b'NARRATIVE SOVEREIGNTYBy Rick GarrickTELLING OUR OWN STORIESAward-winning writer Jesse Wente opens up about the importance of narrative sovereigntyI ndigenous writer and broadcaster Jesse Wente is a big believer in things taking the time they need, noting that he wrote his award-winning book, Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance, over a four-year period. The book was published by Penguin Canada in September 2021, with Wente going on to win the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Non-Fiction the following year.It certainly wasnt my intention for it to take that longI dont think my agent or publisher or editor were particularly thinking it would take that long, but sometimes things take the time they take, says Wente, Co-Executive Director of the Indigenous Screen Office and Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts. Just sort of figuring out how to get my voice to the book took a little time because I was so used to doing radio and just speaking.Wente is a big believer in Indigenous people taking the time needed to tell their own stories, as he did. I felt that was the best way to use my own life to illuminate some larger ideas and how Ive come to think about them through my experiences, he explains. I wanted to write something that my children could read in the future and have an idea of who their father is and was, and why I had made some of the decisions I made.52Fall/Winter 2022'