What Shade of Brown?

Passionate poetry and prose exploring the experience of an Indigenous person who feels like a stranger in a strange land, not quite accepted because of his light skin but also undermined by a settler-colonial society. Lyrical and heartfelt, bewildered and shaken, the poet struggles to find a connection to his family and lost culture.

“I came to the sacred fire as a young man
I should have been brought to it as a little boy
But I wasn’t

I sought out the sacred fire on my own
I sought out the sacred fire to heal myself

I sought out the sacred fire to cleanse and burn away
The pain of a childhood rootless, without purpose
Filled with someone else’s thoughts and prayers and ways.”

from "I Came to the Sacred Fire"

John Brady McDonald

John Brady McDonald is a Nêhiyawak-Métis writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nêhiyawak. He is the author of several books, and his written works have been published and presented around the globe. Kitotam, a poetry collection, was published by Radiant Press in 2021, and Carrying It Forward, a book of essays, was published in 2022 and won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-fiction and the Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award. He is also an acclaimed public speaker, who has presented in venues across the globe, such as the Ânskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival, the Black Hills Seminars on Reclaiming Youth, the Appalachian Mountain Seminars, the Edmonton and Fort McMurray Literary Festival, the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and the Ottawa International Writers Festival. A noted polymath, John lives in Northern Saskatchewan.