In Keeper’n Me, a semi-autobiographic novel, Garnet Raven is stolen from his aboriginal family by the twentieth-century Canadian government and placed in residential schools and a string of foster homes until he ages out of the system. Finding people like himself—Indians—are universally disliked and feared, Garnet becomes anything not-Indian that his physiognomy can possibly accommodate: Hawaiian, Latino, even Black, while trying to avoid his past. When befriended by a Black family, he adopts the persona of a with-it soul brother, even sporting an Afro. Eventually, when he’s left holding a packet of drugs, he lands in jail. After a twenty-year search for this child, his long-lost family writes and asks him to come home. Though he has “no idea of how to be an Indian,” he agrees to return to White Dog Lake.
There, Garnet meets Keeper, an elder taught by Garnet’s own grandfather, who takes the younger man under his wing. What ensues is a loving relationship with Keeper serving as a teacher of Indian ways and philosophy, guiding Garnet back to nature, to love, to family, to an aboriginal culture that with its simplicity coupled with richness, should engender envy from white folks. His growth from despising himself to acceptance of his past, his present, his future, his family is beautifully detailed. The novel relates a belated coming-of-age story, delayed for years because of Garnet’s forced removal from his roots.
Richard Wagamese is one of my all-time favorite authors, and I am slowly working my way through his entire oeuvre. In Keeper’n Me, he doesn’t disappoint. His prose is lush, yet simple, and his descriptions of Native American life are heartwarming. This should be required reading in high schools and colleges.
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Keeper’n Me(Anchor Canada, February 1, 1994) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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You can read my reviews of other Wagamese books below:
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