about the book
This compelling book doesn’t sugarcoat the events in the story. It is about two brothers who are falling through the cracks. They are Métis, aboriginals of the First Nations, Canadian native Indians. Historically, their culture was destroyed by the European settlers’ attempts to assimilate them in a Christian way of life. Today, their entire civilization is ignored by Canadian society.
Pete is the oldest brother. He is a gang thug with the Tribal Warriors and lives of life of violence. The Warriors takes advantage of his rage against the world by using him as muscle to make sure their customers pay what they owe. Joey is his younger brother. Pete looks after him as much as he can but he can only do so much. Dad is long gone. Mom is a negligent heroin addict who has brought home an abusive boyfriend, Dennis.
When Pete’s girlfriend tells him she is pregnant, he abandons her just like his own father did his mother. When he comes home to find Joey sitting in an empty apartment after his mom and Dennis pawn all their belongings to buy more drugs, Pete’s anger explodes. He shoots Dennis and kills him.
Pete goes to jail where racial strife is constant. Joey goes into the Alberta foster care system to be bounced from home to home and is badly bullied. He runs away and ends up living on the streets. Scooped up the Tribal Warriors, he soon follows in Pete’s footsteps.
After Pete is injured in a prison brawl, he’s given a choice. He can go back to maximum security or he can go into an Edmonton medium security centre and join the Search for Your Warrior program. There he will face his disturbing past as well as the wrongs done to his ancestors. Participating in traditional healing circles and ceremonies, he hopes to find his path to peace and a second chance for himself and his brother.
This book is heavy with historical details that explain the trauma to the Canada’s aboriginal people and offers readers a pathway to healing. Although the original comics were filled with rage-filled language, this graphic novel has been edited using symbols instead, making it more appropriate for any reader.
about the author
Patti Laboucane-Benson knows the statistics all too well. Fifty-seven percent of the Canadian First Nation children live below poverty level, and many of the mothers are as young as fifteen. Unemployment, poverty, school dropouts, alcoholism, drugs, gangs, violence, abuse, and shattered families are the everyday problems she has devoted herself to exposing. She, too, is Métis, her heritage is Canadian Native American, and she was born in St. Paul, Alberta, in Canada.
Patti is the Director of Research, Training, and Communication at Native Counselling Services of Alberta (NCSA and has been with the organization for more than twenty years. She has a Ph.D. in Human Ecology, focusing on Aboriginal Family Resilience, and her doctoral research explored how providing healing opportunities for historic trauma experienced by the First Nations people helps them gain resilience in their families and communities. She has worked extensively with gang-affiliated and incarcerated aboriginal men.
For her work, Patti has won The Pierre Elliot Trudeau scholarship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship. She is also the recipient of the Aboriginal Role Model of Alberta Award for Education, the Legal Aid of Alberta Access to Justice Award, and the Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship.
In explaining the title of her award-winning graphic novel, The Outside Circle, she shares the explanation from an elder in the book: The way their communities were set up was like a circle. In the middle were the children. The Elders surrounded the children. They were the teachers. Surrounding the Elders were the women. They kept the home fires burning. The outside circle held the Warriors, ensuring everyone’s safety. Patti goes on to say that the circle has been broken for generations as a result of laws, racism, and social systems.
Her goal was to write the book for her son’s generation. Hopefully the graphic novel will be used all across Canada in high schools and colleges. “There should not be this divide between First People and the rest of Canada. We’ve got to come together and work together.”
Patti and her family make their home in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada.
Sources:
Book page: House of Anansi
Book page: Amazon
Author biography: Goodreads
Article on author and illustrator: CBC News
about the illustrator
Kelly Mellings is an art director, an illustrator, a designer, a comic artist, and the co-owner of the acclaimed animation and design firm, Pulp Studios. His list of awards goes on and on. The man knows how to draw!
Kelly got his formal training in art and design from the University of Alberta, and has taught at the City Arts Center and the Art Gallery of Alberta.
The job of doing the illustrations for The Outside Circle written by Métis writer Patti Laboucane-Benson was a very difficult one. Like many Canadians, he was unaware of the Métis heritage and did not realize how the culture of the aboriginal Canadian Indians is in turmoil. This book delves into the repercussions and possible solutions.
In order to better understand what he was trying to convey in his illustrations, Kelly immersed himself in the current aboriginal culture. He went to the remote community of Tlicho in the Northwest Territory and taught drawing classes to the Indian children. He also participated in sweats and smudge ceremonies and toured the former residential school all Indians were forced to attend.
“I was just imagining my own daughter being taken away from home, from her culture and being yelled at like that,” he said. In the schools, the children were treated as stupid because they didn’t understand the language or hadn’t had previous schooling appropriate to the grades they were placed in. “You don’t realize how close to home it is and how recently all that stuff has happened.” It put a lot of pressure on Kelly, as a white man, to do justice to Pete’s story. Kelly took a long time doing the illustrations.
Kelly lives with his family in Edmonton, Canada. His interests include reading, comic books, pop culture, indie music, collecting art books, keeping healthy, and his amazing family.
Sources:
Book page: House of Anansi
Book page: Amazon
Article on author and illustrator: CBC News
Illustrator profile: Linked In
read more!
Ghetto Brother : Warrior to Peacemaker by Julian Voloj
This graphic novel relates the true story of Benjy Melendez. He is the founder of the notorious Ghetto Brothers gang, known not for its drugs and violence, but for its efforts to bring peace to Benjy’s ravaged neighborhood.
Yummy : The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri
In 1994 in the crime-riddled Roseland neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side, fourteen-year-old Shavon Dean is killed by a stray bullet during a gang shooting. Holding the gun was was teddy-bear toting Robert “Yummy” Sandifer. Learn about the three days after the shooting and how the system failed this eleven-year-old boy.