A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Alicia Elliott is a Tuscarora writer of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who lived from age 13 on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. She currently lives in Brantford, Ontario with her husband and child. Her grandmother moved her family from Canada to the United States to avoid having her children taken into the Indian residential school system, and Elliott lived in the US until she was 13, when her immediate family moved back to Canada. She grew up in extreme poverty, became a teen mom, and continued her education to obtain a degree from university. She struggled to become a writer for years before achieving success and publishing A Mind Spread Out On The Ground.

Elliott’s child is not named in the book, nor are pronouns used to denote the gender of the child. However, the child plays a significant role in Elliott’s life as she became pregnant by her boyfriend, Mike, in high school. Elliott cites her child as a motivating force in her life to get through the weight of motherhood, and she explores her relationship with race and ethnicity through her child, who is only a quarter Indigenous.