Inconvenient Skin / nayêhtâwan wasakay written by Shane Koyczan, Cree, and now available in paperback, is a dual language English and Cree poetry and art book. It includes the artwork by Kent Monkman, of Cree ancestry; Joseph Sánchez, a leader in Indigenous and Chicano arts since the 1970s; Jim Logan, who grew up in a Metis household; and Nadia Kwandibens Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) from the Animakee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation. The Cree translation is provided by Solomon Ratt. With Inconvenient Skin / nayêhtâwan wasakay, Koyczan hopes to continue the conversations after the polarizing 150 years celebration of Canada as a nation. He has learned through his experiences traversing the silence with his father, a residential school survivor, that there were chapters missing in his life and with this current work he hopes to heal a wound. In this work Koyczan’s 48 point poem resonates with words and images that prods the normalcy of memory, apologies, promises, trust, faith, love, togetherness, education, culture, forgiveness, history, values, future, progress, and balance. This poem and the parody, folksiness and gender fluidity in the artworks and photos give power and strength to what is unsaid in this 150 year history – injustice, ignorance, ill-faith, poverty... It is a call to be better than this, to hear the drum, to respect dignity, to give Indigenous culture its identity and not shed this off like an inconvenient skin.
