Conor Kerr (he/him) is a national award-winning (and losing) Métis/Ukrainian writer and bird hunter living in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). His previous books include the ReLit Award-winning novel Avenue of Champions (Nightwood Editions) and the 2024 Giller Prize-nominated novel Prairie Edge (Strange Light), as well as two poetry collections.
A playful and genre-bending novella, Beaver Hills Forever takes a riotous, uncompromising look at the intertwined lives of four characters, each an abstract expression of the few paths available to Métis people on the Prairies. In alternating poetic verses, Buddy, Baby Momma, Fancy University Boy, and Aunty Prof share their inner dreams, hardships, delusions of grandeur, and existential plights.
Interviewed by Julian Gunn
Julian Gunn (JG): I can begin by reintroducing myself to you — I’m a settler instructor who has taught the English and Indigenous Literatures courses for the Indigenous Studies cohort here at Camosun over the last ten years or so.
Beaver Hills Forever is divided into four sections, each named by a traditional food, and there are four voices: Buddy, Baby Mama, Aunty Prof (love her) and Fancy University Boy.
In an interview with Rewilding, you talked about the paired ideas of “landscapes and kinscapes,” and I wondered if you could talk about that in Beaver Hills Forever: how is the book thinking about landscape and kinscape?
Conor Kerr (CK): I don’t think at this point I need to belabor any sense of talking about Indigenous Peoples’ connections to the lands around them. That’s a pretty well-versed thing. I spent a lot of time discussing that in prior conversations, and I really don’t think I’m adding anything new into that discussion at this point.
What I think this book gets at a bit more is the actual lived realities of Métis People and how survivalism is more intertwined into the day to day.
No one wakes up in the morning and starts thinking about how they relate to the land. They listen to birds, watch the sunrise, think about the day and their struggles and hopes and dreams. It’s very Western in notion to think that Indigenous Peoples are constantly living in this symbiotic harmony with the natural world. It’s a position of privilege to have those thoughts, whether you’re Indigenous or non.
Characters like Buddy exemplify that, where he’s probably the most tied into the land through his upbringing but he still works blue-collar jobs in resource-extraction industries that are decimating the land. Does he care? No. He has to make money to support his family and this is the only thing that he’s capable of doing and he’s proud to be doing it.
Aunty Prof can think a bit more about relationship to the land because of the nature of her work. But even then she’s very tied into an urban world and academic landscape that is slowly stealing her soul.
JG: That makes a lot of sense. It was the word “kinscape” that really caught me; I wondered if that concept reflected the way you chose to depict the relationships among these four characters, who are often not interacting directly, but still affecting one another through the network of relations between them, and between them and other communities, institutions, and so on.
But, you know, “no” is also a good answer.
CK: Lol, I love a good “nah,” for an answer. But you’re totally right about the interconnectedness. I think it’s a way of showing the subtle to the obvious. Baby Momma and Buddy break up and he gets thrown into the orbit of Aunty Prof just by being in the right place in the right time. Which is what all of us want, isn’t it? Just to be in the right place in the right time?
But really, I think it’s more the reality of how small the communities are. Everyone’s just a person away from knowing each other. So your decisions always have a huge impact regardless of how miniscule you think they are.
JG: The critique in Beaver Hills Forever of post-secondary institutions was really resonant to me as an educator. In the book, if something good comes of education, it’s because of connections that form despite or around the institution — like when Aunty Prof finds the “badass Métis women.” Can you talk about the characters’ experiences with education and labour?
CK: The entire thing is so exploitive. We get it, we know it, but you still have to survive.
A guy like Buddy doesn’t understand why people would be upset about a job working on a pipeline. He has a family to support. Aunty Prof needs to work within her world, even though it’s the fucking worst, but it’s still a job. Baby Momma wants the same thing, just a good career to support the kids and move away from relying on men for shit. Fancy University Boy wants to work as a cook, a great career, but one that’s “frowned” upon when you’re the one kid who got into university from your town. The emphasis on appropriate work is very fucking hypocritical. People just need to survive.
I think in my own writing and world I’m trying to battle and grapple with the idea that capitalism won, again, unfortunately, and it puts everyone into survival mode just trying to do the best for themselves and their families.
Fucking depressing man.
JG: There seems to be a narrator or speaker who is telling us the stories of these four people, this person who greets the reader with “Aho,” at the beginning of each section. For me as a reader, it makes the four stories feel more personal, intimate, specific. What work do you see that voice doing in the book?
CK: Honestly, I loved the Spirit Warrior character in Reservation Dogs so much. How he fucking just nailed the Indigenous tropes and made fun of them. He usually starts most of his conversations with the line “Aho, young warrior.”
So I thought Aho was a kind of funny way of waking the reader back up to a twist in the narrative. It’s a device to draw the reader back in after being lulled by some dull ass poetic prose. My brother read an earlier draft and thought it was stupid, so I’m glad you liked it.