History

From the bestselling author of 21 Things™ You May Not Know About the Indian Act comes a powerful new book on dismantling the Indian Act and advancing Indigenous self-governance.

Bob Joseph’s 21 Things™You May Not Know About the Indian Act captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of Canadians by shining a light on the Indian Act and the problems associated with it. In that book, readers learned that the Consolidated Indian Act of 1876 has controlled the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada for generations, and despite its objective to assimilate Indians into the economic and political mainstream, it has had the opposite effect: segregation. They live under different laws and on different lands.

People came away from that book with questions such as "Can we get rid of the Indian Act?" and "What would that look like? Would self-government work?" These are timely questions, given that 2026 will mark 150 years since the Consolidated Indian Act of 1876. The short answer to these questions is, yes, we can dismantle the Act, and there are current examples of self-government arrangements that are working.

With his trademark wisdom, humility, and deep understanding, Bob Joseph shows us the path forward in 21 Things™ You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government: A Conversation About Dismantling the Indian Act, in which Indigenous self-governance is already happening and not to be feared—and negotiating more such arrangements, sooner rather than later, is an absolute necessity.

21 Things™ You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government: A Conversation About Dismantling the Indian Act is a call to action. Join the conversation now.

Additional Information
200 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

Your next step on the journey of reconciliation starts here.

What can you do to be a better ally for your Indigenous colleagues, community members, and friends? By actively listening to the history and current lived experiences of Indigenous peoples, you can take steps to address the inequities they continue to face. Author Rose LeMay notes that if you continually educate yourself, you will see many opportunities to be an ally.

This insightful book suggests how to enter the field of reconciliation in a good way, in your community and your workplace. You will learn:

-more about the true history shared by Indigenous peoples and colonial governments
-why reconciliation is mostly the responsibility of non-Indigenous people
-approaches to intervene when you see racism happening
-better ways to respond to emotions that come up when doing the work of an ally
-how to be an active team player for equity and inclusion

LeMay describes key principles to promote reconciliation, deepen your practice of allyship, and contribute to meaningful change.

Additional Information
200 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

The shocking crimes of a trusted teacher wrought lasting damage on Inuit communities in Canada's Arctic.

In the 1970s, a young schoolteacher from British Columbia was becoming the darling of the Northwest Territories education department with his dynamic teaching style. He was learning to speak the local language, Inuktitut, something few outsiders did. He also claimed to be Indigenous - a claim that would later prove to be false. In truth, Edward Horne was a pedophile who sexually abused his male students.

From 1971 to 1985 his predations on Inuit boys would disrupt life in the communities where he worked - towns of close-knit families that would suffer the intergenerational trauma created by his abuse.

Journalist Kathleen Lippa, after years of research, examines the devastating impact the crimes had on individuals, families, and entire communities. Her compelling work lifts the veil of silence surrounding the Horne story once and for all.

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280 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Bebías Into Ǫhndaa Ke: Queer Indigenous Knowledge for Land and Community is a powerful collection of essays, stories and conversations that provide us with a diverse roadmap for navigating and overcoming hate, supporting queer Indigenous kin, and revitalizing radical ethics of care for building healthy, inclusive, and self-determining lands and communities. A celebration of trans, queer, and Two-Spirit Indigenous brilliance, with an intentional inclusion of voices from the North (the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Inuvialuit and Nunatsiavut), the essays in this collection offer a wealth of queer Indigenous theory, experience, and practices, with a unique emphasis on the critical role of land in these conversations.

The contributors, who range from young activists, artists, families, and both emerging and established scholars, provide insightful and transformative queer perspectives on a number of pertinent topics, including: knowledge reclamation, resurgence, nation-building, community life and governance, cultural revitalization, belonging, family relationships, creative practice, environmental degradation, mental health and wellbeing, youth empowerment, and Indigenous pedagogy. Amidst the ongoing violence of settler colonization, and its legacies of exclusion and erasure that continue to target queer, gender-diverse and Two-Spirit Indigenous people, this collection is an invaluable gift and resource for our communities, showing us that a different world is possible, and reminding us that queer Indigenous people have always belonged on the land and in community.

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240 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

This meditation on the poetics of re-worlding follows the threads of Spiderwoman Theater’s Storyweaving practice back to its Guna and Rappahannock sources to illuminate its history, mechanics, and development for coming generations.

