Father Complex

The recent conclusion of quantitative research on epigenetic inheritance, the concept that environmental influences from everything from smoking to stress can affect the genes of one’s children—and even grandchildren—is likely no news to Wab Kinew. As a public personality and broadcaster, Kinew, whose aloof father’s experiences informed his life and choices, is acutely aware of how inherited trauma has shaped his own life.

This awareness is recreated in the early chapters of his memoir, The Reason You Walk, which narrates early life of Tobasonakwut—Kinew’s father—in residential schools in northern Ontario. Called “Ndede” (pronounced “egg”), Tobasonakwut suffers physical, mental and sexual abuse, all under the Canadian government’s implemented policy to “kill the Indian in the child.” Additionally horrifying is the fact that at St. Mary’s Residential school in Kenora, Ontario, Tobasonakwut is subject to nutritional experiments payrolled by the Canadian...