Indigenous Peoples

An irreverent and playful novella of Metis voices that reflects the complexities of contemporary prairie life

Conor Kerr's 2024 novel Prairie Edge was a finalist for both the Giller Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize. His latest book, Beaver Hills Forever, takes a riotous, uncompromising look at the intertwined lives of four characters, each an abstract expression of the few paths available to Metis people on the Prairies. In alternating poetic verses, Buddy, Baby Momma, Fancy University Boy, and Aunty Prof share their inner dreams, hardships, delusions of grandeur, and existential plights. While the messy day-to-day is created by their own doing, the lives of these four individuals are doubly compromised by Canada's colonial education system and resource extraction industries.

A beguiling and genre-bending work, Beaver Hills Forever offers a moving, necessary exploration of education, labour, and the dynamic, ever-changing bonds that bring us back to each other. Here is a diverse, funny, pitch-perfect chorus of voices that rings loud and true over the wide prairie landscape.

An irreverent and playful novella of Metis voices that reflects the complexities of contemporary prairie life

Conor Kerr's 2024 novel Prairie Edge was a finalist for both the Giller Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize. His latest book, Beaver Hills Forever, takes a riotous, uncompromising look at the intertwined lives of four characters, each an abstract expression of the few paths available to Metis people on the Prairies. In alternating poetic verses, Buddy, Baby Momma, Fancy University Boy, and Aunty Prof share their inner dreams, hardships, delusions of grandeur, and existential plights. While the messy day-to-day is created by their own doing, the lives of these four individuals are doubly compromised by Canada's colonial education system and resource extraction industries.

A beguiling and genre-bending work, Beaver Hills Forever offers a moving, necessary exploration of education, labour, and the dynamic, ever-changing bonds that bring us back to each other. Here is a diverse, funny, pitch-perfect chorus of voices that rings loud and true over the wide prairie landscape.

Reviews
"Not every Metis kid / Needs a sad story," says a character in Conor Kerr's propulsive and deeply entertaining new work, where each bone-clean sentence holds a galaxy of stories in its marrow. Kerr is part of a vital contemporary movement that is reimagining what our literatures can be and what they can do. Beaver Hills Forever is a reminder that laughter and passion are as much a part of the narrative as struggle. In these pages, you'll find voices that demand to be heard, felt, and remembered." — Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman and Bad Endings

"Much like his prose, Conor Kerr's Beaver Hills Forever imbues the language of everyday Indigenous life with a poetic charm that is just incredibly readable and relatable. This book is truly multitudinous: a love story, an anti-love story, a critique of neoliberalism, an ode to the Prairies, and, above all, proof that even our smallest desires are worthy of sustained poetic consideration." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of Coexistence

"Beaver Hills Forever is full of raunch and riot. Conor Kerr's ability to gravitate around the embodied truths of institutional whiteness, class, settler colonization, and the Indigenous (Metis) experience in the moraine of amiskwaciy is rebellious in its desire to not pathologize or rationalize the violent backdrops of its animate setting. With his skilled hand, Kerr makes sure there is "room for [all] in the digital economy of the Future." — Joshua Whitehead, author of Jonny Appleseed

"Aho, fancy reader! Welcome to Conor Kerr's Beaver Hills Forever. We'll laugh, we'll cry. We'll smoke, we'll die. Etc, etc. Beaver Hills Forever is funny, heartfelt, poetic, badass. It's Bald Boy, Goodbye, Sad Story, Indigenous Canon. Etc, etc. Magpie cackles, Metis literatures, Aunty Prof wonders, realizes, smudges, feel-good energy. Fuck all the ongoing bullshit internal politics and academic distortion and just hear the truth, etc, etc." — Jordan Abel, author of Empty Spaces and NISHGA

Additional Information
88 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.

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

Behind Closed Doors features written testimonials from thirty-two individuals who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The school was one of many infamous residential schools that operated from 1893 to 1979. These storytellers give voice to the thousands as they remember and share with us their stolen time at the school; many stories are told through courageous tears.

Additional Information
202 pages | 11.50" x 8.00" | 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

In Beyond Blood Quantum, voices from Indian Country convey the insidious impacts of the Indian Reorganization Act confronting the existential and pragmatic questions facing many Native Nations to determine who is—and who is not—a citizen. The voices of poets, parents, academics, activists, educators, young adults, and elders prompt conversations in consideration of shared cultural values and lived realities outside of the limited confines of blood quantum.

Both informational and poetic, Beyond Blood Quantum: Refusal to Disappear is a guide for conversation in-community and a songline of voices grappling with contemporary Native identity and the sovereignty inherent in defining citizenship with analysis softened by appreciation for kin, land, and promises to future generations from the descendants of generations who continue to resist, who refuse to disappear.

Reviews
“The tough issues of Native American identity come from within our communities as well as the harmful legacy of oppressive federal Indian policy. From the rise in “pretendians” to the fetishization of Native culture, contributors allow readers to explore the complexities of what it means to belong to a Tribe/Native Nation, according to their own customs and governance." —Karen Diver, Senior Advisor to the President for Native American Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Former Chairwoman, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Former Special Assistant to President Obama for Native American Affairs

"Our elders teach us that no man, or government, not even the most powerful nation in the world can take away all that defines who we are as Indigenous people—that the Creator gifted to our foremothers and forefathers at the time of Creation—but ourselves. They say that if we are not mindful of our past experiences of our foremothers and forefathers surviving every conceivable policy and laws imposed upon our people, generation after generation, we can at some point in our journey be capable of becoming our own worst enemy. When we internalize the oppression as exhibited by this nation upon our people, and internalize that oppression, we can become the oppressors. The elders warn and prophesied that when that happens, it will be the beginning of the end of us. It is deviating from our core values as gifted to us by our Creator as the deepest expression of love for us. Blood quantum is the epitome of this departure from the Original Instructions of embracing all sacred beings that our children represent so that our lifeways will continue and thrive. The elders say, they are the sacred beings, gifts from the Creator so that we shall continue as a People. The use of blood, our lifeline, to define our relations and our connections ironically in this time of self determination could be the cause of our end. What the government designed, we shall complete. This cannot be the end of our journey.” —Regis Pecos

“A testament to the refusal to disappear and inherent Indigenous sovereignty, Beyond Blood Quantum offers profound insights and reflections on the path forward.” —Wayne Ducheneaux

“Tribal citizens must become informed of where we are and where we are going on the explosive issue of blood quantum. The chapters in this book are a tool for self-education and constitute possible road maps for the future of Indian nations.”—Henrietta Mann

“Blood quantum is an issue that all tribes need to be aware of as they exercise their sovereign right to set their membership standards.” —John Echohawk

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

From adventures in Indigenous futurism to tales of first love, the stories and poems of Beyond the Glittering World proclaim and celebrate a rising generation of Native American storytellers.

Beyond the Glittering World brings together twenty emerging and established Native women writers and writers of marginalized genders, including Moniquill Blackgoose, Heid E. Erdrich, A.J. Eversole, Chelesa Hicks, and D. Daye Hunter. Immersing readers in worlds as varied as their authors, this collection presents an array of singular voices at their genre-bending, boundary-breaking, devastating, and joyous best.

Reviews
"An evocative compilation of voices pondering Indigenous futures and the shape of Indigenous love. Beyond the Glittering World holds a healthy dose of gender-bending, genre-challenging, future-hoping might. This anthology is a welcome addition to the field of Indigenous anthologies.”—DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA, Whiskey Tender

Additional Information
240 pages | 5.25" x 8.00" | Paperback

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 

There There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go—and what they will sacrifice—to win it all.

But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.

Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.

Reviews
“A compelling and strong Native American novel about politics and power and how far some people will go to hold on to what they have.”—Brandon Hobson, author of National Book Award finalist Where the Dead Sit Talking

"Deliciously ruthless and absolutely huge, Big Chief unleashes the Shakespearean realities of Passage Rouge with seismic ambition and brilliance. Prepare to relish every dice roll, partisan jab, and monkey wrench thrown in this all-out showdown from maestro Jon Hickey—a colossal novel of and for our time." —Cody Caetano, author of Half-Bads in White Regalia

"Jon Hickey throws the reader in the backseat of a tricked out F350 and takes them for a wild ride across the Rez following a J. Crew NDN, a Chief who's in over his head, and their crew. This is a must read as Hickey brings us into the chaos and catastrophes that the colonial imposed electoral system creates in Indigenous communities but also shows the reader how community, a sense of belonging, and family is what really matters in the end. This is a book that you won't put down until the last ballot is counted."—Conor Kerr, author of Prairie Edge

“Taut, timely, and brimming with suspense, Big Chief questions our notions of power and morality, holding a mirror to our crooked, calculating world. This is a monumental debut."—Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit

“Big Chief features all the twisty chessmanship—the familial feuds, the financial games, the political maneuvering—of Succession and sets it against the backdrop of Indian country. Jon Hickey has written one hell of an addictive and important debut novel.”—Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal and Red Moon

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Hardcover

Turning a lens on the dark legacy of colonialism in horror film, from Scream to Halloween and beyond.

Horror films, more than any other genre, offer a chilling glimpse—like peering through a creaky attic door—into the brutality of settler colonial violence. While Indigenous peoples continue to struggle against colonization, white settler narratives consistently position them as a threat, depicting the Indigenous Other as an ever-present menace, lurking on the fringes of “civilized” society. Indigenous inclusion or exclusion in horror films tells a larger story about myths, fears, and anxieties that have endured for centuries.

Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes traces connections between Indigenous representations, gender, and sexuality within iconic horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. The savage killer, the romantic and doomed Indian, the feral “mad woman”—no trope or archetype escapes the shadowy influence of settler colonialism. In the end, horror both disrupts and uncovers colonial violence—only to bury its victims once more.

Reviews
“This is the book I’ve waited my whole movie-geek life for.”— Jesse Wente

“Bloody Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is a must read for anyone consuming horror media. Laura Hall masterfully dissects the ways in which settler-colonialism is at the core of sexism, racism, sanism, and white supremacy, and how we see those systems of oppression at work in historical and contemporary horror.”— Jessica Johns

“Expertly foregrounding the most overlooked horror in this film genre—settler colonialism—Bloodies Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is deadly.”— Christine Sy

"Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is brilliant scholarship that pinpoints the ugly truth about the treatment of Indigenous people in horror cinema. But Hall is doing much more than examining tropes of mysticism, savagery, and settler colonialism-as savior in horror; she is directing our attention to the recuperative power of certain portrayals, thereby reminding us that an anticolonial lens can produce whole and full human stories—even scary ones.”— Robin R. Means Coleman, author of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror from Fodder to Oscar

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Introduction

Chapter 1. They’re Here! Settler Colonialism and the Horror Film
Chapter 2. The Bloodsucking Brady Bunch: Gender, the Family and Settler Colonial Horrors
Chapter 3. We All go A Little Mad Sometimes!
Chapter 4. Cowboys in the Antarctic: Settler Colonialism and Nature in Horror
Chapter 5. Jason Voorhees Does a Land Acknowledgement: Indigeneity Lurking in the Woods

Conclusion
Sources

Additional Information
288 pages | 6.02" x 9.01" | Paperback

Blue Corn Tongue is a like mixtape from a thirty-something Diné punk girl. It offers poetry about love, friendship, environmental destruction, and language loss.

Reviews
“This collection describes a life woven together through the topography of the land examining elements of language, love, and family. There is a distinct point of view that encompasses the dialectical nature of belonging. Traveling alongside the poet in tender and sometimes funny moments, I found myself wanting to share these poems with friends.”—Naomi Ortiz, author of Rituals for Climate Change

“McCrary’s collection is one that only she could write. It is a mixtape from a thirty-something Diné punk girl with tracks about love and friendship, but also environmental destruction and language loss.”—Casandra López, author of Brother Bullet

“Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert is a wonder of a book full of ‘Weaving words with nostalgic tongues, heirloom futures and circular knowledge.’ Multilingual, expansive, and courageously written, these poems are an ecosystem of love and place that moves the reader through a sensory landscape of frank emotion and complex beauty. Lovers ‘maized through the rooms’ of a boarding school exhibit ‘familiar as grandma’s tortillas ‘in one poem and inhabit a space where ‘desert honey pulsates’ in another. Both strikingly original and deeply rooted, this book is a marvel to behold.”—Laura Da’, author of Instruments of the True Measure

“In the middle of the desert, a woman holds a poem. And a river begins to flow. McCray’s stunning poems tell the story of the seed, the root, and the inevitable flower. Anchored in the question ‘How does language open?’ this experimental, brave, and intimate book is a must-read.”—Margarita Pintado Burgos, author of Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat

“Equal parts tender and defiant, McCrary’s Blue Corn Tongue laps up landscape and love alike. Propelled by a moving sensuousness, this collection reframes relations between poet, lover, relatives, and the history binding them. Through striking visuals, rich carnality, and the occasional unexpected laugh, McCrary’s work celebrates and challenges what it means to dream and desire from within O’odham Jeweḍ and Dinétah.”—Oscar Mancinas, author of To Live and Die in El Valle

“Amber McCrary is a poet of generational talent who has written a masterful work of staggering beauty. One cannot help but read and reread Blue Corn Tongue with a sense of awe and gratitude for having witnessed, for having been gifted with a poetry that does the important work of documenting and honoring the narratives of her rich culture. I am holding something important in my hands, in this time. I am going to be holding this book close to the heart for years to come because it means that much to me.”—Truong Tran, author of Book of the Other

“In Amber McCrary’s poems, the deserts are rich with sweet honey. This sumptuous debut celebrates Indigenous love, the Navajo language, corn kernels grinding on the tongue—lush life upon life. Blue Corn Tongue teaches me to indulge in intimacy, to find it essential, even as it is haunted by loss. I am thankful for this collection, which insists on remaining abundant and unashamed.”—Erin Marie Lynch, author of Removal Acts

"Filled with stylistically innovative poems that embody place and emerge from ‘the mouth of deserts,’ Blue Corn Tongue carries both ‘generational grief’ and reclamation. McCrary’s poetry claims the Diné language and a vibrant matrilineal power through a ‘kin kind of tongue.’ These intimate poems are filled with lush, tactile images and populated with beings and beliefs that have survived colonization. Over and over, they celebrate ‘something laws cannot govern.’”—Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light and Wisconsin poet laureate, 2015–16

Additional Information
96 pages | 7.00" x 9.00" | 4 Maps | Paperback 

From the award-winning, bestselling author of All the Quiet Places, comes Brian Thomas Isaac's highly anticipated, haunting and tender return to the Okanagan Indian Reserve and a teenager's struggle to become a man in a world of racism and hardship.

Summer, 1968. For the first time since his big brother, Eddie, disappeared two years earlier—either a runaway or dead by his own hand—sixteen-year-old Lewis Toma has shaken off some of his grief. His mother, Grace, and her friend Isabel have gone south to the United States to pick fruit to earn the cash Grace needs to put a bathroom and running water into the three-room shack they share on the reserve, leaving Lewis to spend the summer with his cousins, his Uncle Ned and his Aunt Jean in the new house they’ve built on their farm along the Salmon River. Their warm family life is almost enough to counter the pressures he feels as a boy trying to become a man in a place where responsible adult men like his uncle are largely absent, broken by residential school and racism. Everywhere he looks, women are left to carry the load, sometimes with kindness, but often with the bitterness, anger and ferocity of his own mother, who kicked Lewis’s lowlife father, Jimmy, to the curb long ago.

Lewis has vowed never to be like his father—but an encounter with a predatory older woman tests him and he suffers the consequences. Worse, his dad is back in town and scheming on how to use the Indian Act to steal the land Lewis and his mom have been living on. And then, at summer's end, more shocking revelations shake the family, unleashing a deadly force of anger and frustration.

With so many traps laid around him, how will Lewis find a path to a different future?

Reviews
"A compelling novel, honest and compassionate, haunted by the past. Towards the end of the book, I tried to slow down, not wanting the story to end, but it wasn’t possible."—Mary Lawson, bestselling author of A Town Called Solace

"Brian Thomas Isaac reinforces his place as one of Canada’s most engaging novelists with the tender troubling coming-of-age story of Lewis, a 16-year-old growing up on the Okanagan Reserve. He’s a boy who sees and feels everything with intensity—the joy of swimming in a river, the cruelty of a racist neighbour, the complexity of his mother’s love, the sensations of his first deep kiss, the injustices of the Indian Act, which keeps turning his family’s life upside down. I couldn’t put Bones of a Giant down, wondering to the end if Lewis is just too sweet and vulnerable for the mean world around him."—Carol Off, award-winning author of At a Loss for Words

"Bones of a Giant has good bones. Isaac is a masterful storyteller with an observant eye for nature and a deep compassion for his characters. I loved this book."—Thomas Wharton, bestselling author of The Book of Rain

"A clear-eyed love story to both a people and a place. Brian Thomas Isaac is a vital voice."—David Bergen, award-winning author of Here the Dark

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.25" x 9.00" | Hardcover 

Firsthand narratives from Northern and Indigenous cancer survivors and caregivers offer compassionate advice and insightful analysis about healthcare in rural northern communities.

A cancer diagnosis can be life changing for anyone, bringing new physical and emotional realities, changed relationships, and often frustration when dealing with healthcare systems. But living north of sixty means dealing with a higher level of healthcare inequity. Agnes Pascal compiles firsthand narratives from Northern and Indigenous cancer survivors and caregivers that illuminate the unique challenges of healthcare accessibility in the North.

In this rare volume, more than thirty voices offer compassionate advice and insightful analysis born from experience. With courage and dignity, they discuss fear, grief, and death; the logistics of medical travel for treatment; Indigenous and Western medicine; structural determinants of health, including industrial pollution and environmental racism; and the impacts of residential schools and “Indian hospitals” on northern communities. In these pages people share that hope comes from building healing communities.

This book is for people with cancer and their caregivers; health policy makers and advocates; scholars and practitioners of healthcare, Indigenous governance, or environmental racism; and anyone interested grassroots, community-based peer support.

Reviews
“This book is a chorus of bravery, one every health practitioner should read so they can understand that as devastating as a cancer diagnosis is to the patient, it also affects the patient’s family, extended family and community. Thankfully, there is hope once diagnosed and the stories from these survivors is a testimony to the power of compassion, technology, teamwork, follow up and after care. I am in awe of the humility, courage, insight and gratitude in every story here. Mahsi cho.”- Richard Van Camp, author of Gather: Richard Van Camp on the Joy of Storytelling

“Prioritizing the voices of northern and Indigenous cancer patients, especially those from small communities, is critical for ensuring positive change within the Northwest Territories healthcare system. The inner strength of patients and the insights they share, are a gift to us all. ”- Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, scientific director at Hotıì ts’eeda

Additional Information
192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 30 Contributor Photos | Paperback

A journalistic poetry collection reflecting on Palestinian and Indigenous solidarities, genocides, life, and liberation.

In October 2023, upon witnessing the escalation of Palestinian genocide, Ktunaxa poet Smokii Sumac began writing poems reflecting on the stories of Palestinians in Gaza who were risking their lives to share news of the genocide of Palestinian culture, literature, and life. These 100 poems offer a witnessing of the escalation of colonial violence, both current and historical, across oceans, lands, cultures, and people, and the reckoning one has in the face of a genocide.

Vulnerable, eloquent, compassionate, and enduring, Born Sacred is an in-time reflection honouring the shared histories of Indigenous Peoples of North America and of the people in Palestine. Sumac offers this collection as a small piece of life dedicated to Palestinians and resounds the collective call for solidarity in our shared liberation.

Reviews
"Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine is a profound work of grace and solidarity, rooted in a hard-earned understanding of colonialism’s insatiable appetite. What Smokii Sumac has done, over the course of 100 searing, open-hearted poems, is give voice to the immeasurable grief of bearing witness to genocide – the overwhelming magnitude of it, colliding with a knowledge that this has happened before, that there is an age-old methodology to the act of endless taking. I am so grateful for this work, for this beautiful, honest reminder that, whatever power empires wield, we have what it can never take. We have one another."— Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise

"The succinct starkness of Smokii Sumac’s offerings are an X-Ray to the grief and absurdity of our times. This dangerous dichotomy of trying to live one’s everyday life while holding the tragedy of everyday loss is profoundly captured in each stanza."— Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough

"This collection is the antidote to the silence and cowardice of millions, and the medicine for those who watched the first recorded genocide unfold and needed to be seen and witnessed. Creating room for collective grief, Smokii Sumac shows us the responsibility and power of the poet to face the blank page in the here and now and the necessity for words to remain as a testimony to history. Born Sacred is an essential work in the fight for collective liberation and a reminder that hope can be rooted in allyship." — Rayya Liebich, author of Min Hayati

"I am always drawn to the constellational consciousness that permeates so many Asian refugee, Indigenous, and Black literary and cultural works. This constellational consciousness, the culturally-informed relational view of life and solidarity in struggle, is vital in Smokii Sumac’s collection. In both form and content, the poems shatter dominating linear and compartmentalizing interpretations of the world with constellating stanzas, voices, and experiences that reveal the intertwined histories and presents of colonial harm and Indigenous survivance."— Maral Aguilera-Moradipour, assistant professor, Asian refugee literatures and cultures, SFU

Additional Information
160 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A tenth anniversary bilingual edition in English and Cree of Rosanna Deerchild’s stunning collection about the intergenerational impacts of the Canadian residential school system.

you want me to
share my story

ok then
here it is
here in the unwritten
here in the broken lines
of my body that can never forget

In Calling Down the Sky, poet Rosanna Deerchild viscerally evokes her mother’s experience within the residential school system, the Canadian government’s system of violently removing Indigenous children from their homes, families, and languages in an explicit attempt to destroy Indigenous cultures and identities. With precise and intricate poetry, Deerchild weaves together the story of her mother’s childhood and Deerchild’s memories of her mother: her love of country music, her attempts to talk about what happened to her, how tightly she braided her daughter’s hair on the first day of school. In doing so, Deerchild illustrates the disruptive and devastating impacts of the residential school system on generations of families while also celebrating the life and culture of her mother and other survivors.

Published for the first time in a bilingual edition of Cree and English, in time for the tenth anniversary of the original publication, Calling Down the Sky is an intimate and gorgeously evoked reckoning with a horrifying part of North American history.

Reviews
“Rosanna Deerchild’s poems roll off the tongue as easy as old country songs. With her deft hand, Deerchild finely tunes every word and weaves them together as intimately as she braids her girls’ hair. Together, these poems create a story that sings with beautiful tension, amazing resilience, and love as big as the sky." - Katherena Vermette, Métis Writer

"The poetry collection, called calling down the sky, describes personal experiences with the residential school system in the 1950s and the generational effects it had." - CBC 

"This poetry collection is fierce, raw and candid. It is also visceral, intricate and, above all, illuminating. By recounting her mother’s residential school experience in a powerfully poetic narrative, Deerchild expertly illustrates the heartbreaking trauma of that tragic saga and how it complicates relationships over generations. By beautifully and elaborately exploring those relationships and that devastating history, she finds and celebrates the resilient and hopeful spirit that many residential school survivors, like her mother, have managed to retain in the face of horror and torment. As a result, calling down the sky is an essential read in understanding the true modern history of this land and in honouring the people who survived it.” - Waubgeshig Rice

Educator Information
Bilingual: English and Cree

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

A Métis girl is adopted by a Mennonite family in this breathtaking memoir about family lost and found—for those who loved From the Ashes and Educated.

By the time Brittany Penner is seven years old, she has loved and lost twenty-one foster siblings who have come into her family and left—all of them Indigenous like her. "When will it be my turn?" she asks her mother time and time again. "When will I be taken away?" You won't be, she is told. You're adopted. You're here to stay. You're the lucky one.

On the day of her birth in 1989, near the end of the Sixties Scoop, Brittany was relinquished into the care of the government and adopted by a white Mennonite family in a small prairie town. Her name and where she came from are hidden from her; all she is told is that she is Métis. Her childhood is shaped by church, family, service and silence. Her family is continuously shifting as siblings arrive and depart, one by one. She knows that to stay, she has to force herself into the mold created for her. She must be obedient. Quiet. Good. No matter what.

Whenever she looks in the mirror, she searches her features, wondering if they've been passed down to her by her biological mother. She thinks, if she can find her mother, she'll find all the answers she's looking for. As Brittany moves into adulthood, she will uncover answers—but they will be more tangled than she could have imagined.

Children Like Us asks difficult questions about family, identity, belonging and cultural continuity. What happens when you find what you're looking for, but it can't offer you everything you need? How do you reckon with the truth of your own story when you've always been told you're lucky and should be grateful? What does it mean to belong when you feel torn between cultures? And how does a person learn to hold the pain and the grief, as well as the triumphs, the joys and the beauty, allowing none to eclipse the others?

Reviews
"Children Like Us is a luminous memoir about identity, loss and belonging. Adopted at birth by a white Mennonite family, Brittany Penner grows up straddling two worlds—one she knows and one that remains just out of reach. As she pieces together her origins, she reckons with the complexities of family, love and cultural displacement. Both intimate and unflinching, Children Like Us is a powerful exploration of what it means to know where you come from—and what it costs when that knowledge is withheld." —Adrienne Brodeur, nationally bestselling author of Wild Game

"An absolutely mesmerizing debut. It was a privilege to bear witness to Brittany Penner's story about intergenerational trauma, identity, and belonging. The kinds of complicated grief we so often experience in life are born out of the complexity of human relationships and our fierce ability to both hurt and heal one another. Penner explores this truth deftly, with wisdom, compassion and grace. I hope everyone reads this book." —Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance

Additional Information
384 pages | 5.62" x 8.25" | Paperback