Indigenous Studies

Indigenous naturopathic doctor Nicole Redvers pairs evidence-based research with traditional healing modalities, addressing modern health problems and medical processes

Modern medical science has finally caught up to what traditional healing systems have known for centuries. Many traditional healing techniques and medicines are often assumed to be archaic, outdated, or unscientific compared to modern Western medicine. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of the Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western medical practices using evidence-informed Indigenous healing practices and traditions from around the world--from sweat lodges and fermented foods to Ayurvedic doshas and meditation. Organized around various sciences, such as physics, genetics, and microbiology, the book explains the connection between traditional medicine and current research around epigenetics and quantum physics, for example, and includes over 600 citations. Redvers, who has traveled and worked with Indigenous groups around the world, shares the knowledge and teachings of health and wellness that have been passed down through the generations, tying this knowledge with current scientific advances. Knowing that the science backs up the traditional practice allows us to have earlier and more specific interventions that integrate age-old techniques with the advances in modern medicine and technology.

Reviews
"Redvers illuminates the common ground that underlies both traditional and conventional healing practices. Each chapter identifies and analyzes the different cultural assumptions that can keep healing practices separate from one another, while the depth of the author’s knowledge allows us to see the ways in which these different practices can be rooted in the wisdom of the body. A call for the holistic healing that integrates multiple traditions for healing of mind, body, emotion, and spirit.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

“Drawing on her own unique upbringing and total lived experience—melding wisdom received from her Dene elders of Northern Canada and lessons learned from witnessing illness, poverty, despair, and environmental degradation in various parts of the world—Redvers provides unique insight that only a First Nations person and practicing integrative medicine doctor can bring. The Science of the Sacred is a compass pointing toward a much-needed rebellion in healing. The revolution of the self begins!”—Alan C. Logan, co-author of Your Brain on Nature

“Nicole Redvers neatly ties together her cultural Dene roots and stories from other Indigenous cultures in an evidence-informed manner to look at medicine, the health of our planet, and the health of humans as individuals and societies. She poses questions and solutions that deserve exploration and will keep you thinking long after finishing this, her first work.”—Paul Saunders, PhD, ND

“This is a powerful and courageous book of personal and planetary healing. It points directly to the core of all of our problems, where also lie the path to our solutions. Drawing on modern science and the ancient wisdom of the First Nations Elders it makes a resounding call for change, carefully balancing the well-reasoned practicalities with the inspiration and passion needed to achieve these. In a cataclysmic era for human and planetary health a seismic shift is needed—that we may rediscover our purpose, our roots and our sense of self, from which all else flows. Dr. Redvers takes us boldly to that frontier, and shows us where we might cross the threshold to a new era of health.” —Susan Prescott, MD, PhD, president of inVIVO Planetary Health, paediatrician and immunologist, University of Western Australia

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296 pages | 6.04" x 8.98"

Confronting the truths of Canada’s Indian Residential School system has been likened to waking a sleeping giant. In this book, David B. MacDonald uses genocide as an analytical tool to better understand Canada’s past and present relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples. Starting with a discussion of how genocide is defined in domestic and international law, the book applies the concept to the forced transfer of Indigenous children to residential schools and the "Sixties Scoop," in which Indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed in foster homes or adopted.

Based on archival research and extensive interviews with residential school survivors, officials at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and others, The Sleeping Giant Awakens offers a unique and timely perspective on the prospects for conciliation after genocide, exploring how moving forward together is difficult in a context where many settlers know little of the residential schools and the ongoing legacies of colonization, and need to have a better conception of Indigenous rights. It offers a detailed analysis of how the TRC approached genocide in its deliberations and in the Final Report.

Crucially, MacDonald engages critics who argue that the term genocide impedes understanding of the IRS system and imperils prospects for conciliation. By contrast, this book sees genocide recognition as an important basis for meaningful discussions of how to engage Indigenous-settler relations in respectful and proactive ways.

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224 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Nenaboozhoo left us many gifts.

