Indigenous Peoples

Tap into guidance from the animal spirit realm and connect to ancestral wisdom with this transformative 44-card deck and guidebook from Indigenous Medicine Woman and author of You Are the Medicine and The Sacred Medicine Oracle, Asha Frost.

Everything is interconnected. All of creation carries a spirit. Indigenous people have always had a sacred relationship with animals and treated them as honored elders. Animal beings in the spirit realm are part of our spiritual support team as allies and medicine keepers, ready to help, waiting to remind you of your humanity and deep connection to the natural world.

With 44 Elder Animals depicted in a richly detailed traditional Ojibway art style, each card carries its own unique medicine. This deck offers meaningful insights and messages to guide you on your path both from the universe and in the voice of an animal spirit guide from the lands of the Ojibway people—from Elder Artic Hare to Elder Wolf. Whether you're seeking clarity, healing, or a deeper connection to your ancestral lineage, these cards provide a bridge to the spirit world.

Use this deck your rituals and ceremonies, do readings with it for your clients and friends, and share it with your communities. As the medicine ripples out, hold Indigenous people in your heart and honor how their history continues to impact your current reality.

Additional Information
128 pages | 3.50" x 5.00" | Card Deck & Guidebook 

The Art of Making: Rediscovering the Blackfoot Legacy is a captivating entry into Jared Tailfeathers’ quest of cultural reclamation. Accompanied by his family and loyal dogs, Tailfeathers delves into his Indigenous heritage through hands-on, land-based exploration. The book traces the evolution of the Blackfoot Confederacy, examining its trade routes, resources, and interactions pre- and post-1800s. It provides intricate details of Blackfoot connections with nature, neighbouring First Nations Peoples, and their rich legacy in tool-making, spiritual knowledge seeking, and artistic expression. Tailfeathers’ research began in 2019, driven by a deep desire to reacquaint himself with his cultural and historical identity as a Blackfoot man navigating a post-colonial world. This book is a journey into the heart of Blackfoot culture, told by a man who walks the ancestral trails with his dogs.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Indigenous Spirit of Nature series.

Additional Information
208 pages | 7.25" x 9.25" | Colour Illustrations | Paperback 

Thrust into the foster care system from an early age, Apple moves from house to house on Prince Edward Island without finding a home until she's a teenager and taken in by a couple who never managed to have children themselves. When she falls pregnant, her foster parents are keen to raise the baby with Apple still in the house—to live as a family.

That opportunity is torn from Apple by members of the Catholic Church along with social workers and government officials. Their vicious practices take the babies of unwed mothers and give them to wealthy families in exchange for large "donations" to the church. Apple's beloved baby ends up with a rich couple in the U.S., and is lost to her.

The Baby Train traces her life in the aftermath of that loss, raising subsequent children, creating deep bonds of friendship with other women struggling against society's rigid norms, and carrying underneath it all an unending love for her firstborn child.

We also follow her baby's path, and watch his affluent, neglected childhood and then adulthood unfold. He never knows that his birth mother still yearns for him, still lights him birthday candles every year.

The shameful legacy of forced and coerced adoption in Eastern Canada is brought to life in this sweeping novel.

Educator Information
PEI's birth alert practice allowed hospitals or social workers to flag expectant parents whom they felt might put their newborns at risk. Generally, this practice targeted Indigenous and unwed women.

Additional Information
224 pages | 5.75" x 8.00" | Paperback 

Based on an Inuit traditional story passed down orally for generations, The Cannibal tells the horrific tale of a family experiencing starvation when the animals they rely on for survival disappear. While the wife stays alive by eating plants she gathers daily, the husband does the unthinkable, resorting to murder and cannibalism. Horrified, and terrified for her life, the wife eventually finds herself alone in camp with her husband. She knows what will happen to her if she does not find a way to escape. Hatching a plan, the exhausted wife embarks on the journey with her murderous husband in pursuit. After safely arriving at a nearby camp, she shares the story of what has become of her camp, and her own children. Soon the husband arrives, and the camp must decide how to deal with the cannibal. Both horrific and poignant, this cautionary traditional story provides a window into the at times harsh realities of traditional life.

