The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ Institute for Native American Studies will present a lecture and reading by Native Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden April 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Room 125 of the Jackson Street Building. The lecture, part of the Franklin Visiting Scholars series, is free and open to the public.
Boyden grew up in Ontario, of Irish, Scottish and Anishinaabe heritage. His debut novel, Three Day Road, is the story of two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I. The novel, inspired by the story of a WWI sniper, won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. Boyden’s second novel, Through the Black Spruce, won the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
Boyden is known for writing about the heritage and culture of First Nations peoples, a designation that refers to more than 600 bands of aboriginal people of Canada, representing a population of nearly 700,000.
“The history of indigenous people in North America spans thousands of years, a history that brings important context to understanding our modern society,” said Jace Weaver, Franklin Professor of Native American Studies and Religion and director of the Institute for Native American Studies. “Joseph Boyden is a powerful storyteller and celebrated writer whose works share some of the little-known facets of this history-and present-of North America.”
