Conor Kerr - Prairie Edge

Grey Ginther and Ezzy Desjarlais are two Métis cousins living in an old trailer near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Their days are a mix of drinking and endless card games; listless and dull. Grey is a disillusioned environmental and indigenous rights activist, fed up of the corporate NGO lobbyists, and the endless treadmill of well meaning white activists whose trajectory from college to NGO jobs or academia means they never actually engage in meaningful and lasting action. Ezzy is her friend, who survived a succession of foster homes, poverty and state failure - desperately looking for love and hope, yet failing at ever stage.

Grey comes up with a cunning plan. To ramp up activism needs something profoundly different. Rather than protest, they need direct action, and remembering how the bison were taken from indigenous and Métis people she vows to return them to their rightful home - the plains. Even if there are towns and cities in their way. Grey and Ezzy borrow a truck, steal a car and suddenly the news is full of video of bison roaming where they should not. "Let them stay" and "land back" become the chants and demands of citizens.

The bison plan is the back drop to this tale, but the story is really about how the crushing reality of the Canadian state oppresses and exploits people like Ezzy and Grey at every turn. There's little way out, and sooner or later something will (and does) go terribly wrong with the plan. 

The police turn up - all fat and aggressive. To them Métis and indigenous peoples are simply guilty. 

This is a deeply painful novel. It is not without hope - but that lies in the way that ordinary people stand up for each other and resist oppression. Community and family are the only defence again a brutal state, drugs and alcohol, poverty and addiction. But the novel really asks - is this enough? Or can we rewild Canada and other capitalist states to build something different.