Stations of the Crossed

Shortlisted, 2023 Book of the Year Award (Saskatchewan Book Awards)
Shortlisted, 2023 SK Arts Poetry Award Honouring Anne Szumigalski
Shortlisted, 2023 Rasmussen & Co. Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award

Recalling Easter church services she attended as a child, Carol Rose GoldenEagle draws on the “stations of the cross,” the annual ritual of the priest presenting plaques depicting the stages of Christ’s persecution to his resurrection. Using these early teachings as a springboard for critical reflections, the poems in Stations of the Crossed look back but, more importantly, look forward to reclaim the gifts given by Creator within Indigenous culture.

Carol Rose GoldenEagle’s searing new poetry collection examines the dark legacy of the Residential School System, Church and government doctrine, and the ongoing impacts on Indigenous Peoples’ lives across Turtle Island.

“Written with power and grace, Stations of the Crossed tells the story of ‘doors marked in blood’ from the point-of-view of a Sixties Scoop survivor, honouring those who ‘survive because they have learned how.’ If this book makes you cry, let it. These poems of blood-memory and soul, heartbreaking police brutality, and misconducts of the system have strength, humility, and wisdom, and are urgent reading for anyone interested in reconciliation.”
— Yasuko Thanh, author, Mistakes To Run With

“Stations of the Crossed takes apart this country’s long history of trying to extinguish Indigenous culture, and the legacy of colonialism. Carol Rose GoldenEagle’s own experience as a child of the Sixties Scoop is direct and especially moving. She replaces the Old Testament justifications with her own memories and reflections on community, the teachings and ways of being in Indigenous culture. It’s been said if we only have one story, that’s the story we become. This is a book about finding that new path, and the kind of story we need now—a true one.”
—Bruce Rice, author of The Vivian Poems: The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier

“With Stations of the Crossed, Carol Rose GoldenEagle has given us a profound piece of poetic storytelling unlike anything else. This compelling collection is a thorough exploration of the role of so-called faith in destroying Indigenous culture and identity, and her life-long resolve and resilience to restore Cree pride and understanding. In each piece, GoldenEagle directly responds to Bible passages and the historic rhetoric of the colonizers with heartfelt personal insights and truths, resulting in a strong statement of resistance and revival that will echo across the land.”
—Waubgeshig Rice, author, Moon of the Crusted Snow  

“Carol Rose’s poetry is profound, phenomenal! The journey of words intertwining takes you to the past and the future. The connections intertwined uniquely exceptional while capturing the poetic beauty, and creation of a masterpiece! I survived genocide in and from the institutional residential school. I felt the journey, the shift through Carol Rose’s incredible poetry. It brought me some tears. It put my life in a perspective of silhouettes and vivid picturesque. This is poetry you want to read again and again. I highly recommend for high school and university classes!”
—Bevann Fox, author of Genocidal Love

“I was stripped of any religious or spiritual faith a long time ago. My childhood in Residential School and under the oppressive thumb of the Church proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God or Creator above or around us, for who with such strength and power would allow children to undergo such horror and not step in to save them? The words that Carol has so wonderfully woven together speak to many of the questions I found myself asking over my own life. Juxtaposed with the Fundamentalist Propaganda of the bible, the poems in this collection call out and shine a light upon the truths and pain that we as Indigenous people have faced since the coming of the White Man. They lay bare the ugly reality of the steps taken to erase who we are and what we are, while at the same time questioning the very dogmas and falsehoods pushed upon us as Gospel and Salvation. The underlying theme of Carol’s pieces prove one thing emphatically: that our true strength, medicine and power does not lie with the unseen, omnipotent fallacy of a sky god or ethereal Geppetto-like Daddy Figure, but with the very thing that has not and will never be destroyed, try as they might- the actual living, breathing flesh and blood of us as a people, our mothers and grandmothers and our children, those who have gone before, and those yet to come. Carol’s words show where devotion and reverence should be placed; it should be placed upon those who survived the storm, and those who will one day live a life free of the memories of it. This book will speak to those who are needing to hear it, and need to know that it is OK to say, “wait a minute…”
—John Brady McDonald, Nehiyawak-Metis author of Childhood Thoughts and Water and KITOTAM: He Speaks to It