Latest news with #Belcourt
CBC
30-03-2025
- Health
- CBC
'Would not wish it on my worst enemy,' says Winnipegger sidelined with rare pain syndrome
Ethan Belcourt wants his life back. In 2019, after a year of constant pain, Belcourt was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS. Since then, the Winnipegger's life has dramatically changed. He is on disability and spends most of his time at home, save for appointments and errands. "This disease has sucked me basically to the point where I am tired all the time, that I am fighting pain every day," said Belcourt. "It just sucks the energy out of me." CRPS is relatively uncommon, and is often the result of an injury, though the pain is not commensurate with the injury. There are different classifications and causes of the pain, and treatment is varied too. In Canada, an organization called PARC, or Promoting Awareness of RSD and CRPS, hopes to shed more light on the condition. (The syndrome was formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy, according to the organization.) "[The] pain is excruciating, way more than you would expect," said Dr. Javier Webar, a pain specialist in Winnipeg who treats patients with CRPS. "The nerve endings that are responsible for carrying the pain information from everywhere in your body become hyperactive." Belcourt says the condition has turned his life upside down. He expects to be on disability for the rest of his life. "I'll put this simple — with the amount of pain I get with this, I would not wish it on my worst enemy," said Belcourt. "That's how bad the pain can get some days." Belcourt's story and CRPS are the focus of a new three-minute documentary by students in the Create program at Winnipeg's Sisler High School, a post-high school program that trains students in the creative digital arts, including filmmaking. Create students Shai Vilenski East, Shea Miller and Maya Reuther produced the new short video. Meet the filmmakers Shai Vilenski East has been fascinated with the world of film and entertainment since an early age. He made his first stop-motion film when he was nine and has continued to make films for the sake of entertainment and fun. In junior high, he was an editor for his school's news program, and he created multiple short films in high school. Now, his dream is to become an editor, creating films that are nothing short of awesome. Shea Miller immersed herself in literature, music and movies beginning in childhood. She is now an aspiring filmmaker and has a strong passion for storytelling. As a filmmaker, she hopes to voice life experiences for herself and for others. She has enjoyed expanding her knowledge and learning different ways to tell stories through documentaries and journalism. Maya Reuther has been making videos since childhood. She loved recreating famous movie scenes or making stop-motion videos. She has recently gained an interest in Foley and creating music videos. In her spare time, Maya likes to listen to and make music, create sculptures and try new, crazy makeup looks. More about Project POV: Sisler Create CBC Manitoba's Project POV: Sisler Create is a storytelling collaboration that partners filmmaking students with CBC Manitoba journalists to produce short docs. You can see past projects here. The Winnipeg School Division's Create program is hosted at Sisler High School and trains post-high students in the creative digital arts. During fall 2024, CBC journalists taught storytelling to filmmaking students and led producing workshops at Sisler. Create focuses on education and career pathways into the creative industries. Students can take courses in animation, film, game design, visual effects, graphic design and interactive digital media.
CBC
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Joshua Whitehead recommends three books that centre queerness
Queer identity, language, the land, Indigeneity are themes that preoccupy Joshua Whitehead. He writes about these things, and he reads about them as well. Whitehead is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw Indigiqueer scholar from Peguis First Nation. Jonny Appleseed, his first novel, is about a two-spirit person trying to put his life back together following the death of his stepfather. The book was longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. It won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction and won Canada Reads in 2021 when it was defended by actor Devery Jacobs. He joined The Next Chapter to recommend three books that centre queerness. Coexistence: Stories by Billy Ray Belcourt Complex Indigenous lives intersect in the stories that make up Coexistence. Stretching across Canadian prairies and the west coast, we travel to reserves, university campuses and lodgings of old residential schools to meet characters learning to live with and love one another and accept the realities of the past, present and future happening together all at once. Belcourt is a writer from Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta. His first novel is A Minor Chorus. His debut collection of poetry, This Wound is a World, is unapologetically Indigenous and queer at the same time. Belcourt won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for This Wound is a World. The collection also won the 2018 Indigenous Voices Award for most significant work of poetry in English and was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. Whitehead says the combination of the personal and politics stood out to him. " Coexistence is a collection of a handful of short stories that are all pretty much stand alone. They are within their own little worlds and I feel like we're in maybe to quote Marvel, a multiverse of Belcourt's thinkings. "For example, the short story Poetry Class has a narrator who is also a poetry teacher ruminating on what does it mean to teach poetry in 2024. How are poetics important in the global unfolding of war and genocide and ruination and destruction? It's also, I would say, detailing a frazzling, fractured, maybe even rupturing relationship that's happening at the same time. How are poetics important in the global unfolding of war and genocide and ruination and destruction? - Joshua Whitehead "And what I really enjoyed here is just the deep infusion of politics into the personal. And I think those two are so symbiotic of one another. That's to look at one is to look at the other. They mirror, right? And for me, poetry class just completely encapsulates it. To me, that's just beautiful, beautiful writing." Blackouts by Justin Torres This award-winning novel centres on a character named Juan Gay, at the end of his life, he and the narrator trade stories and reflect on moments of joy, lost loves, parents and heroes. Blackouts won the National Book Award, the Californai Book Award and the Tournament of Books. Justin Torres is an American author from upstate New York. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine and Granta. Whitehead says he admired the multi-layered nature of the novel. "In Blackouts you enter into the realm of the anthropological, the ethnographic — which is we all know here and now hopefully — that that is what causes these essentialized ideas of race, of sexuality, of Blackness — of Indigenity. In Blackouts you enter into the realm of the anthropological, the ethnographic — which is we all know here and now hopefully — that that is what causes these essentialized ideas of race, of sexuality, of Blackness — of Indigenity. "And to take that on in Blackouts, as Torres does to me, is just, it's so important. And then it's just like such a queer methodology to use that in a way that is like satirical, which I love." What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey What I'd Rather Not Think About is a translated book that was originally written in 2020 by and was published in English in 2024. It was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. The books seeks to ask the question: What happens when he person you've built your entire life around is suddenly gone? The book of short vignettes centres around a twin whose queer brother recently died by suicide. As she looks back on her brother's life, she finds moments of humour and gentle melancholy — all while resenting his decision and missing him dearly. Jente Posthuma is a Dutch writer and journalist. Whitehead says he likes how these books reframe the trope of queer suffering in literature. "I think a question I've asked myself continually over and over is: Is all literature a form of grieving? Really specifically, as a queer person who is Indigenous, we always have these tragic endings or trauma. And these books don't shy away from the fact all three deal with loss, with death with suicide, with mental health. They do so in ways that really take these things that we deem are unhealthy or painful — and then they also flip them, they transform them or mutate them in such a way that we can also see beauty and joy in remembrance. - Joshua Whitehead "But they do so in ways that really take these things that we deem are unhealthy or painful — and then they also flip them, they transform them or mutate them in such a way that we can also see beauty and joy in remembrance. We can see dread and fear and anxiety. But when they're inverted, we also see their antithesis, such as awe and assurance and presence."
