About I.M.N. Vaissi
I.M.N. Vaissi is a storyteller with a classic word nerd background in history, literature, language and education. She has graduate training in scriptwriting and won an award from the International Film Festival of Ottawa for her body of work in that program. She recently spent several years up north, apprenticed to hundreds of students - a ruthless audience who demand that you leave out the boring bits.
The Land
Thomas King says in his seminal and bestselling treatise The Inconvenient Indi*n, “Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indi*ns in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.”
Vaissi was born and has lived, studied, worked and dreamed on the unceded, ancestral and traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Ojibway, Anishnabek, Coast Salish, Tahltan, and Tsáá? Ché Ne Dane Peoples, the Nations of Treaty 6 and the Métis.
She thanks them for her whole life and everything in it.
Trivia
I.M.N. Vaissi is a pen name.
She is Finnish-Canadian.
Her ancestor, Maria Raunio, was one of the first female MPs elected to a national parliament. That’s her on the postcard (Girl in the Old Church of Keuruu by Akseli Gallen-Kallela).
Her aunt Tupuna Vaissi was a writer, illustrator and children’s entertainer in Finland.
She has three cats, a giant sled dog, a living room jungle, and an excellent human partner.