Reviews
"The Cannibal by Solomon Awa and Louise Flaherty is a stark and compelling novel centred on an Inuit family facing extreme survival challenges in the Arctic. When the family’s father, driven by desperation, begins to resort to cannibalism to stay alive, the story delves into harrowing themes of survival, morality, and the impact of isolation on human behaviour. This topic is suitable for an older audience, not younger students." - David D., Indigenous Educator & Administrator, Indigenous Books for Schools 

Educator Information
The publisher labels this work as an "Adult Graphic Novel."

Recommended in the Indigenous Books for Schools catalogue as a valuable resource for grades 10 to 12 for English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Themes: Animals, Death, Environment, Loss, Reconciliation

Caution: Contains cannibalism

Additional Information
44 pages | 7.00" x 10.50" | Paperback

A vivid and comprehensive history of the City of Prince Rupert, from its ancient roots as a rich, multicultural trading hub between different Indigenous Nations to its current state as an ethnically diverse community set against the stunning natural backdrop of the Great Bear Rainforest.

Since time immemorial, rain has defined life on Kaien Island, now known as the townsite of Prince Rupert. As the rainiest and cloudiest city in Canada, Prince Rupert is the perfect environment for rainbows—and the rainbow is an apt metaphor for the city: a symbol of diversity and inclusion, a supernatural gateway between worlds, and a universal sign of hope and calm after a storm.

From its original Ts’mysen inhabitants to the first European explorers and fur traders, the building of dozens of salmon canneries to the construction of the transcontinental railway, the global upheaval of two World Wars to decades of industrial boom and bust, Kaien Island, and Prince Rupert, has always been a rich, multicultural trading hub that has weathered countless storms.

By weaving together historical events illustrated by compelling archival photographs, The City of Rainbows strives to tell the story of Prince Rupert from a modern perspective, one that confronts the impact of colonization head-on and moves away from a romanticized account of the development of a “pioneer” town. Balancing the histories of Indigenous Peoples, European and Asian settlers, and recent immigrants, this book reveals powerful, intriguing, uncomfortable, and beautiful truths about an undoubtedly colourful city.

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256 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

In The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, award-winning author Armand Garnet Ruffo brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories. From Manitoulin Island to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection. These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world.

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

The Secwépemc term le estcwicwéy̓ (the missing) was given by Secwépemc elders who dedicated their knowledge and time to guide the community through the hell they were forced to endure in May 2021. Garry Gottfriedson’s The Flesh of Ice picks up the thread of his 2021 collection, Bent Back Tongue, describing the history and relationship of Indigenous people in Canada with the Canadian government and the Catholic church. Here is the story of those who survived Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), and stories of descendants of KIRS who remembered "the missing” in the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at the KIRS. Here, in hauntingly visceral poems, are the living conditions, policies and practices of the school itself, the stories of those who lived there, and the names of practitioners of the school, called out and cursed. Lastly, personal stories are given space to reclaim the narrative, taking readers on a journey of resilience, survival, pain and joy.

Reviews
"Drawing on the work of the late legal scholar Patricia Monture-Angus, I find fitting words for this book and for the former students of KIRS: first we were victims, then we were survivors and now we are warriors. Those warriors have now become teachers—teachers for those who learn to listen to the voices in this book."—from the prologue by Celia Haig-Brown

Additional Information
126 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

Ela Tahoe, a runaway turned deputy sheriff, is forced to contend with a Confederate invasion of her New Mexican town three months after the conclusion of the Civil War. Ela will need to confront her heritage and past with the Apache in order to get their aid to combat this Confederate threat, leading her to look at the world from the Native American perspective once again. Conceived as a tightly paced, gut wrenching western thriller, Ela fights tooth and nail to save the lives of her townspeople and most importantly, her son.

The American Western Frontier is arguably one of the most widely misrepresented histories, rife with inaccuracies and stereotypes. Black Mi'kmaq and Anishinaabe author Tristan Jones powerfully and critically reimagines and reclaims a historical retelling of the Frontier with a focus on the historically missing Indigenous narrative. Illustrated by master sequential artist Alexander Bumbulut, The Forgotten Frontier should be on everyone's reading list.

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

A new edition, revised and updated by the author, of John Brady McDonald’s acclaimed debut poetry collection

John Brady McDonald, MBSFA, a Nêhiyawak-Métis multidisciplinary artist and writer from Treaty Six Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada, is an award-winning author of multiple books who has presented at literary festivals around the world. Before all this, however, he was a young, urban Indigenous youth, struggling with addictions, the streets, and the pain and turmoil of intergenerational trauma as a residential school survivor and the child of residential school survivors.

These raw, lyrical poems are a glimpse of the birth of a poet, recklessly using language and words with abandon and without restraint. It is the poetry of an individual experimenting with the language, influenced by the works of Shakespeare and Jim Morrison, mixed with the teenage goth writing style of youth—the base metals from which a lifetime of words was forged.

Originally published by Kegedonce Press in 2004, The Glass Lodge was presented across Canada and the US at esteemed festivals. Chosen for the First Nations Communities Read program, it was also nominated for the Anskohk Aboriginal Book of the Year in 2005. Since that first edition went out of print a few years ago, McDonald has re-edited and restored the work. He also rediscovered many of the original, handwritten poems, which serve as illustrations in this new edition.

Reviews
"The Glass Lodge transcends all the cliches of the angst-ridden Urban Indian. McDonald's verse is a brilliant fusion of the brutality and hope that is inherent in the Aboriginal experience. I have never read poetry that so closely resembles my own experience as a First Nations man." - Darrell Dennis, Writer, Tales of an Urban Indian, Moccasin Flats

Additional Information
74 pages | 6.00" x 8.50" | Hardcover | 2nd Edition 

A lively recounting of the tough men and heroic but overworked packhorses who broke open B.C. to the big business of the 19th-century fur trade.

Facing a gruelling thousand-mile trail, the brigades of the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) pushed onward over mountains and through ferocious river crossings to reach the isolated fur-trading posts. But it wasn't just the landscape the brigades faced, as First Nations people struggled with the desire to resist, or assist, the fur company's attempts to build their brigade trails over the Aboriginal trails that led between Indigenous communities, which surrounded the trading posts. Nancy Marguerite Anderson reveals how the devastating Cayuse War of 1847 forced the HBC men over a newly-explored overland trail to Fort Langley. The journey was a disaster-in-waiting.

Additional Information
280 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | archival images, maps | Paperback 

The life and times of the Premier from Red River

John Norquay, orphan and prodigy, was a leader among the Scots Cree peoples of western Canada. Born in the Red River Settlement, he farmed, hunted, traded, and taught school before becoming a legislator, cabinet minister, and, from 1878 to 1887, premier of Manitoba.

Once described as Louis Riel's alter ego, he skirmished with prime minister John A. Macdonald, clashed with railway baron George Stephen, and endured racist taunts while championing the interests of the Prairie West in battles with investment bankers, Ottawa politicians, and the CPR. His contributions to the development of Canada's federal system and his dealings with issues of race and racism deserve attention today.

Recounted here by Canadian historian Gerald Friesen, Norquay's life story ignites contemporary conversations around the nature of empire and Canada's own imperial past. Drawing extensively on recently opened letters and financial papers that offer new insights into his business, family, and political life, Friesen reveals Norquay to be a thoughtful statesman and generous patriarch. This masterful biography of the Premier from Red River sheds welcome light on a neglected historical figure and a tumultuous time for Canada and Manitoba.

