents.
I knew about where they were,but I didn't know anything about
them.
But I didn't know anything pastthat as growing up.
But once I got the modern toolslike Ancestry.com, Genie.com, I
(27:09):
was able to start building thattree and discovering them.
The DNA test, though, helpedbecause it helped, for one
thing, it showed us that we didhave Native American ancestry
when we weren't really aware ofthat in our family.
But I gave this DNA test to mymother and five of her siblings,
and they all showed this DNAthis Native American ancestry.
(27:33):
And it took me two years to findthem, who they were.
But I found four gateway NativeAmerican ancestors.
One of them was Penoscott fromMaine, another was Mick Ma from
Nova Scotia, and then there was,of course, Marie Mateo Weawagwe,
an Algonquin woman from Twitterof the Air.
(27:53):
And then there's one, probablythe most mysterious of those
native ancestors, and theclosest one to me,
generation-wise, is my mygrandfather's father's
grandmother.
Okay, if you can think about mymy grandfather, his father's
grandmother.
Okay.
She was native, but she wasn'tfrom Quebec.
(28:13):
She was from Missouri.
When she was a small child,about a year and a half old, the
Jesuits who were doing a missionin Missouri sent her to Quebec
and she was adopted.
So I'm not even certain whattribe she is, but she was
adopted into Quebec fromMissouri.
From my research, knowing whichtribes were mostly had most
(28:36):
contact with the Jesuits at thattime period, she was most likely
Osage.
But only thing I know about, Idon't even know what her
original native name was.
I just know her French name.
The only thing else I know abouther was that she was literate,
she could write.
SPEAKER_07 (28:53):
Oh, how do you know how do you know that?
SPEAKER_08 (28:54):
Did her signatures, yeah, but her husband could not,
but she could.
Probably what happened, she waseither either her parents passed
away and the Jesuits sent herback to Quebec, or she was sent
to a school to be educated andtaught how to you know read and
(29:15):
write in Quebec.
And but we don't know why.
Yeah, was it because she was anorphan?
Did the parents willingly giveher up, which I have a hard time
kind of comprehending that, orwas she taken?
I don't know.
We don't know.
It's a mystery, and I I maynever get an answer to that.
Those were all the answers.
So, anyway, that's that's how Ikind of did the research.
(29:39):
And then research in particularfor this book, there was a uh
there was there was a lot ofresearch done on Rimatewi
Awadway's life that I didn't do,but was already done ahead of
time.
And there was a gentleman namedNorman Lavalle in in Rhode
Island, who's also a descendantof her, old grandmother, and he
(29:59):
did all this research and hecompiled all these records from
the Jesuits.
It was a valuable resource.
Sadly, by the time I found hisresearch and learned all about
the information that he hadabout her in a remarkable life,
and it really inspired me.
By the time I found that andtried to find him, like where he
was located, it turns out he haddied like maybe a month or two
(30:22):
before I found that.
And he only lived, he lived inRhode Island, so he's only about
maybe an hour, hour and a halfaway drive.
And it's a shame that I nevermet him.
But he definitely is aninspiration for the book, his
work is.
And it's on my website too.
So all that research is there soyou can look at it yourself.
So that's one of the researcheswe did.
(30:44):
And of course, we also, asworking with artists, we had to
research the period clothing,clothing and and home styles
that people lived in, whetherthey were Native American,
Native tribes, Algaguans, orFrench.
SPEAKER_06 (30:55):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_07 (30:57):
What what uh what from both pieces of your
heritage do you incorporateincorporate in your life now?
SPEAKER_08 (31:05):
You know, it's interesting you say that,
because when I first startedwriting the books, and you
probably read my introduction,and I'm in a totally different
place from where I wrote that.
When I wrote that back in 2022,I was very much like, hey, I
have a Native American ancestor,but it's way in the past.
Hey, I have French-Canadianancestry, but I'm an American, I
(31:29):
don't live there.
I visit there, but I don'treally feel totally part of it.