The Spiderwoman Theatre, the longest-running Indigenous theatre company in North America has heralded the revolutionary methodology of Storyweaving for generations of Indigenous artists. Storyweaving is a distinct methodology that governs the dramaturgical structure and performed transmission of the company’s plays on the contemporary stage. The practice of Storyweaving predates written history. It has been (and remains) specific to tribal storytellers across the continent.

The reclamation, then, of this aesthetic legacy by contemporary Indigenous storytellers is a crucial act of recovery. Jill Carter, an Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi theatre-worker and scholar, examines the process and development of Storyweaving. She studies how Storyweaving imagines and architects a functional framework that is being adopted and adapted by artists from myriad nations to create works (on the page and stage) that facilitate the healing, transformation, and survivance of their communities. Between the Layers pays respects to the teachers and visionaries that moulded this practice and encourages future generations to continue its legacy, while making a much-needed contribution to the study of Indigenous theatre and performance.

In its painstaking documentation of the Storyweaving artform, Between the Layers refuses the devaluation, erasure, and suppression of Indigenous culture, while contributing to the dissemination and celebration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

Educator Information

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Spiderwoman Theater: A Performance History

Introduction: Between the Layers

Chapter One:
Persistence of Violent Delights:
“It’s All the Same Bullshit Again”

Chapter Two:
“An Indian is an Idea a Man Has of Himself”

Chapter Three:
An Indian is More than Just an “Idea”:
By Their Acts Ye Shall Know Them

Chapter Four:
Towards a Poetics of Re-Worlding:
Becoming (and then Staging) the New Human Being

Chapter Five:
The Published Texts

Chapter Six:
The Three Sisters from There to Here:
Spiderwoman’s Issue and the Project of Re-worlding

Appendices

Works Cited

Additional Information
376 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 8 illustrations | Hardcover

Teammates, champions, Survivors

In 1951, after winning the Thunder Bay district championship, the Sioux Lookout Black Hawks hockey team from Pelican Lake Indian Residential School embarked on a whirlwind promotional tour through Ottawa and Toronto. They were accompanied by a professional photographer from the National Film Board who documented the experience. The tour was intended to demonstrate the success of the residential school system and introduce the Black Hawks to "civilizing" activities and the "benefits" of assimilating into Canadian society. For some of the boys, it was the beginning of a lifelong love of hockey; for others, it was an escape from the brutal living conditions and abuse at the residential school. 

In Beyond the Rink, Alexandra Giancarlo, Janice Forsyth, and Braden Te Hiwi collaborate with three surviving team members-Kelly Bull, Chris Cromarty, and David Wesley-to share the complex legacy behind the 1951 tour photos. This book reveals the complicated role of sports in residential school histories, commemorating the team's stellar hockey record and athletic prowess while exposing important truths about "Canada's Game" and how it shaped ideas about the nation. By considering their past, these Survivors imagine a better way forward not just for themselves, their families, and their communities, but for Canada as a whole.

Reviews
"These three survivors-Kelly, David, and Chris-inspire us not only for what they have done for their communities in the aftermath of the residential school system but also for how crucial hockey and sports are in bringing Indigenous communities together, like we see in the Little NHL Tournament. Our history and the lessons we've learned are vital, and Beyond the Rink does an excellent job of highlighting this." — Ted Nolan, former NHL Player & Coach, Olympic Coach, and author of Life in Two Worlds: A Coach's Journey from the Reserve to the NHL and Back

"On its face, Beyond the Rink is a compelling story of a residential school hockey team from northern Ontario touring Ottawa and Toronto in the 1950s. But it is much more than that: with a National Film Board photographer accompanying them every step of the way, the players are props in a public relations exercise meant to obscure the true conditions in residential schools.

This is an unflinching and nuanced look behind the PR veil, a story of loss, triumph, perseverance, tragedy, and memory. It is also a detailed account of the machinery of residential schools and the trauma they inflicted. And it is a revealing look at the power of photographs, which can be used to both illuminate and mislead.

