Honouring Richard Wagamese

1955-2017

Richard Wagamese was one of Canada’s foremost Indigenous authors and an esteemed public speaker and storyteller. A professional writer since 1979, he was a newspaper columnist and reporter, radio and television broadcaster and producer, documentary producer and the author of fourteen titles from various Canadian publishers.

He was a success in every genre of writing he tried. An Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, he became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing in 1991. He won the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award for his debut novel, Keeper’n Me in 1994 and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction for his third novel Dream Wheels, (Doubleday, Canada; St. Martin’s Press, USA; Bruna, Holland) in 2007. Additionally, One Native Life was one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 Best Books of 2008 and One Story, One Song was awarded the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature in 2011.

His first books were an anthology of newspaper columns, The Terrible Summer (Warwick Press, 1996) and his first and second novels, Keeper’n Me and A Quality of Light (both Doubleday Canada; Schneekluth, Germany). A critically acclaimed memoir entitled For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son arrived in October 2002, Dream Wheels in 2006, and the novel Ragged Company and his acclaimed and bestselling memoir One Native Life (Douglas & McIntyre) in 2008. He published the follow-up to One Native Life, entitled One Story, One Song in February 2011 and his first collection of poetry, Runaway Dreams, in July 2011, followed by The Next Sure Thing, a novel in Orca Press’ Rapid Reads Series in October that same year.

He is perhaps best known for his last two novels, Indian Horse (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012; Editions Zoe, France; XYZ, Quebec), a People’s Choice winner on Canada Reads that has been made into a film by Screen Siren Pictures to be released in April 2018, and Medicine Walk (McClelland & Stewart, Canada, Milkweed, USA, 2015, Editions Zoe, France). Indian Horse will be published by Milkweed in 2018. Richard’s last book, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas & McIntyre) was published in 2016.

Richard twice won the Native American Press Association Award and the National Aboriginal Communications Society Award for his newspaper columns, and his series One Native Life ran as a radio commentary and newspaper column in both Canada and the U.S. and was a weekly television commentary on CFJC-TV 7 in Kamloops, BC from 2007 to 2010.

Richard led writing and storytelling workshops in communities across Canada. He was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in June 2010 in recognition of lifetime achievement in writing and publishing and was the 2011 Harvey Stevenson Southam Guest Lecturer in Professional Writing at the University of Victoria. He was also honored with the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media & Communications.

He spent his latter years in Kamloops, B.C. and died in March 2017.