You feel connected, but you'renot not really totally connected
and yet.
Now, since that time, I havevisited, made connections with
the Algonquins up in Pembroke,Ontario through this book.
Met other descendants of MimaTea Waguay up in Pembroke,
(31:51):
Ontario.
And the director of theAlgonquin community there told
me, from their perspective,because of your ancestry, you
are Algonquin.
So that was a real game changerfor me to be told, well, you are
Algonquin, you are native.
Even if it doesn't matter,percentage doesn't matter from
their point of view.
It's like, are you a descendant?
(32:13):
Yes or no.
It's a black, it's a simplequestion.
And now with this newimmigration law that Canada just
came up with, where if you havea Canadian ancestry, in my case,
my great-great, mygreat-grandparents were born in
Quebec, then you are Canadian.
And so recently I met animmigration lawyer out of
Toronto, and she told me, yes,by statutory law, you are a
(32:37):
Canadian citizen.
So wow.
I've gone from an outsider to Iam Algoquin and I am Canadian,
and all that kind of thoughtthinking and thoughts are going
to go into the introduction tothe fourth book.
SPEAKER_07 (32:51):
Oh, cool.
Good.
Good.
How did you balance thehistorical accuracy with
storytelling artistry?
SPEAKER_08 (33:02):
I don't think there was like a real conscious trying
to balance it.
I think I I had the basic factsof, for example, me Matei
Wewagwe's life.
There were anchor points, and Ibuilt a story around it.
Uh-huh.
And there are, for example,there are a lot of people who
have notable ancestors that maywrite about a historical fiction
(33:26):
about their ancestor.
But I didn't do that.
So this is a totally differentstyle.
What I did was use the languageof a folk tale to dive deeper
into how my ancestors felt andexperienced the world around
them.
Okay.
So it was a tool to kind of digin.
So I wasn't concerned abouttrying I'm not trying to do
(33:47):
historical paper.
I'm trying to have a story thattells a deeper meaning about
their lives and who they were.
So that's probably the way, thebest way I would describe how I
balance that.
SPEAKER_07 (34:00):
Okay.
And and did you have the planfor more books when you wrote
the first one?
Or oh no.
SPEAKER_08 (34:12):
Oh no.
So I had the first story, andthen I said, hey, that shawl
that my great-grandmother inthat La Trope de Sabot, the very
first story, she was wearing theback of the shawl.
The shawl actually made itsappearance there.
And then I started thinkingabout the shaw where it came
from.
And I said, wait a minute, she'sa descendant of this remarkable
Algonquin woman.
Maybe I can make that shawl thatshe's wearing the same shaw that
(34:35):
belonged to her ancestor,Mimateo Wankwe.
So that is the first part itkind of built off that, kind of
blossomed off.
And so I really just startedwriting stories, and I had no
idea when I was going to finish.
And the very first book that wedid, the first attempt we did to
try to publish it, I tried topublish all the stories in the
(34:56):
first two volumes in one massivepaperback book.
Oh.
It was Amazon, the Amazonself-publishing service just
kind of spit it right back at meand said, This is too big.
Yeah.
Split it into two volumes.
So I had a volume one and avolume two.
But so there's a new kind ofinsight.
If we have a volume one and youhave a volume two, well, that
(35:18):
means you can do a volume threeand a volume four, so forth.
So that idea was like, well, nowwe have two volumes, it's going
to be a series.
It's not going to be a one-offbook.
SPEAKER_07 (35:27):
See, that was a blessing in disguise.
SPEAKER_08 (35:29):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, a crisis isyou know, you can be defined as
crisis in with two words, dangerand opportunity.
That was the opportunity.
SPEAKER_07 (35:40):
Yep.
Yep.
Agreed.
What was the most challengingpart of bringing this book to
life?
SPEAKER_08 (35:47):
It took a lot of work.
It took thousands of hours, nothundreds, thousands of hours of
work for just me.
It took thousands of hours ofwork for the artist to do that.
