Storytelling runs in his family but when he’s really stuck for a story, he goes for a walk or a skate. Duncan Mercredi grew up in Grand Rapids where he lived until he had to leave to go to high school in Cranberry Portage. “Most of my education was actually just as a boy was actually living within that Village on how to treat people, the idea that we shared what we had and the school itself was just a two room school, which was from grade one to eight,” Mercredi recounts. The setup accelerated his learning.

His advice for students who have to leave their home community to get educated is, “you go somewhere to get educated at the same time, never forgetting where you come from”. He tells students when they introduce themselves to not just introduce themselves by name but to share who their family is, what their language is, and what Nation they come from.

Mercredi is now retired but he still does a lot of storytelling with schools and writes a lot. He loves to read, something he got from his mother. He became a blue collar worker after he graduated because of his Cree-Metis background. He didn’t have status and his family could only afford to send one of his siblings to university. His mother lost her status as a Cree woman when she married his father who was Metis.  

For 23 years Mercredi worked in the blue collar world, and something he struggled with was the attitudes about people who were different from them that he slowly adopted, even though he was raised to accept people and not hold prejudices. He likes to tell people he went to Blue Collar University or that he got his PhD from Redneck University. He shares what he learned ‘on the other side’, from white society and talks about the mixing of what he learned as a boy and what he learned at work. He describes it like two rivers coming together but being visually distinct.

After that, Mercredi moved into the white collar world and found the same prejudices. He’s had to learn how to handle situations where people are sharing discriminatory perspectives and typically just walks away unless the conversation is more than he can overlook. The white collar world wasn’t somewhere he fit in.

Growing up, his Kokum was the storyteller in the family, and without really saying as much she was training him to be one, too. She knew his storytelling practice would be different though, he would be writing instead of sharing out loud like she did, where people would come to see her to hear her stories.

At first, writing was how Mercredi dealt with homesickness when he left to go to school. His habit of writing wasn’t well-received by the blue collar world after he graduated. Now he writes without holding back and he’s published five books with a sixth on the way. Surrounded by boxes of old writing, he’s putting together a new manuscript of his past works of four phases of his life. The rest he plans to have people light on fire after he’s passed away.

As far as inspiration for his writing goes, Mercredi is inspired by the world around him, by what he reads is happening. He writes a lot about his childhood, his blue collar working days, about his dog and about lines he hears that strike him that sometimes become poems. If he’s stuck in the summer he goes for walks and in the winter, he goes for a skate. Skating opens up his memory bank, reminding him of his childhood, of boat rides, of fishing, of helping his dad with the sled dogs, of his kokum’s stories, of visitors to his home, and of skating as a child. He doesn’t write about his white collar working days at all, though.

Besides skating, Mercredi stopped drinking six years ago to stay healthier after many years of heavy drinking. Since retiring, he also spends a lot of time alone, something he’s used to after often being the only Indigenous person working among white people in the bush camps. When he’s overwhelmed, he finds a quiet place to sit and wait until the feeling passes. Writing also helps him balance himself, as well as listening to blue or country music. Talking to friends on Facebook also helps.

When it comes to youth who are struggling, Mercredi’s advice is, “If you have no one to talk to, talk to yourself. Ask yourself, why do I feel this way? Who am I?” He suggests writing or drawing all the negative thoughts on paper and then writing out what makes you feel good until the two balance out. He finds when you read it, you will feel better.

Storytelling runs in Duncan Mercredi’s family but when he’s really stuck for a story, he prefers to go for a walk or a skate. Writing was first an antidote for loneliness and now he writes all the time, though he’s technically retired. Trained by his grandmother, his medium is different than hers but his talent shines bright as the gift was passed through the generations.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.