This interview was guest-edited by Gillian Joseph as part of their Full Stop Editorial Fellowship project, Reclaiming Horror. The first installment, an essay by Hana Pera Aoake, can be found here. The final installment will be published tomorrow.

Editor’s Note
I’m thrilled to introduce the second part of the Reclaiming Horror series: a discussion between authors Tiffany Morris and Jessica Johns that delves into eco horror, climate grief, and Indigenous relationships to land and horror.
I felt that it was essential to have an audio format contribution to this series. Oral storytelling has carried so much Indigenous knowledge across generations—from cautionary tales to methods of healing from horror. Tiffany and Jessica’s conversation is a wealth of information that offers us insight into how Indigenous writers have continued to forge their own horror genre. I encourage you to listen closely, and to read Bad Cree and Green Fuse Burning, if you haven’t already!
Gillian Joseph
Transcript of Tiffany Morris & Jessica Johns’s Discussion of Bad Cree and Eco Horror
Tiffany (00:00:00):
Gwe’, hello everyone. Thank you for tuning into my conversation with Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree. My name is Tiffany Morris, and we are going to be discussing eco horror, climate grief, and Indigenous relationships to horror and land and all of that, and how it shows up in our fiction. I have written a novella that deals with climate change, and Bad Cree does as well, so I think that’s gonna be most of the focus.
Just a warning to anyone who hasn’t read Bad Cree by Jessica Johns or Green Fuse Burning by myself: Spoilers may show up in our discussion. So, in Mi’kmaq, we like to say pjila’si, which means welcome, come in and sit down.
So, pjila’si, listeners, and pjila’si, Jessica! How are you today?
Jessica (00:00:55):
Aw, Tante, that’s so lovely. Thank you. I am well, I am really excited to be chatting to you. I’m also really excited to read your book—as soon as I read the premise for it, I was like, this is everything that I love. So I’m really excited to dig into that as well.
Tiffany (00:01:20):
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, we’re gonna be mostly focused on Bad Cree, but I was like, oh, if anything comes up, you know, it might be worth mentioning. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:01:28):
Yeah. I mean, if there are parallels or similarities and stuff, it’s fun when works are accidentally in conversation.
Tiffany (00:01:38):
I guess this is jumping right into it, but I think that a lot of Indigenous horror does have that. Even though we’re all from different nations usually, writing in this mode, and it’s still kind of a nascent genre. I think that there’s common threads of understanding and fear that are being interrogated in them.
Jessica (00:02:06):
I agree. I’ve also read so many other works from Indigenous writers that deal with things like dreaming and talking about family and kinship in similar ways. And, yeah, in many ways that’s not an accident. There are similar ties across the many, many different Indigenous cultures. And that’s kind of cool to see show up.
Tiffany (00:02:45):
Yeah, it’s so interesting to me, because I think it speaks to not only a shared experience in the contemporary kind of sphere that we have—and maybe, you know, there’s similar kind of forebears in Indigenous literatures and also just maybe who we read in Canadian literature, in American literature. But also just like cultural connections between the nations and shared wisdom that goes back so far.
Jessica (00:03:21):
One of my elders, elder Jerry Saddleback, here in Amiskwaciwâskahikan . . . talks a lot about how, because we Cree people traveled a lot, we had medicine trails and things like that. And, we moved throughout the seasons. He talked about the relationship that we had with different peoples in different areas that were all eco specialists, not just the few knowledge keepers. Everyone was a knowledge keeper. Everyone was an eco specialist in their area.
They had this very, very intimate relationship with the land that they lived on, and then also with each other because as you’re going into these areas, you develop these relationships with these other Indigenous people that are not from your culture or nation. And you’re developing those relationships because you’re traveling through it, or you’re harvesting, or you have a treaty with them or whatever. And I think about that a lot in terms of knowledge production and knowledge sharing and these similarities and parallels.
Tiffany (00:04:52):
Absolutely. There’s an interesting thing actually between our nations. I mentioned before we started that in L’nu’k culture there’s an element in Jessica’s novel that doesn’t exist in Mi’kmaw culture. And that’s the—how did you say we should refer to it? Sorry.
Jessica (00:05:14):
I think we can refer to the spirit as W. Or, you know, the cannibal spirit.