Trying to, you know, work withmanage the artists, their
expectations and their workschedule with other projects
(36:08):
that they had to work wasdefinitely a challenge.
Cost was a tremendous challengebecause if you're going to do a
book like this, I determinedright off in the beginning this
book is going to be done right.
So I I hired editorial services,I hired a translation service to
translate the books into French.
So that also all costs money.
(36:30):
And uh so you just can't takethe story and throw it into
Google Translate and then it'snot gonna work.
So so I didn't go the cheaproute.
And all the illustrations arebeautifully done as you
remarked.
So there's not a half stepthere, meticulously designed.
So think how much time it takesto go through and design and
approve and check 700illustrations.
(36:54):
Yeah.
So the scope of the project ismassive.
And I think that's probably thebiggest challenge.
It was just very resourceintensive.
And I think it's one of thereasons why you don't see too
many books like this.
You don't see an illustratedbook.
You see graphic novels, but thathas a different style.
(37:14):
And and they're not as big.
No, no, they're not.
And this thing is almost at tothat level of detail, but
there's a lot of text in theretoo.
Yeah.
You don't see books, illustratedbooks this size.
It's just not economical to do.
It's very difficult to pull itoff.
SPEAKER_07 (37:33):
The only other book I've seen this size is a
gentleman I had interviewed.
He hiked the Appalachian Trailat the age of 72.
And he took pictures along theway.
There has to be a thousandpictures in the book of
beautiful landscapes, scenery,animals, some of the, you know,
(37:54):
results of the falls he had anddifferent things like that.
But it's this, it's the samesize book.
It was a big book, and it wasphotographs instead of
illustrations.
And these are the only twobooks, yours and his, that have
ever seen that size.
SPEAKER_08 (38:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (38:10):
So it it's kind, it's kind of nice.
It's almost like a coffee tablebook that is portable if you
have a backpack.
SPEAKER_08 (38:19):
His book, right?
SPEAKER_07 (38:20):
Yeah.
Yeah, your yours and his becausethey they are the exact same
size.
SPEAKER_08 (38:25):
Yeah, they are big.
But here's what I gained bydoing it this way.
These stories, all together now,are ready-made to be produced
into like a limited runstreaming television show.
That's awesome.
Because it's already part of themost of the early storyboard
(38:48):
work is already done.
It's done.
Yeah.
So if it was just text and yousaid, hey, make this into a
movie, well, first you're goingto design all the characters.
Yeah.
Start going to do some roughillustrations about how the
story is going to flow in avisual medium.
Well, that part is already done.
So the first two couple of stepsare already done.
So this project is ready to gofor and to be made into a
(39:13):
streaming service.
And I am seriously going tostart working on marketing that
as such, primarily in Canada,but I'll we'll see, we'll see
where it comes.
Oh, no, no, no.
Don't chip us.
What?
Don't chip us.
Yes.
But I do think it's ready.
It's just asked to get in frontof the right person.
SPEAKER_07 (39:32):
Yeah.
And you know, I'm another happyaccident having the book laid
out the way it is.
For me as a reader, it justhelped get swept up even more
into the story.
And it kind of, you know, forfolk, I listen to a lot of
podcasts, I listen to a lot ofaudible books because it's
(39:54):
quicker and easier.
But if I want to be told thestory, I want the book in my
hand.
And I want to get swept up intothe characters and swept up into
the storylines.
And your book, it's almost likewatching a movie as you're
reading.
(40:14):
It is.
It is designed that way.
SPEAKER_08 (40:16):
And the other interesting thing about how the
books are designed is if you hadall three volumes, you'd notice
this effect more.
But the stories, remember, Itold you the whole story is
written as a circle, kind ofcircles around.
Yep.
You can jump into any volume ofthis book series, and you can
start with any story that youwant.
(40:38):
And you can read those storiesin any order that you wish, and
it'll still make sense to you.
Because every story is designedto stand on its own, even though
it will refer to characters andevents that happen in other
stories.
