First Nations

Krie Redsky is an extraordinary Indigenous child who has both a curse and blessing that allows him to walk between this world and the Spirit Realm. He is also at an age where he is learning to cope with the twists and turns of friendships, the awkwardness of first love, and the self-doubt that must be overcome following loss and betrayal. But, nurtured by Knowledge Keepers as “one who is without fear, and with the ability to cross realities,” he is soon recognized as an individual who can – and will – battle the terrifying ancient spirit stealers known as Bonewalkers. But is he strong enough for what is to come?

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236 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

Journey to the depths of the Arctic and beyond in this unique collection of stories from the award-winning volumes of Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection.

Burning Cold is a captivating volume of Indigenous graphic stories written by acclaimed authors Sean and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley and Richard Van Camp. Time travel on the back of a wolverine, swim with shapeshifters beneath the ice, and travel through the skies with aliens. From traditional stories to reimagined futures, this collection showcases some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work from the North.

Educator Information
Recommended for Young Adults.

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100 pages | 6.50" x 10.25" | Colour Illustrations | Paperback

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.

For five years, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Established in 2017 initially through a crowd-funded campaign by lawyer Robin Parker and author Silvia Moreno-Garcia that set an initial fundraising goal of $10,000, the initiative raised over $116,000 in just four months.

Through generous support from organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, CELA, and others, the award has grown and have helped usher in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVA recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also help promote the works of unpublished writers, helping launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.

For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Carleigh Baker, Jordan Abel, and Indigenous scholar Madeleine Reddon, this anthology will be a true celebration of Indigenous storytelling that will both introduce readers to emerging luminaries as well as return them to treasured favourites.

Educator Information
Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology: A collection of prose and poetry from emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada includes a selection of standout work from the first five years of the Indigenous Voices Awards.

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400 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

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Spiral bound

In this quietly powerful and deeply human book, Ruth DyckFehderau and twenty-one James Bay Cree storytellers put a face to Canada’s Indian Residential School cultural genocide.

Through intimate personal stories of trauma, loss, recovery, and joy, they tell of experiences in the residential schools themselves, in the homes when the children were taken, and on the territory after survivors returned and worked to recover from their experiences and to live with dignity. The prose is clear and accessible, the stories remarkably individual, the detail vivid but not sensational.

Together they reveal the astonishing courage and strength of children along with the complexity and myriad methods of their oppressors. A tough, often funny, and ultimately uplifting book that’s not quite like anything else out there.

This book is published by Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay and distributed by WLU Press.

Reviews
“These previously unwritten stories of lived, traumatized experiences are testament to the storytellers’ courage and strength and resilience. When the rich Cree traditional and spiritual relationship with land and with family is harmed by separation, hatred, and fear - a harm resulting in anger and loss of values, identity, and self-worth - these storytellers find ways to heal. Through their stories, you learn about culture as treatment, about the power of forgiveness and love, and about peaceful co-existence in community as essential to healing, belief, and advancing true reconciliation.” —Chief Willie Littlechild, Ermineskin Cree Nation, Former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, Former residential school student athlete, Order of Canada; Order of Sport, Member of Sports Halls of Fame, Canada and North America

“These Cree stories, told with utmost respect and a feeling of safety, are gifts. They are medicine.” —Joanna Campiou, Woodland/Plains Cree Knowledge Keeper

“This is a difficult but necessary book. There’s a power to truth and to the realities of the Indian Residential School system, but for those wanting to see strength and movement toward hope, this is the book for you. These stories hold that hope close to the heart. What shines through is a love of the land, a love of community, a love of the Cree language, a love of family – exactly what colonial forces like the IRS system tried to destroy but couldn’t.” —Conor Kerr, Metis/Ukrainian author, Avenue of Champions, Giller Prize longlist

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320 pages | 7.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

A landmark publication bringing together more than seventy voices illuminating the rich array of Indigenous art held by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Under the editorial direction of Anishinaabe artist and scholar Bonnie Devine, Early Days gathers the insights of myriad Indigenous cultural stakeholders, informing us on everything from goose hunting techniques, to the history of Northwest Coast mask-making, to the emergence of the Woodland style of painting and printmaking, to the challenges of art making in the Arctic, to the latest developments in contemporary art by Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island.

Splendidly illustrated, Early Days not only tells the story of a leading collection but also traces the emergence and increasing participation of many Indigenous artists in the contemporary art world. This publication will be the largest in the history of the McMichael, and represents a vital acknowledgment of the place of Indigenous art and ways of knowing in global art history.

Featured contributors: Barry Ace, Leland Bell, Dempsey Bob, Christian Chapman, Violet Chum, Hannah Claus, Dana Claxton, Jisgang Nika Collison, Alan Corbiere, Marcia Crosby, Ruth Cuthand, Mique'l Dangeli, Joe David, Sarah Davidson, Robert Davidson, Bonnie Devine, Tarralik Duffy, Norma Dunning, David Garneau, John Geoghegan, Janice Grey, Haay'uups (Ron Hamilton), Jim Hart, Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Emily Henderson, Lynn A. Hill, Richard Hill, Maria Hupfield, Jaimie Isaac, Heather Igoliorte, Luis Jacob, Gayle Kabloona, William Kingfisher, Jessica Kotierk, Robin Laurence, Duane Linklater, Ange Loft, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Jean Marshal, Michael Massie, Gerald McMaster, Ossie Michelin, Sarah Milroy, Antoine Mountain, Nadia Myre, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Ruth Phillips, Jocelyn Piirainen, Ryan Rice, Carmen Robertson, Paul Seesequasis, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Wedlidi Speck, Clyde Tallio, Drew Hayden Taylor, Nakkita Trimble-Wilson, Jesse Tungilik, Camille Georgeson Usher, William Wasden Jr., Jordan Wilson, Jessica Winters.

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400 pages | 11.00" x 10.00" | 200 Colour Photographs | Hardcover

From the acclaimed, boundary-breaking author of NISHGA comes a hypnotic and mystifying exploration of land and legacy.

Reimagining James Fenimore Cooper’s nineteenth-century text The Last of the Mohicans from the contemporary perspective of an urban Nisga’a person whose relationship to land and traditional knowledge was severed by colonial violence, Jordan Abel explores what it means to be Indigenous without access to familial territory and complicates popular understandings about Indigenous storytelling. Engaging the land through fiction and metaphor, the successive chapters of Empty Spaces move toward an eerie, looping, and atmospheric rendering of place that evolves despite the violent and reckless histories of North America. The result is a bold and profound new vision of history that decenters human perception and forgoes Westernized ways of seeing.

Jordan Abel’s extraordinary debut work of fiction grows out of his groundbreaking visual compositions in NISHGA, which integrated descriptions of the landscape from Cooper’s settler classic into his father's traditional Nisga'a artwork. In Empty Spaces, Abel reinscribes those words on the page itself, subjecting them to bold rewritings and inviting us to come to a crucial understanding: that the land knows everything that can and will happen, even as our world lurches toward uncertainty.

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224 pages | 6.24" x 8.27" | B&W illustrations throughout | Hardcover

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him – about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.

On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

Reviews
"Green Fuse Burning is an impressively vigorous fiction debut from a truly dynamic storyteller. Tiffany Morris has laid out a concise and creepy tale that mesmerizes as it weaves through several realms, from the tangible to the spiritual. I was captivated by the looming mystery and the striking imagery that carried me like a current to the story's monumental resolution. This book is a must-read in new speculative fiction!" - Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

"Morris quietly dazzles and disquiets in this weird horror novella . . . Poetic and grotesque imagery drives the novella's horror, with fluid narration fostering a sense of disconnect and dread . . . This is a subtle and refreshing twist on the cabin in the woods trope." - Publishers Weekly starred review

"A verdant alienation seeps through every page as Morris reimagines the possibilities of decay, a desperate isolation scouring the mind to reveal a torrid, seething strangeness beneath, the inevitable reckoning gathering its strength below the calm surface of the pond." - Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold and The Handyman Method

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112 pages | 6.12" x 9.03" | Paperback

After Haywaas sees his parents get frustrated while watching the news, this precocious 12-year-old begins a months-long journey navigating many different answers to what he thought was a simple question.

Expertly crafted by a teacher-parent-author duo, Haywaas’ Question is relatable, understandable, and aptly builds up to an answer we’re all a part of.

Educator Information
The publisher recommends this picture book for Grades 4 - 10. 

This book is available in French: La Question de Haywaas: Qu'est-ce que la réconciliation? 

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36 pages | 7.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Author Leigh Joseph, an ethnobotanist and a member of the Squamish Nation, provides a beautifully illustrated essential introduction to Indigenous plant knowledge.

Plants can be a great source of healing as well as nourishment, and the practice of growing and harvesting from trees, flowering herbs, and other plants is a powerful way to become more connected to the land. The Indigenous Peoples of North America have long traditions of using native plants as medicine as well as for food. Held by the Land honors and shares some of these traditions, offering a guide to:

• Harvesting herbs and other plants and using them topically
• North American plants that can treat common ailments, add nutrition to your diet, become part of your beauty regime, and more
• Stories and traditions about native plants from the author's Squamish culture
• Using plant knowledge to strengthen your connection to the land you live on

Early chapters will introduce you to responsible ways to identify and harvest plants in your area and teach you how to grow a deeper connection with the land you live on through plants. In the plant profiles section, common plants are introduced with illustrations and information on their characteristics, range, how to grow and/or harvest them, and how to use them topically and as food. Special features offer recipes for food and beauty products along with stories and traditions around the plants.

This beautiful, full-color guide to Indigenous plants will give you new insights into the power of everyday plants.

Additional Informaiton
192 pages | 8.00" x 9.25" | Hardcover 

We live in a hopeless old house on an almost-deserted dead-end street in a middle-of-nowhere town named Hope. This is the oldest part of Hope; eventually it will all be torn down and rebuilt into perfect homes for perfect people. Until then, we live here: imperfect people on an imperfect street that everyone forgets about.

For Eva Brown, life feels lonely and small. Her mother, Shirley, drinks and yells all the time. She’s the target of the popular mean girl, and her only friend doesn’t want to talk to her anymore. All of it would be unbearable if it weren’t for her cat, Toofie, her beloved nohkum, and her writing, which no one will ever see.

When Nohkum is hospitalized, Shirley struggles to keep things together for Eva and her younger brother, Marcus. After Marcus is found wandering the neighbourhood alone, he is sent to live with a foster family, and Eva finds herself in a group home.

Furious at her mother, Eva struggles to adjust—and being reunited with her family seems less and less likely. During a visit to the hospital, Nohkum gives Eva Shirley’s diary. Will the truths it holds help Eva understand her mother?

Heartbreaking and humorous, Hopeless in Hope is a compelling story of family and forgiveness.

Reviews

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 12+

Additional Information
216 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

This Indigenous Art Colouring Book features Holiday designs to colour from Coast Salish artist Angela Kimble.

Included are 28 colouring pages based on original pieces of artwork created by the artist, as well as information on the artist's cultural background and the artist's biography. The artist is paid royalties for the sale of this product.

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8.5" x 11" | 28 Colouring Pages | Made in Canada

Indigenous and settler scholars and media artists discuss and analyze crucial questions of narrative sovereignty, cultural identity, cultural resistance, and decolonizing creative practices.

Humans are narrative creatures, and since the dawn of our existence we have shared stories. Storytelling is what connects us, what helps us give shape and understanding to the world and to each other. Who tells whose stories in which particular ways leads to questions of belonging, power, relationality, community and identity. This collection explores those issues with a focus on settler-Indigenous cultural politics in the country known as Canada, looking in particular at Indigenous representation in media arts. Chapters feature roundtable discussions, interviews, film analyses, resurgent media explorations, visual culture advocacy and place-based practices of creative expression.

Eclectic in scope and diverse in perspective, Indigenous Media Arts in Canada is unified by an ethic of conciliation, collaboration, and cultural resistance. Engaging deftly and thoughtfully with instances of cultural appropriation as well as the oppressive structures that seek to erode narrative sovereignty, this collection shines as a crucial gathering of thoughtful critique, cultural kinship, and creative counterpower.

