Dawaa: The Space Between - Paperback

by Tareyn Johnson (Author), Tareyn Johnson (Illustrator)

Dawaa: The Space Between celebrates in poetry the tensions and beauty between the two ancestral languages of the author: Ojibwe and English.

As a First Nations woman, Tareyn Johnson grew up without knowing the language of her ancestors. Her grandparents attended residential school, and neither they, nor her mother carried the language. Left with a deep longing desire to embrace Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) language, she began her learning journey as an adult.

As her understanding grew, words began to form visually in her mind. As a result, twenty-six poems--two for each of the Thirteen Moons--grouped seasonally, beautifully juxtapose Ojibwe and English to express Johnson's feeling of existing between two languages.

This collection of poems--not intended as a didactic or language teaching tool--examines the unique experience of walking between two worlds, speaking and learning two languages, and relating the two ways of knowing in a liminal space... the space between.

nanda-gikendan--seek to know it, seek to learn it.

Author Biography

Passionate artist and storyteller, Tareyn Johnson is Anishnaabe and a member of the Chippewa of Georgina Island First Nation. She owns an art company, She Came Shining, focusing on beadwork and digital collage. She has been the director of Indigenous Affairs at the University of Ottawa since 2017 and Professor in the Indigenous Studies program since 2021.