It's not that information is notso it's going to destroy your
enjoyment or you can't followwhat's going on in that
(40:59):
particular story.
You do not have to read thesestories like in order.
You can read them in any orderthat you wish.
And the fun effect of that is ifyou start reading the stories
all over the place in anyvolume, it's really like you're
taking you're taking littlepieces of glass and you're
pasting on the wall and you'rebuilding this mosaic one story
(41:20):
at a time.
Yeah.
As you complete all threevolumes in any order that you
wish, a much grander story willemerge naturally from that.
And that'll that effect willhappen no matter what story you
start with.
So that's the part of the magicof the way these books are
designed.
SPEAKER_07 (41:38):
Very cool.
Was there a story, a particularstory, or even a piece of a
story that was especiallyemotional for you to write or to
write about?
SPEAKER_08 (41:54):
Well, this of course we're only audio, so everybody
can't see, but I'll let you lookat it.
This is the cover of the fourthbook.
SPEAKER_07 (42:01):
Oh, beautiful Campfires in the Sky.
SPEAKER_08 (42:04):
Yes.
So it's our file.
So maybe what I could do is Icould read this one section of
it.
Sure.
This so as I'm turning to thepage, well, I'll set your
readers up.
So in this story, Campfires ofthe Sky, the fourth book that's
going to be coming out nextyear, Marie Mateya Weawagwe is
(42:26):
retelling the story of theattack what happened when she
was a young woman.
And she's telling that story toher granddaughter.
And in this section, I'm goingto read to you, it's going to be
the part where MarimateaWeawagwe discovers that her
(42:47):
husband, not only was herhusband died, but she quickly
discovered right afterward thather children were gone.
And this is going to describehow she felt.
And this was very emotional.
And it also shows you that theseall these stories have different
tones.
Stories in this book series arethoughtful, you know, profound a
(43:07):
little profound, make you think,philosophical.
Some of these stories are justplain farcical.
They're kind of simple.
That's okay.
But that's how real life is.
It has different changes.
This is this has sections of thestory that are probably a little
bit darker because we're talkingabout a real event and it was
rather tragic.
(43:28):
So what happens is that whenMarine Bate Weawagwe heard that
her husband was mortallywounded, she left her care the
children in the care of hersister.
And she ran to her husband whojust died as as she got there.
So I'm going to pick up fromthere and start reading.
Okay.
(43:49):
After this is her narrating.
After I left my children in thecare of my sister, I ran to
where Asababish had fallen inthe fighting.
But he died of his wounds,moments.
Before I arrived, Asababish dieddefending your grandfather
Pierre, and he himself took theblow that was meant for Pierre.
(44:10):
As I stood there in shock, Iremembered my children, and I
ran back to my house.
When I got there, they weregone, along with my sister
Kahenta.
At that moment, I realized thatI had lost everything.
(44:31):
My children, my husband, and mysister.
There was so much emotion withinme, without any outlet or way to
express how I felt.
I collapsed to the floor andjust stared into the dim
(44:53):
emptiness in front of me.
Her granddaughter responds, Iwish.
I I don't know how or how Icould understand.
Her grandmother responded, Ipray that you never do
understand, my dear one.
(45:15):
The grandmother gently placedboth her hands on Marguerite's
cheeks.
I was only a bit older than youare now.
And up until that moment, I wasa naive and innocent girl who
knew nothing of violence or war.
That innocent girl, that girlthat was me, died on the floor
(45:37):
of that empty longhouse, and Ihave mourned for her for the
rest of my life.
And kind of it'll you'll you getto see it.
I'm sorry, everybody else, butthat's her collapsing on the
floor of her longhouse while thechildren and their sister gone.
SPEAKER_07 (45:54):
Yeah.
Holy cow.
SPEAKER_08 (45:58):
So that's an upcoming vibe that'd be coming
up next year.
SPEAKER_07 (46:03):
Were there moments like that when you're writing
that, or maybe even writinganother another story where you
felt that the the folks you werewriting about were guiding you?
SPEAKER_08 (46:15):
Oh, absolutely.
All through this process, allthrough this process.
I remember very early on when wewere doing the initial character
sketches for Rimatei Weawagwe,old grandmother, my ancestor.
And at the time I had found thispicture of my great-grandmother,
uh Izala Mirny, at her wedding.
(46:37):
And on her in her weddingpicture, she was wearing just on
her neck a little necklace andhad a small cross.
And she was wearing that in thepicture.
And as I was looking at it, Iheard this voice in my head as
I'm looking at this picture ofReima Tiwiwagwe.
And the voice said, I want youto draw me with that cross.
(47:00):
And so if you look at theillustrations of Marima Tiwagwe,
notice that she's wearing anecklace and she has a small
cross.
SPEAKER_07 (47:08):
Wow.
SPEAKER_08 (47:10):
So that's one example.
SPEAKER_07 (47:12):
Yeah.
Give me another one.
SPEAKER_08 (47:15):
Another one.
Okay.
I believe that physically, Ithink we physically captured her
essence.
I believe that she tended to beon the shorter side.
I believe that she was verystrong and loving, you know,
strong in the sense ofresilience.
I also believe that she liked tocarve.
She liked to carve wood.
(47:36):
And that she was an artist.
And she was also a healer.
And it was also very importantto her to pass on her Algonquin
heritage to her grandchildren.
It was very important to herthat she thought of herself as
Algonquin even after she marrieda French settler.
And she never lost that feelingand that part pride in her own
(47:57):
culture.
And she wanted to pass it on toher children.
So those are things that I thinkare definitely in there.
The other aspect I felt verystrongly inspired by was her
this was her first husband,Asababish.
The way he is drawn in this bookis that he is shown as a very
gentle and kind man andcompassionate man, a brave man,
(48:20):
but he wasn't necessarily amighty warrior, but he was a
very good man.
And that's how he is portrayedin these stories as well.
SPEAKER_07 (48:29):
What what do you hope readers feel when they
finish one of the oldgrandmother stories in any of
the volumes?
Or maybe even when they finishall of them.
SPEAKER_08 (48:40):
I think it's better to say when you finished all of
them.
I think that you're going tofeel like you've been immersed
inside this magical world ofstory and you're going to feel
like you're part of it.
You're also going to feel likeyou're in you're still within
it, and you can pick up thestory again and start over.
Like a story doesn't really end.
(49:02):
Definitely one way you're goingto feel.
And I also think that if you arenot French Canadian or you're
not a descendant of MarieMateoagwa and you read these
books, you're going to feelinspired to research your own
family heritage as well.
SPEAKER_07 (49:15):
What have you gotten out of this whole experience?
I mean, you're ahead of all ofus because you've already gotten
that fourth volume written.
So you know the next piece tothis.
But what has this meant to you?
SPEAKER_08 (49:30):
Well, I think, like I said, you know, earlier, I
started out feeling like I wasan outsider for these heritage.
Uh-huh.
I wasn't Algonquin.
In fact, I wrote introduction inthe very beginning of my first
two volumes, says, hey, youknow, I just want to let you
know I'm not claiming membershipin an Algonquin tribe.
And, you know, and they havethey have every right to
determine who is is and is notpart of their community.
(49:53):
And that and that's still true.
But I kind of regret it nowbecause I wrote it as an
outsider, and I don't feel likean outsider to that community
anymore.
I've been very much evolved.
That's true.
So I think feeling thatconnection and rediscovering
that Algonquin heritage, and Ithink in that sense, I am
fulfilling the desires and thewish for my that my old
(50:16):
grandmother, Mimi Taywi Awagwe,had for her children and her
descendants, that we would notforget that we are also
Algonquin.
So I think that's one aspect.
And I think it also ties in withwith the French Canadian and the
Canadian side.
I, you know, I talked about howI felt like I was a welcome
stranger up in Quebec.
(50:36):
Now that I know that I am aCanadian citizen, although I'm
still working on thedocumentation to get that
documented, but I am.
Right.
You know, last time I visitedCanada, I said, you know what, I
belong here too.
So I think I I have finishedwith a greater understanding of
my ancestors and my place.
I think also I have a sense ofbelonging in both those
(51:00):
communities that I did not havebefore.
SPEAKER_07 (51:04):
That's wonderful.
So after the fourth installmentcomes out, will there be a
fifth?
Or do you think you may move onto different type of
storytelling or explore otheraspects of your family or your
heritage?
SPEAKER_08 (51:17):
Well, I mean, I do have this, I had this really
good story idea for that Greekmythology, which was something I
started way, way, way back andnever finished it.
But I don't know if I'm evergoing to get to it, to be quite
honest.
I have ideas for two other booksthat I could put in the old
grandmother's tree series.
But it's very resourceintensive.
(51:38):
And at this point, I'm I'm kindof reached the end of my
resources that I can put intoit.
So now that these four bookswill be done, the next thing is
to get it shopped around so thatit can be taken up to the next
level.
And that's really where myeffort needs to go.
If they do, if and when they arepicked up for a series, and that
I can get a little bit of theflow of cash coming back to me
(52:02):
that'll help resource, I will doother books.
But at this point, for financialreasons, I can't really do any
more right now.
So that's why I really have tosay, take a pause.
It's a pretty good story as itis.
It's kind of has a sense ofcompleteness as it is.
So I think it's time to justtake it to that, focus on taking
(52:22):
it to that next step, whichwould be a film or a TV show.
And that's where my effort'sgoing to be.
SPEAKER_07 (52:53):
And it's when I can take the time to sit down and
just get swept up in it andmarvel at the pictures that just
so perfectly reflect the writtenword.
SPEAKER_08 (53:04):
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, Natasha did a wonderfuljob on those.
SPEAKER_07 (53:08):
So, Joseph, thank you so much for all of your
time.
SPEAKER_08 (53:11):
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
And I would just, if I may, justinvite people to look up my
website, oldcrammotherstree.com.
SPEAKER_07 (53:18):
Yep.
SPEAKER_08 (53:19):
And in there you'll find my biography, Natasha's
biography.
You'll find backgroundinformation from the first from
the research of Norman Lavalliabout Rimate Wiague.
And I also have a characterWikipedia.
So if you really, if you go tothe website, you can read a
character Wikipedia, give a lotof background information, and
(53:41):
also little tidbits that are notin the books.
SPEAKER_07 (53:44):
So I will make sure to have that linked in the show
notes.
SPEAKER_08 (53:48):
Yes.
Yes.
So a lot on that on thatwebsite.
So I encourage you to take alook.
And you can also order the bookson Amazon.
SPEAKER_07 (53:57):
Perfect.
I'll have links to those aswell.
SPEAKER_08 (53:59):
Great.
Great.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_07 (54:01):
All right, Joseph.
You have a great night.
SPEAKER_08 (54:03):
Uh, you too.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_07 (54:12):
What's up to you from this conversation?
I love the interest anddedication he has for
researching his lineage.
He went back decades and manygenerations to fact-find and
bring his ancestors to life.
But my favorite part of Joseph'sstory is the deeper sense of
(54:33):
inclusion and connection he nowfeels with both his Canadian and
Native American heritage.
You can hear it in his voicethat the feeling of belonging
and truly understanding thespirits of those that came
before him really have an impacton him.
If you're interested in learningmore about Joseph's work,
(54:54):
picking up any or all of hisbooks before the fourth
installment comes out, jump downto the show notes for all the
links.
And while you're there, don'tforget to connect with me.
All links to my socials areincluded as well.
And there's a new featureavailable to connect with me.
(55:14):
Use the drop-me-a-text link atthe beginning of the show notes
to say hi or share your thoughtson any of the episodes.
I'd love to hear from you.
As always, thanks for listening,and I'll see you in two weeks.
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