How an escaped Albertan bison herd inspired Conor Kerr's latest novel about resisting colonial structures

The Next Chapter18:53Bison roam Downtown Edmonton in Prairie Edge

Mtis-Ukrainian author Conor Kerr's latest novel takes inspiration from a real-life news story. In Prairie Edge, two distant Mtis cousins release bison into Edmonton's urban green spaces in an act of reclamation.

The idea for Conor Kerr's latest novel spurred from the story of a herd of bison that broke free from a farm and ventured through the Albertan city of Camrose in 2010. In Prairie Edge, two Mtis cousins seek to reclaim Indigenous knowledge in part, through the bison and their historic ties to the land.

Prairie Edgeis on the 2024 Giller Prize shortlist.

Isidore "Ezzy" Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey iscynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Ezzy is simply devoted to his distant cousin. So when Greyconcocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzyis along for the ride one that has devastating, fatal consequences.

Kerr is a Mtis/Ukrainian writer who hails from many prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the novels Old Gods and Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the ReLit award the same year. Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta.

Kerr spoke with The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan about how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people learn more about the land they live on.

You open with a prologue and it's the late 1870s during the Mtis bison hunt. Take me back to that moment and describe how significant that hunt was for the Mtis in that time.

I've heard some stories from some elders who had direct family members who were participants on some of these last hunts where Mtis hunting parties would leave on these hunting expeditions where they'd join in with other communities along the way and they'd follow the bison herd south. One of the ways that I thought about the idea of the Prairie edge was with this creation known as the Medicine Line, the American and Canadian border, and how back in the day you could free flow across all of that and then with the inception of the American Calvary's push against the Sioux in the West as well as more North-West Mounted Police coming in on the Canadian side, this line became more pronounced and you weren't able to necessarily cross this. As the bison herds dwindled, I thought, what a depressing idea that as this group of Mtis are following this bison herd south, the elders know that they'll never see the bison again?

By the first chapter, you've jumped to contemporary time and you introduce us to these two Mtis characters who propelled the story forward, Ezzy Desjarlais and Grey Ginther. Ezzy in particular, he grew up in the city in foster care, hasn't graduated high school, steals to get by and done a short stint in prison for minor offences. Why did you give Ezzy that lived experience?

I think that's a pretty common experience for a lot of young Mtis men who have gone in and out of basically systems their entire life, these colonial systems, whether it's the child welfare system which essentially then becomes a pathway into the prison system. People who are like Ezzy in particular, who's not a bad guy but he's been placed into this world where he's essentially been told that he's less than constantly within this space and that he's waiting to try to figure out what is going on. He doesn't know how to really take that initiative himself, he's never been granted that type of confidence he's essentially just hanging out and seeing what life brings him.

For Grey, who's charging ahead with this plan to release the bison into the streets, what do the bison symbolize to her?

The bison are a return to a different governance structure, they're a return to the idea of there's also kind of a joke in there around this "#BisonBack", but really what I'm writing in is the idea that we talk about in Indigenous community around LandBack. Our idea of a concept of LandBack from my understanding is a return to a governance structure that institutes Indigenous knowledge and the matriarchal and two-spirit ways of knowing and running a space. So when you have bison return to a landscape, especially in urban space like Edmonton, there's a return back to an Indigenous governance structure and a lifestyle in a society that we necessarily haven't seen yet. For Grey, this is actual LandBack in action by the restoration of bison in the spaces that they would have historically always been in.

This is actual LandBack in action by the restoration of bison in the spaces that they would have historically always been in.- Conor Kerr

What did Ezzy, who's a descendant of the Papaschase Cree, learn about his ancestors and their story at this rally?

Yeah, I feel there's a lot of that context and talking in Edmonton, especially as someone like myself. My great, great grandmother was born on the Papaschase Cree nation and then had to leave to the Bush north of Saint Paul, Alberta after. Then they came in and burned down all the homesteads and got everyone out of there. There's a constant growing up and learning about this knowledge because you don't hear about this still. It's still a very under-talked about thing and even in Edmonton itself where there's a bit of talk about it but really like the vast majority of people have no concept that the majority of the south side of Edmonton was a First Nations community after the treaty negotiations and of course before it was always the First Nations community... I feel like a lot of people grow up in these spaces, whether they're Indigenous or non-Indigenous and don't have knowledge of the land and what really exists here.

I feel like a lot of people grow up in these spaces, whether they're Indigenous or non-Indigenous and don't have knowledge of the land and what really exists here.- Conor Kerr

Ezzy ends up in rehab, he befriends an elder there who teaches him Mtis beading, shares stories about Ezzy's family and grandfather. How do these cultural knowledge and traditional practices contribute specifically here to the characters journey of self discovery and and healing?

There's kind of an interesting component behind a lot of this because for a lot of Indigenous people the only place that you can actually learn about some of your own culture and history and knowledge is in Western institutions, whether that's rehab, whether that's jail, whether that's post-secondary. There's just way more access within these Western institutions than for a guy like Ezzy who's just growing up all throughout these kinds of spaces and the access that he gets to learning more about his culture and knowledge is framed within theseWestern contexts.

I was thinking about how much activism and the forms of protests that are in Prairie Edge. How effective are they in creating lasting change?

The idea behind a lot of this is really that sense of a collective movement whereas people are taking up more of these ideas around like LandBack, working together to make a significant change, to show how we can actually press against policy, to press against the government-imposed restrictions and those kinds of things. Honestly, if you think about where Indigenous relations and this work was 30 years ago comparatively to today, it's changed a lot. But at the same time, I remember an elder telling me one time that if we're waiting for the government to make change for us, if we're waiting for Western institutions to make change for us, that we're going to be waiting forever.

If we're waiting for Western institutions to make change for us, that we're going to be waiting forever.- Conor Kerr

That's not going to happen, real change isn't going to come from the University of Alberta or the government of Alberta, the Canadian government.It's going to come from within community. It's going to come from future generations of youth who know themselves, who know what it means to be Indigenous, to embrace that and there's so much hope for that future, but there's a lot of work that's been said in the groundwork behind this from generations and generations of matriarchs, of two-spirit peoples, of men who fought constantly for a future for us, for me to be able to talk to you today around all this.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.