In conjunction with Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic award-winning author Joseph Boyden discusses the importance of place in his novels. The historical moment captured in Picturing the Americas saw the large-scale appropriation of Indigenous land, the suppression of Indigenous languages and cultures, and the death of many Indigenous people by violence and disease. Boyden has explored this history in his writing, most recently in his novel The Orenda, is a visceral portrait of life at a crossroads that weaves together the natural beauty and blood-soaked brutality of Canada's formative years. The Orenda, won Canada Reads and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. Joseph Boyden is the author of the award winning novels Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce. Boyden divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana.