Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing by Clayton Thomas-Müller (review)

Reviewed by: Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing by Clayton Thomas-Müller Adele Perry (bio) Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing by Clayton Thomas-Müller Penguin Random House Canada, 2021 in life in the city of dirty water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller writes as "an Indigenous man, as an activist, as someone seeking the correct spiritual paths through a landscape pocked and pitted by traps, many of them centuries old, some as old as the world, some of my own creation" (213–14). The result is a powerful, compelling story and a call to action. The title of Thomas-Müller's 240-page memoir evokes the particular space of Winnipeg, the middling Canadian prairie city that Thomas-Müller and more than seventy thousand other Indigenous people currently call home. So do I, as a settler. Life in the City of Dirty Water has a lot to say about Winnipeg. But Thomas-Müller also ranges well beyond this particular urban geography, tracing his teenage life in northern British Columbia, his time on his family's trapline in northern Manitoba's Inninew or Swampy Cree territories, and a career devoted to global climate justice advocacy in the United States, Latin America, and beyond. The result is a highly readable discussion of what it means to be a Cree man in contemporary Canada and an argument for environmental action and decolonization. The memoir is a fluid and at times rollicking read. It begins with a short preface from Thomas-Müller's mother, Gail Pelltier, who offers her "full support and permission to share his story" (n.p.). Five parts follow, each with titles in Inninewmowin, English, and syllabics: tapasîwin (or "flight") tells the story of Thomas-Müller's immediate origins, his birth in 1977, and his early years. This includes time on the family trapline in Treaty 6 territory, in juvenile detention in British Columbia, and in Indigenous street gangs in Winnipeg. Nōtinikêwiyiniw or "warrior" documents Thomas-Müller's coming to Indigenous community organizing in 1990s Winnipeg, to global Indigenous resistance while on a solidarity trip to Chiapas in 1997, and to the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network as a staff member. "You can't be an Indian and not be political," explains Thomas-Müller (77). In the first part, nîpîy (or "water"), Thomas-Müller narrates a series of linked returns: to Indigenous spirituality, and the particular practices of sweat lodge and sun dance, to his marriage to Koren Thomas-Müller, and [End Page 176] to the city of Winnipeg. Nanâtawihowin (or "healing") speaks of Indigenous masculinities through Thomas-Müller's stories of club and rave scenes and the birth of his two sons. It ends with Thomas-Müller joining 350.org, a well-resourced NGO organization, and his work with antipipeline campaigns. "Some mainstream environmentalists might ask what fighting a pipeline has to do with LGBTQ rights," Thomas-Müller concludes, "but I know that everything is connected" (208). The final and shortest part of Life in the City of Dirty Water is iskotêw (or "fire"). Here Thomas-Müller connects his own life with wider struggles and argues that environmental justice and Indigenous rights are necessarily connected. "In 250 years of industrialization, colonizers have almost destroyed our ability to live on Mother Earth," Thomas-Müller explains. "Integrated, holistic governance of our nations, or cities, and the relationship that they have with the land and resources are how we are going to do it" (221). Thomas-Müller's book was published by Penguin in 2021, two years after a short documentary of the same title as the book (https://lifeinthecityofdirtywater.com/). In book form, Life in the City of Dirty Water reads like a life story told in parts. It has been received well in mainstream Canadian circles, a national best-seller, shortlisted for three major awards, and featured on the annual Canada Reads show on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio. Life in the City of Dirty Water is a testament to Indigenous dispossession in...

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