Poet unpacks the baggage of being light-skinned in new collection

What Shade of Brown is a powerful and emotional collection of poetry and narrative prose in which Nehiyawak (Cree)-Métis writer John Brady McDonald examines what it means to be a light-skinned Indigenous person “and the baggage that comes with that, the pain that that entails.”

McDonald says his third collection of poetry is a combination and continuation of his first two works, Childhood Thoughts and Water and Kitotam: He Speaks to It, both published in 2021. Childhood Thoughts, his first poetry collection, was “geared more towards rediscovering what was lost” while Kitotam was “more of an exploration of my past.”

“It's kind of the reality of discovering who I was, reconnecting with who I was, giving voice to what was silent for so long. When a person does that it's not always a pretty thing. It's not always a positive experience and it's reality. What Shade of Brown speaks to the reality,” said McDonald, who was born and raised in Prince Albert, Sask.

The title poem is featured about midway through the collection. It hauntingly recounts McDonald’s constant battle when in Indigenous communities: “What shade of brown would you rather I be?/Since you’re so keen to focus on my light skin/and how, if I were darker, I might be more Indian in your eyes, correct?/Dark enough that my life would have been made a little harder than it was.” 

A light-skinned individual, said McDonald, is “the living representation of colonization and so that could be a very isolating thing because you're never good enough and that's something that carries through.” 

For McDonald, who is a residential school survivor, as well as having dealt with poverty, addictions, and the intergenerational trauma of residential schools, the constant feeling of never being good enough has hit him hard. 

“Finally with that poem,” he said, “it's just asking, well, ‘What would it take for me to be good enough in your eyes? What would it take for me to finally be accepted by my community?’”

In that same poem, McDonald moves on to talk about his life in the settler world: “This light skin didn’t stop me from being followed around by store security/This light skin didn’t stop the fights on the playground or the racial slurs hurled at me/This light skin didn’t stop the cops from slowing down whenever they passed me on the street/This light skin didn’t stop the high school guidance counselor from saying I was going to end up in jail or on drugs ‘just like the rest of them.’”

Because he’s light skinned, non-Indigenous people think it’s okay to tell racist jokes around him, expect him to know everything about other Indigenous people, and tokenize him, he says.

“Jaded” is how McDonald describes his emotions in the poem. “There's the feeling of isolation, of loneliness.”

McDonald said he positioned the titular poem in the middle of his work “because it’s a very emotional piece. It's a piece that carries a lot of weight… It's balanced on both sides by so much emotional-other…that it needed to be in the middle as that counterbalance.”

Unlike his previous poetry collections, McDonald says there is no theme running through these poems. Each piece has its own emotion. Each piece is honest and direct.

“In poetry, a lot is inferred. So much gets implied. As poets you'll have a lot of metaphors. With this book what I wanted to do is…not use the metaphors, to be very blunt and very narrative...in my telling,” he said. “I’m being honest with what I'm saying without trying to hide behind a beautiful phrase.”

Writing poetry has kept McDonald sober for the past 28 years. In his younger years, dealing with pain was done through drugs, alcohol and violence.

“Poetry allows that cathartic release,” he said. “My story is not unique. What makes me quote-unquote unique is that I have this ability to be able to make groups of words sound somewhat coherent.”

McDonald offers a handful of narrative prose mixed in with his poems. Not being restricted to the format of a poem allowed him to expound further, putting “a little bit more meat on the bone and share a little bit more thoughts and delve deeper into that.”

McDonald started writing this collection pre-COVID in 2018-2019. In one of his prose pieces, “Life in Dystopia (Observations on the First Run for Groceries at the start of the Pandemic)”, he writes, “As you walk down the aisles, you're beyond aware of everyone around you, and it feels like there is a lot of people there. You suddenly become aware of every breath you're taking, and the paranoia kicks in. ‘Which breath will it be that gives it to me?’"

Two of his poems tackle the visit of Pope Francis to Alberta in 2022. In “You’ll Pave the Road for a Pope,” he outlines Canada’s shortfalls when it comes to Indigenous people: safe drinking water, “steal our children into foster care,” murdered and missing mothers and sisters, and plundering “Mother Earth for all she is worth…” but “You’ll pave the road for a pope/And leave us to suffer yet again.”

In “Never Give Me a Headdress,” McDonald tackles the controversial decision by Chief Wilton Littlechild to present Pope Francis with a headdress: “You even gave one to the pope/When he was supposed to be here begging for our forgiveness.”

McDonald, who wears the title of activist proudly, says poetry plays a “huge part” in that role.

“When you're an activist and a poet, you can't separate the two. It's something as poets we've always been,” he said, pointing to the bards, the beatnik poets and the urban poetry that is in rap and hip hop. “We're telling stories and we're making sure, ‘Hey, we're still here. There are stories and you can't ignore us.’ The two are so intertwined that they can't be separated.”

What Shade of Brown is published by Radiant Press, who McDonald calls “wonderful allies.” The collection of poetry will be released June 30. It can be ordered through radiantpress.ca/shop/