About

Two Tricksters are Johnny Aitken and Jess Willows. We began our work together years ago (2015) for the purpose of collaborating on ideas to increase Indigenous Education in schools. We knew one another as community members in the small community of Mayne Island. Johnny brought his background as an artist and community leader and Jess brought her background as a teacher; together we make a pretty nifty team! Johnny met with Jess' local school class regularly to learn about the welcoming figure, which Johnny had carved, and the history of Johnny’s family on Mayne Island. We also started collaborating around Professional Development sessions for teachers. Johnny often refers to fumbling in his work as an artist and looking back at this time, it felt like we were fumbling in the sense that we hadn’t found a solid project to work together on, but in reality we were building a very strong foundation for our future work together. We established early on how we would like to work together: authentically and intentionally. This looked like ensuring we were sharing leadership in how we made decisions and discussing difficult topics in an open and vulnerable way.

We often used the image of “cultural eggshells” early on – this represented our shared understanding of where Indigenous and White Canadian relations are. This can be expressed in the way teachers often express fear in bringing in Indigenous teachers in case they “do it wrong”, or make things worse, or are culturally appropriating in some way. The relationship feels tenuous and delicate. We agreed that there are a lot of difficult feelings that need to be aired, expressed, and shared as part of the more cerebral understandings we need to have before “Canada” and Indigenous communities could really begin to do the work of reconciliation; hence the need to feel the sharpness of the egg shells before they can be reduced to a fine powder. We both come from families that were heavily affected by alcoholism and the “walking on eggshells”, trying not to make someone mad, also connects to this expression. Perhaps we needed to spend some time together grounding down some of the eggshells that existed between us before we found a project that fit. 

The idea to write a book came from Johnny in 2019, and our meetings and discussions led to some ideas right away: the book would follow Johnny and Jessie as our younger selves and tell a story of reconciliation through their friendship. We started this project with the perspective that reconciliation means to come back together, to reconcile. We both recognize that the relationships between Indigenous people and Canada could never really be considered “together” in a formal relationship that we would want to return to. So, while there is no “healthy” relationship to come back or return to, there is a respectful relationship and understanding to move towards. Our work together included deciding how to tell that story: what we need to include to express this understanding in our book and how our relationship as a white Canadian and an Indigenous Canadian represent this. We also had a number of themes and ideas that we wanted to explore and quickly realized that this was going to be a book series!

The intention and purpose of these books is for them to be used in classrooms with students to explore what reconciliation is, what it means and what youth can possibly do to be a part of this national process. Our first book, "Two Tricksters Find Friendship" is available at most book stores and online at Orca Publishing and other providers such as Strong Nations. A teacher's guide for this book is available through Orca. 

As the relationship navigated between Johnny and Jessie moving parallel to the development of the book and the relationship of the authors, we knew we also wanted to share how we were working together, as this process also captures themes of reconciliation.