Reviews
"The Honourable John Norquay is a magisterial biography that brings Norquay out of the historical shadows to a prominent place among the major figures of nineteenth century Canada. One of the most important historical studies of this decade, Norquay is a model of how superb historical scholarship can make us better understand both past and present."  — John English

"This is a beautifully written, extremely accessible, but obviously meticulous scholarly tome. Friesen wrangles a wide variety of facts into a compelling narrative." — Chris Andersen

"The Honourable John Norquay is a magnificent book. Friesen meticulously documents Norquay's many accomplishments, larger-than-life character, and charisma. He paints a picture of a negotiator and orator who ably uses humour and personal stories to win support, especially in the midst of the racism he faced." — Gary Doer, Premier of Manitoba, 1999-2009

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Introduction

Ch 1: “A Merry Prankish Youngster,” 1841–58

Ch 2: Red River Family, 1859–70

Ch 3: “The Transfer Made Us Wise,” the 1870s

Ch 4: Public Life: An Introduction, 1871–74

Ch 5: Senior Minister, 1875–78

Ch 6: Premier, 1879

Ch 7: Boom Times and Crash, 1880–January 1883

Ch 8: “Chief,” 1883–February 1885

Ch 9: “An Unfortunate Family Difference,” 1885

Ch 10: Vindication, 1886

Ch 11: Defiance, 1887

Ch 12: Downfall, November–December 1887

Ch 13: Dénouement, 1888–89

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Keywords

A Note on Sources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Additional Information
619 pages | 6.12" x 9.25" | b&w illustrations, maps, index, bibliography | Hardcover 

A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States

Who is Indian enough?

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.

In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.

Reviews
“The Indian Card is a candid, unflinching look at the sometimes subtle, sometimes ruthless ways federal policies undermine Indigenous culture and society. Carrie Schuettpelz understands first-hand how official tribal membership rations not only access to benefits such as healthcare and housing stipends, but also an ineffable sense of belonging. Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.”– The Whiting Foundation Jury's Note

"The Indian Card is all at once an intimate portrait, a sweeping history and a thoughtful examination of tribal identity, Native sovereignty and the quest for belonging."—WBUR

"Carrie’s book is so dang good you need to get two copies: one for you and then the other for a friend. Schuettpelz, with so much research and interviews, shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation with such ease. The voice is pitch perfect, there is not one wrong word and the content is written with so much grace and elegance and honesty you can’t help but finish Schuettpelz’s work knowing it will live on for as long as it takes to unravel the many, many contradictions surrounding what it means to Native American today." - Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit

"A well researched book for readers who are curious or confused about complex kinship relationships in Native America. Armed with personal experience, interviews, and scholarly data, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz tackles the political nature of Indigenous identity with clarity and concision."—Deborah Taffa, author of Whiskey Tender

"Illuminating...An innovative exploration of a thorny issue." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A clear and frank analysis of the challenges that define Native selfhood." —Kirkus Reviews

Additional Information
304 pages | 6.12" x 9.25" | includes 10-12 charts/figures and captions throughout | Hardcover 

From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family’s story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada

For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many of them after being sent to residential schools, “Indian hospitals” and asylums through a coordinated system designed to destroy who the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are. This is one of Canada’s greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment.

The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide.

Deeply personal and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today.

Additional Information
480 pages | 6.12" x 9.25" | Hardcover 

Ukraine, 1944

As the world around her is ripped apart by war and infiltrated by Nazi soldiers, Savka Ivanets works as a medic for the Ukrainian resistance, stitching wounds by day, stealing supplies by night, and dodging firefights between the SS and Soviet partisans. When her husband, Marko, a reluctant member of the Waffen-SS, forces her to deliver a coded message to an underground bunker, she’s terrified. But when her mission doesn’t go as planned, and her son, Taras, is kidnapped by the KGB, Savka fears she’ll never see him again.

Salt Spring Island, 1972

For Jeanie Esterhazy, the world, with its whispers and curious eyes, is too much to bear. Ever since the horrific accident that left her badly scarred, Jeanie, unable to remember anything about that awful day, has pulled away from society, utterly isolated.

Then a mysterious stranger appears at her house, and Jeanie suddenly begins having flashbacks about the night of her wedding—flashbacks that hold answers to the questions she’s had for years; flashbacks that make her realize the world around her is not as it seems.

Weaving together Savka and Jeanie's stories with artful precision, The Last Secret is at once luminous and transporting, a brilliant and impossible-to-forget story of love, hope, and the breathtaking resilience of women.

Reviews
"An extraordinarily powerful novel cinematically weaving one gripping layer into the next. From the frozen hellscape of Eastern Europe during WW2 to the lush green of Salt Spring Island in Canada, The Last Secret delivers a thrilling story of survival and love that held me spellbound throughout. Brava, Ms. Caron! An easy five stars." —Genevieve Graham, #1 bestselling author of The Forgotten Home Child

"How delicious to discover sleepy Salt Spring Island, BC, caught up in the icy tendrils of a Cold War thriller. Sweeping from hardship to heartache, The Last Secret is a timely reminder of the improbable bonds forged, broken and recast on World War II’s Eastern Front. Here, revenge is served tundra-cold, but with a dash of sea salt and fire." —Shelley Wood

Additional Information
416 pages | 6.09" x 8.91" | Paperback 

An examination of the barriers facing Indigenous people within the healthcare system from the perspective of an empathetic settler physician

After leaving her medical practice in Pennsylvania in 2011, Jarol Boan returned to her childhood home in Saskatchewan, Canada to practice medicine. There she found a healthcare system struggling with preventable chronic diseases and institutional racism. Shocked by the high rate of preventable diseases in her patients, Boan realized that a paternalistic deficit model does not support Indigenous communities. Through working to provide medical services in Indigenous communities and learning firsthand from her Indigenous patients, Boan embarked on a road to enlightenment and reconciliation.

In The Medicine Chest, Boan exposes the healthcare disparities in a country that prides itself on an equitable healthcare system and examines the devastating effects of diabetes, the myth of “the drunken Indian,” the inner workings of hospitals, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, epidemics on reserves, and residential school trauma. Exploring the intersectionality of common diseases and social determinants of health gained from her experience of caring for Indigenous patients, Boan weaves historical data, comments on health policy, and jurisdictional gaps into the narrative while investigating how Canada’s healthcare system is failing those most in need.

Reviews
“A heart-breaking, heart-warming story of damage and caring. I couldn’t stop reading.” —Gary Geddes, Medicine Unbundled

“Canada’s national sense of self is rooted in the myth of a fair, open, and public health care system. But all too often the medical system is a nightmare journey for Indigenous patients and their families. The Medicine Chest is a frontline diary of the struggle to address the inequities and colonial legacy, and the urgency to find a new way to healing and reconciliation.” —Charlie Angus, Cobalt and Children of the Broken Treaty

“Dr. Boan confronts the traps and assumptions she unearths, both in herself and in the health care system, as she journeys, and sometimes stumbles, along the messy path toward self-awareness and reconciliation.” —Karen Palmer, Policy Advisor to Canadian Doctors for Medicare

“An important effort at reaching out and tackling the challenges presented by Indigenous health disparities and jurisdictional obstacles.” —Blair Stonechild, First Nations University of Canada

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Map

Introduction

Willow Medicine
Hollywood in Regina
A Field on the Prairie
A Middle Ground
Two-Eyed Seeing
A Crime to Refuse Treatment
As Long as That Sun Shines
Strangers in the Touchwood Hills
An Expanding Circle
Red Dress Day
Michael’s Tears
An HIV Epidemic
A Clinic in the Parklands
Derrick
The Trade in Alcohol
Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t
Sweetgrass and Ceremony
The Dialysis Shuttle
Anxiety
Food on the Reserve
The Spirit Journey
Ten to Fifteen Percent
The Serpent
The Road to Reconciliation

Seven Grandfather Teachings from the Anishinaabe
Postscript
TRC Calls to Action addressed in The Medicine Chest

Index
About the Author

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