Nenaboozhoo, the creator spirit-being of Ojibway legend, gave the people many gifts. This collection of oral stories presents legends of Nenaboozhoo along with other creation stories that tell of the adventures of numerous beloved animal spirits. The Trail of Nenaboozhoo is a book of art and storytelling that preserve the legends of the Anishinaabe people. Each story is accompanied by strikingly beautiful illustrations by revered Indigenous artists Isaac Murdoch and Christi Belcourt.

Educator & Series Information
From the Forward, by Isaac Murdoch:
"Everything we have can be accredited to the gifts from the spirit world. As we are now in abrupt climate change we can see the world-wide ecological collapse happening before our very eyes. How important was the birch bark canoe? The wigwam? How important were those gifts that were given to us? I think they were very important. They were more than important; they were sacred.

And so its with great hopes and encouragement that I offer these stories as a map to understand how to go back to the old ways. The old people always said we are going to go back to the old ways and I truly believe the time is now. We mustn’t wait.

Nenaboozhoo is a spirit that was brought to the earth who is highly respected to this day by my people. They say when he was in spirit form he went through four levels of power. Through each power he went through he went back to the centre saying he didn’t want to leave. But the Great Mystery told him, “'keep going, keep going, you’re needed somewhere.'

And he made his way through those four powers and ended up on earth. His life here on earth was magical. All the rivers, all of the mountains all of the beautiful colours that we see, were created with Nenaboozhoo and his magical trail on earth. They say one day ten men will go fasting and call Nenaboozhoo back and the world will be new again.

Nothing can stop the power that is here."

This book is part of the Ojibwe History Series.

Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 resource list for grades 7 to 12 for English Language Arts and Science.

Most stories appear in English and with an Anishinaabemowin translation, but some stories are in English only.

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55 pages | 9.00" x 9.00" | 20 illustrations

The cop who blew the whistle on Saskatoon’s notorious “Starlight Tours,” Ernie Louttit is the bestselling author of two previous “Indian Ernie” books. He demonstrates in this latest title that being a leader means sticking to your convictions and sometimes standing up to the powers that be. One of the first Indigenous officers hired by the Saskatoon Police, he was an outsider who became an insider, with a difference. A former military man with a passion for the law, he was tough on the beat, but was also a role model for kids on the streets.

Reviews
"I read it in one sitting and it left me wanting more" - John Lagimodiere, editor and publisher of Eagle Feather News

“The author fearlessly takes on some of the most problematic public issues of the day…and confronts them with the objective practicality of a thoughtful, observant foreigner.” —Les Macpherson, former editor and columnist with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Additional Information
192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

David Neel was an infant when his father, a Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist, died, triggering a series of events that would separate him from his homeland and its rich cultural traditions for twenty-five years. When he saw a Potlatch mask carved by his great-great-grandfather in a museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the encounter caused the aspiring photographer to wonder if he could return to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Drawing on memory, legend, and his own art and photographs, Neel tells the story of his struggle to reconnect with his culture after decades of separation and a childhood marred by trauma and abuse. David returned to the Pacific Coast, where he apprenticed with master carvers from his father’s village on Vancouver Island, and his career as an author and artist took him to the United States and to Mexico, to Europe and back again to British Columbia. Along the way, he met and photographed some of the most talented artists and Indigenous people of his generation. His travels helped him grow as a man and become an accomplished and prolific artist, but they also reconfirmed the healing power of returning home.

The Way Home is a testament to the strength of the human spirit to overcome great obstacles and to the power and endurance of Indigenous culture and art.

Educator Information
This memoir is a must-read for anyone interested in Canadian art and artists, particularly Indigenous art, as well as those learning about or active in cultural revitalization in Indigenous communities.

Subjects / Themes: Indigenous Art, Canadian Art, Memoir.

This resource is recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 list for grades 9 to 12 for Art Education, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Caution: includes memories of domestic violence.

Additional Information
192 pages | 8.00" x 10.00"

Here is a voice we have never heard--a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with stunning urgency and force.

Here is a story of several people, each of whom has private reasons for travelling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honour his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and unspeakable loss.

Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking, There There is a relentlessly paced multi-generational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. An unforgettable debut.

Reviews
“There There has so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation… its appearance marks the passing of a generational baton.” —The New York Times

“Each character is introduced and developed with a clear-eyed fidelity, empathic without sentimentality, our understanding increasing as connections are revealed, histories explored, gaps filled in. . . . At its core, There There is a novel about those gaps.” —Toronto Star

“Welcome to a brilliant and generous artist who has already enlarged the landscape of American fiction. There There is a comic vision haunted by profound sadness. Tommy Orange is a new writer with an old heart.” —Louise Erdrich, Birchbark Books

“A gripping deep dive into urban indigenous community in California: an astonishing literary debut!” —Margaret Atwood via Twitter

“There There is a miraculous achievement, a book that wields ferocious honesty and originality in service of telling a story that needs to be told. This is a novel about what it means to inhabit a land both yours and stolen from you, to simultaneously contend with the weight of be­longing and unbelonging. There is an organic power to this book—a revelatory, controlled chaos. Tommy Orange writes the way a storm makes landfall.” —Omar El Akkad, author of American War

Educator Information
ERAC approved title for grades 11 and 12 literature circles around identity, overcoming adversity, or how the past shapes our lives. Social considerations noted; recommended for mature students.

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.64" x 8.51" | Paperback

In They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever, ‘Nlaka’pamux elder Annie York explains the red-ochre inscriptions written on the rocks and cliffs of the lower Stein Valley in British Columbia. This is perhaps the first time that a Native elder has presented a detailed and comprehensive explanation of rock-art images from her people’s culture. As Annie York’s narratives unfold, we are taken back to the fresh wonder of childhood, as well as to a time in human society when people and animals lived together in one psychic dimension.

This book describes, among many other things, the solitary spiritual meditations of young people in the mountains, once considered essential education. Astrological predictions, herbal medicine, winter spirit dancing, hunting, shamanism, respect for nature, midwifery, birth and death, are some of the topics that emerge from Annie’s reading of the trail signs and other cultural symbols painted on the rocks. She firmly believed that this knowledge should be published so that the general public could understand why, as she put it, “The Old People reverenced those sacred places like that Stein.”

They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever opens a discussion of some of the issues in rock-art research that relate to “notating” and “writing” on the landscape, around the world and through the millennia. This landmark publication presents a well-reasoned hypothesis to explain the evolution of symbolic or iconic writing from sign language, trail signs and from the geometric and iconic imagery of the dreams and visions of shamans and neophyte hunters. This book suggests that the resultant images, written or painted on stone, constitute a Protoliteracy which has assisted both the conceptualization and communication of hunting peoples’ histories, philosophies, morals and ways life, and prepared the human mind for the economic, sociological and intellectual developments, including alphabetic written language.

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.75" x 9.75" | 2nd Edition

A treaty is a contract. A treaty is enduring. A treaty is an act of faith. A treaty at its best is justice. It is a document and an undertaking. It is connected to place, people and self. It is built on the past, but it also indicates how the future may unfold. Armand Garnet Ruffo's TREATY# is all of these. In this far-ranging work, Ruffo documents his observations on life - and in the process, his own life - as he sets out to restructure relationships and address obligations nation-to-nation, human-to-human, human-to-nature. Now, he undertakes a new phase in its restoration. He has written his TREATY# like a palimpsest over past representations of Indigenous bodies and beliefs, built powerful connections to his predecessors, and discovered new ways to bear witness and build a place for them, and all of us, in his poems. This is a major new work from an important, original voice.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 8 to 12 for English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Historical terms like "Indian" and "half-breed" are used in this work.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.75" x 8.50"

As beautiful as it is useful, Understanding Northwest Coast Indigenous Jewelry is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in learning about or deepening their understanding of a fascinating craft.

Indigenous hand-engraved jewelry from the Pacific Northwest Coast is among the most distinctive, innovative, and highly sought-after art being produced in North America today. But these artworks are more than just stunning—every bracelet, ring, and pendant is also the product of a fascinating backstory, a specialized set of techniques, and a talented artist.

With a clearly written text, a foreword by award-winning First Nations artist Corrine Hunt, and more than one hundred striking color photographs and sidebars, Understanding Northwest Coast Indigenous Jewelry offers an illuminating look at an exquisite craft and the context in which it is practiced.

Providing a step-by-step overview of various techniques, the book also introduces the specifics of formline design, highlights the traits of the most common animal symbols used, offers tips for identification, and features biographies and works from over fifty of the Coast’s best-known jewelers. Finally, it delves into the history of the art form, from the earliest horn and copper cuff bracelets to cutting-edge contemporary works and everything in between.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 9 to 12 for Arts Education, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Additional Information
192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

The Skeena, second longest river in the province, remains an icon of British Columbia’s northwest. Called Xsien (“water of the clouds”) by the Tsimshian and Gitksan, it has always played a vital role in the lives of Indigenous people of the region. Since the 1800s, it has also become home to gold seekers, traders, salmon fishers and other settlers who were drawn by the area’s beauty and abundant natural resources.

Voices from the Skeena takes readers on a journey inspired directly by the people who lived there. Combining forty illustrations with text selected from the pioneer interviews CBC radio producer Imbert Orchard recorded in the 1960s, the book follows the arrival of the Europeans and the introduction of the fur trade to the Omineca gold rush and the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad.

Open the pages to meet Robert Cunningham, an Anglican missionary who would later become the founder of the thriving Port Essington. Here too is a man called Cataline, a packer for whom no settlement was too remote to reach, and the indominable Sarah Glassey, the first woman to pre-empt land in British Columbia. At the heart of these stories is the river, weaving together a narrative of a people and their culture. Pairing the stories with Roy Henry Vicker’s vibrant art creates a unique and captivating portrait of British Columbia that will appeal to art lovers and history readers alike.

Additional Information
112 pages | 11.00" x 8.00" | 40 colour illustrations

This work has received the Authentic Indigenous Text label because of the interviews/contributions with Indigenous people like Vicky Sims and Chief Jeffrey H. Johnson. It is up to readers to determine if this work is authentic for their purposes.

Wënchikàneit Visions is a collection of essays that explores the connection to place and history through the lens of absence, forgetfulness, and abandonment. The pieces and collection as whole turn to often overlooked physical spaces of the region around Waawiiyaatanong, and consider their central role in both its past and its future. The pieces are organized as visions occurring in regards to the moons from September (Hunters Moon) until February (Deep Snow Moon) and utilize traditional teachings and myths to contemplate these forgotten or abandoned places.

Additional Information
70 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Note: cover image may differ.

"His voice was as thick as pine resin when he began to read and as the words travelled down my spine."

Mary Barnes has identified beauty in subtlety. What Fox Knew captures our gentle world in rich poems that calm and awaken. Amid landscape and truth, the quiet world we take for granted is revealed anew with tempered grace. Bringing her Ojibwe roots to the fore, the poet has constructed a first collection that settles on masterful.

Reviews
"What Fox Knew is a beautiful collection of poems that lead us to reflect on the essential spaces of beauty, justice, love, home and nation. Mary Barnes is the poet whose work I've been waiting to read; I had no idea how much until I read these poems. These are not quick poems; they are not desperate, or rushed. Barnes' poems are, to quote her, "thick as resin" and also gorgeously clear as amber in the light. --Juliane Okot Bitek

Additional Information
136 pages | 5.00" x 7.50"

The desire to erase the religions of Indigenous Peoples is an ideological fixture of the colonial project that marked the first century of Canada’s nationhood. While the ban on certain Indigenous religious practices was lifted after the Second World War, it was not until 1982 that Canada recognized Aboriginal rights, constitutionally protecting the diverse cultures of Indigenous Peoples. As former prime minister Stephen Harper stated in Canada’s apology for Indian residential schools, the desire to destroy Indigenous cultures, including religions, has no place in Canada today. And yet Indigenous religions continue to remain under threat.

Framed through a postcolonial lens, What Has No Place, Remains analyses state actions, responses, and decisions on matters of Indigenous religious freedom. The book is particularly concerned with legal cases, such as Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia (2017), but also draws on political negotiations, such as those at Voisey’s Bay, and standoffs, such as the one at Gustafsen Lake, to generate a more comprehensive picture of the challenges for Indigenous religious freedom beyond Canada’s courts. With particular attention to cosmologically significant space, this book provides the first comprehensive assessment of the conceptual, cultural, political, social, and legal reasons why religious freedom for Indigenous Peoples is currently an impossibility in Canada.

Reviews
"There is no book that takes on the ambitious task that What Has No Place, Remains does, especially in the context of Canada and the Indigenous practices and beliefs linking Indigenous People to the land." - Michael McNally, Department of Religion, Carleton College

"Working at the intersection of religious, political, legal, and Indigenous studies, this book’s multi-disciplinary framework yields numerous insights, both analytically and prescriptively." - Greg Johnson, Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
Preface
A Comment on Terminology

Introduction: Colonialism and the Challenges for Religious Freedom

1. The Depth of Religious Freedom
2. Secularization, Dispossession and Forced Deprivatization
3. Religions Plus? Competing Frameworks of Indigenous Religious Freedom
4. Dealing with Diversity Poorly and the Gustafsen Lake Standoff
5. The Duty to Consult and Accommodate
6. The Potential and Limits of International Mechanisms of Redress

Conclusion: Challenges for Reconciliation

Notes
Bibliography

Additional Information
280 pages | 5.90" x 9.00"

“Arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north.” —New York Review of Books

Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows.

Then, one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, sharing her story of brotherhood between the two species. But as these origins grow more distant, the old woman’s tales are subsumed into myth—and her descendants turn increasingly bent on parading their dominance over the natural world.

Buoyantly translated into English for the first time by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse, this new entry in the Seedbank series is at once a vibrant retelling of the origin story of the Chukchi, a timely parable about the destructive power of human ego—and another unforgettable work of fiction from Yuri Rytkheu, “arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north” (New York Review of Books).

Reviews
“We have so little intimate information about these Arctic people, and the writer’s deep emotional attachment to this landscape of ice (today melting away under global warming forces) makes every sentence seem a poetic revelation.”—Annie Proulx

“Rytkheu immerses his readers in the fantastical landscapes of the Arctic circle, and does so without breaking a sweat. . . . His elegant, unforced descriptive writing can whip us across leagues of tundra and thread the jagged icebergs studding hyperborean seas, but when the blizzards hit and the characters are trapped in their huts, we’re snowbound there with them under the whale-oil lamp, chewing walrus and hoping for respite.”—Bookslut

“Thousands of books have been written about the Arctic aborigines by intruders from the south. Rytkheu has turned the skin inside out and written about the way the Arctic people view outsiders. A Chukchi himself, [he] writes with passion, strength, and beauty of a world we others have never understood.”—Farley Mowat

Additional Information
136 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Translated by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse

Wisdom Engaged demonstrates how traditional knowledge, Indigenous approaches to healing, and the insights of Western bio-medicine can complement each other when all voices are heard in a collaborative effort to address changes to Indigenous communities’ well-being. In this collection, voices of Elders, healers, physicians, and scholars are gathered in an attempt to find viable ways to move forward while facing new challenges. Bringing these varied voices together provides a critical conversation about the nature of medicine; a demonstration of ethical commitment; and an example of successful community relationship building. 

Contributors: Alestine Andre, Janelle Marie Baker, Robert Beaulieu, Della Cheney, Mida Donnessey, Mabel English, Christopher Fletcher, Fort McKay Berry Group, Annie B. Gordon, Celina Harpe, Leslie Main Johnson, Thea Luig, Art Mathews, Linda G. McDonald, Ruby E. Morgan, Keiichi Omura, Evelyn Storr (Inuvialuit Regional Corporation), Mary Teya, Nancy J. Turner, Walter Vanast, Darlene Vegh

Educator Information
Keywords: Traditional Knowledge, Well-Being, Health

Subjects and Course Areas: Social Science, History, Indigenous Studies, Anthropology, Health and Medicine

Additional Information

Authenticity Note: This book has received the Authentic Indigenous Text label because of its contributions from Indigenous peoples.  Non-Indigenous contributors are also included.