Richard Wagamese
The Next Chapter
Richard Wagamese deeply believed in the healing power of stories to change the world, one story at a time.
We invite you to connect with his story, books, films and teachings.
History
RICHARD WAGAMESE
Muskode Pisheke Anaquat (Buffalo Cloud)
1955 - 2017
Richard Wagamese was one of Canada’s foremost storytellers and writers and one of the leading Indigenous writers in North America with a career spanning over 35 years.
“Like many others, I’m an ex-athlete, an ex-smoker, an ex-drunk and an ex-husband. As an Ojibway man, I have been marginalized, analyzed, criticized, ostracized, legitimized, politicized, socialized, dehumanized, downsized and Supersized. One day, I will be eulogized.”
- Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song
Books
Richard Wagamese created 18 books, including nine novels, one book of poetry, and eight nonfiction titles, including two memoirs as well as an anthology of newspaper columns, with three additional children’s books slated for release.
Awards
Richard Wagamese was recognized as an award winning journalist and author.
- 1991 National Newspaper Award for Column Writing
- 1995 Co-winner of the Georges Bugnet Award for Novel at the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, Literary Awards for Keeper‘n Me
- 2007 Canadian Authors Association MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction for Dream Wheels
- 2008 One Native Life made The Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of the Year
“All that we are is story.
From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey,
we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here.
It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind.
We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us.
What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here;
you, me, us, together.
When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship
– we change the world, one story at a time…”
Richard Wagamese (1955 - 2017)
“I did not speak my first Ojibwa word or set foot on my traditional territory until I was twenty-six. I did not know that I had a family, a history, a culture, a source for spirituality, a cosmology, or a traditional way of living. I had no awareness that I belonged somewhere.”