Review of This Place: 150 Years Retold

Each month, we like to feature a review of an informative graphic novel, to give readers a glimpse into the many ways people can use graphic sequential storytelling (read: comics and graphic novels) to convey factual, research-based content.

To celebrate Native American heritage month, we are featuring This Place: 150 Years Retold, a beautiful collection of 10 comics in a single volume that conveys the history of indigenous peoples and their interactions with an abusive national government and dominant population. We did go a bit rogue though: this book is filled with stories of the, indigenous people in Canada, not the US. Still, it allows us to reflect on the differences and similarities in the two experiences.

The book is organized as an edited volume. 10 writers worked with 10 illustrators to tell 10 stories about real and fictional indigenous persons experiencing historical moments, representative practices, and speculative futures. Each story differs in the writing: some tell the story via dialogue, others via narration, others giving voice to spirits.

Each also differs in artistic style, conveying different feelings and experiences. “Tilted ground” tells the story of the author’s ancestor, a chief that defied prohibitions on potlatch ceremonies, in a 1980s palette of bright pastel colors and loose line art that enhance feelings of connection between members of the community. “Annie of Red River” looks like a traditional comic, with realistic drawings of persons with comic styles to suggest movement, action, etc., akin to a superhero comic. The moody colors and often-absent panel borders in “Red Clouds” convey the interconnection between people and spirits in many traditional teachings.

While people often focus on the horrible violence and forced actions governments used against indigenous peoples, I found myself most fascinated by the various bureaucratic or administrative ways that the Canadian disempowered the first peoples. My favorite story was “Peggy”, about Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow, the most decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian history. He served in World War I, and while abroad he was promoted, decorated, and lauded by fellow soldiers, officers, and civilians, experiencing rewards for his efforts and feeling fully valued as a person. Upon returning home, though, he was denied loans to improve his farm and other benefits that were given to all non-indigenous veterans. Indigenous persons in the US had very similar experiences; so did African Americans returning from service to a country rife with formal and informal segregation and inequalities. This movement from communal respect to abuse inspired early efforts in the US Civil Rights movement, and it similarly spurred Peggy to organize protest actions and enter government to improve the rights of his community.

Importantly, many of the writers and artists are people of indigenous heritage themselves, often telling stories of their own family members or stories they learned from their families in years past. This means the storytelling is from the perspective of the first peoples’ experiences and histories, rather than the official histories in Canadian government archives or school textbooks. Their language is often written directly in the speech bubbles, with translations in each panel. Rituals are elevated in feeling and experience through colors, artistic gestures, and descriptions. Stories of heroes are told as we often think of hero stories—in comics. This collection, therefore, by its structure and creation, retells history from a different perspective, with new heroes, new voices, new views.

Buy it here while supporting independent bookstores.

NB: I am not a person of indigenous heritage. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, in territory once populated by first peoples who were forced from their lands by US politicians, laws, and peoples, leading to catastrophic outcomes for the indigenous population of the time and their descendants. While I do not know if my direct ancestors participated in the forced removal or many other abuses Native Americans endured, they and I benefit from a privileged position in US society as a result of those abuses and other inequities.