Tiffany (00:05:23):
That’s probably enough for the listeners to extrapolate what we mean. And hopefully they’ve read Bad Cree, ’cause it’s amazing and that’s a dominant element of it. We don’t have that spirit in our cosmology, but there is a word for it—I believe Chino, which I think is related to the Chinook winds. . . . Which is weird ’cause aren’t those warm winds?
Jessica (00:05:51):
Yeah. Chino, yeah. [Laughs] They are warm winds, and typically happen in Treaty Seven, which of course there are Cree people in Treaty Seven, but it’s more south. But yeah, we do have Chinooks as well. That [relationship is] interesting to think about, because . . . typically, in our stories, they’re very associated with winter. So that is maybe the connection.
Tiffany (00:06:26):
Ah. Well, it’s interesting because I didn’t actually get this from an elder, so I am going to have to verify it, but, it’s a creature that is referred to as being from the north. So it’s recognized as not being from our area, you know . . . [laughs], where we’re found.
I find that interesting; that’s probably an indication of that story traveling to us.
Jessica (00:06:53):
Yeah. Yep. Definitely.
Tiffany (00:06:56):
And I guess . . . hmm. Do I wanna get into that right now?
Jessica (00:07:03):
Whatever it is, yes. [Laughs]
Tiffany (00:07:05):
[Laughs] I think I’ll go back and we’ll come back to it.
I was wondering if you could talk about your relationship to horror and how you were brought into writing this book and writing in the horror genre.
Jessica (00:07:25):
I love horror. I have always loved horror, my entire life. I think it stems from . . . the books that were in my household growing up. Stephen King was like . . . My dad had every Stephen King book. And romance novels, my mom had all these romance novels. So those were my main—the things I started reading, when I started reading. And I probably read them, you know, when I was . . . much too young [laughs] to read either of those particular genres.
But I think that’s where it started. And also, I’m from northern Alberta. I was born in Fort Vermilion, which is in Treaty Eight territory, my territory. And, my family . . . through my life kept traveling more and more South.
We moved a lot when I was younger, but I lived the majority of my formative childhood years in the North. And honestly, the North is such a perfect horror setting. And I mean this in the best way I can possibly mean that, because I also find gothic horror and prairie horror really stunning. It’s really beautiful. You know, there’s just . . . vast space, lots of woods, lots of farmland, and cabins and remote houses and things like that. And we grew up on farms and we grew up in remote areas. I think that setting really fosters imagination, at least it did for me. And certainly sort of fostered a very horror imagination or imagination sort of based in horror.
As I grew into adulthood, I kept loving horror and would consume horror in all types of media. Things like Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps, as a kid, they were very formative for me. And then different kinds of horror that . . . I think hardcore, traditional horror-ists might balk at. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and . . . horror in ways maybe we don’t typically find horror.
So I just kept loving it. And then when it came to writing Bad Cree, I just really wanted to write into a genre or write into something I would really want to read. And that’s a mix of things. I really love horror and I also really love coming-of-age novels. I love the bildungsroman adventure, leaving-home-to-find-yourself type stories. I just wanted to read a mix of them all; I wanted to make something that was a mix of them all.
Tiffany (00:11:25):
I think that is really well balanced in the book, too. You get a real sense of Mackenzie’s journeying through grief, away from herself and then further into herself, into her home, as she’s moving through these dreams and this experience that she’s having.
Jessica (00:11:53):
Well, I’m really glad that came across.
Tiffany (00:11:56):
It’s interesting you mentioned Buffy, because it’s such a striking element of Bad Cree that there are so many female family members and femme characters populating Mackenzie’s world. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit? Is that something that’s kind of related to, I guess, voices you wanted to center in a horror narrative and the comfort and culture that comes from that?
Jessica (00:12:25):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there were very intentional subversions that I was attempting in writing this, particularly with the horror genre. You know, there are tropes that we often see in horror and not in a bad way, we just see them often in these works. And one of them is [that] usually, particularly in old horror novels or movies, women are quite disposable. I mean, I can’t say that for all horror . . . I’m not saying that for all horror. I’m just gonna generalize. But, yeah, they play certain roles: Either they’re these victims, people that need saving, or they’re used as a foil for (typically) a man to figure something out.
And Cree people are matriarchal; they’re a matriarchal society. So I really wanted to center women, center the power of women and femmes and queer Indigenous people and our ability to really take on shit and band together and, sort of imperfectly, but, you know . . . face things.
Even the most horrific things. So, the fact that the novel is made entirely up of characters that are women or femmes is really significant both to my culture and also just writing into this genre, sort of taking a different perspective.
Tiffany (00:15:10):
Mhmm. It’s so fascinating too, because so often horror protagonists, especially female horror protagonists, they’re disconnected. And that’s part of the horror. And instead, the bulk of Bad Cree happens in connection. And that kind of, re- . . . not even establishing, but revitalizing and nurturing those connections—
Jessica (00:15:37):
Yeah. Actually, and let’s use Buffy as an example here, because why not? That happens to Buffy in her lowest moments, or when she’s dealing with the scariest things: They’re happening in solitude. And one of those things that happens . . . is she has prophetic dreams. And dreams are a plot device used in horror often. If we think of Nightmare on Elm Street, or . . . But yeah, it’s always—and this is in Buffy’s case as well, at least for a while—she’s not believed. Remember, her closest friends aren’t taking her dreams as seriously as they absolutely should, based on what happens, them actually being prophetic.
That’s where the tension is. The tension and the horror is she’s isolated in this knowing she can’t talk about it with anyone, let alone have someone problem solve with her, you know? But in Bad Cree, that’s not the case. Mackenzie, when she tells anyone about her dreams, her parents (or her mom, rather), her aunts, her cousin, Joli, her friend, she’s believed instantly. And again, that’s sort of just what would happen in my culture or my family. For the most part, dreams are taken quite seriously.
So the tension instead is elsewhere. It’s in, like: How do they band together to figure it out?
Tiffany (00:17:43):
Yeah. And that was such a striking part of it too, because there’s that movement from . . . it starts out in . . . Mackenzie, is she in Vancouver?
Jessica (00:17:54):
She starts in Vancouver, yeah.
Tiffany (00:17:55):
Okay, perfect. And she ends up back on her home territory. Was it Treaty Six?
Jessica (00:18:05):
Treaty Eight. She ends up going back to her home territory of Treaty Eight, to High Prairie, which is where her family lives.
Tiffany (00:18:14):
And that’s when we really, I think, get into kind of the negotiation of climate and land, and climate grief that she’s experiencing, and just the evolution of how relationships to land have changed in the time that she’s been away.
Jessica (00:18:43):
Yeah. Mackenzie has been away for three years by the time she returns home, and she hasn’t visited in the three years she’s been gone. When she returns home to her home territory, to her homelands, she’s very shocked at the change in the landscape. It’s a very different place, because as she was growing up, the land was very inundated with industry, with the oil field industry. The town grew to double its size or something like that because it was an oil town. The perfect place for businesses to pop up headquarters for these oil companies and workers who came into the town and lived there now.
And she sort of took this for granted as she was growing up. She didn’t know any different, it’s just the way her town was. In the three years she’s been gone, that industry has died. The land has been extracted from in that area too; there’s nothing more that the industry can take from it. And so industry deserts it, workers leave, there’s no work anymore, people leave. The oil industry, of course, is still an industry. It’s just moved on to another area, another place to extract from. And so what Mackenzie sees is the aftermath of that. She sees this town that has now shrunk. She sees a place that she doesn’t really recognize. A place that has just undergone and had been—even while she was living there when she was younger—undergoing extreme violence. And she was sort of reckoning with that violence, seeing the aftermath of what was left.
Tiffany (00:21:09):
Yeah, there’s a real sense in some of these scenes you’ve written so beautifully—there’s a real sense of hunting and hollowing out of the town, and her being surprised that places are boarded up and things like that. It was really, really striking to me, ’cause it just really drove home that kind of language of consumption and that imagery.
Do you wanna talk about that a little bit? That choice?
Jessica (00:21:37):
I mean, this relates back to this creature, this cannibalistic creature which has a different name in the book, which when you read it, you’ll see it, it’s just written there. But these tie in together because, essentially, this has been a place—not just her town, but her territory—has been a place of extreme extraction.
I think one of the things Bad Cree highlights is violence isn’t something that happens once, and there’s like a moment of violence. Violence is also . . . a ripple effect. There’s so much more hurt that comes than just an incident. Mackenzie sees this place that has undergone extreme consumption, land extraction, and also how its sort of eaten her people, too.
Because when you are an industry in an area that is the main industry, it’s also where all the jobs are. So you create a place and a people that are reliant on you to be there, because now that’s how they’re putting food on the table for their children and for their families. You create this people who are now working against the very land that they live on and have this relationship with, and had this relationship with because you’ve given them no other option.
It’s mentioned that even some of her family members have moved away to chase jobs and to be a part of this industry. And that, in itself, is also a violence . . . another way of stealing people away from good relationship with their kin, with their land. This force that’s descending upon Mackenzie and her family is this creature, is this being that is a cannibal that eats, and in particular eats the greedy and eats and feasts off of consumers.
Tiffany (00:24:42):
I’m so sorry about my cat. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:24:44):
That’s okay!
When the oil field was big and vibrant in the area, that creature had a buffet: It had its choice of people to feed on, because there was greed everywhere. And Mackenzie learns of stories of people sort of disappearing and going missing and things like that. Or dying unexpectedly in weird ways or ways that were very sudden. And she learns that, essentially, once the food source for this creature has left the area, it then turns to the people that are still left, which also is what happens with land extraction.
It’s the people who are left that face the brunt of that, face the consequences of this violence. They still experience violence because, again, their land is fundamentally changed. Socially, things are changed. But they have to deal with it. And similarly, Mackenzie’s family now has to deal with this thing that’s coming after them, because even though this family didn’t bring this thing there, they now have to deal with it. It needs to eat something. It’s going through the people that are left and in particular, feeding on grief. And this is a family that is experiencing a lot of that. So those two things are very heavily connected: how Mackenzie is thinking about her home, her home territory, and what it’s going through, and this thing that is targeting her family because the implications of what has been done to their land without their consent or knowledge. And now they’re just left to face the consequences of that.
Tiffany (00:27:40):
The grief they were experiencing made them vulnerable, and there’s a desperation in the creature because, you know, we’re thinking about capitalism and colonialism and extractive industries, like, there’s just no ending to the consumption. And even though it’s a non-renewable resource, often they’ll just find other land to extract from, or they’ll move along. And the effects, like you said, are still rippling through.
It reminds me of that quote. . . Oh, goodness, I wish I could remember who said it. “Colonialism is a structure, not an event.”
It’s so true, and I think it’s a natural place for horror to emerge, especially horror literatures. Every nation is gonna have a different relationship, but we’re all extracted from.
Jessica (00:28:58):
Yeah. And when I think about the most horrific thing . . . It’s so interesting because some people, you know, don’t view this work as horror at all based on other criteria that horror works have to meet. [Laughs] “Have to” in quotation marks.
It’s so interesting to me because I’m like, there’s body horror in here, there’s some gore. Let’s take all that out of it and just have this be about colonialism and extraction and a family reeling with the ongoing violence of these systems. That is the most horrific thing I can think of.
Tiffany (00:29:51):
Yep.
Jessica (00:29:53):
That alone is horror. Writing about that is horror. It’s so interesting to me when people claim it isn’t; it’s interesting to hear who is defining what horror is.
Tiffany (00:30:15):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that maybe some of that is like a reluctance to acknowledge social horror, I guess. And like that the way that that shows up, and I guess that’s . . . It’s not necessarily settler consciousness, but it’s kind of the way that colonialism gets treated as inevitable, right.
Jessica (00:30:38):
Mhmm. Yeah.
Tiffany (00:30:40):
It doesn’t occur to people that this is part of lived horror that we’re expressing [laughs] as Indigenous horror writers in our literatures.
Jessica (00:30:49):
Yes.
Tiffany (00:30:49):
And stuff we’re processing.
Jessica (00:30:53):
Yes. Absolutely.
Tiffany (00:30:55):
It’s interesting to me, too, ’cause there’s kind of an anxiety at the beginning when she’s still in Vancouver, and it’s where the title of the novel comes from, Bad Cree, where she’s asking: “Am I a bad Cree?” I was so struck by that because I feel like sometimes in urban environments, there becomes this kind of anxiety, especially if you’re away from your home territory, about having those connections stay intact. And it’s weird. I’ve had these conversations with some friends who live in community and they say it’s just not possible to have the same kind of relationship with land in the city. And I’m like, well, I don’t know. Where I am, Halifax/Kjipuktuk, it means the Great Harbor, where Lnu’k—people—from all around Mi’kma’ki would gather.
So we obviously had a relationship to this land, and the fact that it’s a city now doesn’t change that I have a relationship to how land operates here. Even though cities are colonial and cities are devouring land, I still have a relationship to what exists here.
Circling back, I think there’s an anxiety sometimes when we [Indigenous people] are in urban spaces, having those connections stay intact. Did you wanna speak to that a little bit?
Jessica (00:32:27):
Leanne Simpson has talked about this quite a bit, as also an urban Indigenous person, and she has said that she’s posited this—or not even posited, this is a fact: Whether you’re in the city or in a rural area, the thing beneath you is land. Whether you’re on pavement or not, you’re still on land. Land you’re still in relationship with. And, similarly with Amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton, which is where I live. The river valley and the river here—the North Saskatchewan River—has such huge significance to Cree people, both in Treaty Six where it’s located, and Treaty Eight, my home territory.
There’s a road here called Groat Road that is now a major road, but is made that way because it used to be our trail. It used to be the trail leading from Treaty Eight down to Treaty Six, because we traveled here so often, specifically for ceremony, for medicine, and to go to that river. And there’s such significant ceremonies that took place by that river, and still do. It’s a really big disservice, I think—the city’s there. And we can’t turn our back on these significant places because they’re a city. They deserve our attention still, and our relationship, and our love, regardless of where they’re located. And it’s certainly because of colonial systems and policies and laws, that exist because the colonial drive was to eliminate Indigenous people. Practicing ceremony and things like that in cities is a lot harder. And those are things we need to fight against too, because those are important things we need to do. But even if we’re not doing those, you can still harvest medicines and food in the city in green spaces.
And we can still gather, and we can still do all these things. And when you’re disconnected or when you’re away from your home community, which for a lot of Indigenous people happens for many, also violent, reasons. And for some people it’s a necessity. For example, queer Indigenous people need to leave because of white supremacy and colonialism. Homophobia and transphobia is still a big thing in communities. That’s not something that belongs to us, but it is still something we need to contend with. And so moving to other places becomes a necessity. And then there are anxieties around that, too. If I’m removed, then am I no longer a good Cree? Am I a bad Cree if I can’t “be on the land.” If I can’t be involved in ceremony and things like that? Which again, if you’re in an urban environment and there’s red tape and laws prohibiting that, then that shame doesn’t belong to you, but you feel it anyway.
Tiffany (00:37:08):
Yeah. And natural spaces still exist within the city. You step outside, you’re breathing the air. I know in Lnu’k worldview sky is also land. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:37:24):
Mhmm.
Tiffany (00:37:25):
I was learning the Lnu’k calendar, and I was able to kind of track the different things that were happening at different moments, based on what the trees in my neighborhood were doing and things like that. But there’s still that anxiety, like you said. And I guess Mackenzie was feeling that initially.
Was that the driving idea behind naming the novel Bad Cree?
Jessica (00:37:55):
Yeah, there were a couple of things. The first was this sort of idea, or this anxiety that Mackenzie is grappling with, which is: Now that I’m no longer in my territory, now that I’m no longer with my family and able to do these things that I once could. Or learned things about my culture that maybe she had when she was younger or would be able to, in her home territory. Am I a bad Cree because I’ve left all that and I’ve left all possibility of doing those things
And another part is, these dreams start happening to her, and she doesn’t know what’s going on. And so she immediately thinks it must be because I’m bad. And she kind of returns to this dichotomy of goodness and badness. And she asks this to her aunt, and her aunt is kind of the one that—she’s not an elder, but in elder fashion, she doesn’t answer directly.
Tiffany (00:39:21):
[Laughs]
Jessica (00:39:21):
She just tells a story.
Tiffany (00:39:24):
Mhmm. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:39:25):
But the crux of that story, or the point of the story, is that you can be good and not be living in the best way.
Tiffany (00:39:41):
Mhmm.
Jessica (00:39:42):
And Mackenzie, at the time of being in Vancouver, was very isolated. She’d had invitations to be more involved in community, and didn’t want anything to do with them. Her one tether to the world is Joli, who she relies on a lot, which is fine, but also relationships need to be reciprocal.
Is she living reciprocally in a land that is not her own, number one? Is she living reciprocally with the people in her community there? And is she living in a good way with her family members who she kind of deserted in her own way of dealing with grief that has consequences because she’s hurt people. And so, instead it reframes it as: What does being a good community member or family member—kinship—what does that look like?
Tiffany (00:41:00):
Yeah. That’s so interesting too, ’cause just as you’re explaining, I had a question about the Crows. There’s that questioning in the first half or two thirds of the book, about the role of the crows and whether they’re a good influence or a bad omen [laughs] in the story. Could you talk a bit about that, the parallels with Mackenzie and the crows too?
Jessica (00:41:28):
Oh, yeah. That’s. . . Similar to her sort of making these assumptions about herself, this goodness and badness and assumptions also about her family, like [laughs] she calls her aunt to find out . . . I’m sort of making fun in this, but often when Indigenous people are portrayed in media, they’re these wise, all knowing, stoic people with all the answers—
Tiffany (00:42:09):
Right. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:42:10):
—that white people turn to. It’s one or the other. They’re either that or they’re like reckless, lawless, terrible stereotypes. So sort of playing on this, she falls into this trap as well. She’s like, this thing is happening to me and I don’t know what’s going on. So she calls her aunt and she expects her aunt to just have the answer for her.
Tiffany (00:42:46):
[Laughs]
Jessica (00:42:46):
And her aunt is like: I don’t know what’s going on. This is all really messed up. And the reader and Mackenzie are both struck with this: “Oops, did I just fall into this thing that everyone else does?”—which is, assuming the older Native person will have the answer.
Tiffany (00:43:07):
Right. [Laughs] And her auntie’s playing bingo, right?
Jessica (00:43:10):
Yeah. Bingo.
Tiffany (00:43:11):
I love that.
Jessica (00:43:12):
She’s annoyed at having to answer this call. But yeah, the crows are sort of paralleled, because it’s asking Mackenzie again, and it’s asking the reader to check your assumptions. And it’s a bit of a trick, because they are set up—and, again, a horror trope. Crows are often used; they’re mood setting; they’re tone setting, creepy, eerie. And similarly, they’re used in the first two thirds of the novel. And when Mackenzie really thinks about when they start showing up, the things that they’re showing her, what they’re doing, and talking to her aunt about them and how not to assume what they’re doing, she realizes they’re not these ominous creatures that are just there to terrorize her. They’re there to help.
This actually is not really a Cree teaching. In Cree teachings, crows are tricky. And they usually don’t give you anything unless they’re gonna get something back. You have to be pretty careful when you’re trusting them because they have ulterior motives and things like that. But I just didn’t portray them that way in Bad Cree. I thought in terms of craft and in terms of a storyline and these parallels, I liked the idea of them being helpers, rather than more tricky than we know them to be traditionally. But I wanted to put my own spin on it, so I just did that.
Tiffany (00:45:27):
Yeah. I really appreciated that kind of turn [laughs] ’cause I think they’re really just common to see in urban spaces. So it’s like, that’s part of the natural world that even people in cities are gonna be familiar with. And if you try to befriend them, they’re really intense. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:45:51):
Yes.
Tiffany (00:45:52):
So it’s just like, if you’re trying to connect with nature, you’re gonna remember how intense nature is.
Jessica (00:45:59):
For sure. When we think about our connection to land in an urban space, you do have to think about these animals. I love—again, Leanne Simpson has a great short story about raccoons in Toronto because they are taking over Toronto. Not in the short story, like as a fact: They’re taking over Toronto. [Laughs]
Tiffany (00:46:33):
I love this for them.
Jessica (00:46:35):
Yeah. And in Vancouver, raccoons and skunks are everywhere. And in Edmonton, magpies are everywhere too, and are often regarded as sort of a trash bird ’cause they love trash. But we have stories about magpies too, and our relationship to magpies. These are animals that we’re in relationship with in these urban spaces. And so we need to learn how to be in relationship with them in a good way. And we need to learn about them.
Tiffany (00:47:15):
Yeah, absolutely. This is something that I wanted to bring up, and I guess this is a good kind of point to draw that in. I think that one thing that differentiates Indigenous eco horror from general eco horror, where nature is this kind of element rising up against humans and giving us what we deserve. And that’s a big “We” there; I’m like, “Who?”
[Laughs]
Jessica (00:47:44):
Yeah. Who deserves that, exactly?
Tiffany (00:47:45):
Indigenous eco horror is kind of like, this isn’t something implicit to humanity. This is living in a wrong way and having bad and wrong relationality with the world around us.
Do you wanna talk about that in your writing, and what you like to read that maybe influenced Bad Cree?
Jessica (00:48:04):
A lot of what I thought about as I was writing Bad Cree was more so giving the landscape and giving land agency. So in as much as land is sky, land is also water. So when talking about the lake and describing the lake and even the movement of the lake, the lake actually had a lot of influence over when Mackenzie was in it and when the three girls were in it. And similarly with the land: The woods act in a particular way.
And I think making them characters that do have agency and thinking about, how does a character who has this really long relationship with—not just Mackenzie, but I’m thinking about the water, the lake—how would they react to an evil presence in the water trying to lure Mackenzie, who can’t swim, into the water? What would they do to protect their kin, who they have a very long relationship with? And also then Mackenzie’s family and Mackenzie’s ancestors who have lived in that water, around that water, who’ve nurtured that water, since time immemorial. This lake is a very significant place for her family, for her entire Cree community.
So I was thinking about that a lot. I was really influenced by a lot of my own teachings from elders and knowledge keepers and friends. And also, I’ve already mentioned her, but Leanne Simpson. In her writing, I feel like she does a very similar thing. She really writes agency into non-human characters. And that makes a lot of sense to me. And is something that I find very exciting about writing character, too.
Tiffany (00:50:49):
There are a lot of really great moments that are used to kind of like horror effect, but also maybe even just introspection and the characters and then Mackenzie’s part, where there’s a lot of connection between body and land—and, in some of her more horrified moments, body becoming land. And other times, like you said, there’s that real sense of kind of a kinship connection between her and the land, and her family and the land.
Jessica (00:51:23):
Hmm. Yeah. There are lots of times where there’s this blurring of the line between human bodies turning back into land. And I hadn’t realized that until this conversation right now. [Laughs]
Tiffany (00:51:52):
Oh!
Jessica (00:51:54):
Like, oh yeah, that does happen often. [Laughs]
Tiffany (00:51:58):
Yeah. I was going through it . . . underlining different parts in preparation for this conversation. I was just like, “Wow, I love this motif. Like, this is brilliant.”
Jessica (00:52:08):
That’s so funny. Oh my God, I’m gonna have to think about that more. I didn’t even realize. Multiple moments that happens, yeah.
Tiffany (00:52:19):
Well, it’s interesting ’cause there’s that crossing of threshold that keeps happening, right? Like with dream and waking and what gets brought back, and grief, and recurrence, and all this stuff coming together in really interesting ways. So to me, that enmeshment, in addition to just understanding relationship to land, that made sense to me. And seeing that there are moments where that can be subverted in a horrifying way really drove that home. . . . I can see that that’s something that’s probably really effective for Indigenous readers.
Maybe that’s another element that non-Indigenous readers aren’t seeing as horror. I don’t know. [Laughs]
Jessica (00:53:08):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Tiffany (00:53:14):
I loved how Bad Cree really brought together all those different relationships and how, even through this kind of disorientation, there’s a reorientation and a reminder of what you carry with you. And there is a sense that Mackenzie, even though she’s experienced these devastating losses, is still carrying memory and knowledge and culture with her, wherever she goes.
Jessica (00:53:47):
Yeah. And that really manifests like . . . There’s very exacting parallels where she’s literally bringing things back and forth from the dream world. And then also I think, I can’t remember if it’s Tracey, her sister, or Kassidy, her cousin, who says to her at one point, like, “If we’re bringing all these things with us from our ancestors. Yes, we have intergenerational trauma and all that. And also what about the joy?”
Tiffany (00:54:25):
Mhmm.
Jessica (00:54:25):
“And also what about all these things they can do with their dreams?”
She calls it magic because that’s what that is. And thinking about all the things they bring forward in all its complexity.
Tiffany (00:54:49):
That’s the resilience and resurgence component. I love how that comes through, because it rings true. And also because it subverts . . . There’s a lot of debate about the happiness of horror endings. Especially, I think, with eco horror where there’s this idea of nature’s revenge. It’s like, well, how is there a happy ending? I think in different Indigenous worldviews, it’s because you continue, you have survived. It’s as Gerald Vizenor called it, right? We carry that with us. That’s how it can be happy if we face it together.
Jessica (00:55:32):
Yeah. It’s interesting too, because the ending of Bad Cree is . . . Bad Cree is interesting because the Big Bad isn’t actually the cannibal creature. That creature is a result of the Big Bad; it’s a result of extraction. It’s a result of an extractive industry, of a violent industry. It’s a result of land violence. And so they defeat this product of this violence, which is happy, and they face it together, and at the end, the last scene is of them together.
But also, that’s another thing about living under colonialism. A lot of the time, marginalized communities will undergo the most horrific things. And these people at the top would never know.
They’re unfazed, they’re not losing sleep over what they’re doing.
Tiffany (00:56:55):
Mhmm.
Jessica (00:56:56):
And similarly, they’ve defeated this thing and they’ve survived. And who knows what’s coming for them, because they didn’t take down the oil field industry; they didn’t take down capitalism, which drives an industry like that.
So it’s sort of bittersweet because they’ve won a battle, but not the war, in a sense.
Tiffany (00:57:24):
Yeah. And I guess that really drives home the eco horror component, especially with that particular area, the land that she’s in, ’cause we saw the devastating wildfires. And it’s across the country now. So these extractive industries across the world are devastating land, and we have to reemerge again, and again, and again.
Jessica (00:58:01):
Mhmm.
Tiffany (00:58:05):
That’s the cycles of grief also, that come through, right? The way that sometimes you’re progressing in your healing journey with grief and then, boom, it’ll totally immobilize you for a day out of nowhere.
Jessica (00:58:23):
Or you experience another grief.
Tiffany (00:58:27):
Mhmm. I think it’s so important that we have these narratives and that we’re able to have a horror story specifically to work through these anxieties and to show that mirror of this experience.
Jessica (00:58:49):
Yeah, definitely.
Tiffany (00:58:52):
I guess we can start wrapping it up. Was there anything that you wanted to talk about with relation to horror or eco horror, your writing process?
Jessica (00:59:04):
No, this is everything I wanted and more! I haven’t got to talk about this so fully. So this felt very good. Thank you so much for that.
Tiffany (00:59:14):
Oh, thank you. It’s been, you know . . . I devoured this book as soon as it came out [laughs] and it was such a pleasure to revisit it again, in anticipation of this conversation. And to just spend that time with it and to spend this time with you examining those elements. ‘Cause it just weaves together so beautifully and I think expresses really important things about this moment that we’re in.
Jessica (00:59:43):
Aw, thank you so much.
Tiffany (00:59:45):
Do you have anything, any projects that you’re working on at the moment or anything you wanna share with the audience?
Jessica (00:59:54):
Yeah, I’m working on a short story collection now. Also horror, also speculative fiction, Indigenous futurism, queer. It’s a fun mishmash and it’s gonna be great.
Tiffany (01:00:14):
Oh, that’s amazing! We’ll all look forward to that.
Alright, well, thanks so much for listening, everybody. This has been Tiffany Morris and Jessica Johns for Full Stop Quarterly’s Indigenous takeover. Wela’lin.
Tiffany Morris is an L’nu’skw (Mi’kmaw) writer from Nova Scotia. She is the author of the Ignyte, Indigenous Voices, Shirley Jackson, and Aurora award-nominated Green Fuse Burning (Stelliform Press, 2023) and the Elgin Award-winning horror poetry collection Elegies of Rotting Stars (Nictitating Books, 2022). Her work has appeared in the Indigenous horror anthology Never Whistle At Night, as well as in Nightmare Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, and Apex Magazine, among others.
Jessica Johns is a Nehiyaw aunty and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty Eight Territory in Northern Alberta. She is an interdisciplinary artist and winner of the 2020 Writers’ Trust Journey Prize
This post may contain affiliate links.