THE BATTLEFORDS — Michelle Good, author, lawyer and activist from British Columbia with ties to Red Pheasant First Nation, realised she was good at writing when she was about 10.
“I was one of those little kids that walked around with a journal under their arm,” Good told the News-Optimist/Sasktoday.ca in an interview prior to a March 28 event at the North Battleford Public Library.
“So, I was journaling, really when I was maybe 11, but certainly no older than that. So, it’s always been a part of how I relate to the world and express, and it’s also been a huge part of my work,” Good added.
But Good also believes that writers are born, not made, noting that there is a certain demeanour that writers have.
“Writers observe, we consider, we record.”
While Good found power in her artistic communication in elementary school, she also realized she wanted to be a lawyer.
“When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a lawyer, I thought that would be very cool. But of course, I considered law in the context of justice, which of course, it isn’t.”
Good was a Sixties Scoop kid. She spent five years in the foster care system, aged out at 18, and didn’t go to law school until she was 40. She was, however, an activist for her entire adult life, and by sheer coincidence, luck, or miracle, she was introduced to her mentor.
“Just by hook or by crook, by luck, by opportunity, I was introduced to a very important Indigenous leader in B.C., and I went to work with his organization,” Good said, speaking about Chief George Manuel, the first president of the National Indian Brotherhood.
“But I wanted to make a transition in my life from working with Indigenous people and just doing that work from a different perspective,” Good said about her eventual 20-some-year foray into law.
“I was thinking, ‘I wanna do this, if I don’t do it now, I won’t,’ so I did it.”
The Attraction of Law
And it was the notion of justice that attracted Good to law. The notion of protecting people had interested her since her youth.
“Obviously, I was a little kid, my perception of it would have been less sophisticated, but that was my notion. And it really wasn’t until I got to law school that it has nothing to do with that at all. Law is really just a set of rules. Law is not about justice, it’s about order.
“You follow the rules, or you don’t, and if you don’t, you run into trouble, period. That’s it. That’s law in a nutshell,” Good said.
“There is room to improve things through the law, but it doesn't end there … we have achieved victories through the legal system that we couldn’t have achieved politically at the time,” Good said, which included recognition of aboriginal title, aboriginal rights, and entrenchment of those rights in the constitution.
“Although it really doesn’t make any difference … the systems that were formed through the colonial agenda remain today, and nothing is going to change substantially until those things are revisited and changed, and that’s, you know, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
To Good, that change would look like a recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction, creating a third order of government with a direct relationship with the federal government and establishing equalization payments to Indigenous governments.
“This country has been enriched by what has been taken by Indigenous land and Indigenous resources, without any consideration for Indigenous people. And so that needs to be recognized, and there has to be something like equalization payments to Indigenous governments.”
“Not just a pseudo-governing system,” Good said, “we need to be a third order of government.”
But Good recognizes a junction between storytelling and law.
“In litigation, what you’re doing is you’re basically standing in front of the judge and trying to convince them that your story, your interpretation of the facts, the law, the events, are stronger than your opponent's. And so, it really is storytelling in a different way, in a different context.”
The Creative Process and its Outcomes
Good has used that to tell the story of Indigenous people and survivors of residential schools in her novel, Five Little Indians.
“There are people that write in the context of art for the sake of art, and I don’t have any issue with that; it’s beautiful, but that’s not the way I approach it. My creative work is very focused on educating and making a point, and clarifying and creating deeper understanding in readers,” Good said.
“I get literally hundreds of emails from readers, and they say the most amazing things, like, ‘I just had no idea, but now I’ll never forget.’
“This one woman who wrote and said, ‘this book made me ashamed of myself, and I’m going to change the way that I think about and interact with Indigenous people, thank you for making me a better person.’”
Her novel has had an impact that she never dreamed of, sending ripples across the country and around the world that have hundreds of thousands of people reading her book.
“The success of the book is beyond my wildest expectations … I thought it was going to be a niche book for a niche audience. I thought, some people are going to pick it, and they’re going to think about it, but it’s going to be people who already have an interest in this.”
Good spent nine years writing her book while operating her law firm and representing survivors. Then she entered the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of British Columbia.
“My thesis for the MFA program was the first draft of the novel. And another reason it took that long is this is not a subject that you take on lightly … it is such a sensitive subject, and it had such a potential to be triggering and, in a way, hurtful to survivors, which is, of course, the last thing that I would want it to be.”
Five Little Indians
So Good had to get her novel, Five Little Indians, just right.
“And so I knew I had to get it just right, and that took a long time, and that was OK, you have to have the right tone. You have to tell the story in a way that’s authentic, that is reflective, but is not, you know, as somebody a while back coined the phrase, trauma porn, right?”
Good is mindful to balance both the story that she wants to tell and the story of the characters that are fully formed human beings. Human beings that have trauma and psychological injury, yes, but also have laughter, joy, rage and every human feature,
“I think that’s another reason this book resonates, because I took the time,” Good said, adding that she’s often told that her characters stay with people.
“That’s the best thing you could possibly want.”
Many of Good’s own experiences inform her novel, including her experiences in foster care, racism, or ageing out of the system.
“When you age out of foster care, that’s it. It doesn't matter if you've got 10 cents in your pocket, that’s it, you’re on your own … I’m fortunate in the sense that I understand what that’s like, and I’m able to articulate that in the form of character development.
“Something needs not be factual to be true, and that’s what people found in this book, they’ve found an aspect of truth about the residential school legacy,” Good said, speaking on her book that she believes would never have been so successful had it been a book of poetry or another form of writing.
“I will do this work until I die or until my fingers fall off or I’m no longer able to keep my brains together. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, the implements of what I refer to as the colonial tool kit are something I’ll write about forever.”
Good, at the time of the interview, had recently returned from a two-week trip to France, launching the French translation of her novel at the Canadian embassy in Paris.
“Going to France really was a phenomenal experience. It just made me really, really, really think, I thought about my mother so much during that time. In one lifetime, I think, as I said before, we’ve gone from nobody talking about it, a complete brick wall in terms of communicating about this, to speaking about it on the world stage. It’s phenomenal,” Good said.
“We’re moving forward.”
