Rita Bouvier
Rita Bouvier is a Métis author and worked for the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation. She has served in public education for thirty years in varying capacities: as a classroom teacher, as Director of the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program, as sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, and as a curriculum developer. Ms. Bouvier has also served as a volunteer with various organizations. Ms. Bouvier describes herself as a teacher with a bent on social justice issues. She has traveled nationally and worldwide to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and other parts of the U.S., St. Lucia, Geneva, and India.
Ms. Bouvier's publications include Blueberry Clouds, Resting Lightly on Mother Earth, Okiskinahamakewak - Aboriginal Teachers in Saskatchewan's Publicly Funded Schools: Responding to the Flux, and Pâpiyâtak.
Books (2)
Synopsis:
This evocative new poetry collection speaks with a fierce tenderness of many aspects of the poet’s life: a childhood spent on the banks of the Churchill River, the death of a beloved one, the struggle to try to find forgiveness for wrongs done and the weariness of trying to redress those wrongs. And, most poignantly, a beautiful rebellion reaches one hand back to Louis Riel and one hand forward to future Métis generations.
The poems navigate losses that we all suffer when the world of our childhoods has altered irrevocably; they reveal the pain caused by residential schools and share despair at the lack of progress in social justice and self-determination. Rita Bouvier’s work is intimate and insightful, written in inviting, open-hearted language that includes many Cree and Michif phrases and their translation.
There is a quiet power--riverine, deep, unstoppable--that flows through these words.
Additional Information
72 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
The voices of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants are heard as they chronicle their survival in mainstream school systems. The authors describe and analyze the experiences of Aboriginal students, teachers, and pre-service teachers struggling to find a place in urban society. Some voices are resistant, others angry, many questioning, as they enter into tentative coalitions with other urban teachers who pursue social justice for Aboriginal peoples. The editors open the book with a wide-ranging look at the contexts of urban Aboriginal education, and explore the themes of the book—identity, disconnection from the land, spirituality, the effects of a colonial legacy—from their own Aboriginal and mainstream perspectives.
A strength of the book is the diversity of backgrounds and experiences the authors bring. The writers are Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, from Canada, the United States and Australia. They have taught and worked in elementary and secondary schools, universities and teacher education programs. All have direct experience working in urban educational settings, and all bring passionate advocacy to their writing. Resting Lightly on Mother Earth is intended for both Indigenous and mainstream educators; it is particularly suitable for teachers and administrators in urban systems, teacher educators, and graduate and undergraduate education students.
Additional Information
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