Indigenous Peoples

A deeply scouring poetic account of the residential school experience, and a deeply important indictment of colonialism in Canada.

Many of the poems in Louise Halfe's Burning in This Midnight Dream were written in response to the grim tide of emotions, memories, dreams and nightmares that arose in her as the Truth and Reconciliation process unfolded. In heart-wrenching detail, Halfe recalls the damage done to her parents, her family, herself. With fearlessly wrought verse, Halfe describes how the experience of the residential schools continues to haunt those who survive, and how the effects pass like a virus from one generation to the next. She asks us to consider the damage done to children taken from their families, to families mourning their children; damage done to entire communities and to ancient cultures.

Halfe's poetic voice soars in this incredibly moving collection as she digs deep to discover the root of her pain. Her images, created from the natural world, reveal the spiritual strength of her culture.

Originally published in 2016 by Coteau Books, Burning in This Midnight Dream won the Indigenous Peoples' Publishing award, the Rasmussen, Ramussen & Charowsky Indigenous Peoples' Writing award, the Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award, the League of Canadian Poets' Raymond Souster Award, and the High Plains Book Award for Indigenous Writers. It was also the 2017 WILLA Literacy Award Finalist in Poetry. This new edition includes a new Afterword by Halfe.

Reviews
"Burning in this Midnight Dream honours the witness of a singular experience, Halfe's experience, that many others of kin and clan experienced. Halfe descends into personal and cultural darkness with the care of a master storyteller and gives story voice to mourning. By giving voice to shame, confusion, injustice Halfe begins to reclaim a history. It is the start of a larger dialogue than what is contained in the pages." --Raymond Souster Award jury citation

Additional Information
104 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | 8 illustrations

Toni Jensen grew up around guns: As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten.

In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America. In the title chapter, Jensen connects the trauma of school shootings with her own experiences of racism and sexual assault on college campuses. “The Worry Line” explores the gun and gang violence in her neighborhood the year her daughter was born. “At the Workshop” focuses on her graduate school years, during which a workshop classmate repeatedly killed off thinly veiled versions of her in his stories. In “Women in the Fracklands,” Jensen takes the reader inside Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and bears witness to the peril faced by women in regions overcome by the fracking boom.

In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history—as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates. With each chapter, Carry reminds us that surviving in one’s country is not the same as surviving one’s country.

Reviews
“Like a murmuration of starlings, Toni Jensen’s new book Carry changes its shape constantly and effortlessly. . . . The value of Carry lies in its unique structure, its sparse, powerful prose, and in the stinging perspective it provides on events that are numbingly common. Until we see it as clearly as Jensen does, the lens she offers on gun violence in America will be relevant again and again and again.”—Chicago Review of Books

“In Carry, Jensen scours language to find a new way of writing about how historical injustices seep into the present. . . . With a controlled voice like a Philip Glass composition, smooth, meandering yet repetitive, Jensen considers her troubled past and begins the work of stitching herself back together. . . . An unsettling account that creeps into your bones.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Jensen grew up around guns. But bird-hunting with her father was a much different experience than staring down bored barrels at Standing Rock. A new and much-needed voice, Métis author Jensen shares her deepest thoughts and most emotional experiences in Carry.”—Bustle

“Toni Jensen’s memoir is stunning. There’s no other words that come to mind—it’s about growing up Métis, existing as an Indigenous woman in America, and the looming threat of ever-pervasive gun violence. . . . A must-read.”—Alma (Alma’s Favorite Books for Fall 2020)

“Moving between personal recollections and historical observations, Jensen narrates what it means to be Métis, and what it feels like to be connected by bodies and land. . . . A meditative exploration of people and place that shows what it means to live and survive.”—Library Journal

“[A] debut memoir from a Native author enmeshed in the American way of violence, alienation, and death . . . a powerful rejection of a culture that has always been grounded in violence and intimidation.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Carry explores the gun’s tragic impact with heartfelt prose and deep intellect—on politics, on history, on Black and Indigenous bodies, on women’s bodies, and on children behind closed doors . . . It is full of difficult and vital news, delivered right on time.”—Terese Marie Mailhot, New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.24" x 7.94" | Paperback

Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities be an honour song—one that celebrates rather than pathologizes; one that seeks diversity and strength; one that overturns heteropatriarchy without centering settler colonialism? Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities even be creative, inclusive, erotic?

Carrying the Burden of Peace answers affirmatively. Countering the perception that “masculinity” has been so contaminated as to be irredeemable, the book explores Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.

Sam McKegney’s argument is simple: if we understand that masculinity pertains to maleness, and that there are those within Indigenous families, communities and nations who identify as male, then the concession that masculinity concerns only negative characteristics bears stark consequences.

It would mean that the resources available to affirm those subjectivities will be constrained, and perhaps even contaminated by shame. Indigenous masculinities are more than what settler colonialism has told us. To deny the beauty, vulnerability, and grace that can be expressed and experienced as masculinity is to concede to settler colonialism’s limiting vision of the world; it is to eschew the creativity that is among our greatest strengths.

Carrying the Burden of Peace weaves together stories of Indigenous life, love, eroticism, pain, and joy to map the contours of diverse, empowered, and non-dominative Indigenous masculinities. It is from here that a more balanced world may be pursued.

Reviews
“I came away from the manuscript convinced of the need for this work, as I find it exemplary of the kind of careful, ethically attentive, and deeply generous scholarship we need more of.” —Daniel Heath Justice, author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

“There has been much debate in scholarly and community settings in recent years as to whether the examination of Indigenous masculinities might be one that celebrates rather than pathologizes. McKegney does not shy away from these debates and the players involved, and in so doing, takes risks in the service of holding place for decolonial men and masculinities. Beautifully written, his book is courageous, critical and unique in terms of advancing discussions about critical Indigenous masculinities in the academy and community alike.” —Kim Anderson, co-editor of Indigenous Men and Masculinities and Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters

Additional Information
288 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Châhkâpâs: A Naskapi Legend shares the story of Châhkâpâs, a heroic figure in First Nations storytelling, who performs feats of strength and skill in spite of his diminutive size.

The book shares this traditional legend as originally recorded in the Naskapi community in northern Quebec in 1967 when it was narrated by John Peastitute, a Naskapi Elder and accomplished storyteller. Transcribed in the Naskapi language and syllabic orthography, the book offers a literary resource for the Naskapi language community, and the English translation enables those unfamiliar with the language, or the story, to discover this important legend.

The book also contains extensive analysis of stories about Châhkâpâs, notes about the provenance of the recordings, a biography of the storyteller, and a history of the Naskapi people. Lavish illustrations from Elizabeth Jancewicz—an artist raised in the Naskapi community—provide a sensitive and accurate graphical account of the legend, which has also been approved by Naskapi speakers themselves.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the First Nation Language Readers series. With a mix of traditional and new stories, each First Nations Language Reader introduces an Indigenous language and demonstrates how each language is used today. 

By John Peastitute
Edited by Marguerite MacKenzie
Translated by Julie Brittain and Silas Nabinicaboo 
Illustrated by Elizabeth Jancewicz 
Contributions by Bill Jancewicz

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

For six decades, Olive Dickason was a remarkable contributor to Canadian public life. An award-winning journalist, influential academic, and respected human rights advocate, her life was a triumph over seemingly impossible obstacles. These many impediments include having a childhood marked by poverty; being forced, as a single working mother, to place her three daughters in foster care for several years; working as a female journalist in the sexist, “Mad Men” era of the 1950s and ‘60s; giving up a successful journalism career to obtain a doctorate in Indigenous history; arguing successfully with the university establishment on whether or not Indigenous peoples had history; and taking her fight against mandatory retirement all the way to the Supreme Court. Olive Dickason faced these challenges with determination and dignity and was an inspiration for all who knew her. Changing Canadian History: The Life and Works of Olive Patricia Dickason is the first full-length biography of this trailblazing icon who forever changed how Indigenous history is viewed in Canada.

Reviews
“Olive Dickason pushed the boundaries of sexism, racism, and ageism, defying colonial narratives upheld by patriarchal systems.”—Dr. Cindy Gaudet, Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta

“A biography of a brilliant woman who forged entry into Canadian cultural and intellectual institutions by sheer force of determination.”—Dr. Allyson Stevenson, Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair, Métis Studies

Educator Information
This book is the first biography of this trailblazing icon who forever changed how Indigenous history is viewed in Turtle Island and beyond.  Based on years of meticulous research, this work provides readers with an engaging and thought-provoking read about this iconic academic who helped define a discipline.

Additional Information
445 Pages 

Coalesce is a fusion of distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetics of the Great Lakes region with refuse from Western society’s technological and digital age in order to intentionally shift an object’s materiality and its accepted paradigm within the physical world. It is through the integration and juxtaposition of recognizable materials used in the making of Anishinaabeg material culture, such as glass beads and porcupine quills, with new-found materials, such as electronic components (capacitors and resistors), that this body of work disproves any notion of Anishinaabeg cultural stasis. Coalesce demonstrates the continuum of Anishinaabeg innovation and expression by making use of disparate materials that knowingly coalesce and segue seamlessly into contemporary Anishinaabeg artistic tradition and material culture.

Additional Information
48 pages | 7.00" x 8.50"

In this timely collection, the authors examine Indigenous peoples’ negotiations with different cosmologies in a globalized world. Dussart and Poirier outline a sophisticated theory of change that accounts for the complexity of Indigenous peoples’ engagement with Christianity and other cosmologies, their own colonial experiences, as well as their ongoing relationships to place and kin. The contributors offer fine-grained ethnographic studies that highlight the complex and pragmatic ways in which Indigenous peoples enact their cosmologies and articulate their identity as forms of affirmation. This collection is a major contribution to the anthropology of religion, religious studies, and Indigenous studies worldwide.

Contributors: Anne-Marie Colpron, Robert R. Crépeau, Françoise Dussart, Ingrid Hall, Laurent Jérôme, Frédéric Laugrand, C. James MacKenzie, Caroline Nepton Hotte, Ksenia Pimenova, Sylvie Poirier, Kathryn Rountree, Antonella Tassinari, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel

Reviews
“Contemporary Indigenous Cosmologies and Pragmatics advances debates about how Indigenous cosmologies are received, understood, and valued. The contributors consider the complex connections that emerge between religiosity, politics, activism, and the ways in which globalization continues to shape these processes as Indigenous cultures relate with different elements of traditionally European religions.” - Amy Whitehead, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Massey University

Educator Information
Keywords / Subjects: Cosmology; religion; ritual; Indigenous; settler-Indigenous; spiritual; ethnography; Americas; Australia; Malta; Russia; secular; globalization; entanglement; identity politics; Social Science; Comparative Religion, Anthropology; Beliefs

Table of Contents
1 Indigenous Cosmologies, Entangled Religiosities, and Global Connections 1
A Theoretical Overview
FRANÇOISE DUSSART & SYLVIE POIRIER
2 Embracing Christianity, Rejecting Western Individualism? 33
Inuit Leaders and the Limits of Indigenization
FRÉDÉRIC LAUGRAND
3 Engaging Religiosities 59
Relationality, Co-existence, and Belonging among Lander Warlpiri, Central Australia
PETRONELLA VAARZON-MOREL
4 Making People 87
Manipulating Alterity in the Production of the Person among the Karipuna People of Northern Brazil
ANTONELLA TASSINARI
5 Discourses on the Advent of New Times among the Kaingang People of Southern Brazil 111
ROBERT R. CRÉPEAU
6 From Unknown to Hypermediatized 133
Shipibo-Konibo Female Shamans in Western Amazonia
ANNE-MARIE COLPRON
7 Tying Down the Soul of a Potato in the Southern Peruvian Andes 157
Performance and Frictions
INGRID HALL
8 Negotiating Indigenous-Global Relationships in Contemporary Shamanism 187
The Case of Malta
KATHRYN ROUNTREE
9 Indigenous Cosmologies and Social Media 219
Creativity, Self-Representation, and Power of the Image for First Nations Women Artists
CAROLINE NEPTON HOTTE & LAURENT JÉRÔME
10 Human Remains and Indigenous Religiosity in the Museum Space 253
Ritual Relations to the Altaian Mummy in the Anokhin National Museum of the Altai Republic, Russia
KSENIA PIMENOVA
11 Shaman, Christian, Bureaucrat, Cop 285
Maya Responses to Modern Entanglements
C. JAMES MACKENZIE
Contributors 311
Index 317

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

Creeland is a poetry collection concerned with notions of home and the quotidian attachments we feel to those notions, even across great distances. Even in an area such as Treaty Eight (northern Alberta), a geography decimated by resource extraction and development, people are creating, living, laughing, surviving and flourishing—or at least attempting to.

The poems in this collection are preoccupied with the role of Indigenous aesthetics in the creation and nurturing of complex Indigenous lifeworlds. They aim to honour the encounters that everyday Cree economies enable, and the words that try—and ultimately fail—to articulate them. Hunt gestures to the movements, speech acts and relations that exceed available vocabularies, that may be housed within words like joy, but which the words themselves cannot fully convey. This debut collection is vital in the context of a colonial aesthetic designed to perpetually foreclose on Indigenous futures and erase Indigenous existence.

the Cree word for constellation

is a saskatoon berry bush in summertime

the translation for policeman

in Cree is mîci nisôkan, kohkôs

the translation for genius

in Cree is my kôhkom muttering in her sleep

the Cree word for poetry is your four-year-old

niece’s cracked lips spilling out

broken syllables of nêhiyawêwin in between

the gaps in her teeth 

Reviews
"Here is an ode to northern Alberta, to the kokums and aunties who are worlds unto themselves, to the vastness and profundity of the Cree language. Dallas Hunt’s Creeland is tender and aching and intellectually exciting. Hunt uses the lyric mode to write another kind of public history about the prairies, one in which we Cree are always beautiful and indomitable. I can’t thank him enough for this." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, February 2021

"Dallas Hunt’s debut collection of poetry is work built from the ground up, meaning he has read, loved, studied poetry. He uses language “lived” in his relationships with family, home, community. Creeland feels like home to me. It “[crackles] with love and life.”" — Marilyn Dumont, February 2021

"From index to glossary, this stunning work bends with the possibilities of saplings. Mortally aware, a mind that can be everywhere “wolf willows and pin / cherries,” here is a poet halting the mallets of supremacy. Dallas Hunt aligns “petals of / larkspur” against the “maw of the inferno” to speak of Creeland. Entwined in “pîsim’s luminous / touch,” the poet’s smile returns home. Bringing forth fine, wry and tenderizing poetry, rickety love begets gale winds, and everyday, constellatory magnitudes. A quieting read with dimensional perspective, this book will transport you." — Cecily Nicholson, February 2021

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.00"

Dadibaajim narratives are of and from the land, born from experience and observation. Invoking this critical Anishinaabe methodology for teaching and learning, Helen Agger documents and reclaims the history, identity, and inherent entitlement of the Namegosibii Anishinaabeg to the care, use, and occupation of their Trout Lake homelands.

When Agger’s mother, Dedibaayaanimanook, was born in 1922, the community had limited contact with Euro-Canadian settlers and still lived throughout their territory according to seasonal migrations along agricultural, hunting, and fishing routes. By the 1940s, colonialism was in full swing: hydro development had resulted in major flooding of traditional territories, settlers had overrun Trout Lake for its resource, tourism, and recreational potential, and the Namegosibii Anishinaabe were forced out of their homelands in Treaty 3 territory, north-western Ontario.

Agger mines an archive of treaty paylists, census records, and the work of influential anthropologists like A.I. Hallowell, but the dadibaajim narratives of eight community members spanning three generations form the heart of this book. Dadibaajim provide the framework that fills in the silences and omissions of the colonial record. Embedded in Anishinaabe language and epistemology, they record how the people of Namegosibiing experienced the invasion of interlocking forces of colonialism and globalized neo-liberalism into their lives and upon their homelands. Ultimately, Dadibaajim is a message about how all humans may live well on the earth.

Reviews
“Dadibaajim is the product of a lifetime of reflection, and the distilled narrative we are presented shares an invaluable part of our Anishinaabe – and larger human – story that might have otherwise never been told. This work brings new value and appreciation for the role and positionality of our senior and traditional Elders, our Indigenous languages, and knowledge building customs and protocols that are inherent to the community." — Brian McInnes

"Dadibaajim is a fascinating story of the people and the land told from a uniquely Anishinaabe perspective. It also gives us hope for the future of these stories and traditions, particularly in the narratives, experiences, and perspectives of the younger generations that are represented." — Brian McInnes

“Dadibaajim is brilliant in its unapologetic incorporation of Anishinaabemowin and its prioritizing of Anishinaabe way of being in the world. It contributes to important decolonial work and challenges settler histories and discourse.” — Brittany Luby and Margaret Lehman

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Ch 1: How We Know

Ch 2: Subjectivity

Ch 3: As Written of Us

Ch 4: Our Anishinaabe Selves

Ch 5: Boreal Narratives

Ch 6: Colonial Identity

Ch 7: Anishinaabe Rectitude

Ch 8: Historical Texts

Additional Information
176 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Black and white illustrations and tables, maps, index, bibliography | Paperback

In Daniels v. Canada the Supreme Court determined that Métis and non-status Indians were “Indians” under section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, one of a number of court victories that has powerfully shaped Métis relationships with the federal government.

However, the decision (and the case) continues to reverberate far beyond its immediate policy implications. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide array of professional contexts, this volume demonstrates the power of Supreme Court of Canada cases to directly and indirectly shape our conversations about and conceptions of what Indigeneity is, what its boundaries are, and what Canadians believe Indigenous peoples are “owed.”

Attention to Daniels v. Canada’s variegated impacts also demonstrates the extent to which the power of the courts extend and refract far deeper and into a much wider array of social arenas than we often give them credit for. This volume demonstrates the importance of understanding “law” beyond its jurisprudential manifestations, but it also points to the central importance of respecting the power of court cases in how law is carried out in a liberal nation-state such as Canada.

Reviews
"This important collection of original pieces focusing on Daniel’s v. Canada and the Supreme Court’s decision will have an impact for years to come. Reader’s will appreciate the diverse areas of expertise found in this volume, including Indigenous leadership, political activism, sociology, law, and anthropology." — Christopher Adams

“Articulate, thoughtful, provocative assessments of how we might assess the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision regarding the Metis People’s legal status in Canada.” — William Craig Wicken

Educator Information
Other contributors: Tony Belcourt, Catherine Bell, Deborah A. Bolnick, Brenda L. Gunn, Arend J.A. Hoekstra, Thomas Isaac, Darryl Leroux, Jason Madden, Brenda Macdougall, Austin W. Reynolds, Rick W.A. Smith, Lauren Springs, D’Arcy Vermette

Table of Contents
Introduction

Ch. 1—Daniels in Context

Ch. 2—Harry Daniels and Section 91 (24) of the British North America Act

Ch. 3—After the Hysteria: Understanding Daniels v. Canada from a Métis Nation Perspective

Ch. 4—Daniels v Canada: A Framework for Redress

Ch. 5—The Other Declarations in Daniels: Fiduciary Obligations and the Duty to Negotiate

Ch. 4—Racism, Canadian Jurisprudence, and the de-Peopling of the Métis in Daniels

Ch. 5—Daniels Through an International Law Lens

Ch. 6—Daniels v. Canada Beyond Jurisprudential Interpretation: What to do Once the Horse has Left the Barn

Ch. 7—Outlining the Origins of “Eastern métis” Studies

Ch. 8—Making Kin in a Postgenomic World: Indigenous Belonging after the Genome

Ch. 9—How We Know Who We Are: Historical Literacy, Kinscapes, and Defining a People

Conclusion: The Multiple Lives of the Daniels Case

Additional Information
336 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | index, bibliography

Daughters of Aataentsic highlights and connects the unique lives of seven Wendat/Wandat women whose legacies are still felt today. Spanning the continent and the colonial borders of New France, British North America, Canada, and the United States, this book shows how Wendat people and place came together in Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and how generations of activism became intimately tied with notions of family, community, motherwork, and legacy from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. The lives of the seven women tell a story of individual and community triumph despite difficulties and great loss. Kathryn Magee Labelle aims to decolonize the historical discipline by researching with Indigenous people rather than researching on them. It is a collaborative effort, guided by an advisory council of eight Wendat/Wandat women, reflecting the needs and desires of community members. Daughters of Aataentsic challenges colonial interpretations by demonstrating the centrality of women, past and present, to Wendat/Wandat culture and history. Labelle draws from institutional archives and published works, as well as from oral histories and private collections. Breaking new ground in both historical narratives and community-guided research in North America, Daughters of Aataentsic offers an alternative narrative by considering the ways in which individual Wendat/Wandat women resisted colonialism, preserved their culture, and acted as matriarchs.

Reviews
"Daughters of Aataentsic makes a significant contribution to the historiography of Indigenous women. Labelle has written an important book and her laudatory and exemplary methodology is a model for all people researching and writing on First Nations and Native Americans." — Clifford Trafzer, University of California, Riverside

"Daughters of Aataentsic enriches our understanding of the everyday lives of real women, their families, and communities across time in Quebec and parts of the southwestern and western United States. This book does not denounce the past, holler, and shout, but rather attends to the range of information and knowledge passed down to draw us into times and places we would otherwise not have the privilege of knowing from an Indigenous perspective. Its insights have stuck with me long after my first reading, as I expect they will for others." — Jean Barman, University of British Columbia

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
Figures xv
Map xxvi
Introduction 3
1 Cécile Gannendâris (?-1669) 13
2 Marie Catherine Jean dit Vien (1676-1767) 33
3 Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon (1816-1890) 50
4 Mary McKee (1838-1922) 69
5 Eliza Burton Conley Jr (1869-1946) 90
6 Jane Zane Gordon (1871-1963) 115
7 Dr Éléonore Sioui (1924-2006) 132
Epilogue: The Wendat/Wandat Women’s Advisory Council 154
Notes 169
Index 205

Recommended for these subjects: History, Women's History, North American History, Canadian History, Indigenous History, Indigenous Studies, Women's and Gender Studies.

Additional Information
240 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 21 Photos, 7 Diagrams 

This second edition expands the provocative analysis of the racist colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance into other sectors and offers practical advice on how anyone can be a healer.

The world is out of balance. With increasing frequency, we are presented with the inescapable truth that systemic racism and colonial structures are foundational principles to our economies. The $1 trillion philanthropic industry is one example of a system that mirrors oppressive colonial behavior. It’s an industry whose name means “the love for humankind,” yet it does more harm than good.
 
In Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva looks past philanthropy’s glamorous, altruistic façade and into its shadows: white supremacy, savior complexes, and internalized oppression. Across history and to the present day, the accumulation of wealth is steeped in trauma. How can we shift philanthropy toward social reconciliation and healing if the cornerstones are exploitation, extraction, and control? 
 
Drawing from Native traditions, Villanueva empowers individuals and institutions to begin to repair the damage through his Seven Steps to Healing. In this second edition, Villanueva adds inspiring examples of people using their resources to decolonize entertainment, museums, libraries, land ownership, and much more.
 
Everyone can be a healer and a leader in restoring balance—and we need everyone to do their part. As Villanueva writes, “All our suffering is mutual. All our healing is mutual. All our thriving is mutual.” Are you ready?

Reviews
“Edgar outlines with compassion and clarity thoughtful and practical steps toward aligning our money with our values. There are important lessons here for anyone working in finance or philanthropy.” —Keith Mestrich, President and CEO, Amalgamated Bank

“Decolonizing Wealth is a must-read for philanthropists and donors looking to achieve the change we want to see in the world. Compelling, honest, and kind, Edgar is clear that we must free funding resources and the philanthropic sector itself from frameworks that further exacerbate the problems rather than bring us closer to identifying and activating the solutions.”—Alicia Garza, co-creator of Black Lives Matter Global Network, and Principal, Black Futures Lab

“Edgar has broken through the tired jargon of philanthropy-speak and written a fresh, honest, painful, and hopeful book, grounded in his own truths and Native traditions. He offers some radical thinking about what it would take to bring about a world where power and accountability shifted and communities controlled the resources vital to their strength and futures.”—Gara LaMarche, President, Democracy Alliance; former President, Atlantic Philanthropies; and former Vice President and Director of US Programs, Open Society Foundations

“Due to years of detrimental federal Indian policy and discriminatory economic systems, Native American communities have been marginalized and left out of the economic opportunity experienced by other Americans. Edgar offers a new vision and an Indigenous perspective that can put us on a better path. Everyone should read Decolonizing Wealth, especially those who control the flow of resources in government, philanthropy, and finance.”—LaDonna Harris (Comanche), politician, activist, and founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity

“Decolonizing Wealth offers a refreshing and inspired look at how wealth can better serve the needs of communities of color and atone for the ways in which it has traditionally been used to inflict harm and division. Using a solutions-oriented framing, Edgar makes a solid case for how Indigenous wisdom can be used as a guiding light to achieve greater equity in the funding and philanthropic world.”—Kevin Jennings, President, Tenement Museum

“Finally, a Native perspective on how to heal internal systemic challenges. Decolonizing Wealth not only is an unflinching examination of today’s philanthropic institutions and the foundations upon which they were built but also offers critical wisdom applicable to many sectors.” —Sarah Eagle Heart (Lakota), CEO, Native Americans in Philanthropy

“We should all be grateful to Edgar Villanueva for helping us understand, by sharing Indigenous wisdom, that there is a path toward a more transformative approach to wealth, to investment, and to giving. We cannot truly call ourselves ethical, progressive, or mission-aligned investors until we have wrestled honestly with the fundamental issues raised in this book.”—Andrea Armeni, co-founder and Executive Director, Transform Finance

Additional Information
240 pages | 5.56" x 8.50" | Paperback

The Assiniboia school is unique within Canada’s Indian Residential School system. It was the first residential high school in Manitoba and one of the only residential schools in Canada to be located in a large urban setting. Operating between 1958 and 1973 in a period when the residential school system was in decline, it produced several future leaders, artists, educators, knowledge keepers, and other notable figures. It was in many ways an experiment within the broader destructive framework of Canadian residential schools.

Stitching together memories of arrival at, day-to-day life within, and departure from the school with a socio-historical reconstruction of the school and its position in both Winnipeg and the larger residential school system, Did You See Us? offers a glimpse of Assiniboia that is not available in the archival records. It connects readers with a specific residential school and illustrates that residential schools were often complex spaces where forced assimilation and Indigenous resilience co-existed.

These recollections of Assiniboia at times diverge, but together exhibit Survivor resilience and the strength of the relationships that bond them to this day. The volume captures the troubled history of residential schools. At the same time, it invites the reader to join in a reunion of sorts, entered into through memories and images of students, staff, and neighbours. It is a gathering of diverse knowledges juxtaposed to communicate the complexity of the residential school experience.

Reviews
“Remembering Assiniboia is a thoughtful, community based project rooted in the needs of the Assiniboia Residential School community. This book is a must read for those working on the history of Residential Schools and those engaged in community based restorative justice projects.” — Krista McCracken

"Did You See Us? was born out of a reunion, and readers are invited to the reverberations of this coming together. It offers multi-vocal perspectives primarily from survivors but also from non-Indigenous staff, archival documents, and settler community members. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins to accumulate anniversaries, now more than ever the testimonies of residential school survivors are much needed." — Jane Griffith

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Dedication

Land Acknowledgement Statement/ Theodore Fontaine

Preface / Theodore Fontaine

Section One: The Residential Years (1958-1967)

Section Two: The Hostel Years (1967-1973)

Section Three: Assiniboia and the Archives

Section Four: Staff Remembrances

Section Five: Neighbours

Section Six: Winnipeg Remembers

Section Seven: Reunion and Remembrance

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 8.50" | bibliography

A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history.
 
When Danielle Geller’s mother dies of alcohol withdrawal during an attempt to get sober, Geller returns to Florida and finds her mother’s life packed into eight suitcases. Most were filled with clothes, except for the last one, which contained diaries, photos, and letters, a few undeveloped disposable cameras, dried sage, jewelry, and the bandana her mother wore on days she skipped a hair wash.

Geller, an archivist and a writer, uses these pieces of her mother’s life to try and understand her mother’s relationship to home, and their shared need to leave it. Geller embarks on a journey where she confronts her family's history and the decisions that she herself had been forced to make while growing up, a journey that will end at her mother's home: the Navajo reservation.

Dog Flowers is an arresting, photo-lingual memoir that masterfully weaves together images and text to examine mothers and mothering, sisters and caretaking, and colonized bodies. Exploring loss and inheritance, beauty and balance, Danielle Geller pays homage to our pasts, traditions, and heritage, to the families we are given and the families we choose.

Reviews
“Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller is a journey story we’ve never read before. Geller travels through snippets of her own life and that of her mother’s, creating a narrative where all roads lead to her mother’s home in the Navajo Nation. It’s an honest, intimate, and heart-wrenching memoir that explores fractured family, the damaging effects of alcoholism and poverty, and what it means to seek healing from legacies of trauma. This book gave me chills. Trained as a librarian and archivist, Geller has created a type of archive, a living collection of memories and documents that speak to a life that is at once precisely individualistic while also being universally resonant. Read this book.”—Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Sabrina & Corina

“Dog Flowers pulls the few remaining threads of an unraveled family life. This courageous, honest, desperate, tender, and compelling book tells a daughter’s story of her troubled mother. In Dog Flowers, we learn that a handful of threads can never reweave the blanket of family, or patch up what a mother’s abandonment has torn. What little we learn of Geller’s Navajo mother comes from collaged notes and journal entries, photographs and reportage; it’s a story full of gaps. Which is exactly what’s remarkable about this book: Geller does not seek to make anything whole but herself. She refuses to deal in the tropes of redemption and reconciliation—which just shows how much strength it takes not to judge another’s life or lie about it. Even her return to her mother’s Navajo Nation does not bring about an easy cultural reunion, although it does give us a satisfying sense that while an immediate family can fall apart, an extended family, a tribe, ties a tight web that might just hold.”—Heid E. Erdrich, award-winning poet, author, and editor of the award-winning New Poets of Native Nations 

“A Navajo woman’s memoir of family, loss, and self-discovery. [Danielle Geller] takes readers on two parallel journeys: that of her mother, Laureen, who left the Navajo reservation at age nineteen, “almost as soon as she could,” and her own, which begins with her notifying her sister Eileen that their mother was dying. . . . After Laureen’s death, Geller collected her mother’s belongings, “packed into eight suitcases” and including “her diaries, her photos, and the letters she kept.” Using these personal items, the author expertly weaves her story into Laureen’s. . . . Geller’s mix of archival research and personal memoir allows readers to see a refreshing variety of perspectives and layers, resulting in an eye-opening, moving narrative. A deftly rendered, powerful story of family, grief, and the search for self.”—Kirkus Reviews

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.12" x 9.25" | 27 black & white photos | Hardcover

The highly anticipated debut poetry collection of Mi'kmaq poems by Prince Edward Island's Poet Laureate, Julie Pellisier-Lush.

This collection will enthrall poetry lovers. Skilled at taking words from hearts and minds to paper, Julie's poems will connect with the reader deeply. Some poems were created with teachings from our Elders and some were created to learn more about the art of words.

At times heart wrenching and other times a call to action for Mother Earth, each poignant poem is paired with vivid artwork crafted by the poet herself.

Take what you like, use what you need, most of all enjoy.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 9.00" | Paperback