BLACKBIRD CALLING depicts the beauty and complexity that unfold when dominant and indigenous cultures fuse horizons. It begins on Cape Breton Island, where the narrator encounters the agonies and exploits of childhood—and the prejudices lodged against Aboriginal people. These prejudices form a solid line between pigments, and the protagonist understands this line, lives at its borders. But when her family moves to the Prairie Pothole Region in Alberta, she sees another reality in the people of the Blood: she sees a remnant of ancient civilizations pushing itself into the present. Blackbird Calling, derived from dozens of interviews with Aboriginal people, carries within its borders poignant anecdotes of cultural import; we are all indigenous in some part of our being, and at some level we understand the stories of the wetland.