At its heart, Beyond the Rink is the story of twelve Indigenous hockey players, who, like their white counterparts, loved the game for the thrill of competition, but also as an escape from the relentless control and exploitation they faced on a daily basis, even if they were being exploited while doing it. This is the story of twelve boys, told through the lens of three of them, trapped in a world they barely understood, a world that was not the least bit interested in understanding them, and in many ways still isn't." — Gord Miller

"The authors have spent decades working with the Survivors whose stories they share and centre in this book. Beyond the Rink, Behind the Image does not simply tell the story of a hockey team; it demonstrates how sport within the context of residential schools was a tool of colonization." — Karen Froman

"It is difficult to overstate the significance of this book. The scholarship is sound as well as original in context and content, and Survivor testimony is respected and communicated in a theoretically sophisticated way." — Travis Hay

Additional Information
184 pages | 6.00" x 8.50" | 36 b&w illustrations, bibliography | Paperback 

Culinary Claims explores the complex relationships between wild plants and introduced animals, Indigenous foodways, and Canadian regulations. Blending food studies with environmental history, the book examines how cuisines reflect social and political issues related to cultural representation, restaurants, and food sovereignty.

L. Sasha Gora chronicles the rise of Indigenous restaurants and their influence on Canadian food culture, engaging with questions about how shifts in appetite reflect broader shifts in imaginations of local environments and identities. Drawing on a diverse range of sources – from recipes and menus to artworks and television shows – the book discusses both historical and contemporary representations of Indigenous foodways and how they are changing amid the relocalization of food systems.

Culinary Claims tells a new story of settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance, emphasizing the critical role that restaurants play in Canada’s cultural landscape. It investigates how food shapes our understanding of place and the politics that underpin this relationship. Ultimately, the book asks, What insights can historians gain from restaurants – and their legacies – as reflections of Indigenous and settler negotiations over cultural claims to land?

Educator Information
Subjects: Business; History / Canadian History; History / Business & Economic History; Food Studies / Food in History; Indigenous Studies / Indigenous History

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction: You Are Welcome
1. Agricultural Flagpoles
2. From Trains to Tundra
3. Restaurants and Representation
4. An Edible Exhibition
5. One Address, Three Restaurants
6. A Meal for a Chief
7. Culinary Resurgence
8. Seal Tartare
9. Where the Beaver and Buffalo Roam
10. Salmon and the F-Word
Conclusion: The North

Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Additional Information
392 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 34 illustrations | Paperback

This book invites readers to step into a space of reflection on your personal relationship with truth, reconciliation, and Orange Shirt Day.

Written in response to the increase of residential school denialism, Phyllis Webstad and Kristy McLeod have collaborated to create a book that encourages readers to face their own biases. This book challenges readers through a series of sensitive conversations that explore decolonization, Indigenization, healing, and every person’s individual responsibility to truth and reconciliation. Centered around the Orange Shirt Day movement, and a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, these conversations encourage readers to unpack and reckon with denialism, biases, privilege, and the journey forward, on both a personal and national level.

Within each chapter, Phyllis Webstad draws on her decade of experience (sharing her Orange Shirt Story on a global level and advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples) to offer insights on these topics and stories from her personal journey, which co-author and Métis scholar, Kristy McLeod, helps readers to further navigate. Each section includes real denialist comments taken from social media and Kristy's analysis and response to them. Through empathy-driven truth-telling, this book offers an opportunity to witness, reflect, heal, and be intentional about the seeds we hope to plant for the future, together.

Additional Information
350 pages | 5.70" x 8.25" | Hardcover

Teachings from the stars

Much more than stories about the sky, Indigenous astronomies provide powerful, centuries-old models of knowing, being, and relating to the world. Through collaboration with more than sixty-five Dene Elders and culture bearers across thirty-four communities in Alaska and Canada, In the Footsteps of the Traveller reveals the significance of the stars to Northern Dene life, language, and culture.

At the centre of these knowledge systems is the Traveller, a being who journeyed around the world in Ancient Time before incarnating among the stars. The Traveller constellation is a teacher, a gamekeeper, a guardian, and a practical guide for wayfinding. The Traveller, together with a host of other celestial and atmospheric phenomena like thunder and the northern lights, bridges the divide between earth and sky, instilling balance and instructing people on how to live with each other and their environments.

This study combines interviews, stunning photographs and detailed illustrations of the northern night sky, author Chris M. Cannon's own experiential learning, and a foreword from Chief Fred Sangris of Yellowknives Dene First Nation. Rooted in years of collaborative fieldwork, In the Footsteps of the Traveller leads the way to deeper understandings of Northern Dene astronomical knowledge.

