Wabanang, Daughter of the Stars

In the winter of 1876, a baby is born to Anishinaabe parents along the trapline in the northern Ontario wilderness. Seventy five years later, her granddaughter is seeking information about her grandmother's life, why her family is so fractured, and what part the residential school played in the dysfunction and estrangement which has shaped her own life. To that end, twenty--two year old Janey enlists the help of a hypnotist who regresses Janey back to a time when Indigenous people in Canada lived off the land, supported each other and raised their children without outside interference. But when settlers began to arrive and residential schools were established, all that changed. In her hypnotic state, Janey is able to follow her grandmother, Wabanang (Morning Star) as a child, as a residential school student and as a medicine woman for her people. But the seeds of distrust and fear sown along the way are destroying her family. Estranged from her mother and living with her only relative, Janey must find her own way through the smoke of confusion to discover who she is. Although this is a work of fiction. The author has drawn on her own family's history, ceremonies and visions from her own life, stories shared with her by respected elders, as well as many years of researching her own and other families.… (more)