Above all, Jesse Wente is a believer in the power of story. A movie lover since he was a child in Toronto, he went on to work for CBC Radio as a film critic. That led to other gigs supporting storytellers. First, he championed Indigenous film as a programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, until his sense of being treated as a token prompted his departure. Then, in 2018, he became the founding director of the Indigenous Screen Office, a national advocacy and funding organization.
“I champion these artists’ work for the same reasons any great art is celebrated – because it is beautiful, honest, brave, and any number of other wonderful and affecting things,” he writes in his memoir, Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance. “But I’ve dedicated my life to it because of my unwavering belief in the power of Indigenous representation to improve the quality of Indigenous life and make Canada, as a whole, a better place.”
I used to listen to Wente’s reviews on morning radio and, after he was appointed last year as the first Indigenous chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, made a point of attending his virtual talk for Ideas, the wonderful CBC Radio program hosted by journalist Nahlah Ayed. Wente did a fabulous job, talking fluidly, apparently without notes, for an hour or so, about the need to reframe Indigenous stories in joy. So, making a beeline for Unreconciled was a no-brainer. I was curious about his story.
Jesse Wente (photo by Red Works Studio)
Wente, now in his mid-40s, is Anishinaabe – his mother’s family is from Genaabaajing Anishinaabek, and he is a member of the Serpent River First Nation on the north shore of Lake Huron between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. His father was born to a wealthy white family that relocated to Toronto from Chicago.
Wente describes feeling disconnected from his maternal community, explaining that his grandmother was forcibly placed in residential school, which led to her estrangement from her culture. “Her pain and loss weren’t the result of a misstep or a bad decision,” he writes, “they were part of a state-sponsored policy of physical and cultural eradication.”
The book sketches out his childhood – he describes trips to Serpent River as well as racist whoops at baseball games in Toronto – and his private school education, something he credits for his ability to work within Canadian power structures. “I know where this country’s politicians and power brokers come from,” he writes. “I’ve gone to school with their children. I’ve seen how they behave when they think no one’s watching. I’m unintimidated and unimpressed.”
Disappointingly, the book includes nothing about his experiences at the Canada Council, where, as chair, he should have the clout to influence policy directions. But, of course, it’s still early days for him there.
Wente, who reveals he has received anonymous death threats, does not shy away from hard truths about Canada’s settler-colonial society, which he calls “a murderous resource extraction project.” And he’s clear that he’s not talking only in historical terms but also about colonial attitudes that persist today in the country’s treatment of Indigenous people.
He accuses Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, of “hypocrisy” for voting against Indigenous interests even as they bear the trappings of Indigenous cultures, in Trudeau’s case, a shoulder tattoo based on a Haida design by Robert Davidson. “Trudeau has largely governed the relationship as other Liberal governments have done, namely by allowing Indigenous people to suffer in order to aid the advancement of the settler state,” Wente writes.
In his concluding chapter, Wente laments the lack of progress in implementing the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and takes issue with those who talk about reconciliation without mentioning truth, arguing that you cannot have the former without addressing the latter.
Ultimately, though, he ends on a hopeful note, reflecting on his daughter’s love for their home community, as well as other Indigenous youth, who are learning their languages and mounting protests to protect the land. “I’m optimistic because I see in my children and in Indigenous youth across Canada just how tough and resilient we are,” he writes. “And I’m optimistic because more and more Canadians seem to know that great change is required.”
Noting that the pandemic has given people time to slow down and think about the inequities underlying Western capitalism, he makes an impassioned plea.
“Stop the endless consumption,” he writes. “Stop the endless work to feed the endless consumption. Stop the hoarding – of everything, by so few. Stop the police; stop them from killing us, stop them from provoking us in order to imprison us. Stop the nationalism that blinds so many to the failure and corruption of their leaders, that sows division when we most need to rely on one another. Stop keeping people poor and sick. Just. Stop.”
Unreconciled, written in clear and flowing prose by a leader in the cultural community, is not a long or difficult read and offers much food for thought. Wente, in telling his story but emphasizing the broader social and political context, makes a valuable contribution to truth and understanding.
Unreconciled: Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance, by Jesse Wente: Allen Lane, 2021.