Reviews
"In the Footsteps of the Traveller is a ground-breaking book. Cannon's authoritative treatise of Dene knowledge of the stars is unique and exemplary, redefining the field by linking the basic ethos of Dene life to a meticulously documented body of shared but threatened knowledge. Detailed and precise, the book innovates by showing how knowledge-of how to live with other people, with animals, with nature-is encoded in astronomical and aerial phenomena."— Guy Lanoue

"Chris Cannon's contribution to the subject of Dene astronomy stands alone. Many authors have referred to Dene knowledge of the stars but no one has gone into such detail or pulled the topic together in such a comprehensive manner."— William Simeone

"Impressive and thorough in both its astronomical and linguistic dimensions, Cannon's solid scholarship illuminates Northern Dene cosmology while promoting a greater appreciation of Dene history, traditions, and knowledge systems. Germinal studies of this breadth are only made possible through lengthy and respectful cooperation between the researcher and Indigenous knowledge holders. The author's engaging story of his travels and collaborations with his Dene teachers-an immersive process lasting some fourteen years-convincingly demonstrates this point, infusing the narrative with a vital personal component."— John MacDonald

Educator Information
Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Chief Fred Sangris
Acknowledgements

Introduction
The Northern Dene
A Note on Dene Orthographies

1. The Traveller Constellation Part I
The Gwich’in Constellation Yahdii
The Ahtna Constellation Nek'eltaeni
The Lower Tanana Constellation Nogheyoli
The Sahtúot’ı̨nę Constellation Yíhda or Yámǫréya

2. The Traveller Constellation Part II
The Tanacross Constellation Neek'e'elteen
The Upper Tanana Constellation Yihda or Nek'e'eltiin
The Yellowknives Dene Constellation Yèhdaa or Yı̀da
The Koyukon Constellation Ghededzuyhdle or Naagheltaale
The Upper Kuskokwim Constellation Noghiltale
The Dëne Sułiné Constellation Yéhda or Yeda
The Dena’ina Constellation Yuq'eltaeni or Naq'eltaeni
Supporting Evidence from the Literature

3. Stellar Time-Reckoning, Weather Forecasting, and Wayfinding
Divisions of Time
Stellar Time-Reckoning
Introduction to Northern Dene Stellar Wayfinding
Yellowknives Dene Stellar Wayfinding
Gwich'in Stellar Wayfinding
Stellar Wayfinding Discussion
Stars and Planets in Weather Forecasting

4. The Sun, Moon, and Eclipses
The Sun
The Moon
Eclipses

5. Beings of the Atmosphere Part I
Northern Lights
Meteors
Halo Phenomena

6. Beings of the Atmosphere Part II
Rainbows
Thunderbirds
Deterring Unfavourable Weather
Colours of the Sky

7. Knowing, Being, and Relating

Appendix A: Northern Dene Names for the Traveller
Appendix B: The Cosmic Hunt in Northern Dene Cultures
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Additional Information
448 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 57 colour illustrations, 4 maps, index, bibliography | Paperback 

With more than fifty contributors, Indigenous Critical Reflections on Traditional Ecological Knowledge offers important perspectives by Indigenous Peoples on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous value systems. The book aims to educate and inspire readers about the importance of decolonizing how Indigenous Knowledges are considered and used outside of Native communities.

By including the work of Indigenous storytellers, poets, and scholars from around the globe, editor Lara Jacobs and chapter authors effectively explore the Indigenous value systems—relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility—that are fundamental to Indigenous Knowledge systems and cultures. Indigenous languages and positionality statements are featured for each of the contributors to frame their cultural and geographical background and to allow each Indigenous voice to lead discussions and contribute critical discourse to the literature on Indigenous Knowledges and value systems. By creating space for each of these individual voices, this volume challenges colonial extraction norms and highlights the importance of decolonial methods in understanding and protecting Indigenous Knowledges.

Indigenous Critical Reflections on Traditional Ecological Knowledge is an essential resource for students, academics, members of Tribal, state, and federal governments, Indigenous communities, and non-Indigenous allies as well as a valuable addition to environmental and Indigenous studies collections.

Reviews
“Indigenous Peoples have shared values, but we live them out in ways that reflect the places where our Tribes emerged as People and the communities in which we live. Lara Jacobs has created a touchstone in these collected essays and reflections from Indigenous Peoples throughout the so-called Americas and beyond, giving voice to the various ways we live out relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility. I will return to these words again and again, and so will you.” —Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

Educator Information
Contributors include: Melinda M. Adams, Joe Anderson, Coral Avery, Andrew Kalani Carlson, Kathryn Champagne, Brandie Makeba Cross, Joanna M. DeMeyer, Jonathan James Fisk, Pat Gonzales-Rogers, Celina Gray, Rhode Grayson, Zena Greenawald, Jennifer Grenz, Joy Harjo, Mandi Harris, Jessica Hernandez, Victor Hernandez, David Iniguez, Michelle M. Jacob, Lara A. Jacobs, Lydia L. Jennings, Eileen Jimenez, Stephanie Kelley, David G. Lewis, Tomás A. Madrigal, Tara McAllister, Lauren Wendelle Yowelunh McLester-Davis, Angeles Mendoza, Kat Milligan-McClellan, Todd A. Mitchell swəlítub, Don Motanic, ‘Alohi Nakachi, Kaikea Nakachi, Kobe , Natachu, Ululani Kekahiliokalani Brigitte Russo Oana, Jennifer R. O’Neal, Lily Painter, Britt Postoak, Leasi Vanessa Lee Raymond, Anamaq Margaret H. C. Rudolf, Oral Saulters, Sam Schimmel, Paulette Steeves, Joni Tobacco, Angelo Villagomez, Vivi Vold, Margaret Palaghicon Von Rotz, Luhui Whitebear, Joseph Gazing Wolf, Monique Wynecoop, and Cherry YEW Yamane.

Additional Information
464 pages | 10.00" x 9.00" | 21 b&w photos, 6 charts, 7 tables | Paperback 

How Indigenous currencies—including wampum and dentalium shells, beads, and the cryptocurrency MazaCoin—have long constituted a form of resistance to settler colonialism.

Indigenous Currencies follows dynamic stories of currency as a meaning-making communication technology. Settler economies regard currency as their own invention, casting Indigenous systems of value, exchange, and data stewardship as incompatible with contemporary markets. In this book, Ashley Cordes refutes such claims and describes a long history of Indigenous innovation in currencies, including wampum, dentalium, beads, and, more recently, the cryptocurrency MazaCoin. By looking closely at how currencies developed over time through intercultural communication, Cordes argues that Indigenous currencies transcend the scope of economic value, revealing the cultural, social, and political context of what it means to exchange.

The book’s two main case studies, the gold rush and the code rush, frame a deep dive into how Indigenous ways of being have shaped the use and significance of currency and vice versa. Settler currencies, which have developed in the wake of wars and through massively scaled forms of material extraction, offer a very different story of the place of currencies within settler economies of dispossession. The second part of the study asks how contemporary cryptocurrencies may play a critical role in cultivating Tribal sovereignty. The author analyzes structural properties of the polymorphic blockchain to provide key insights into how emergent digital spaces, with their attendant forms of meaning and value represented by code, NFTs, and Web 3.0, are inextricably connected to Indigenous knowledges. The book cultivates a vision of currency in which the principle of leaving some for the rest establishes a way of imagining relationships of exchange beyond their enclosure within settler-capitalist parameters of extraction and into currents of deep reciprocity.

Reviews
"Brilliantly written in the best of Coquille Nation practices, wisdom of ancestors, and traditional technologies, Indigenous Currencies is a gift guiding us through deep insights for the digital realm."—Tiara R. Na’puti, University of California, Irvine

"Indigenous Currencies is an unparalleled study of cryptocurrency's colonialism and Indigenous decolonial possibilities in this powerful space. Cordes takes Indigenous epistemologies to places previously unexamined, and she does so by grounding case studies in practices of Indigenous digital agency."—Jason Edward Black, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; author of Mascot Nation

Educator Information
226 pages | 6.06" x 9.00" | 22 b&w illustrations | Paperback

Internationally renowned as an expert in Aboriginal law and an advocate for Indigenous rights, Bruce McIvor delivers concise, essential information for Canadians committed to truth and reconciliation.

A shortage of trustworthy information continues to frustrate Canadians with best intentions to fulfill Canada’s commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. To meet this demand, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor provides concise, plain answers to 100 essential questions being asked by Canadians across the country.

During his nearly three decades advocating for Indigenous rights and teaching Aboriginal law, McIvor has recorded the fundamental questions that Canadians from all corners of society have asked to advance reconciliation: Why do Indigenous people have special rights? What is the Doctrine of Discovery? Who are the Métis? Why was the Calder decision important? What is reconciliation? McIvor supplies the answers Canadians are looking for by scrapping the technical language that confuses the issues, and speaks directly to everyone looking for straight answers. Throughout, McIvor shares his perspective on why reconciliation as envisioned by the courts and Canadian governments frustrates Indigenous people and what needs to change to overcome the impasse. McIvor’s explanations of complex legal issues demonstrate a unique mix of a deep knowledge of the law, the ability to write clearly and concisely, practical experience from the frontlines of advocating for First Nations in courtrooms and at negotiation tables across the country, and a profound passion for justice rooted in his work and personal history.

To ensure the country’s reconciliation project progresses from rhetoric to reality, ordinary Canadians need straightforward answers to fundamental questions. McIvor provides the answers and context to support a thoughtful and respectful national conversation about reconciliation and the fulfillment of Canada’s commitment to a better future for Indigenous people.

Additional Information
208 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 25 colour and b&w photographs | Paperback

Indigenous Spiritualities and Religious Freedom investigates the complex relationship between Indigenous legal orders and Canadian law, emphasizing the richness of Indigenous spiritual practices alongside their historical and ongoing suppression by the Canadian state. It critically examines the role and limitations of the Canadian Charter of Right’s section 2(a), which guarantees freedom of religion, in protecting the spiritual lives of Indigenous communities.

The book highlights the holistic nature of Indigenous spiritual beliefs, which view the spiritual as immanent and closely tied to land and specific locations. The book reveals how, by contrast, the Anglo-American conception of religious freedom often separates spiritual and religious matters from civic and political concerns, and so fails to provide meaningful protection for Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices.

Many essays in this collection propose alternative approaches to the relationship between Canadian law and Indigenous legal orders, particularly regarding Indigenous spiritual practices. Ultimately, Indigenous Spiritualities and Religious Freedom reveals the challenges – and perhaps the futility – of seeking significant protection for Indigenous spiritual practices within the existing framework of religious freedom.

Educator Information
Chapters
Introduction
Jeffery Hewitt, Beverly Jacobs, and Richard Moon
1. Water Is Life: Haudenosaunee Responses to Climate Change and Water Security - Dawn Martin-Hill
2. The Gaya’shra’gowa’ in the Twenty-First Century: Traditional Indigenous Governance and the Problem of Canadian Settler Colonial Law - Theresa McCarthy
3. An Imaginary for Our Sisters: Spirits and Indigenous Law - Val Napoleon
4. Indigenous Religious Rights: Reconciling Religious Views and Decolonizing Section 2(a) of the Charter - Natasha Bakht
5. Is State Neutrality Bad for Indigenous Religious Freedom? - Benjamin L. Berger
6. Ktunaxa and the Shape of Religious Freedom - Richard Moon
7. Beyond Experience? Objectivity, Indigeneity, and Freedom of Religion - John Borrows
8. Ancestors in the Land: Indigenous Burial Sites and Religious Freedom - Senwung Luk and Howard Kislowicz
9. Posing the Land Question: An Analysis of Servatius v. Alberni School District No. 70 - Ardith Walkem
10. The Perils of Rights and Reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples - Karen Drake
Contributors

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

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.

From the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their tribal communities to attend boarding schools whose stated aim was to "save the Indian" by way of assimilation. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the U.S. government, but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation—were a calculated attempt to dismantle tribes by pulling apart Native families. Children were beaten for speaking their Native languages; denied food, clothing, and comfort; and forced to work menial jobs in terrible conditions, all while utterly deprived of love and affection.

Amongst those thousands of children was Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother, who was was sent to a boarding school in northern Wisconsin at age five. The trauma of her experience cast a pall over Pember's own childhood and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark but hopeful portrait of communities still reckoning with the trauma of acculturation, religion, and abuse caused by the state. Through searing interviews and careful reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of Native cultures and nations in relation to the country that has been intent on eradicating them.

Reviews
“A devastating history. . . . Weaving into her narrative her own mother’s experiences . . . Pember explores the psychological ramifications the schools had on subsequent generations. She comes to many quietly ruinous insights about the emotional neglect she herself suffered at the hands of her wounded mother. . . . Concluding with a searing call for accountability, this strikes a chord.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[Pember’s] extensive research illuminates the attempted cultural erasure by government and religious institutions. Her mother’s story provides a heartbreaking, personal focus.” —Booklist

“Elegantly weaving together her mother’s stories, those of other boarding school students, and concise accounts of federal assimilationist policies and common institutional practices, [Pember] provides an informed and unsettling perspective on the schools’ individual and collective impact. . . . A gripping, often harrowing account of the personal and communal toll of cultural genocide.”—Kirkus

"Mary Annette Pember has left it all on the line. Through her, her Ojibwe ancestors speak boldly about how the US government has treated them and every Indigenous nation in these so-called-United States. I have never read a book that has changed me so profoundly. Pember not only points to what has been done, but also offers a way forward. Everyone, absolutely everyone, should read this book." —Javier Zamora, author of Solito

“So much writing about historical trauma casts a vague, impenetrable cloud over its subjects’ lives. But with electric precision and rigorous care, Mary Annette Pember pierces through, illuminating the real mechanisms by which pain has accumulated and reverberated through generations of boarding school survivors and their descendants, as well all the beauty, love, and humor these same lives contain. In showing us how trauma is made, Pember helps us see that it can be unmade. ‘History flows through us,’ she writes, and nowhere has this idea been so well rendered as here, in this stunning, essential book.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

“Pember has written a searing exploration of the multi-generational trauma visited upon Native people by the boarding school experience, as well as a brilliant account of Indigenous survivance.” —Michael Witgen, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, author of Seeing Red

"I have a shelf full of books on the Indian boarding schools, but nothing quite like this one. Anyone who questions why the U.S. government has finally apologized for these schools and for its brutal assaults on Native children and their families should read Medicine River." —Colin G. Calloway, Professor of History and Native American Studies, Dartmouth College

"Mary Annette Pember reveals that the trauma and rage of surviving the St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School permeates through the generations. Pember has chronicled a deeply personal and first-person account of the dark legacy of incarceration at a ‘civilized’ boarding school and how the trauma of those youngsters impact their living descendants. Pember tells us that resistance and accountability is attainable, and I believe her. This is an essential read."—Devon Mihesuah, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, author of The Bone Picker

"A dauntless and visceral excavation of one family’s residential boarding school legacy. In Medicine River, we can see pain ripple through generations, eclipsed only by Mary Annette Pember's courage and her conviction that, in the search for answers, we can heal."—Anton Treuer, author of Where Wolves Don't Die

Additional Information
304 pages | 6.42" x 9.55" | Hardcover

From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, a sweeping, personal exploration of Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world.

Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic vacation destinations in the country, it was home to the Wampanoag people. Today, as tourists flock to the idyllic beaches, the island has become increasingly unaffordable for tribal members, with nearly three-quarters now living off-island. Growing up Aquinnah Wampanoag, journalist Joseph Lee grappled with what this situation meant for his tribe, how the community can continue to grow, and more broadly, what it means to be Indigenous.

In Nothing More of This Land, Lee weaves his own story and that of his family into a panoramic narrative of Indigenous life around the world. He takes us from the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard to the icy Alaskan tundra, the smoky forests of Northern California to the halls of the United Nations, and beyond. Along the way he meets activists fighting to protect their land, families clashing with their own tribal leaders, and communities working to reclaim tradition.

Together, these stories reject stereotypes to show the diversity of Indigenous people today and chart a way past the stubborn legacy of colonialism.

Reviews
"Nothing More Of This Land is a stark, beautifully rendered reminder of all that had to occur for the happening of our existences to take place, and all who lived and fought against their own erasure to maintain a semblance of a legacy. This is a profound, and moving book, a powerful indictment of the colonial mindset that firmly balances an ode to people, to place, to remaining."—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

"A forcefully illuminating and utterly compelling blend of personal narrative and vivid reportage, Joseph Lee’s Nothing More of this Land is a triumph of complexity and insight. We follow Lee from the red clay cliffs of Aquinnah to the halls of the UN, from the Klamath River basin to a feast of muktuk and tundra greens in Bethel, Alaska; and very early on I realized I’d follow him anywhere. Lee has given us a timely reckoning with Native sovereignty and community that is adroitly committed to the mess and nuance of lived experience, rather than sentimentalized accounts of victimhood or resilience. Nothing More of this Land is tender, ferocious, surprising, and tenaciously thoughtful; its existence makes the world a bigger and truer place."—Leslie Jamison, bestselling author of The Empathy Exams

Additional Information
256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Hardcover