Latest news with #ChyanaMarieSage
CBC
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Chyana Marie Sage crafts a memoir steeped in Indigenous tradition and a strong sense of empathy
Chyana Marie Sage's memoir, Soft As Bones, is her quest to better understand the childhood trauma and abuse that scarred her family. It's also a tapestry of poetry, history, Cree language, traditional ceremony and folklore — and delves into her experiences and those of her family with compassion and strength. "Writing this book has been the most cathartic experience of my life," said Sage on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "Healing is a lifelong journey and it never ends and we're continually growing. But writing this book allowed me to release, to process and release so much that was stored up in my nervous system." Sage is a Cree, Métis and Salish writer from Edmonton who is now based in New York. She joined Roach to share the catharsis she felt from writing about painful memories and the care she took to portray everyone with empathy. Soft As Bones is a phrase that I understand has been part of your life for a few years now. It's your Instagram handle. It's the name of your YouTube channel and now the name of this book. What do those three words mean to you? Soft As Bones is this phrase that came to me and this was years before the book was the book. I was living in London, Ont. at the time and I was sitting there just having my morning tea. Then, in my head, came the words "soft as bones." I sat with it and I ruminated on it and it kind of encapsulates my philosophy on human beings, like specifically Indigenous folks, but really all people. It's this idea that we are equal parts strength as much as we are delicate and fragile, because our bones are our foundation, they're our building blocks. They're very strong. They give us the capability to stand and give us structure, but yet they can also break very easily. However, they also have immense capacity for healing as well. I just think it's this beautiful metaphor for us as human beings, like holding space for us to be strong as much as we are fragile, and allowing those to coexist together. In the second section of the book, you share a lot about your mom's back story and her own struggles when she was growing up. What did you want readers to know about your mom? How could I write this story without her and her voice and her experience? Because I needed to go back into the past, and not just my own past, but all of our past to to understand how all of our stories came together and and how what happened in our family unit unfolded. Because on paper, you can look at a fact and think, "Well, oh my God, my mom fell in love with the guy that was in prison. Of course, this wasn't going to go well, right?" And you can insert all of these judgments for what a terrible decision or this and that. But life is not that simple. Life is not black and white. And so I wanted to not just write, "OK, my mom fell in love with this charming man in prison, but it was how does one get to that point?" I tried my best to do this with everyone in the book, but I really want people to understand the full scope of the person because we are not just the bad things we do. We are so much more than that. I really wanted to do everybody justice, especially my mother, so readers could understand where she was at, mentally, in all of that. One of the other things that you do in the second section of the book is you weave this story of your mom's teen years and that of your own teen years with the eight stages of a drum making ceremony that you attended when you were 14. What was important about that ceremony for you as a young person? Oh, so much. It's an honour to be able to make your own drum. It's not something that everybody gets to do, even if you're Native. It's like a coming of age thing, right? So now my time has come and I get to make this drum. And when you're making this drum, you're so connected to, A, everyone that's there, the elder that's leading it, and B, you really feel connected to your entire ancestry. As much as there is a lot of difficulty in this memoir, it was really important to me to capture a lot of the beauty of my culture. The history and the importance of that is so strong because I just think about my family members who were not allowed to do that. And I'm not talking about my ancestors, I'm talking about my family members. I'm talking about my grandparents. I'm talking about my aunts and uncles who were in residential schools who are still alive today. For me to be able to do that and have that ceremony was just a very emotional and powerful experience, even if at the time, at 14, you don't feel the scope of it then, but you know that it's special and you know that you're grateful for it. It felt like such a celebration and a moment of beauty. Because as much as there is a lot of difficulty in this memoir, it was really important to me to capture a lot of the beauty of my culture because there is so much beauty and love and healing and connection in my culture. I wanted to share a little bit of that with the rest of the world.
Winnipeg Free Press
14-06-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Hope and healing
'How do you begin to forgive the unforgivable?' This is the enduring question of Cree, Salish and Métis writer and poet Chyana Marie Sage in her memoir Soft As Bones, and a question that plagues many in Prairie cities across Canada. Through the weaponization of residential schools, the child welfare system, the Sixties Scoop and unfulfilled treaties, Canada has inflicted harm on Indigenous Peoples for centuries that snakes through generations. In Soft as Bones, Sage speaks of her deep pain caused by Canada and inflicted on her family. Growing up in Edmonton in public housing, she recounts the horrors of having to turn her father in for sexually abusing her older sister for years. This resulted in the cutting off of family ties, skirting from house to house and school to school, and ultimately bearing the brunt of generations of trauma through alcohol and drug abuse and a constant desire to fill a void with dangerous behaviour. Ana Noelle photo For Chyana Marie Sage, the power of the matriarch was and is critical, as her sense of trust, particularly for men, had been eaten away. Part tome of Indigenous teachings, part scrapbook of poems and certainly a deep dive into the emptiness that many youth feel, Soft as Bones also provides pathways for healing the self and a people. Despite the revulsion for her father, Frank, who did unthinkable things, Sage gains an understanding, through her healing, that violence and sickness can be traced back through the reach of memory. As Sage posits, 'I think of the way the schools and the scoops took all my relatives away, and scattered them, and not just physically but mentally, spiritually, and emotionally too.' She speaks openly and honestly about her life and her path to healing, and eloquently and magically weaves in traditional teachings of the drum, water and the animals to not only shed light on her metamorphosis, but on the transformation of her family and her people. A constant thread in the healing is the power of women, the matriarchy — when Sage felt safest, it was with Indigenous women. When she felt healing, it was with Indigenous women. At the centre of her core was her mother, who endured violence, and her sisters. And there were always elders present to teach, guide and love. This is what good teachers do. They guide with love. For Chyana Marie Sage, the power of the matriarch was and is critical, as her sense of trust, particularly for men, had been eaten away. 'My trust was eviscerated on such a fundamental, intrinsic level during my most formative years, and that has affected most of my relationships ever since. I have struggled to trust anyone who got close to me,' she writes. What is most captivating for this reviewer is the role school played in Sage's life. As she jumped from school to school, she and her sisters were forced to navigate new peers, protect themselves and endure the systemic racism inherent in our colonial systems. At age 15, Sage is expelled from high school for possession of weed. She describes having to appear in front of the school board: 'So I was expelled from the only place that was giving me any sense of routine. Across the table sat Ms. Long, the vice-principal who loathed me, staring at me with a smug smile on her pinched face.' Children understand very quickly when they are not loved, and too often schools send powerful signals that kids are not wanted. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. On the other hand, a former principal, Mr. Skoreyko, had her back. When she returned to the school that expelled her from Grade 12, where Skoreyko was principal, there were no questions asked. He showed her kindness throughout her teens, and this made the difference for her. When children are pulled closer and not pushed out of the community, they begin to trust and thrive. 'Mr. Skoreyko was someone I could actually count on,' Sage writes. All young people need multiple Mr. Skoreykos — particularly those who are most vulnerable. Soft as Bones Despite the odds, Sage sought her undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta before heading to Columbia University to further develop her writing at grad school. As she explains, and bears witness to, 'Writing is catharsis and it is the most powerful tool I have to use on my healing journey.' The writing of Soft as Bones, and the interviews she performs with her family, are stepping stones along this journey. There is no arrival point, just the notion of getting better. As Sage writes: 'There is no such thing as healed — there is only movement along the spectrum of unawareness to awareness.' Soft as Bones is essential reading for all who work in systems on this land, in this territory. It is a call to action and sheds an enormous spotlight on the voids created by historic violence and racism, and the formidable elixir that is land, language, culture and community. Matt Henderson is superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division.
