It's Book Review Time Again! What Did I Think of "Native Brush Strokes"?

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. It's Sandy Boucher here once again with this week's video and I'm excited because I haven't done this in a long time. I'm doing a book review. It's by Antoinette Gauden and it's Native Brushstrokes. If you're interested in indigenous authors, indigenous content or Indigenous non fiction, well, you've come to the right place. So let's talk about it. Quite an additional Cosmon do dam. Hi everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And as I mentioned in the opening, I'm doing a book review this this week. Now. I received a letter back in May of 2025. That's a long time ago. I just wanted to share it with you. It's from Antoinette Godden, so the author, and this is what it says. Dear Sandy, I'm mailing you a copy of my debut novel, Native Brush Strokes, which was published published on March 24, 2025. It is a fictional romance of Bipoc origin taking place in the 20th century. In a nutshell, Wuthering Heights meets Indian country in a grand triangular love affair between a humble artist, a man of narcissistic ambition, and a woman of considerable wealth. Tackling subjects such as historical trauma, class assimilation and civil rights are all explored during this special time of political activism in American Indian history. Overriding themes are survival, hope, resilience, redemption and forgiveness. I am an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe and and an attorney with over three decorate decades of practice in Indian law. I'm so not used to using that word, but they use it in the States. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1991. I'm excited to share my novel with you and hope that you can do a review on your channel. I'm really excited because I love your show. I'm also available to interview with you at your convenience. And maybe she's just gonna have to be a podcast guest in the future. Let me know in the comments if that is something you would like to see. So it took me a while to sit my butt down and read the book and that has. That is not a reflection on the content of this book. So first and foremost, the way that Antoinette described the book in the letter, a hundred percent true. My glasses are fogging up here. It is hot in here. Hang on, let me get a Kleenex. Fix my glasses. This is as real as it gets here, guys. No fancy schmancy stuff. Anyways, as I was saying, the way she described it in the letter, a hundred and ten percent true. That is exactly what happened from a personal perspective. I have long been advocating for that. We need more Indigenous authors. I meet so many people in my travels across the country doing my work that say they want to write a book, that they want to share their story, and I always encourage them to. Unfortunately, the hardest part of writing a book is actually sitting down and writing it. And most, most, whether you're indigenous or not, do not make it past that stage. But what reading Native brushstrokes Get the title right? Yes. What it made me realize is we need. When. Yes. We need indigenous people sitting down and sharing their stories so that the next generation knows they're not alone. It's not only them, but we need way more Indigenous, not fiction authors. Because sharing your own story would be nonfiction. But what the imaginary stories. One of the things, if you've watched any of my videos that I did with Julia Gibson about our work in changing copper magic to copper stone, A Glimpse of Blood Memory, it was. I had mentioned 100 times that in the original text I would be getting lost in the story, as I tend to do, and then something would be said that just. It wasn't accurate. It wasn't the way an indigenous person would look at it. And it pulled me out of the story. It reminded me that I was not the Avatar. I was not the target market for the book. That it wasn't. It excluded me with those subtleties. So a lot of people wonder why. What's the big deal? And that's the big deal, that it's more exclusion. So right off the bat, reading this book, if you're Indigenous, if you're indigenous female, if you have done any quality time dancing with alcohol and unquality time in maybe a local tavern. And I have. That is not a judgment. Been there, done that for longer than I should have. This book is going to resonate with you. I laughed at a few times. Some of the phrasing she used, the character used in the book, Bang on perfect. It was. In some cases, it's like, are they writing about my life? Yeah. Yeah. It so many things. And I did put a couple little flags here, as always, just things I wanted to make sure to mention. Today. She mentions Cordy. Cordy is the main character of the book. Cordy always wondered if her mother's boarding school trauma severed their attempted closeness. Her mother had been forcibly Enrolled into a residential school, Cordy always knew that her name came from the school. Her mother used to tell her how she had stumbled upon the Cordelia while reading Anna Green Gables, immediately connecting the story to her life with the child's imagination. Courtney recalled her mother telling her these bedtime stories when she was a child. Hang on, I got to eliminate. I don't know why Facebook can override my do not disturb, but it can. So I just shut it down and hopefully that'll work and I'll put my phone on do not disturb and that should take care of everything. Hopefully where it was. Cordy recalled her mother telling her these bedtime stories when she was a child. She painted the government schools with wicked matrons in such stark contrast to the elite boarding schools some of her college classmates had attended. So Cordy was in college. The Indian boarding schools were brutal, soul crushing experiences with cultural backgrounds haphazardly discarded and pruned like weeds. The motto was often kill the Indian, save the man. I thought that was interesting because I assume that's the phrasing of it in the US So we know up here the phrase was kill the Indian in the child that they really didn't care if the child was saved. So take that for what you will. But you can see the residential schools are there. That was the, the intergenerational trauma that she mentioned. Now the one thing they kind of, kind of made my skin crawl to, to be honest. And it's not because it wasn't factual and it's not because it wasn't honest. It was racism and the racism that can be shared by and spoken by indigenous peoples. So just, just there's some commenting about Jews in this book and I'm really not going to go into that. But yeah, definitely, definitely some racism that exists. Let's see what was here. Alcatraz is mentioned here. Oh, I love this one. Page 136. In Native culture, humility is prized and the guests should take. Oh, okay. I want to read you a little bit more of this. Okay. So Merlin is the narcissistic guy that she's crazy about. Merlin had lost his father when he was an infant. He lost his mother at the age of 14. She had died tuberculosis. Merlin is indigenous as well. Merlin had been shipped to an Indian boarding school for the neglected and abandoned after his mother died. Nobody claimed him and years later Merlin would realize and had teetered him towards suicide. The years of poverty left a mark on him permanently. He remembered the lean years eating slipper stew made from cattle Hooves boiled for their nutritional value and little else. On the Milk River, Merlin remembered that he and his grandmothers had eaten every part of the animal before he was sent to boarding school. He recalled eating the tripe, the brains, the kidneys, and the heart. These times made Merlin hearken back to the years of living on buffalo before the government killed all the buffalo in the 1800s. They no longer had the buffalo. He always distrusted white people because of his early childhood. To him, they were wasiches, takers of the fat. His ancestors had given him given them this moniker because they ate the choice part of the animal when offered a meal. In native culture, humility is prized, and a guest should take the poorest cut of the meat, which took the best without thinking twice about it. Now, I may be mispronouncing that, but how often have you heard me speak of humility teaching? So that was definitely there. So what did I want here? So Sugar ends up being Merlin's wife. None of this is going to make sense to you until you read the book, but. So 10 years his senior, people often confuse Sugar for his aunt. Her appearance didn't do her any favors. She looked like a leathery old cowgirl written hard and put away wet. Have you ever heard that phrase? I had to giggle when I read. I have said that. I have definitely heard that. It's a hundred percent derogatory statement. But again, that was one of those. Helped me to identify. It's like, yep, I've definitely heard that phrase. The alcohol had taken its toll on her looks. Merlin liked this about her because it gave him power over her moods and anything else he wanted. No other men were looking. There was no competition. Sugar was all his. So there's that narcissistic behavior. So do I Recommend this book? 110 million percent made up a new number. If you're indigenous or indigenous female, highly recommend this book. There's a twist in the book that I didn't see coming at all, which I love because so much of the book I was identifying with and just cruising along in this beautiful comfort and then twist. And no, of course I'm not going to tell you what the twist is. So I am thrilled that I read this. And by the way, we go from LA to Montana. There's so many different places, geographic places in this book. Different backgrounds, different cultures. Not everyone is indigenous, but it's a real glimpse into the reality for indigenous people. I mean, it's all well and good to say, you know, that we all want healing. Healing is hard and Sometimes what you want is escape. And for many people, alcohol is that escape. Rather than worrying about your poverty or how to pay your bills, you just go forget it all in a bar. And again, I'm not judging, been there, done that for so many years of my life. I'm not even judging myself for it. I did what I did to survive and if someone else wants to judge me for it, they can just do that. So yes. Is this available on Amazon? I should have looked that up. I'm going to take two seconds to type this. Oops. Native brush strokes. Get that. Well, there's. It is available on Amazon and I'll put the link in the notes below the video. So I hope you enjoyed that. Antoinette, I'm going to send this to you. Thank you for sending me your book. It was a joy. Now you know how I spent my weekend because I had read a bit here, read a bit there in the middle of an insane schedule. And then this weekend I committed to reading it. And it has been a long time since I read a book that I couldn't put down. Like I was upset that I got tired and had to go to bed and that was this. And then Sunday there was things I had to do, didn't care, not until the book was finished. So that's how much I'm recommending this book. If you're non indigenous and you read it, don't judge. Listen to what it's like on the other side of the feather and try to walk a mile in our moccasins. Just, just don't judge. Try to understand if you're indigenous, you're going to identify with the hard parts, you're going to identify with the funny parts, you're going to identify with the fun parts, you're going to identify. So. So I think we need so many more of these. Antoinette. I hope you're working on another one. Until next time, everyone. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.