Words from the Editors

Muses from the North celebrated her second year birthday this fall. We are proud to release this current issue, the third in the series for your reading pleasure. Our students continue to take advantage of the MFTN platform to relate their culture, tradition, struggles, challenges, aspirations, and achievements to the reading public.

So far, more than 40 student-created works have been published in the three issues of MFTN that have been released. These works cut across genres such as poetry, short stories, interviews, graphic stories, and research papers. The current issue of MFTN has 14 works in total, out of which 10 reflect the northern culture and indigenous traditions. The collection of works begins with an interview with Elder Marie Ballantyne, on the Aboriginal Culture in the North. It also has a history research paper on Women’s Involvement in the Fur Trade, a play about the residential school, and poems about Reserve communities and northern cultures. There are also three reflective papers: “Exploring the Town of The Pas,” “The Sundance,” and “Woodworker.” Writing can be therapeutic because it can be used as a tool for freeing one’s self from the effects of drug and alcohol abuse. Hence, there are two articles in this collection that relate to the subject. In addition, this issue also features a history research paper on the Thirty Years’ War, and a Gothic story.

With the consistent increase in students’ submissions to MFTN, especially from students on the two main campuses of UCN, we are currently working on motivating students in some of UCN’s regional centres spread across Northern Manitoba to write and get their works published in MFTN. In order for this to happen, we will be organizing writing workshops in the regional centres to help boost submissions from UCN students in the remote areas. The goal is to ensure that all UCN students, irrespective of their location, will have their voices heard, images seen, and stories read.

It is also worth mentioning that this September, the MFTN production team received a generous sponsorship from the management of our host institution, UCN, towards our participation at the 2019 Congress of the Social Science and Humanities. The UCN entourage which comprises of two student writers, namely, Kassidy Burden, the copy designer, and Taylor Flett, the student editor, along with their instructors, Drs. Ying Kong and Joseph Atoyebi, will host a panel on students’ publication at the Congress which will take place from June 1 to June 7, 2019 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (See https://ucn.ca/communications/News%20Releases/11%20September%202018.pdf).

The Congress will afford us the opportunity to introduce our anticipated SSHRC funded outreach project, namely, “Voice, Image, Prose and Poetry from Indigenous Students.” We will explore the process of inspiring students to interview indigenous elders in the community, and motivating students to use their creative talents to represent their voices, images, poems, and short stories through publication. Furthermore, as the editors of MFTN, we will also share our experience in collecting, shortlisting and upgrading students’ works in order to get them ready for publication in the MFTN journal. Ms. Burden and Flett will share their achievements and experience as student writers and artists as well as their contributions to the journal in the areas of proofreading/editing, and designing of the print version. The team will also display copies of the MFTN journal, complemented with posters.

So, we invite everyone to savour the offerings which we have been able to put together for your reading delight in this third issue of Muses from the North. It is our hope that you find the literary works educative, informative, inspiring and uplifting.

(Drs. Ying Kong and Joseph Atoyebi)