Unpublished Newswire

I’ve been thinking about how Indigenous kids grow up in a swath of experiences—those we give them deliberately, those they seek out themselves, and what they are simply exposed to. This summer, I took my youngest to the fairgrounds in Saskatoon. The sun was murky and orange as forest fire smoke obscured it. The acrid smell that makes the back of your throat feel raw is a summer familiarity now. In the fairgrounds, the bright lights were flashing, the teddy bears were puffy, the popcorn and the Doukhobor bread were bursting out of their confines, and the majority of the thousands of kids—...

LAST NOVEMBER, WE received a letter from a grade five student in New Kent, Virginia, asking for advice. The child was beginning work on an “editorial” and wanted information on how to “save the walrus from extinction.” He meant the wrinkled, tusked-and-whiskered mammal, not this organization. There is a lot to love here. First, the charming analogue quality of the act. The letter was printed, crisply folded, slipped into an envelope, and dropped into a mailbox. No email address was provided, ensuring our reply would travel by slow technology. Second, undergirding the letter—and this, in...