“Of all the stories I’ve read and seen in popular culture about events like this, how come there’s from an Indigenous perspective?” Rice wondered.

Many have been through a series of apocalypses: disease, forced displacement, cultural genocide. While dystopian horror stories are considered popular entertainment, “In some senses, for a lot of communities, it’s already a dystopian existence,” Rice says. “We spent a lot of time outside, doing a lot of fishing, going through the bush, and learning about the medicines,” says Rice, a new father himself. His father, John, reclaimed his Anishinaabe culture as a young man and was determined to pass down the lessons and traditions to his children. Now 39, Rice grew up in his Wasauksing home without running water or electricity. The characters initially find the experience refreshing – something Rice can relate to from his own childhood. In a small Anishinaabe community, the struggle between Indigenous people and a new wave of colonizers plays out in miniature.Īs the story begins, the reserve finds itself without cell service, television, or internet, technologies that have only recently become essentials in the community. While the broad strokes of the story will be familiar to most readers – Rice cites Cormac Mc Carthy and John Wyndham as influences – the setting is not only original but also provides allegorical heft. That idea forms the kernel of Rice’s second novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, coming out with ECW Press in October, in which an unnamed disaster cuts off a northern Ontario reserve from the outside world, leaving the community to deal with both dwindling supplies and desperate refugees from the south. If, however, the power were to stay off, the 400 citizens of Wasauksing would be equipped with much of the knowledge, skills, and resources they would need to survive. Across Ontario and the northeastern U.S., 55 million people were suddenly plunged into a world without electricity during the most widespread blackout ever to hit North America. This time, it was not the kind of local power failure many reserves are accustomed to. On August 14, 2003, Rice was there visiting his brothers when the power went out. Author and CBC Radio host Waubgeshig Rice grew up in the community of Wasauksing First Nation on Parry Island, a swirl of land at the eastern edge of Ontario’s Georgian Bay.

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