Dawaa: The Space Between celebrates in poetry the tensions and beauty between the two ancestral languages of the author: Ojibwe and English.

As a First Nations woman, Tareyn Johnson grew up without knowing the language of her ancestors. Her grandparents attended residential school, and neither they, nor her mother carried the language. Left with a deep longing desire to embrace Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) language, she began her learning journey as an adult.

As the lists of words grew, they began to form visually in the author’s mind. As a result, 26 poems—two for each of the Thirteen Moons—grouped seasonally, beautifully juxtapose Ojibwe and English to express Johnson’s feeling of existing as an Anishnaabekwe in the modern world.

Dawaa is not intended as a didactic tool, or as a language teaching tool. This book of poetry examines the unique experience of walking into worlds, speaking and learning two languages, and relating the two ways of knowing in a liminal space… the space between.

nanda-gikendan—seek to know it, seek to learn it.