Author shares memoir about gun violence, land and Indigenous women’s lives

With storytelling that intertwines personal and cultural trauma, author Toni Jensen shares accounts of gun violence, stolen land, and Indigenous women’s lives.

Her critically acclaimed Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book.

“It's not an anti-gun book,” Ms. Jensen said. “It's a book about both historic and contemporary land, violence, and issues with guns and gun culture.”

The memoir-in-essays offers a personal narrative in conjunction with researched accounts, also shining a light on other matters such as the issues of indigenous people, and how trauma suffered by ancestors is carried down with repercussions still felt by today’s generations.

“I come from a military and police family, but it's a book that’s anti-gun violence,” she said. “The book is narrative and tells stories of how people in my community, my family, and myself have been affected by gun violence, but also as an indigenous woman, it tells the story of the indigenous history of the United States too.”

Owens Community College hosted a discussion of her book as its 2023-24 BIG Read Selection on Thursday. More than 200 people attended the school’s Center for Fine & Performing Arts, and Owens students were joined by Sylvania Northview and Southview High schools.

Throughout the academic year, faculty, staff, students, and the community have participated in activities, discussions, and programs related to the book. The goal of the BIG Read is to bring awareness of different perspectives through books and accompanying activities on campus and in our surrounding communities, organizers said.

Ms. Jensen, who is Métis — of European and Indigenous ancestry — grew up in rural Iowa and was taught to shoot guns by her father, a Native American. Guns were common among the men in her family, and gun violence also played a hand in her family’s migration to Iowa from Alberta, Canada.

“In the late 1800s, the federal government sold 115,000 acres of land in Central Alberta to the Saskatchewan Land and Homestead Company. Most of the Métis farms, including my family's, were located on land sold to this SLH company,” she said.

“Despite how they've been good stewards of the land for generations, despite how their squatters' rights should have been legally recognized, the federal government did not respond to the petition brought by all existing farmers in and around Red Deer in support of many farmers keeping their farms,” she said. The farmers were essentially forced off the land.

“This leaving was how my grandmother's parents arrived in Iowa,” Ms. Jensen said.

While the relocation to Iowa offered new beginnings, it brought with it the trauma that survivors experience following eviction, something she prefers to call ‘survivance.’

“’Survivance’ versus survival just means that it's an ongoing process,” she said. “Because if you say someone has survived, that implies it's finite, it's ended, it's done. Whatever happened, you're over it, you've moved on.

“But ‘survivance’ keeps it alive and implies that whatever happened in the past, is still carried along, generation to generation, body to body, place to place," she said. While becoming part of a diaspora event involves dispersal, it is not finite, Ms. Jensen said.

“The presentation was very interesting, and the book was very good too. I like seeing it from her perspective,” said 20-year-old Owens student Jessica Williams of Oregon, who also valued the explanation of the bird symbolism in the presentation.

“Birds are mostly everywhere. They're beautiful, they're funny, and everyone has a reference point for birds,” Ms. Jensen said. “Fortunately, everyone doesn't have a reference point for things like trafficking, interpersonal and domestic violence, guns, and gun violence. Many of us do, but not everyone.”

With topics that can feel heavy, Ms. Jenson expounded on many instances involving birds to “give readers a break” by offering whimsy and humor.

“I learned about her extensive background and everything she has done, about the land and how different it was for her. She grew up much differently,” said Southview senior Aubrey Opacdewski. “She has a lot of good information.”

Ms. Jensen was a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, and her essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone. She teaches at both the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts.