Johnson, Tareyn: Dawaa: The Space Between

Duo, paperback

Publication Date: March 3, 2026

Publisher Marketing:

Dawaa: The Space Between celebrates in poetry the tensions and beauty between the two ancestral languages of the author: Ojibwe and English.

As a First Nations woman, Tareyn Johnson grew up without knowing the language of her ancestors. Her grandparents attended residential school, and neither they, nor her mother carried the language. Left with a deep longing desire to embrace Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) language, she began her learning journey as an adult.

As her understanding grew, words began to form visually in her mind. As a result, twenty-six poems--two for each of the Thirteen Moons--grouped seasonally, beautifully juxtapose Ojibwe and English to express Johnson's feeling of existing between two languages.

This collection of poems --not intended as a didactic or language teaching tool--examines the unique experience of walking between two worlds, speaking and learning two languages, and relating the two ways of knowing in a liminal space... the space between.

nanda-gikendan--seek to know it, seek to learn it.