Terminal Avenue
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"Terminal Avenue" is a
short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...
by
Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
author
Eden Robinson Eden Victoria Lena Robinson (born 19 January 1968) is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations in British Columbia, Canada. It was later included in ''
So Long Been Dreaming ''So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy'' (2004) is an English language anthology of science fiction and fantasy short stories by African, Asian, South Asian, and Indigenous authors, as well as North American and British w ...
'', an anthology of
postcolonial Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and extractivism, exploitation of colonized pe ...
speculative fiction, science fiction and fantasy edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan. It was also included in ''Walking the Clouds'', an anthology of indigenous people, Indigenous science fiction edited by Gracle L. Dillon.


Background

Eden Robinson wrote "Terminal Avenue" "in Vancouver, Canada on the number 9 Broadway bus between Commercial and the University of British Columbia" on the third anniversary of the Oka Crisis, Oka Uprising. The uprising, also known as the Oka Crisis, was a 1990 confrontation between a group of Mohawk people (along with allied Native activists) and Sûreté du Québec, Quebec's provincial police force over the proposed construction of a golf course on territory that, according to local Mohawk people, had been sold illegally. The conflict escalated to the point of gun battles between activists and provincial forces, resulting in one fatality (a Sûreté du Québec, QP corporal). According to Robinson, "It was my spec fic, bondage, aboriginal response to Oka Crisis, Oka and the Fraser River salmon wars."


Plot

Set in what appears to be a somewhat futuristic Vancouver, the story is narrated by a Indigenous peoples in Canada, Native Canadian man named Wilson Wilson (Wil). In this Canada, Indigenous people have been removed from their lands and ghettoized in urban Indian reserve, reservations. There, they face continual Police brutality, brutalization by armored security officers. The armored officers are described as sexless and invulnerable, their voices mechanically distorted to conceal their identities. The story shifts quickly between multiple timeframes. In one, the reader learns that in Wil's professional life, he is a professional submissive at an exclusive BDSM club. There, his lover (unnamed but marked as white people, white), together with others dressed in security officer uniforms, performs sadomasochistic acts on him for an audience. In private, their roles are reversed, with Wil assuming the dominant role, but his lover maintaining the security officer's uniform. In a past timeframe, the reader is told about Wil's father holding an illegal potlatch before being removed from the Douglas Channel area to the urban reservation. For this act, his father is later stopped along the road and beaten nearly to death by security officers. He never recovers psychologically, and commits suicide soon after. Subsequently, Wil's brother, Kevin (the only other named character in the story), participates in the Oka Uprising. After the uprising's failure, he becomes a security officer, and is disowned by his family. The "present" timeframe is extremely condensed. A group of security officers is approaching Wil, preparing to beat him (at the story's close, presumably to his death). Wil wonders whether perhaps his brother is one of the officers assaulting him.


References

{{reflist First Nations literature Science fiction short stories Canadian speculative fiction short stories 2004 short stories BDSM literature Vancouver in fiction