Atlantic Canada Book Launch for N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England

Atlantic Canada Book Launch for N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England 

Novel by Professor Bonita Lawrence explores five centuries of interconnections between
Mi’kmaq people and London

Monday, February 8 (Halifax, NS) –  The Atlantic Canada book launch for Dr. Bonita Lawrence’s new novel N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England will be hosted by Dalhousie University Libraries and will take place virtually on Thursday, February 11 at 7 p.m. (AST). At the launch, Dr. Lawrence will be joined by guests Marie Battiste, Hannah Beaulieu, Sean Hillier, and Cathy Martin.

N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England is an historical novel beginning in 1497 that takes the reader on a series of vignettes through five centuries of interconnections between Mi’kmaq people and London. Each character begins their story in different regions of the Mi’kmaq world, and they end up in London for various reasons—ranging from being kidnapped or enslaved in early years of contact, to being impressed into the British Navy or to attend university. The novel encompasses descriptive scenes of London in different eras, alternately addressing the eroticism of lovers, the wide-ranging lives of whalers and sailors, the horrors of nursing during World War I and the overwrought world of heroin users in late 1970s East London, interspersed with occasional short pages of intellectual commentary. Ultimately, it is a labour of love for homelands lost. (Taken from austinmacauley.com)

Dr. Lawrence is a professor in the Department of Humanities at York University and is a founding member of the Indigenous Studies program. She is of Mi’kmaq, Acadian, and English ancestry. In addition to this novel, she has authored two academic books, Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario and “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Race Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood. With Kim Anderson, she co-authored a collection of essays entitled Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival.