Katja Kettu’s Rose on poissa as Transcultural Trauma Fiction

ABSTRACT

This article coins the term “transcultural trauma fiction,” proposing that it constitutes a useful conceptual lens through which to examine the Finnish author Katja Kettu’s 2018 novel, Rose on poissa (Rose is Gone). Set in a Minnesotan world of mixed Ojibwe and Finnish heritage, Rose on poissa narrates a story of historical, intergenerational, and individual trauma, focusing on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis. The term “trauma fiction” has been in use since the 2004 publication of Anne Whitehead’s eponymous monograph, which applies Caruthian trauma theory to representations of trauma in contemporary novels. My use of the modifier “transcultural” before “trauma fiction” highlights the status of Rose on poissa as a text written by a cultural and ethnic outsider to any Native American heritage about traumas experienced by Ojibwe women and their indigenous and mixed daughters. I argue that Kettu’s literary strategy of transcultural hybridity seeks to acknowledge and mitigate problems potentially posed by the outsider’s gaze and by the risk of exploitative cultural appropriation accompanying it. Rose on poissa is a distinctly hybrid text that draws on both Ojibwe and Finnish cultural influences and intertexts as it depicts white-indigenous relations in the Great Lakes region.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Kettu (b. 1978), who writes in Finnish, has published five full-length novels and a collection of short stories to date. Rose on poissa, which has not been translated into English yet, was one of the finalists for the 2018 Finlandia Prize, Finland’s most prestigious annual literary award. In this article, the English translations of all quoted passages from the novel are mine.

2. The adjectives “Native,” “Native American,” and “indigenous” are used interchangeably in this article.

3. In Canada, a 1,200-page document informally called the MMIWG final report – the outcome of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls – was released on June 3, 2019. The report includes 231 recommendations or “calls for justice.”

4. In the United States, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, first signed into law in 1994) and the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA, first signed into law in 2010) are regarded as landmark legislation concerning the safety of Native women (Agtuca; Deer [92–106]; Luna-Gordinier [126–32]). However, Native activists have critiqued their de facto enforcement and, in some cases, their interpretation. In 2016, the publication of the “Rosay report” on violence against Native women and men – written by André B. Rosay and funded and published by the National Institute of Justice, the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – drew further attention to the MMIWG crisis. On November 22, 2019, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced the DOJ’s plan to address the crisis by investing $1.5 million to fund the hiring of specialized coordinators in eleven states where the situation is the most acute (Balsamo and Fonseca). On November 26, 2019, the White House issued an “Executive Order on Establishing the Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.” Some indigenous MMIWG activists have received these two announcements with enthusiasm, whereas others have adopted a more cautious “wait-and-see approach” (Hilleary), particularly given the uncertainty surrounding the reauthorization of VAWA, which expired in February 2019.

5. Craps appropriately emphasizes that “the traumas of non-Western or minority groups must … be acknowledged on their own terms” (3) and that such an inclusive approach has ramifications for discussions of the style of trauma fiction; see also Visser. Roger Luckhurst, too, stresses that trauma fiction should not be regarded “as a narrow canon of works, but as a mass of narratives that have exploded across high, middle and low-brow fiction since the late 1980s” (89–90).

6. See Erll, “Transcultural Memory.” Moreover, issue 4 of volume 17 of Parallax (2011), titled “Transcultural Memory,” is dedicated to the study of this concept; see, in particular, Crownshaw, “Introduction”; Erll, “Travelling Memory.”

7. For a collection of essays focusing on the “transcultural turn,” see Bond and Rapson.

8. For overviews of memory studies within the humanities and humanistically and culturally oriented social sciences, see e.g. Erll, Memory in Culture; Klein; Whitehead, Memory.

9. Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory, which examines the cultural memory of the Holocaust together with that of decolonization, opposes the notion that a “competition of victims” must necessarily ensue when “memories of slavery and colonialism bump up against memories of the Holocaust in contemporary multicultural societies” (2). Rothberg suggests that collective memory (or, in this case, the collective memories of various victimized ethnocultural groups) should not be conceived of “as competitive memory – as a zero-sum struggle over scarce resources” but, rather, “as multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing” (3, italics in original). Rothberg’s key term is now widely used in cultural analyses of transnational memory.

10. I use the spellings of Ojibwe words given in The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary at https://ojibwe.lib.umn.edu/, with only two exceptions: I keep direct quotations as they are, and I use the semi-Anglicized variant “Weendigo” for wiindigoo (a windigo, a winter cannibal monster). I opt for Weendigo because it is Basil Johnston’s preferred spelling, which Kettu adopts directly from his work (see note 15 below).

11. The late anthropologist Ruth Landes, whose commentary on Ojibwe creation and origin stories drew on her early- and mid-1930s field work in Ojibwe villages of western Ontario and northwest Minnesota, remarked on the multiplicity of these stories as follows: “Some origin tales were known to all Ojibwa …. Creation stories about the first Indian were familiar in unlike versions that coexisted even in the same villages at Manitou and Red Lake locations. Some appeared more Judaeo-Christianized than others, some contained more detail” (89).

12. Ettu’s first name serves as a respectful nod to the retired Finnish-American miner Ettu (Edward) Hannula of Calumet, Michigan, who was 90 years old when Kettu interviewed him in 2014 (see Kettu et al. 72–73, 81; Rose 276).

13. Musician Lyz Jaakola, of Ojibwe and Finnish heritage, embodies the ambivalence surrounding the term “Finnindian.” She has indicated that she would prefer a term that she herself has coined, “Finnishinaabe” (Kettu et al. 20), a combination of “Finnish” and “Anishinaabe.” However, given that her coinage is not in wide use, she also accepts and utilizes “Finndian.” In 2005, she released an album that uses both terms: the album’s second song is called “Finnishinaabe Blues,” whereas the album itself is entitled Finndian Summer.

14. This translation is currently used in English promotional materials for the Finnish book. Another option would be In Finndian Country.

15. There are also sizable Ojibwe communities in Canada, particularly in Ontario, but because Kettu and her colleagues primarily focus on the U.S. Finndian experience, I do as well. However, I do reference books by Basil Johnston, who was a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation (Ontario). Kettu specifically mentions Johnston’s Ojibway Heritage in the Acknowledgments section of Rose on poissa (276), and one of the novel’s epigraphs is a quotation from Johnston’s remarks on the Weendigo figure in The Manitous.

16. The 2014 essay collection Finns in the United States, edited by Auvo Kostiainen, provides an up-to-date scholarly introduction to multiple aspects of Finnish American history. Moreover, Gary Kaunonen’s Challenge Accepted, which paints a detailed picture of the political activism of first-generation Finnish-American workers, offers valuable context for Kettu’s portrait of Ettu’s late Finnish-born father, the radical labor activist Heinari, who identified with IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) syndicalism (Rose 85; Kaunonen 170–74).

17. For Banks’s life story, as told by him to Richard Erdoes, see Banks and Erdoes.

18. Laestadianism, which, globally speaking, has its strongest foothold in Finland, is a pietist Lutheran revival movement founded by Swedish-born Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861). Its most conservative branch, Conservative Laestadianism, is the largest revival movement within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, with approximately 120,000 members if minors are included (STT) – a significant following in a country with a population of five and a half million. Laestadianism was brought to the United States and Canada by Nordic, especially Finnish, immigrants in the late nineteenth century. In Finland, the long-lasting debate over Conservative Laestadianism’s authoritarian patriarchalism gained new momentum in the late 2000s and early 2010s, due, in particular, to revelations about the sexual abuse of minors within the movement (see e.g. Hurtig; Yle).

19. For the history of sexual abuse in boarding schools for indigenous children and youth, see Smith (35–54, especially 38–39); Schafer and McIlwaine.

20. Foundational contemporary monographs on the history of education for indigenous peoples in the United States include Adams; Lomawaima; Child, Boarding School Seasons; Fear-Segal. For a chapter-long historical overview that includes both traditional indigenous education and white-led efforts in its purview, see Trafzer et al.

21. For commentary on boarding schools for Native Americans in the contemporary United States, see Dixon and Trafzer.

22. The denominational mislabel provided by Kettu is, in my view, problematic. It must be noted, however, that she seeks to critique the patriarchal misuse of spiritually sanctioned power within any denomination, not just within Catholicism; Protestantism receives similar criticism in the passages depicting the Laestadian pastor Grant’s long-term sexual abuse of Lempi.

23. Brady DeSanti elaborates: “Understood to be a giant monster with an insatiable appetite for human flesh, the windigo possesses hideous features and immense physical and spiritual power …. The creature’s appetite increases in proportion to how much flesh it eats, ensuring it is never satiated” (188). For my choice of the spelling “Weendigo,” see note 10 above.

24. For a historical overview of sex trafficking of Native women, see Deer (59–79).

25. In his 1999 preface to Manifest Manners, Vizenor writes: “Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry. Survivance means the right of succession or reversion of an estate, and in that sense, the estate of native survivancy” (vii). See also Vizenor, “Aesthetics of Survivance” (1). For a longer discussion of “survivance,” see e.g. the essays in Survivance, edited by Vizenor; Doerfler.

26. See note 4 above.

27. For book-length descriptions and analyses of the Midewiwin, see Angel; Landes. See also Child, Holding Our World Together (91–94); Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (80–93); Pomedli (especially 5–47).

28. For the Ojibwe understanding of the good life, see e.g. Child, Holding Our World Together (92); McNally (24–26).

29. For both the credentials and the disputed authority of Hoffman, see Pomedli (244, n23; 246–47, n32).

30. According to Johnston, the Ojibwe regard the wolf, in the capacity of a totem animal, as a defender and warrior, which is also true of the bear and the lynx (Ojibway Heritage 60, 67). The wolf is specifically associated with perseverance and guardianship (ibid. 53).

31. Today, Julius Krohn is best remembered as the founder of the “Finnish [historical-geographical] method” of folktale research and folklore theory. His oldest son, Aino’s half-brother Kaarle Krohn (1863–1933), developed the method further and made it internationally known.

32. Aino Kallas’s paternal grandparents were St. Petersburg Germans, and the first language of her father, Julius, was German, whereas the first language of her mother, Minna (née Lindroos), was Swedish. Being a Fennoman, Julius insisted that the language of his household be Finnish, and his children grew up in Helsinki as speakers of Finnish (Laitinen, Kallas 1897–1921, 23; Vuorikuru 23).

33. Both Finland and Estonia were part of the Russian Empire at that time, with Finland having the status of an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Empire. Finns and Estonians are ethnically and linguistically related. For an elaboration of the significance of each heritage for Aino Kallas’s identity, see e.g. Olesk.

34. The English translations of the first two of these three novellas were initially published in London, by Jonathan Cape, as a single volume entitled Eros the Slayer: Two Estonian Tales (1927). Kallas scholars now typically refer to the three novellas as the Eros the Slayer trilogy; the collective title (in Finnish, Surmaava Eros) was Kallas’s invention, and she thought of the three works, including Sudenmorsian, as belonging together (Vuorikuru 297, 320). This said, the 1962 volume published by the Helsinki-based house Otava that includes all three novellas is simply titled Reigin pappi, Barbara von Tisenhusen, Sudenmorsian, and the 1975 volume published by Otava that includes Matson’s translations of all three texts is titled Three Novels.

35. The play was first performed in Tartu 1911, and it appeared in print in 1912 (Laitinen, Kallas 1922–1956, 233). Aino Kallas was a member of a board that gave Kitzberg an award for the play in 1913 (ibid.).

36. The pioneering Kallas scholar Kai Laitinen offers detailed discussions of Kallas’s background research on historical werewolf witch trials, werewolf narratives, and other relevant intertexts (Kallas 1922–1956, 223–41). The evidence he provides of Kallas having modeled the Diabolus Sylvarum of Sudenmorsian after Leino (ibid. 321, 326–28) includes a quotation from a 1953 letter from Kallas to Laitinen in which she explicitly admits the Leino-Diabolus connection (ibid. 321). For scholarship on early modern notions of Baltic lycanthropes and on Baltic werewolf witch trials, see Donecker; Metsvahi.

37. “Prose ballad” was Kallas’s preferred term for these novellas (Laitinen, Kallas 1922–1956, 104).

38. For a more detailed discussion of the scholarly consensus concerning Sudenmorsian as a feminist text, see e.g. Lönngren (86, including n9).

39. “ … todistettiin kunniallisten ja hyvämaineisten todistajain ja silminnäkijäin suulla Alioikeuden tutkinnossa, jonka piti Priidik metsävahdin saunan palosta sekä hänen vaimonsa Aalon kuolemasta … ” (Kallas, Sudenmorsian (95 [2014]).

40. “Tainkaltainen on tarina Aalosta, Priidik metsävahdin aviovaimosta, joka Saatanalta sudenhahmoon saatettiin, ja näin Ihmissutena vihityn miehensä viereltä korpiin karkasi, siellä metsänpetojen ja Diabolus Sylvarum’in elikkä Metsändaimonin kanssa kanssakäymistä pitäen, ja sentautta maarahvaalta Sudenmorsiameksi kutsuttu. Herra, hyvästi varjele meidän sielumme ja ruumiimme kaikelta vaaralta ja vahingolta … ” (Kallas, Sudenmorsian 5 [2014]).

41. “Jim Harmaaturkki, minun äitini muuttui sudeksi ja se on totuus” (Rose 11).

42. “Minun äitini muuttui sudeksi. Se on totuus, jossa pysyttelen koska muuten teette isästäni murhaajan” (Rose 262).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tuire Valkeakari

Tuire Valkeakari is Professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. She is the author of Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction (University Press of Florida, 2017) and Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952–1998 (University Press of Florida, 2007).