Reviews
“Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton’s collection of conversations between, for, and about Indigenous media makers poses vital, critical, and generative questions about Indigenous film, film festivals and institutions, residential school histories, and decolonization without providing easy answers. These conversations are at times joyful expressions of the radical possibilities of media arts and at times painful provocations about settler colonial violence and its representational apparatuses. The chapters, written by the most brilliant and creative minds in contemporary Indigenous film, are paradigm-shifting love letters to the land, lived experience, collaboration, and futurity.” —Michelle Raheja, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of California, Riverside, author of Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Indigenous Media Arts in Canada: Making, Caring, Sharing – Edited by Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Seeing, Knowing, Lifting – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
Part I – Decolonizing Media Arts Institutions
Part I Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
1. Our Own Up There: A Discussion at imagineNATIVE – Danis Goulet and Tasha Hubbard with Jesse Wente, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Shane Belcourt
2. Curating the North: Documentary Screening Ethics and Inuit Representation in Canada – Ezra Winton and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
3. Sights of Homecoming: Locating Restorative Sites of Passage in Zacharias Kunuk’s Festival Performance of Angirattut – Claudia Sicondolfo
Part II – Protecting Culture
Part II Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
4. Addressing Colonial Trauma Through Mi’kmaw Film – Margaret Robinson and Bretten Hannam
5. Not Reconciled: The Complex Legacy of Films on Canadian "Indian" Residential Schools – Brenda Longfellow
6. The Resurgence of Indigenous Women in Contemporary Québec Cinema – Karine Bertrand
7. “Our Circle Is Always Open”: Indigenous Voices, Children’s Rights, and Spaces of Inclusion in the Films of Alanis Obomsawin – Joanna Hearne
Part III – Methods/Knowledges/Interventions
Part III Introduction Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
8. Indigenous Documentary Methodologies: ChiPaChiMoWin: Telling Stories – Jules Arita Koostachin
9. Marking and Mapping Out Embodied Practices through Media Art – Julie Nagam and Carla Taunton
10. Curatorial Insiders/Outsiders: Speaking Outside and Collaboration as Strategic Intervention – Toby Katrine Lawrence
11. The Generative Hope of Indigenous Interactive Media: Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Futurism – Michelle Stewart
Part IV - Resurgent Media/Allies/Advocacy
Part IV Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton + Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc
12. “Making Things Our [Digital] Own”: Lessons on Time and Sovereignty from Indigenous Computational Art – Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc
13. Careful Images: Unsettling Testimony in the Gladue Video Project – Eugenia Kisin and Lisa Jackson
Concluding Thoughts
Part 1: Beyond Words and Images – Ezra Winton and Dana Claxton Part 2: Setting the Record Straight – Lisa Jackson
About the Contributors
References
Index

Contributors

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
Shane Belcourt
Karine Bertrand
Dana Claxton
Sasha Crawford-Holland
Danis Goulet
Bretten Hannam
Joanna Hearne
Tasha Hubbard
Lisa Jackson
Eugenia Kisin
Jules Arita Koostachin
Toby Katrine Lawrence
Lindsay LeBlanc
Brenda Longfellow
Julie Nagam
Margaret Robinson
Claudia Sicondolfo
Michelle Stewart
Carla Taunton
Jesse Wente
Ezra Winton

Additional Information
450 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback 

A fierce voice longs to break free. A spark ignites inside fourteen-year-old Iz Beaufort when she hears school music group Manifesto perform. Even though she hasn’t written a song since That Place, she recognizes herself in the moving performance and longs to be part of the group, certain that they might actually understand her. But Manifesto is based at the prestigious Métier School, and Iz has bounced through twenty-six foster homes. Plus, there’s no way Dominion Children’s Care would ever send a foster kid to a private school when a public option is available. So Iz does what any passionate, broken, off-the-chart wunderkind might and takes matters into her own hands. Iz fakes her way in only to face a new set of challenges: tuition fees, tough classwork, and new classmates she can’t immediately identify as friends or foes. And if she can’t handle all this while keeping how she got into Métier a secret, she could get kicked out of both school and her current home. But a life with music—a life where Iz gets to have a voice—might be worth risking everything.

Reviews
"A compassionate, character-driven story that will particularly resonate with music lovers." - Kirkus

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 12 to 18.

Additional Information
230 pages | 9.00" x 6.00" | Paperback

With gorgeous imagery, visual artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast.

Yahgulanaas uses a blend of traditional and modern art, eschewing the traditional boxes of comic books for the flowing shapes of North Pacific iconography. The panels are filled with colourful and expressive watercolour paintings. The panels of each page, if removed and assembled into one whole image, form a large image reminiscent of a woven robe.

The story follows several historical figures, including Johan Adrian Jacobsen (JAJ), who comes to the Haida village of Masset to collect specimens for a German museum, through a time span that includes first contact, the devastation of the smallpox epidemic, and the mass resettlement of disenfranchised peoples, both Indigenous and European.

Reviews
“This book is a necessary tale told by the perfect voice at the right time. It also uses graphic imagery in a way I've not seen before, and it feels ground-breaking.” — Douglas Coupland

Additional Information
132 pages | 8.00" x 10.00" | Hardcover