About Joseph

I was born Joseph Darren Onodi. I am of Cree-Nation and Austrian ancestry. My single Native mother raised her seven half-breeds (abittawokosisan) in the south BC Peace Region. I moved to Vancouver BC in 1989. And since then I've had plenty of Jo-jobs; I've been a Janitor, a security guard, a Baker's Assistant at a Prison, a bicycle courier, a Process Server; I was employed by Coquitlam and Surrey Public Libraries, and was intercity truckdriver, and in 2009 I started to take my self, and my writing seriously.

In 2014 I was awarded the 2014 Canada Council for the Arts: Creation Grant for Aboriginal Peoples Writers and Storytellers for my manuscript Woodland Creetures. I'm a graduate of Simon Fraser University's prestigious 2018 writing program, The Writer's Studio (TWS), and published my short story, "The Bicycle" in the 2018 Writer's Studio Anthology, Emerge. In 2019 I completed The Writer's Studio Graduate Class.

Using my personal brand of storytelling and traditional knowledge I've read at Coquitlam’s 2016, 125th Celebration, Kaleidoscope: The Writer's Café; In May 2017 I presented Ati-meo Ayaw (It's Getting Better), for the Surrey Teacher"s Conference; in June of that same year I spoke to My Personal Truth and Reconciliation at the Kerrisdale Anglican Church; in April 2018 I presented at the Cloverdale Learning Centre; in 2019 I presented, The Where and How of my Trauma, at the 42nd Annual International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP) Conference: Engaging Difference and Sameness: Pathways to Empathic Dialogue, in Vancouver BC.