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The Reason You Walk
- Narrated by: Wab Kinew
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Entertainment & Celebrities
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Publisher's Summary
A moving father-son reconciliation told by a charismatic First Nations broadcaster, musician, and activist.
When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who'd raised him. The Reason You Walk spans the year 2012, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school.
An intriguing doubleness marks The Reason You Walk, a reference to an Anishinaabe ceremonial song. Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief, and an urban activist. His father, Tobasonakwut, was both a beloved traditional chief and a respected elected leader who engaged directly with Ottawa. Internally divided, his father embraced both traditional native religion and Catholicism, the religion that was inculcated into him at the residential school where he was physically and sexually abused.
In a grand gesture of reconciliation, Kinew's father invited the Roman Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to a Sundance ceremony in which he adopted him as his brother. Kinew writes affectingly of his own struggles in his 20s to find the right path, eventually giving up a self-destructive lifestyle to passionately pursue music and martial arts. From his unique vantage point, he offers an inside view of what it means to be an educated aboriginal living in a country that is just beginning to wake up to its aboriginal history and living presence.
Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.
Number-one Globe and Mail nonfiction best seller
A Toronto Star nonfiction best seller
Finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize
Shortlisted for the Ontario Library Service North 2017 Louise de Kiriline Award for Nonfiction
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Crystal McLeod
- 2019-04-24
Seeing a New Side of Colonialism
Read this book twice, and skimmed through it again last month - Absolutely loved it! Each time I read it, I see something new in Kinew's memoir that enlightens and surprises me. Wab Kinew paints an incredible story of his and his father's life experiences. As a colonial Canadian, this memoir provided me rare insight into First Nations culture, knowledge, and perspectives. The abhorrence of residential school, intergenerational trauma, and continuing racism in mainstream Canadian society are present in this story. However, Kinew masterfully presents these terrible moments as apart of a larger, uplifting storyline of healing and reconciliation.
2 people found this helpful
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- Jeanette M.
- 2020-10-03
Powerful Story
A really beautiful walk through the evolution of both Wab and his father. I feel like I learned a lot about Canada and the Anishnaabe people as well as the bit of Ontario I lived in for almost a decade, all while being carried in the personal, yet universal stories of family.
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- Rhonda Gebert
- 2020-09-02
powerful. raw. inspiring.
to share your journey in such an authentic way I know will resonate with and help those in need of healing as we all move to reconcile that within us because of what happened to us as individualsand to our families and ancestors...and as we all move toward a collective reconciliation in the spirit of love. Thank you. Maarsii. Miigwetch.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2020-08-10
A must-read.
What a wonderful journey that we went on with you! As we all walk on the road to reconciliation the small acts in this book teach us the most important lesson. Compassion, forgiveness and love for all beings is the journey of life. Thank you for this message.
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- Missy
- 2020-03-19
Amazingly life changing!!
Words can not express how this book has given me new perspective to us as indigenous people. Ahehee