Huff

Growing up on an indigenous reservation in Canada is not much different, it seems, from growing up on similar reservations in other countries. Cut off and isolated from the mainstream by legislation, distance and lack of opportunity, some adults turn to drink and abuse. Kids ‘huff’ (sniff) gasoline, sneak porn magazines and find a secret place to read them – in this case, an abandoned motel – a place to hide from the realities of a dysfunctional world. But wherever they go the ‘Trickster’ – bad luck, misfortune, adversity – finds them.

Cliff Cardinal blends the realities of tribal beliefs and mysticism with forced segregation and assimilation in this heart-wrenching story of brothers trapped in a barrage of abuse and hardship following the death of their mother. They cling together, trying to sustain each other, but gradually give in to the darkness that creeps after neglect, addiction and despair.

Cardinal writes graphically yet with economy and haunting realism. The characters he creates he inhabits skilfully, moving from one to another with fluid clarity and lithe delineation. The brothers become a beautiful mother, a drunken father, an unwilling stepmother. An aged grandmother hobbling on a walking stick morphs into a gurgling, odorous skunk. And behind the brothers, arms wide and high, stretches the Tricskter, following, thwarting and bringing them further and further down.

Though tempered with comic moments, and buoyed by the immediacy and intimacy of Cardinal’s performance, this is a harsh tale of abuse and neglect. It is, however, a tale that needs to be told, often, and as vividly as Cardinal does, until neglect and abuse such as this, is outlawed – at home, in institutions, in police stations, in detention centres … and in children’s prisons.

Carol Wimmer