The Reason You Walk

Starred review from September 14, 2015
Kinew, a prominent Canadian journalist, musician, and Ojibway leader, turns his immense capacity for storytelling to his own life. He begins with the story of his father, Tobasonakwut, including a childhood spent on traditional Anishinaabe lands in Ontario, abuse in an Indian residential school, his later life as an elder and elected leader, and a search for peace that takes his family across the Americas and even to Rome. The journey is familial, political, and spiritual for both father and son, spanning drug and alcohol use, failed relationships, births, adoptions, bureaucratic battles, constitutional questions, sundances, sweat lodges, and visions. In this powerfully written memoir, pivotal moments are delivered in short sentences, a style that is brilliantly clear but retains enough opacity to engender serious, fruitful thought. Kinew's father taught him that there are four meanings to the book's title phrase, all of which are "from the perspective of the Creator: âI have created you and therefore you walk... I am your motivation.... I am the spark inside you called love, which animates you and allows you to live by the Anishinaabe values.... I am the destination at the end of your life that you are walking towards." By the end, readers will feel honored to know why Kinew walks, on all four levels. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists.