In former Federal Cabinet Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould's recently released book, True Reconciliation, she emphasizes that reconciliation is a process that begins with learning and understanding, but must translate into action and change before true reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous peoples can occur. Given the coincidence that I am releasing my new novel, The Night Class within a month of Ms. Wilson-Raybould's book, I thought I would share the Foreword to The Night Class with readers of this blog, to give you some insight into my journey of learning and understanding reconciliation, and ultimately turning that knowledge into action in the form of a coming-of-age novel, set within a context of reconciliation. THE NIGHT CLASS: FORWORD
SINCE I BEGAN telling friends and acquaintances that I’m writing another fictional novel, this one set within the context of Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, I’ve been met with a lot of silence, raised eyebrows, or comments like: “Have you checked with Indigenous sources?” or “How did you get the idea for your characters?” or “Can you be sure the story is authentic?” I understand their concerns. They’re all worried that I’m stepping into a racial and political minefield—and I agree with them. But I think it’s a racial and political minefield that somebody in Canada has to navigate, in order to help raise awareness in the non-Indigenous public of the need to take an active role in helping to resolve the longstanding, complex issues related to Truth and Reconciliation. Before I go any further, I want to make the disclaimer that I am definitely pro-reconciliation! As much as anybody, I want to see the wrongs of the past corrected, and I want to see our Indigenous brothers and sisters treated with fairness and dignity. But, despite that, I have observed that non-Indigenous Canadians continue to have a lot of questions about the political process of reconciliation. Thus, although The Night Class is a fictional coming-of-age story, it is also a political commentary about reconciliation. Will readers (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) find this story controversial? Will The Night Class generate emotional reactions, some heated debate, and dialog about reconciliation? I certainly hope so, otherwise there’s no point in writing the story. At this point, you’re probably asking yourself the same question as my friends and family: “Why is this guy crazy enough to tackle this controversial subject?” So, I’ll try to answer that question as briefly as possible, after telling you a bit about my background. My ancestors were colonial settlers in Prince Edward Island, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, Canada. As young children, my sisters and I often spent summer vacations at my grandparents’ cottage in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, having to drive through the small village of Lebret to get there. I remember seeing a large building beside the road, with children playing in a playground, and I remember asking my parents and grandparents about the building, which I now know was one of Canada’s residential schools. Their answer was that “this is where the Indian kids go to school.” Since I’d already learned that most Indians (as we called Indigenous people then) lived separately on reserves, having separate schools for Indian kids made logical sense to my ten-year-old mind, and I never thought to ask any more questions about the schools. Non-Indigenous children my age simply accepted those explanations at face value. That was just the way things were for us back then. However, as the years passed, non-Indigenous Canadians like myself have had our childhood naiveté systematically broken down by a non-stop flow of disturbing news stories about the ongoing problems in many Indigenous communities—problems and truths that keep repeating themselves time and time again. And eventually, I started asking myself: “Why does this keep happening?” So, I started reading. And no matter what Indigenous topics I chose to read, they all ultimately pointed me in one direction—towards Canada’s Indian Act. And the more I read about the Act, and the more I read about what Canada’s Indigenous people were saying about it, the more appalled I became! Then, over the past two to three years, I noticed that the words “Truth and Reconciliation” were popping up more and more frequently in the news. So I started reading key documents like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and the final report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, with its ninety-four Calls to Action. My reading prompted me to start talking with friends and neighbours about Truth and Reconciliation. But, when I raised the topic, something very surprising happened. Many of them were reluctant to talk about the subject, let alone ask questions or express concerns about what the word reconciliation actually means for Canadians. They were afraid to ask how long the process might take, or whether there is a goal or an endpoint for reconciliation. Most importantly, they were afraid that anything they said might be interpreted in a way that might brand them as racists. And given the current political and racial climate, especially in North America where there are apparently no grey areas, and where being branded a racist is a very all-or-nothing, unforgiving judgment, I don’t blame them one bit for being cautious. The only way I could get some people to openly express opinions about reconciliation was to link an informal, confidential survey about reconciliation for friends to access via my Facebook page. The results and comments were not only insightful, but they aligned completely with previous polls conducted by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, as well as other reputable polling companies over the past few years. Despite the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s 2015 findings and report, and despite the recent multiple revelations of finding the bodies of missing Indigenous children at Canada’s residential schools, reconciliation is still only a priority for a small percentage of Canada’s non-Indigenous population. Even worse, a majority of Canadians rated their level of knowledge about reconciliation to be very low. Frankly, this is a shame, and I think it needs to change! How can we encourage First Nations and non-Indigenous people to engage in a dialogue about reconciliation, and to start moving that process forward, when a large part of the non-Indigenous population is afraid to talk about the subject? How can we increase awareness of reconciliation issues, when it isn’t even a high priority for most non-Indigenous people? And most importantly, how can those of us who are non-Indigenous, help to raise awareness in our communities of the need to get reconciliation moving forward in a meaningful way? Given the recent residential school revelations, which includes a ground search at the school that was located at Lebret, the need for moving Truth and Reconciliation forward in Canada is even more pressing. So, as a writer, I decided to use fiction as a vehicle to raise awareness in non-Indigenous people, and also to raise awareness in Indigenous people that much of the non-Indigenous population is either afraid to engage with them in meaningful dialog, or doesn’t care about the issue. My aim is to raise awareness through storytelling, in a way that is entertaining, but also in a way that tells the story through characters representing the reality of Canada’s ethnic mosaic. As such, The Night Class is both a coming-of-age story and a political commentary. It necessarily contains a certain amount of political incorrectness in order to raise awareness of issues and generate dialog. There is a long history of political commentary in fiction, beginning in ancient Greece and re-emerging in the sixteenth century. Like an independent media, these types of stories serve a necessary need in any society claiming to have free speech. Thus, I hope this book will be difficult to read in places. The Night Class exposes biases and prejudices present in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, with the intention of eliciting strong emotional responses and discomfort from both groups. I’ll be presenting examples of racist attitudes that I grew up with, many of which still prevail today. I do not endorse those attitudes. Instead, I wish to expose them for what they are—myths and misconceptions about our Indigenous brothers and sisters. While writing The Night Class, I did my best (as a non-Indigenous person) to research and make the experiences of the Indigenous characters in my story as realistic as possible. I also did my best to reach out to consult with members of the Indigenous community, to obtain critical feedback on the first draft of the manuscript. However, this is where I experienced another surprising phenomenon, when nobody I approached in the Indigenous community seemed motivated or interested in reading the manuscript and giving feedback. I was asked a pointed question by one young Indigenous lady: “Why are you the one to tell this story?” On one hand, I completely understand that Indigenous people feel a deep need to reclaim their history, and to tell their own stories and truths along the road to healing and reconciliation. Non-indigenous people have been appropriating Indigenous stories and cultures for hundreds of years now. But, on the other hand, the experiences I described above have left me feeling like reconciliation is currently a one-way street, where there does not seem to be a lot of interest from the Indigenous community in engaging in frank, open dialog with an average, non-Indigenous Canadian about the process of reconciliation. Given that the definition of the word reconcile is to resolve differences and restore harmony between people, it’s difficult for me to see how any path towards Truth and Reconciliation in this country can resolve differences or restore harmony without frank, two-way dialog, even if that dialog is sometimes uncomfortable for all parties involved. Consequently, it is my hope that The Night Class provides a lesson in how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples must learn to look at themselves and their approaches to reconciliation, how both groups must learn lessons from our past, and how we must make it a higher priority to learn to work together as one team in the present, if we all hope to move forward and live together in peace and harmony in the future. At the end of the story, you’ll find something that is a bit unusual for a work of fiction—a short list of recommended readings, for those of you who are interested in learning more about the issues raised in The Night Class. The list includes important documents such as the UNDRIP and Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s findings and Calls to Action. I would particularly like to recommend three books: 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, by Bob Joseph; Indigenous Relations, by Bob and Cynthia Joseph; and From Where I Stand, by former Federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. Together, these three books provide valuable insight for non-Indigenous people, into the First Nations’ perspective on the Indian Act, and on the process of Truth and Reconciliation in general. I hope you enjoy The Night Class and its cast of characters. And, if you also learn something that helps to raise your curiosity or your awareness of reconciliation and Indigenous issues, and causes you to think more about those issues—even better. Finally, if you enjoyed the story and it’s messages of the need to build trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and the need for teamwork and compromise in rebuilding our nation, please use social media to recommend The Night Class to your friends and neighbours. We won’t achieve reconciliation in our country unless we spread awareness of these complex and important issues to all Canadians, and until we all realize that now is the time for concrete action on the part of each one of us, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, to make reconciliation become a reality in our country. Alex Jones December, 2022
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The obvious short answer to this question is EVERYTHING! But life is never that simple. Many people will tell you that there are times when your name, and how you choose to be called, can become extremely complicated.
Take my name, for example. I thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t named John Smith, the most common name for white men of Anglo-Saxon descent who were born in the mid-20th century. On the other hand, I’m a David Jones—a close second on that list behind John Smith. To be precise, my parents named me David Alexander Jones. With that revelation, I hear you all snickering in the background. Yes, during my youth I did indeed endure a litany of comments about ‘Davey Jones’ Locker’ and about my shorter English namesake who was a member of the sixties pop group, the Monkees. And then there was an even more famous David Jones, who realized very early in his career that he should probably choose a different stage name—you likely know him as David Bowie! Being teased about your name during your youth is one thing, but the problems can become much bigger when you’re an adult. For example, whenever I crossed the border into the U.S., I couldn’t help but notice that the eyes of Homeland Security agents spent a lot of time scrutinizing my passport or driver’s license, and searching their computers. One very friendly agent finally joked with me on one of those occasions, saying “there’s a lot of you Davey Joneses out there, and some of them aren’t exactly upstanding citizens.” Ironically, my smoothest entry into the U.S. came on one occasion when I mistakenly grabbed my son’s passport from my desk drawer, instead of my own. And just to be clear—his name isn’t David! At any rate, I’m not sure how it happened, but I was welcomed to New York State with an uncharacteristically cheery wave by the Homeland Security agent that morning. There was, of course, the matter of my return to Canada using my son’s passport—but that’s another hilarious story for another time! Let’s just say that Canada Customs wasn’t nearly that cheery upon my return! The next time my name became an issue was in 2012, while I was writing my first novel, Walls. Around that time, I began thinking ahead to whether or not I was going to use some form of David Jones for my writing identity, or whether to use some other name on the cover of my book. At the time, I was still practising psychology as Dr. David A. Jones, and I was uncomfortable with creating fictional characters in my novel that might inevitably have distant similarities to the multitude of real-life stories I heard from my clients. After giving it quite a bit of thought, I eventually decided that I needed to make a clean distinction between my professional life and my new part-time life as a writer, so I decided to use my middle name—Alex—and to write under the name Alex Jones. And once again, I hear you all groaning in the background at my choice of names, because you know where all of this is going, don’t you? So, who knew that Alexander Emerick Jones, the now-disgraced conspiracy theorist from Austin, Texas, was going to become as notorious and controversial as he turned out to be? Certainly not me, that’s for sure! His notorious behaviour quickly escalated and became a gigantic monkey on my back, and on the back of anybody named Alex Jones. As an independent author, I realized that if I was going to rise above the notoriety of the Alex Jones InfoWars disinformation, I would either have to mount a costly public relations and advertising campaign that I most certainly couldn’t afford, or go back and reconsider using Alex Jones as my pen name. However, because I was finishing out the last five years of a busy psychology career, I ended up putting my writing career on the back burner because I didn’t have time to deal with the issue. But, it’s now November, 2022, and how life has changed! I’m now retired and a pandemic has come and changed all of our lives in many ways. I got back to writing during the summer of 2021, and I’m proud to say that I have a unique new novel, The Night Class, ready to publish. But now I’m faced with the dilemma that I put off for the past five years—I either have to change my writing identity and pen name, or find a way to build my own Alex Jones identity, and to make it as distinct from Alex Emerick Jones as possible. The first choice means that I would have to edit and re-publish all of my previous four novels, and publish The Night Class under a name other than Alex Jones. But worse than that, it means discarding my own Alex Jones writing identity, of which I’ve become quite proud. The longer I spent thinking about my dilemma, the more it just didn’t seem fair that I should have to suffer the consequences for Alex Emerich Jones’ disgusting deeds. I’m tired of living in this man’s dark shadow. And so, I finally came to the conclusion that the world needs to know that there is ANOTHER Alex Jones riding into town—an Alex Jones who writes stories that entertain, but who also addresses important social issues with insight, empathy, and compassion! In my novel Walls and its prequel, Angela’s Eyes, I addressed domestic abuse and sexual abuse, especially by those in positions with great power differentials over those whom they abuse. Interestingly, I highlighted these abuse issues a full five years before the “Me Too” movement finally brought them into the open. In my novel Faces, I addressed the issue of parental child abuse. And I delved into the world of military sexual abuse in my novel Spirits, years before the Canadian Armed Forces (at its highest levels) was exposed for being a culture that cultivated and covered up rampant sexual abuse. Finally, in my latest novel, The Night Class, I’ve raised issues revolving around Indigenous Reconciliation, and the need to educate Canadians on this extremely important social and political subject. So, what’s in a name, you ask? For me, it’s everything! It’s time for me to let the world know about “The Other Alex Jones”—the Canadian Alex Jones who writes fiction that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. It’s time for me to mount the social media campaign that I’ve been putting off for the past five years. And in order to do that, I need help from you—my friends, followers, and readers of my novels and this blog—I need you to help spread the word about my work with your Follows, Tweets, Likes, Comments, and Shares on your social media feeds! Together, let’s show the world that there is another Alex Jones out there—one who is truthful, decent, and who doesn’t spread disinformation and falsehoods! Alex Emerick Jones is likely going to think of me as the “Anti-Alex Jones.” But, I don’t care—from here on, I’m choosing to call myself “The OTHER Alex Jones!” Watch for the hashtag #theotheralexjones. Let’s see if we can make it trend! Author's Note: After a one-month campaign to spread word over social media that there is another, different Alex Jones, I learned an important lesson. While people may care that I'm trying to distinguish myself from the disgraced conspiracy theorist, search engine algorithms don't care at all! Thus, from this point onward, I'll be using a new writing name that is distinctive because I'll be using all three of my names - David Alex Jones. |
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