Red Paint

I enjoyed reading Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography Of A Coast Salish Punk by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe. This young person earned a MFA and obviously has a passion for poetry, music, and writing. Sasha was always searching for a home, for a place to feel safe, and for a place where she could relax a little. Her family moved around when she was young and she was not always safe. No wonder she has asthma and panic attacks. No wonder she turned to drugs and alcohol and the punk rock scene. Sasha searches for her ancestors, especially for the one she was named after. Her ancestor was the only one from her village to survive a small pox epidemic. She left her village and eventually married a Scottish ship captain. Since natives were not allowed in the house, her ancestor slept outside in the shed where she concocted herbal remedies, cooked and cleaned. Although it was against the law to sell alcohol to natives, her husband had barrels and barrels of whiskey in his store house and sold the whiskey to natives every chance he could get. Once he was taken to court. Sasha's ancestor went to court only to find her husband was fined twenty dollars for his crimes. I enjoyed the story because Sasha writes about the towns and islands around Seattle, Washington where I have been and because she is an excellent writer who offers a very different perspective.