Black Water. Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the YearA Quill & Quire Book of the YearA CBC Books Nonfiction Book of the YearA Maclean's 20 Books You Need to Read this Winter"An instant classic that demands to be read with your heart openand with a perspective widened to allow in a whole new understanding of family, identity and love." -Cherie DimalineIn this bestselling memoir, a son who grew up awayfrom his Indigenous culture takes his Cree father on a trip to the familytrapline and finds that revisiting the past not only heals old wounds butcreates a new futureThe son of a Cree father and a white mother, David A.
Robertson grew up with virtually no awareness of his Indigenous roots. Hisfather, Dulas-or Don, as he became known-lived on the trapline in the bush inManitoba, only to be transplanted permanently to a house on the reserve, wherehe couldn't speak his language, Swampy Cree, in school with his friends unlessin secret. David's mother, Beverly, grew up in a small Manitoba town that had noIndigenous people until Don arrived as the new United Church minister.
Theymarried and had three sons, whom they raised unconnected to their Indigenous history. David grew up without his father's teachings or any knowledgeof his early experiences. All he had was "blood memory": the pieces of hisidentity ingrained in the fabric of his DNA, pieces that he has spent a lifetimeputting together. It has been the journeyof a young man becoming closer to who he is, who his father is and who they aretogether, culminating in a trip back to the trapline to reclaim theirconnection to the land.
Black Water is a memoir about intergenerational trauma andhealing, about connection and about how Don's life informed David's own. Facingup to a story nearly erased by the designs of history, father and son journeytogether back to the trapline at Black Water and through the past to create anew future.