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Miss Chief Eagle Testickle
In Volume 2 of The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle Kent Monkman and Gisele Gordon pick up where they left off in Volume 1 of their protagonist’s history. Miss Chief Eagle Testickle had her first encounter with the newcomers from across the water by the end of the first installment. In spite of some misgivings as to their lack of harmony with the natural world, Testickle quite enjoyed her time with the white men they encountered.
However they had been warned by their spirit friends to be careful because more and more of them were on their way and they could prove harmful to the world. While Miss Chief Eagle Testickle still has many pleasurable encounters with the newcomers, it soon becomes obvious that they are completely out of step with the natural world.
While one or two of them might have the inclination to learn how to walk in balance, most of them simply see the new world as a place to exploit. Even worse, they start to destroy the way of life of the people who live on Turtle Island.
As Monkman and Gordon are inhabitants of the land called Canada they focus primarily on the history of the people who live here and their interactions with the Europeans. As seen through the eyes of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle the history is a true accounting of the bloody and racist history of European colonial conquest.
This history includes the slaughter of animals in the name of fashion and commerce (the beaver and the buffalo), the horrible treatment of the nations the British made treaties with, to the systematic ways the government of Canada attempted to deal with “The Indian Problem.” Few Canadians will have read this true history of the country they live in, having been raised on a diet of brave settlers and RCMP subduing the wild, so they might not recognize the accuracy of what is described in this volume.
A Truer History of Canada
However, Monkman and Gordon have given us more of a true history of this land than anything written by so-called historians or presented in school textbooks. You might not like to read of Indian Agents starving people to death, or of the government stealing children from their parents to send them to the horror of Residential Schools as part of the “Final Solution to the Indian problem”(an actual quote from the first Prime Minister of Canada), but as we are all learning that is part of our sordid past.
Monkman’s paintings scattered throughout the book not only illuminate the story but bring us forcibly into the history and the present. Disturbing and disconcerting, they will shock and probably offend people with their explicit depictions of the violence that continues to be enacted to this day against the Indigenous people of Canada.
Whether through the government’s neglect of squalid living conditions, such as lack of running water, they are still forced to put up with; the systemic racism of the Canadian justice system, including police forces and politicians; or direct violence against Indigenous women that no one seems to care about, they are still treated as less than second-class citizens in their country.
However, the one thing Monkman and Gordon take great pains to depict is the fact that no matter how hard they tried and continue to try, nobody has completely broken the spirit of the Indigenous people of Canada. They are still fighting for justice and to preserve their land and their way of life.
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle by Kent Monkman and Gisele Gordon is a remarkable and memorable book. It’s a must-read for anybody interested in the true history of Turtle Island.
