Communities

The First Nations of British Columbia, now in its third edition, is a concise and accessible overview of BC's First Nations peoples, cultures, and issues. Robert J. Muckle familiarizes readers with the history, diversity, and complexity of First Nations to provide a context for contemporary concerns and initiatives. This latest edition of the classic work has been fully revised, with new chapters added and previous ones rewritten, arguments reframed in light of current developments, and resources brought right up to date. The First Nations of British Columbia is an indispensable resource for teachers and students and an excellent introduction for anyone interested in BC First Nations.

George Kenny is an Anishinaabe poet and playwright who learned traditional ways from his parents before being sent to residential school in 1958. When Kenny published his first book, 1977’s Indians Don’t Cry, he joined the ranks of Indigenous writers such as Maria Campbell, Basil Johnston, and Rita Joe whose work melded art and political action. Hailed as a landmark in the history of Indigenous literature in Canada, this new edition is expected to inspire a new generation of Anishinaabe writers with poems and stories that depict the challenges of Indigenous people confronting and finding ways to live within urban settler society.

Educator & Series Information
Indians Don’t Cry: Gaawin Mawisiiwag Anishinaabeg is the second book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or underappreciated texts by Indigenous artists. This new bilingual edition includes a translation of Kenny’s poems and stories into Anishinaabemowin by Patricia M. Ningewance and an afterword by literary scholar Renate Eigenbrod.

Although most of the books in this series are non-fiction, this one is listed as fiction.

Additional Information
190 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Traditionally, Inuit do not call each other by their given names. Instead, they refer to each other using a system of kinship and family terms, known as tuqurausiit (turk-thlo-raw-seet). Calling each other by kinship terms is a way to show respect and foster closeness within families. Children were named after their elders and ancestors, ensuring a long and healthy life.

As more and more Inuit refer to each other by their English first names, rather than their traditional kinship terms, the tradition of tuqurausiit is slowly disappearing. This book presents interviews with four Inuit elders from Baffin Region, Nunavut, about how names were chosen, the importance of using kinship terms, and how the practice of tuqurausiit has changed over the years. Inuit Kinship and Naming Customs helps to preserve the knowledge of this tradition for younger generations, both Inuit and non-Inuit.

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The Haudenosaunee, more commonly known as the Iroquois or Six Nations, have been one of the most widely written-about Indigenous groups in Canada and the United States. But seldom have the voices emerging from the Haudenosaunee community been considered in order to understand its enduring intellectual traditions.

Rick Monture’s We Share Our Matters offers the first comprehensive portrait of how the Grand River Haudenosaunee of Southern Ontario have expressed their long struggle for sovereignty in Canada. Drawing from individuals as diverse as Joseph Brant, Pauline Johnson and Robbie Robertson, Monture illuminates a unique Haudenosaunee world view comprised of three distinct features: a spiritual belief about their role and responsibility to the earth; a firm understanding of their sovereign status as a confederacy of independent nations; and their responsibility to maintain those relations for future generations.

After more than two centuries of political struggle Haudenosaunee thought has avoided stagnant conservatism and continues to inspire ways to address current social and political realities.

Elders are the keepers of First Nations traditional knowledge and from their wisdom we offer this short booklet. Wisdom of the Elders answers the question: Who is an Elder? It is meant to be used as a guide for First Nations educators to use when implementing a model involving Elders in the education process. Advice and guidance from Elders in First Nations territories in Manitoba are the key resources for this booklet.

This volume explores Indigenous measures of economic development in First Nations Atlantic Canadian communities that are of relevance for First Nations peoples. Many of the challenges faced by these communities and their local, regional and national leaders in advancing economic development relate to experiences of diverse and complex issues — most of which clash with federal policies that increasingly call for centralization, standardization and uniformity. This volume illustrates the key challenges in establishing and maintaining socially responsible economic development that is beneficial for Aboriginal communities.

In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wîsashkêcâhk, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage, adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities.

In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of “Indian” and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess’s successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Agreement and their high inclusion rate of new “Bill-C31s” as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership.

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216 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Arctic historian Kenn Harper gathers the best of his columns about Inuit history, which appear weekly in Nunatsiaq News, in this exciting new series of books.

Each installment of In Those Days: Collected Columns on Arctic History will cover a particularly fascinating aspect of traditional Inuit life. In volume one, “Inuit Biographies,” Harper shares the unique challenges and life histories of several Inuit living in pre-contact times.

The result of extensive interviews, research, and travel across the Arctic, these amazing short life histories provide readers with a detailed understanding of their specific time and place.

Series Information
This book is part of the In Those Days series, a historical series that collects writings on Arctic history.

Additional Information
200 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

With the advent of Aboriginal street gangs such as Indian Posse, Manitoba Warriors, and Native Syndicate, Winnipeg garnered a reputation as the “gang capital of Canada.” Yet beyond the stereotypes of outsiders, little is known about these street gangs and the factors and conditions that have produced them. “Indians Wear Red” locates Aboriginal street gangs in the context of the racialized poverty that has become entrenched in the colonized space of Winnipeg’s North End. Drawing upon extensive interviews with Aboriginal street gang members as well as with Aboriginal women and elders, the authors develop an understanding from “inside” the inner city and through the voices of Aboriginal people — especially street gang members themselves.

While economic restructuring and neo-liberal state responses can account for the global proliferation of street gangs, the authors argue that colonialism is a crucial factor in the Canadian context, particularly in western Canadian urban centres. Young Aboriginal people have resisted their social and economic exclusion by acting collectively as “Indians.” But just as colonialism is destructive, so too are street gang activities, including the illegal trade in drugs. Solutions lie not in “quick fixes” or “getting tough on crime” but in decolonization: re-connecting Aboriginal people with their cultures and building communities in which they can safely live and work.

When the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug’s traditional territory was threatened by mining exploration in 2006, they followed their traditional duty to protect the land and asked the mining exploration company, Platinex, to leave. Platinex left — and then sued the remote First Nation for $10 billion. The ensuing legal dispute lasted two years and eventually resulted in the jailing of community leaders. Ariss argues that though this jailing was extraordinarily punitive and is indicative of continuing colonialism within the legal system, some aspects of the case demonstrate the potential of Canadian law to understand, include and reflect Aboriginal perspectives. Connecting scholarship in Aboriginal rights and Canadian law, traditional Aboriginal law, social change and community activism, Keeping the Land explores the twists and turns of this legal dispute in order to gain a deeper understanding of the law’s contributions to and detractions from the process of reconciliation.

Indigenous scholars strive to produce accessible research grounded in the daily lives of Native peoples, research that will improve their communities in meaningful and sustained ways. They also recognize that long-lasting change depends on effective leadership.

Living Indigenous Leadership showcases innovative research and leadership practices from diverse nations and tribes in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. The contributors use vibrant stories and personal narratives to offer insights into the unique nature of Indigenous leadership. These dynamic case studies reveal that Native leaders, whether formal or informal, ground their work in embodied concepts such as land, story, ancestors, and elders, concepts rarely mentioned in mainstream studies of leadership. Indigenous leadership, they show, finds its most powerful expression in collaboration, in the teaching and example of Elders, and in community projects to promote higher education, language revitalization, health care, and the preservation of Indigenous arts.

This collection not only adds Indigenous methods to studies on leadership, it also gives a voice to the wives, mothers, and grandmothers who are using their knowledge to mend hearts and minds and to build strong communities. Their personal stories and collective knowledge will inspire further research and future generations.

The past two decades have witnessed the emerging role of grassroots social movements and community-based peacebuilding as key sites of transformative political and cultural engagement. Merging Fires offers case studies of grassroots alliance building between non-Indigenous activists and three Indigenous communities:
the Chippewa of Nawash,the Grassy Narrows First Nation and the Anishinaabe Grand Council of Treaty #3. These Canadian examples offer insights into the challenges, limitations and complexities of transformative, community-based alliance building and raise critical questions about power, knowledge and pedagogy at the grassroots level.

While this analysis is uniquely Canadian in scope, Merging Fires is of great political relevance in light of the Idle No More movement as well as similar decolonizing initiatives occurring globally. Rick Wallace’s research methodologies and ethics of solidarity are starkly different from many mainstream academic approaches, and his documentation of on-the-ground efforts at peacebuilding fills an important gap in the field.

Additional Information
178 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King's critical and personal meditation on what it means to be "Indian" in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.
This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope--a sometimes inconvenient but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.

Awards

• 2014 Burt Award Second Place Winner

Educator Information
This resource is also available in French in a pocket-sized format: L'Indien malcommode: Un portrait inattendu des Autochtones d'Amerique du Nord (format poche)

Additional Information336 pages | 5.18" x 7.99"

The Poetics of Land and Identity is about the meaning of land for the many diverse First Nations within British Columbia. The work offers a study of the folklore and symbolic traditions within many Aboriginal regions and illustrates how these traditions emphasize the importance of orality and poetics as the defining factor in the value of land. Christine J. Elsey offers a deft, scholarly discussion of these “storyscapes,” providing us with a point of access for understanding First Nations’ perspectives on the world and their land. She provides an important alternative to the monetary, exploitative, resource-driven view of nature and land ownership and highlights the conflicts between the colonial, Western perspective of nature and the holistic view of First Nations people.

Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school.

These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only-not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.

In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family-from substance abuse to suicide attempts-and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. 'Number One' comes at a time of recognition-by governments and society at large-that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them.

Awards

• 2014 Burt Award Third Place Winner

Educator Information
Grades 10-12 BC English First Peoples resource for the unit Place-Conscious Learning - Exploring Text through Local Landscape.

Additional Information
256 pages | 5.67" x 8.20"