Though Related, Our Echoes Are Not the Same
We Survived the Night, Julian Brave Noisecat. Penguin Random House Canada, 2025.
Early in Julian Brave Noisecat’s memoir, We Survived the Night, he states: “We are all related, but we are not all the same.” The quote exemplifies a central tenet of the pan-Indigenous community (Indian Country, if you will) but also serves as a critical guidepost for his highly lauded book. And as this particular book arises from one of the most lauded citizens within NDN Country, this makes sense. His comment indicates the depth and nuance that permeate the community that exists between First Nations.
Let me follow this observation with the fact that Noisecat is an incredibly strong artist and writer. Constructed around the figure of Coyote, We Survived the Night is an excellent mix of traditional stories of his people and the curated experience of Noisecat and his family’s life. As a trickster figure, Coyote brings chaos and typically manages to produce what could vaguely be called the good order of creation. The metaphor and figure are apt for Noisecat’s work here. As he himself is well located within the coyote’s lineage, Noisecat builds the granite core of this book with a heavy infusion of Coyote spirit.
The arc of the book moves from his father’s unlikely survival at Williams Lake Residential School through to Noisecat’s childhood and dipping into his deep ancestry, we are given a glimpse into a contemporary Indigenous family not from the standpoint of the individual, but rather the family as a whole. Noisecat deftly moves from deep-level traditional stories to the personal, merging folktale and history and epistemologies into an enchanting read that is both engaging in its everyman’s cadence and replete with teachings to help understand specific life choices and events:
Our people believe we are echoes of ancestors — usually for better, but also sometimes for the worse. We are the inheritors of mythological achievements and tricksterly foibles. We’re the children of fathers who abandoned and relatives who picked up. We tell these stories to remind ourselves who we are, where we come from, and what we’ve been through.
This style and declared function of his storytelling and narration accomplishes much in fashioning a shared space to unpack the essential differences between nations and their readerships.
The echoes he shares are both important and occasionally problematic. Which makes sense, given his adherence to his coyote self in the construction of the memoir. The trickster as storyteller is occasionally kind, driven by want, most clearly, devious, and decidedly male. This metaphor of narrative choice does much to frame those occasionally problematic observations. Noisecat comes to this book from what many average NDN might call Indian Country’s more notable colonial “blue bloods” — that is, the ruling class — or elites — of our communities. His family is tightly connected to white-collar often academic or government jobs and lives in places like tech-bubble San Francisco and college town New England. They enjoy frequent skiing and snowboarding outings in the mountains of California and British Columbia. These are far from the experiences of everyday working-class Indigenous folks in the same way they are in settler communities. Social class is social class in every community. And every community spots toxicity in the form of privilege and economic standing. I might point to Dawn Dumont’s Glass Beads (Thistledown Press, 2017) as a fictional recasting of this social class. No small part of my problems with the text is the often borderline misogynist treatment of women in his stories. His ancestral coyote nature discourse on his mother, grandmother, and other women that pop up during the course of the telling are not what I would term as empowering or understanding. Instead, the women clean up the coyote’s messes (both in folktale and in Noisecat’s family) and we are left with long apologist explanations of men’s behaviour as being tied to their inner coyote. They are real, they are problematic, and their story is relevant to the greater Indigenous experience. But not everything the trickster says or does we find easy to accept, let alone like.
Our communities contain multitudes. And some of those multitudes can often be our own worst enemy. The elite of Indian Country have often welcomed con artists into our midst, sold them as siblings to the community. Notable pretendian figures such as Thomas King and Sacheen Little Feather make appearances in which the narrator lauds them for their kindness and connection. While King was outed in the greater community of North America more recently, it had been relatively common knowledge in NDN Country that the man was not what he claimed to be. Yet the worst of this promotion comes in a chapter-length promotion of the group now calling themselves the Lumbee Nation of North Carolina, a group that within NDN country is largely unrecognized, and is seen as toxic and deceitful. In this section Noisecat misrepresents (and on occasion appears to misunderstand) the status laws in both the US and Canada, largely ignores or delegitimizes the findings of Indigenous elders, scholars, and nations, and appeals to what is likely to be a large non-Indigenous audience for this book. Emotions and community-wide outrage aside (one must consider the book’s aforementioned audience), the essence of this book runs heavy with coyote spirit. One should not always believe Coyote, but still leave room to appreciate the beauty of his story and accept his place within our kinships.
Noisecat’s personal story is an important reflection of our communities in that it shows one of our multitudes. A brilliant one that shines and struts into every scene, every section. Coyote is both a beloved and a despised spirit. His stories are beautiful, funny, and equally frustrating. I find myself, as a citizen of Indian Country walking away with all of those sensations.
We tell these stories to remind ourselves who we are, where we come from, and what we’ve been through. We tell these stories because we see ourselves in them, even when they’re not explicitly about us.
From the core, We Survived the Night is a duality of coyote energy. Along the way, he captivates our attention with a powerful narrative ability, deep level knowledge of folklore, and a welcome everyman cadence. While I fundamentally disagree with his promotion of a so-called Lumbee “nation” and apologist sentiments regarding toxic masculinity within Indian Country, this is a well-crafted memoir. To understand the contemporary Indigenous experience, one must come to know its nuances and its beauty. We Survived the Night accomplishes this. While the book is no gospel of absolute truth in Indian Country nor a grand reflection of what the totality of our experiences are on contemporary Turtle Island, Noisecat’s work here adds an important and well-crafted testimony of contemporary Indigeneity on Turtle Island. His work is surely a bright point among the multitudes.
— D.A. Lockhart is an author, Turtle clan member of the Lenape, and independent Indigenous scholar residing on the south shore of Waawiiyaataong (Windsor, ON).
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