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The Pemmican Eaters
With a title derived from John A. Macdonald's moniker for the Mtis, The Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont's sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel.
82 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 7, 2015
About the author
Marilyn Dumont
10 books35 followersMarilyn Dumont’s poetry has won provincial and national awards. She has been the writer-in-residence at five Canadian universities and the Edmonton Public Library as well as an advisor in the Aboriginal Emerging Writers Program at the Banff Centre. She teaches sessional creative writing for Athabasca University and Native studies and English for the University of Alberta. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
January 10, 2016
I guess I'm the only one here that didn't win this book in a giveaway. I never win any thing!
The Pemmican Eaters is a nice collection of poems and short prose pieces concerning the Metis and its turbulent history with the Canadian government. My favourite pieces concerned Louis Riel directly, but I also enjoyed the ones that focused on the Metis culture - its love of the earth - and freedom from the meticulous accounting and measurements that the organized government forced upon them.
The Pemmican Eaters is a nice collection of poems and short prose pieces concerning the Metis and its turbulent history with the Canadian government. My favourite pieces concerned Louis Riel directly, but I also enjoyed the ones that focused on the Metis culture - its love of the earth - and freedom from the meticulous accounting and measurements that the organized government forced upon them.
April 7, 2021
The poems about beading are literal works of art.
Read
April 20, 2019I think my favorite poems here are the ones about beadwork, in which Dumont moves between the fine detail of a woman’s patient crafts to the world and life it evokes:
she considers blue beads as holding a piece of the sky
reflected in berries
her same fingers gather saskatoons draping from branches bent blue with fruit
and release them to the lard pail tied to her waist
their dropping, the sound of small drumming in the pail
her same fingers scoop saskatoons, the fruit of feasts
from a bowl in the sweat
that place of gathering self
and others back to womb
that bulb of life
in her mother
The epigraph of The Pemmican Eaters is from Michel de Certeau’s Practice of Everyday Life: “What the map cuts up the story cuts across.”
There are angry political poems about maps, about the lines drawn by surveyors who divided up and stole Métis land. The stories and practices of everyday life resist that cutting up: the Métis are still here. “Fiddle Bids Us” is a good example of this:
that we long kissed this earth with our feet
before the surveyors executed their dance
of lines and stakes at the corners to witness
the Dominion’s decree to leave just fiddle and bow
and no quarter sections to bury our relatives below
because we resisted the government’s line
The dance to the music of the fiddle goes on, resisting the efforts of the Dominion to cut it off: “we, the improvident ones, proclaim our dance / to the minsters and lords who tried to set us below.”
In the penultimate poem, Dumont writes that “they will regret taking our prince” (Louis Riel), because one day their children will ask about him, and “they will have to answer.”
she considers blue beads as holding a piece of the sky
reflected in berries
her same fingers gather saskatoons draping from branches bent blue with fruit
and release them to the lard pail tied to her waist
their dropping, the sound of small drumming in the pail
her same fingers scoop saskatoons, the fruit of feasts
from a bowl in the sweat
that place of gathering self
and others back to womb
that bulb of life
in her mother
The epigraph of The Pemmican Eaters is from Michel de Certeau’s Practice of Everyday Life: “What the map cuts up the story cuts across.”
There are angry political poems about maps, about the lines drawn by surveyors who divided up and stole Métis land. The stories and practices of everyday life resist that cutting up: the Métis are still here. “Fiddle Bids Us” is a good example of this:
that we long kissed this earth with our feet
before the surveyors executed their dance
of lines and stakes at the corners to witness
the Dominion’s decree to leave just fiddle and bow
and no quarter sections to bury our relatives below
because we resisted the government’s line
The dance to the music of the fiddle goes on, resisting the efforts of the Dominion to cut it off: “we, the improvident ones, proclaim our dance / to the minsters and lords who tried to set us below.”
In the penultimate poem, Dumont writes that “they will regret taking our prince” (Louis Riel), because one day their children will ask about him, and “they will have to answer.”
May 8, 2016
I'm teaching this book to my high school IB English class and keep finding more to admire and enjoy. As a collection, it is masterfully constructed with so many poems that speak to other poems throughout the book. Dumont also does such interesting things with traditional forms like the pantoum she blasts apart with Gabriel Dumont's gun and the sestina in which she deftly weaves and reweaves fiddle and dance with government treatment of Métis people. The poems about Métis beadwork are my current favorites because of how they combine lived experience and beliefs made manifest through textile work. And I keep coming back to how the epigraph from Michel de Certeau echoes across the poems' landscape. This is a book I know will return to time and again in the future.
June 17, 2023
I loved Marilyn as a prof, and now I love her writing 🙌🏼
February 6, 2026
“I want to forget their ordinary faces. Their benign smiles and dim hearts. Their mundane treachery and accumulating assets.”
“When will Gabriel call us out? Our great heads swiping side to side, pulling the universe in our sway. The Milky Way twisting in our horns shaking bright burning dust to earth.”
Gorgeous passages in this collection! I don’t know that much about the Riel resistance so this was a tremendous introduction.
“When will Gabriel call us out? Our great heads swiping side to side, pulling the universe in our sway. The Milky Way twisting in our horns shaking bright burning dust to earth.”
Gorgeous passages in this collection! I don’t know that much about the Riel resistance so this was a tremendous introduction.
October 24, 2018
Needs some serious proofreading.
I was troubled by "I wanted to treat them as we would have treated buffalo" and thought to myself "so much for the idea of the sacred buffalo if Gabriel Dumont equates the bison with the Middleton's colonial army." I'm not sure that these poems are fully thought out. But who am I to say, right?
I was troubled by "I wanted to treat them as we would have treated buffalo" and thought to myself "so much for the idea of the sacred buffalo if Gabriel Dumont equates the bison with the Middleton's colonial army." I'm not sure that these poems are fully thought out. But who am I to say, right?
December 5, 2022
"Le registre d'arpentage dans ses calculs
tenait-il compte des vies fracturées par la précision
des coordonnées ?"
Encore un cas où mon manque de connaissances sur le sujet m'a probablement empêché d'apprécier ce recueil. Je crois que Une Vraie Bonne Petite Métisse de l'auteure était plus accessible, pas seulement pour moi, mais pour une majorité de gens aussi.
tenait-il compte des vies fracturées par la précision
des coordonnées ?"
Encore un cas où mon manque de connaissances sur le sujet m'a probablement empêché d'apprécier ce recueil. Je crois que Une Vraie Bonne Petite Métisse de l'auteure était plus accessible, pas seulement pour moi, mais pour une majorité de gens aussi.
February 27, 2018
"Pemmican Eaters" is rich with with imagery, culture, and emotion. I've found it's rare to find a poetry collection that bridges poetics and narrative, that engages multiple genres effortlessly. This is a book I'll keep coming back to.
April 17, 2019
Marilyn Dumont is an incredible poet, and The Pemmican Eaters lives up to my high expectations. She infuses vital history with vivid emotion in a way that just feels... painful and perfect.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
March 9, 2018
loved this collection of poems - mostly looking at the Metis history in the times of Louis Riel.
July 29, 2019
Wonderful collection of poems.
June 29, 2020
I actually gave up on this one (I read the intro and some of the poems) when I decided to teach Thomas King's 77 Fragments, so I'm counting them together as a finished book.
January 14, 2022
wow i’m the first to give this book a 1 star? nothing against Dumont but just, not my forte with this one..
July 19, 2023
This is a collection of poems that should be sought out and displayed for Canadians (and the world).
Magical, tragic, and an important piece of work. A must read.
Magical, tragic, and an important piece of work. A must read.
June 24, 2017
This year, I am reading CBC’s “12 Books by Indigenous Women You Should Read”. North End Love Songs is one of them.
"The Pemmican Eaters" is a collection of poetry by Métis poet, Marilyn Dumont. In this collection, she explores Métis history, culture and life, primarily during the time of the Riel Resistance. Marilyn Dumont is a distant relation of Gabriel Dumont, Riel’s general. Her poetry is an exploration of personal, as well as cultural identity. I was moved by the rich culture she reveals to her readers, but I was also struck by her description of depth of the Métis connection to land. Instead of providing a review, I’ll leave you with one of Dumont’s poems that moved me deeply.
OCTOBER 1869: To SMOKE THEIR PIPES AND SING THEIR SONGS
Louis planted his beaded moccasin on the survey chain
cutting across André Nault’s river lot
pitched there by men
slung with transits, levels, and measuring sticks
men looking to the horizon
calculating the free land for homesteaders
“You go no further,” commanded Louis
blocking their line of sight
their ledger of lines
angles, meridians, and parallels
corrections for curvature
iron stakes for corners
of perfect square miles
although over fifty million acres
was surveyed
made ready
ready-made
for occupation
there were no quarter sections
for “the miserable halfbreeds,”
“the pemmican-eaters”
but any man over eighteen
with a vacant quarter in the NWT
homesteaded
did the survey record in its calculations
witness whose lives were fragmented by these precise
coordinates?
could their instruments
determine the number of years
Nault had lived and cleared brush
harvested firewood on the same land he was now barred from?
did the surveyor’s coordinates record the number of letters, the
number of signed petitions
did it detect the colourless voices of the Settlers’ Rights Association
joining in Louis’ protest
did their instruments detect their words plain as bread “we have not
been consulted in any way as a people entering into the Dominion”
where did this penchant for measuring and marking derive?
this desire to count and delineate this land
account for it
rename and grip it
like shovels, axes, and saws
lug like trunks,
steer like plows
pile like lumber
where did this taste for counting begin
its long rooted self
calculating angles and slopes
long conjuring “empty” land into property
the long root of capitalism
boring mineral veins
drilling wells
forcing steam down bored holes
extracting dark thick fluids
stabbing the land-belly
sucking every seam
and filling the gaping holes with
with the toxic unseen
I am told when I survey from the top of a hill
I take into account the entire land
upon which I stand;
I count this place
what conjuring does the mind do
measuring a hill,
the angle of its slope,
is it easier to climb?
is it in the imagined embrace of mother?
minds hover
oversee her
capture, hold
I take into account this entire land
land, upon which I stand
I count this place
I count this space my own
when two lines cross, the saleable land is multiplied by two
the survey lines that scored this land were
so it could be ripped along its edges, cliffs, and deeper memories
Marilyn Dumont
"The Pemmican Eaters" is a collection of poetry by Métis poet, Marilyn Dumont. In this collection, she explores Métis history, culture and life, primarily during the time of the Riel Resistance. Marilyn Dumont is a distant relation of Gabriel Dumont, Riel’s general. Her poetry is an exploration of personal, as well as cultural identity. I was moved by the rich culture she reveals to her readers, but I was also struck by her description of depth of the Métis connection to land. Instead of providing a review, I’ll leave you with one of Dumont’s poems that moved me deeply.
OCTOBER 1869: To SMOKE THEIR PIPES AND SING THEIR SONGS
Louis planted his beaded moccasin on the survey chain
cutting across André Nault’s river lot
pitched there by men
slung with transits, levels, and measuring sticks
men looking to the horizon
calculating the free land for homesteaders
“You go no further,” commanded Louis
blocking their line of sight
their ledger of lines
angles, meridians, and parallels
corrections for curvature
iron stakes for corners
of perfect square miles
although over fifty million acres
was surveyed
made ready
ready-made
for occupation
there were no quarter sections
for “the miserable halfbreeds,”
“the pemmican-eaters”
but any man over eighteen
with a vacant quarter in the NWT
homesteaded
did the survey record in its calculations
witness whose lives were fragmented by these precise
coordinates?
could their instruments
determine the number of years
Nault had lived and cleared brush
harvested firewood on the same land he was now barred from?
did the surveyor’s coordinates record the number of letters, the
number of signed petitions
did it detect the colourless voices of the Settlers’ Rights Association
joining in Louis’ protest
did their instruments detect their words plain as bread “we have not
been consulted in any way as a people entering into the Dominion”
where did this penchant for measuring and marking derive?
this desire to count and delineate this land
account for it
rename and grip it
like shovels, axes, and saws
lug like trunks,
steer like plows
pile like lumber
where did this taste for counting begin
its long rooted self
calculating angles and slopes
long conjuring “empty” land into property
the long root of capitalism
boring mineral veins
drilling wells
forcing steam down bored holes
extracting dark thick fluids
stabbing the land-belly
sucking every seam
and filling the gaping holes with
with the toxic unseen
I am told when I survey from the top of a hill
I take into account the entire land
upon which I stand;
I count this place
what conjuring does the mind do
measuring a hill,
the angle of its slope,
is it easier to climb?
is it in the imagined embrace of mother?
minds hover
oversee her
capture, hold
I take into account this entire land
land, upon which I stand
I count this place
I count this space my own
when two lines cross, the saleable land is multiplied by two
the survey lines that scored this land were
so it could be ripped along its edges, cliffs, and deeper memories
Marilyn Dumont
April 2, 2015
I was lucky to win this book as a Goodreads giveaway. A look at the Metis traditions and the Riel rebellion through poetry. The poet is able to use her words so that you can hear the fiddles and see the dancers or you can imagine the colorful beadwork being done or you can see the rebellion through the eyes of the Metis people. I truly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.
October 2, 2016
This book taught me a few things about Metis history and the history of western Canada. Learning something new makes me value a book, so I value this one simply for that. I like this prose poems and little short story in it too.
April 1, 2015
I won this book on Goodreads!
I wish to thank Marilyn for the opportunity to read her thoughts and collection of prose/poems. It ws a most enjoyable read.
I wish to thank Marilyn for the opportunity to read her thoughts and collection of prose/poems. It ws a most enjoyable read.
April 6, 2015
Goodreads win. Will read and review once received.
This was a good read. It was a short and quick read. I would definitely read this again. I would also recommed it. It was very enjoyable.
This was a good read. It was a short and quick read. I would definitely read this again. I would also recommed it. It was very enjoyable.
May 15, 2015
Concrete, complex, allusive, playful. Re - ignited my love of poetry.
August 8, 2016
Loved the different forms of poetry used to tell the story of the Northwest Rebellion, Dumont, and the Métis. They lended themselves well to their specific poems.
January 17, 2017
Enjoyed this little book thoroughly and learned something about the Manitoba Metis people as well. I especially appreciate and relate to the pieces based on women's experience.
August 27, 2019
Loved it again!
July 18, 2021
I share my thoughts on this poetry collection here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcHN...
Read
February 16, 2015Read for a review.
April 20, 2017
National poetry month has me searching for something different this time around. I try to incorporate some poetry into my reading, but find it difficult. Glad there is a lot of reminders about how important it is and to read it. I'm always glad I have after all is said and done. While I didn't learn anything new about Metis culture from this book, the prose and poetry of Marilyn Dumont was lovely, and was reminiscent of the injustices done to the Metis and First Nations peoples in Canada by the government. This is as much a historical book as poetry. Would be a wonderful book for a school curriculum.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews