Indigenous Peoples

A new and expanded version of Gord Hill's seminal illustrated history of Indigenous struggles in the Americas. When it was first published in 2010, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book was heralded as a groundbreaking illustrated history of Indigenous activism and resistance in the Americas over the previous 500 years, from contact to present day. Eleven years later, author and artist Gord Hill has revised and expanded the book, which is now available in colour for the first time.

The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book powerfully portrays flashpoints in history when Indigenous peoples have risen up and fought back against colonizers and other oppressors. Events depicted include the the Spanish conquest of the Aztec, Mayan and Inca empires; the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890; the resistance of the Great Plains peoples in the 19th century; and more recently, the Idle No More protests supporting Indigenous sovereignty and rights in 2012 and 2013, and the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Canadian events depicted include the Oka crisis in 1990, the Grand River land dispute between Six Nations and the Government of Canada in 2006, and the Wet'suwet'en anti-pipeline protests in 2020.

With strong, plain language and evocative illustrations, this revised and expanded edition of The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book reveals the tenacity and perseverance of Indigenous peoples as they endured 500-plus years of genocide, massacre, torture, rape, displacement, and assimilation: a necessary antidote to conventional histories of the Americas.

The book includes a foreword by Pamela Palmater, a Mi'kmaq lawyer, professor, and political commentator.

Reviews
"Gord Hill's goal of giving indigenous peoples a better understanding of their past so as to counter the benign version all too often taught in schools and presented in the media makes the format [of his work] the perfect vehicle for his hard-hitting message."-BC Studies

"Gord Hill has put colonial myth-makers on notice with a comic that educates and inspires." - The St'at'imc Runner

"Comics aren't always known for treating serious subjects, but Gord Hill's The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book adds a dose of reality to the genre. Hill, of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation, has taken the topics of dispossession, genocide, and the colonization of First Nations in the western hemisphere and, surprisingly, pulled off a rendering in comic book form." -Dissident Voice

"Never before have I come across a non-fiction graphic novel capable of evoking such a powerful emotional response. Dealing with such topics as genocide, oppression and assimilation the comic is sure to cause frustration and sadness in the reader. At the same time, 500 Years of Resistance is inspirational and empowering, accurately depicting the strength and nobility of Native warriors. Gord's straightforward approach to writing coupled with his iconic illustrations has created a truly groundbreaking comic book." -Redwire Media

"An excellent introduction to the tremendous historical and ongoing legacy of resistance on the part of Indigenous peoples in Canada and elsewhere in the continent against the settler colonial regimes that continue to oppress and exploit." -Popmatters. com

Educator Information
This book is available in French: 500 ans de résistance autochtone 

Additional Information
144 pages | 9.00" x 12.00" | Comic Book | Colour Illustrations Throughout 

Drawing attention to the ways in which creative practices are essential to the health, well-being, and healing of Indigenous peoples, The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being addresses the effects of artistic endeavour on the “good life”, or mino-pimatisiwin in Cree, which can be described as the balanced interconnection of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. In this interdisciplinary collection, Indigenous knowledges inform an approach to health as a wider set of relations that are central to well-being, wherein artistic expression furthers cultural continuity and resilience, community connection, and kinship to push back against forces of fracture and disruption imposed by colonialism.

The need for healing—not only individuals but health systems and practices—is clear, especially as the trauma of colonialism is continually revealed and perpetuated within health systems. The field of Indigenous health has recently begun to recognize the fundamental connection between creative expression and well-being. This book brings together scholarship by humanities scholars, social scientists, artists, and those holding experiential knowledge from across Turtle Island to add urgently needed perspectives to this conversation. Contributors embrace a diverse range of research methods, including community-engaged scholarship with Indigenous youth, artists, Elders, and language keepers.

The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being demonstrates the healing possibilities of Indigenous works of art, literature, film, and music from a diversity of Indigenous peoples and arts traditions. This book will resonate with health practitioners, community members, and any who recognize the power of art as a window, an entryway to access a healthy and good life.

Reviews
“There is a genuinely beautiful life-force at work in this text: it’s artful and creative, readable and forceful. The objectives and scholarship throughout The Arts of Indigenous Health and Wellbeing are clear, grounded, rigorous and likely to make important contributions to knowledge and conversations about Indigenous health and the humanities in times and space of contemporary coloniality.” — Sarah de Leeuw

"The unique content of The Arts of Indigenous Health and Wellbeing may be useful for communities to heal, and to preserve cultural and traditional knowledge that can be passed down in the written form. The content can spark dialogue and learning by being discussed and used by families, generations, health providers/healers and a wide array of learners.”— Margot Latimer

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Ch 1: What This Pouch Holds

Ch 2: Baskets, Birchbark Scrolls, and Maps of Land: Indigenous Making Practices as Oral Historiography

Ch 3: For Kaydence and her Cousins: Health and Happiness in Cultural Legacies and Contemporary Contexts

Ch 4: Stories and Staying Power: Art-Making as (Re)Source of Cultural Resilience and Well-Being for Panniqtumiut

Ch 5: Healthy Connections: Facilitators’ Perceptions of Programming Linking Arts and Wellness with Indigenous Youth

Ch 6: Narrating Relations: Genetic Ancestry Testing and Alternarratives of Queer Kinship

Ch 7: The Doubleness of Sound in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools

Ch 8 Kissed by Lightning: Mediating Haudenosaunee Traditional Teachings through Film

Ch 9: Minobimaadiziwinke (Creating a Good Life): Native Bodies Healing

Ch 10: Body Counts: War, Pesticides and Queer Spirituality in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints

Ch 11: “The Song of the Starved Soul”

Ch 12 Sakihiwawin: Land’s Overflow into the space-tial “Otherwise”

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

The Bear Is My Father is a celebration of the life, teachings, and legacy of Marcellus Bear Heart Williams. It follows the critically-acclaimed book, The Wind Is My Mother, which has been translated into 14 languages today. Globally renowned, Bear Heart was one of the last traditionally trained medicine persons of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Weaving together the knowledge of many traditions, Bear Heart was an ordained American Baptist Minister, Road Chief, and renowned spiritual counselor. Speaking in 13 Native American tribal languages, Bear Heart was considered a Multi-Tribal Spiritual Leader and was called upon internationally for his healing work. The Bear Is My Father contains the final words Bear Heart wrote before his "going on," with contributions from friends and family whose lives had been forever changed by his presence and work. It is co-authored by Reginah WaterSpirit, Bear Heart's Medicine Helper and wife of 23 years. When Reginah would ask Bear Heart exactly how he made his medicine, he always answered, “I don’t make the medicine, it was here before me. I’ve been entrusted to be a caretaker of certain sacred ways.”

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

Drawing upon his Cree and Scandinavian roots, Harold R. Johnson merges myth, fantasy, and history in this epic saga of exploration and adventure.

While sorting through the possessions of his recently deceased neighbour, Harold Johnson discovers an old, handwritten manuscript containing epic stories composed in an obscure Swedish dialect. Together, they form The Björkan Sagas.

The first saga tells of three Björkans, led by Juha the storyteller, who set out from their valley to discover what lies beyond its borders. Their quest brings them into contact with the devious story-trader Anthony de Marchand, a group of gun-toting aliens in search of Heaven, and an ethereal Medicine Woman named Lilly. In the second saga, Juha is called upon to protect his people from invaders bent on stealing the secrets contained within the valley’s sacred trees. The third saga chronicles the journey of Lilly as she travels across the universe to bring aid to Juha and the Björkans, who face their deadliest enemy yet.

The Björkan Sagas is a bold, innovative fusion of narrative traditions set in an enchanted world of heroic storytellers, shrieking Valkyries, and fire-breathing dragons.

Additional Information
176 pages | 5.00" x 7.75" | Hardcover

In a world that requires knowledge and wisdom to address developing crises around us, The Gatherings shows how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can come together to create meaningful and lasting relationships.

Thirty years ago, in Wabanaki territory – a region encompassing the state of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes – a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals came together to explore some of the most pressing questions at the heart of Truth and Healing efforts in the United States and Canada. Meeting over several years in long-weekend gatherings, in a Wabanaki-led traditional Council format, assumptions were challenged, perspectives upended, and stereotypes shattered. Alliances and friendships were formed that endure to this day.

The Gatherings tells the moving story of these meetings in the words of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants. Reuniting to reflect on how their lives were changed by their experiences and how they continue to be impacted by them, the participants share the valuable lessons they learned.

The many voices represented in The Gatherings offer insights and strategies that can inform change at the individual, group, and systems levels. These voices affirm that authentic relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples – with their attendant anxieties, guilt, anger, embarrassments, and, with time, even laughter and mutual affection – are key to our shared futures here in North America. Now, more than ever, it is critical that we come together to reimagine.

Reviews
“Very impressive. The contributions of these men and women are noteworthy and deserve to be read and available to all persons who are interested and want to learn from them.” — The Hon. Graydon Nicholas, Chancellor and Endowed Chair in Native Studies, St. Thomas University, and Former Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick

“Shirley N. Hager’s gentle and affirming spirit shines through as she introduces the reader to this unique, collective experience. I felt so much gratitude for each participant, opening themselves to let strangers in.” — Beth Clifford, Curriculum Coordinator, Maine Indian Education

“I had intended to only take a quick look at the book and come back to it later, but once I started reading I couldn’t stop. The Gatherings is a very well-constructed book of great importance both as a cultural document and as a tool for teaching and learning.”

Educator Information
Mawopiyane
Gwen Bear
The Reverend Shirley Bowen
Alma H. Brooks/Zapawey-kwey
gkisedtanamoogk
JoAnn Hughes
Debbie Leighton
Barb Martin
Miigam’agan
T. Dana Mitchell
Wayne A. Newell
Betty Peterson
Marilyn Keyes Roper
Wesley Rothermel

Afterword by Dr. Frances Hancock

To reflect the collaborative nature of this project, the word Mawopiyane is used to describe the full group of co-authors. Mawopiyane, in Passamaquoddy, literally means "let us sit together," but the deeper meaning is of a group coming together, as in the longhouse, to struggle with a sensitive or divisive issue – but one with a very desirable outcome. It is a healing word and one that is recognizable in all Wabanaki languages.

Table of Contents
Foreword
With Gratitude
Notes on Terminology
Introduction

Gathering

The Talking Circle

Miigam’agan
Wayne
Gwen
Dana
Alma
Barb
gkisedtanamoogk
Shirley H.
Debbie
Shirley B.
Wesley
Marilyn
Betty
JoAnn

The Last Gathering
The Decision
Hindsight
The Gatherings: May 1987 to May 1993
Creating This Book

The Giveaway Blanket

The Circle and Ceremony
The Circle and Decision Making
Ceremony: Protect or Share It?

Allies, Friends, Family
Beginnings
The Women Compare Notes
The Relationship Evolves
Mutuality

How We Got Here
The Doctrine of Discovery
But What about the Treaties?
The Personal Is Political
Economic Self-Determination
Beginning to Make Amends
Some Progress ... and a Long Way to Go

How It Could Be Different
Being Here Legitimately
Acknowledging First Peoples/Honoring the Treaties
An Indigenous Worldview
The Need for Gathering Spaces
Creating a Gathering Space
Working Together on a Cause
Humility versus “White Guilt”
Non-Natives Working with Our Own People
Entering the Longhouse

Being in the Relationship: An Afterword by Dr. Frances Hancock

Appendix: How This Book Came to Be
Notes
Suggested Resources
Contributors
Map: Location of the Gatherings
Reader’s Guide
Index

Additional Information
304 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 23 illustrations

Authenticity Note: This book's contributors are Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Readers must determine if this works as an authentic Indigenous work for their purposes.

White settlers saw land for the taking. They failed to consider the perspective of the people already here.

In The Land Is Not Empty, author Sarah Augustine unpacks the harm of the Doctrine of Discovery—a set of laws rooted in the fifteenth century that gave Christian governments the moral and legal right to seize lands they “discovered” despite those lands already being populated by indigenous peoples. Legitimized by the church and justified by a misreading of Scripture, the Doctrine of Discovery says a land can be considered “empty” and therefore free for the taking if inhabited by “heathens, pagans, and infidels.”

In this prophetic book, Augustine, a Pueblo woman, reframes the colonization of North America as she investigates ways that the Doctrine of Discovery continues to devastate indigenous cultures, and even the planet itself, as it justifies exploitation of both natural resources and people. This is a powerful call to reckon with the root causes of a legacy that continues to have devastating effects on indigenous peoples around the globe and a call to recognize how all of our lives and our choices are interwoven.
​
What was done in the name of Christ must be undone in the name of Christ, the author claims. The good news of Jesus means there is still hope for the righting of wrongs. Right relationship with God, others, and the earth requires no less.

Additional Information
224 pages | 5.25" x 8.00" 

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, settlers dispossessed Indigenous people and undermined their sovereignty as nations. One site of invasion was Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien’kehá:ka community and part of the Rotinonhsiónni confederacy.

The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler-colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawà:ke law; the establishment of modern Kahnawà:ke in the context of French imperial claims; intensifying colonial invasions under British rule; and ultimately the Canadian invasion in the guise of the Indian Act, private property, and coercive pressure to assimilate. Daniel Rück reveals increasingly powerful and aggressive colonial governments interfering with the affairs of one of the most populous and influential Indigenous communities in nineteenth-century Canada. What he describes is an invasion spearheaded by bureaucrats, Indian agents, politicians, surveyors, and entrepreneurs. Although these invasions were often chaotic and poorly planned, Rück shows that despite their apparent weaknesses they tended to benefit settlers while becoming sources of oppression for Indigenous peoples who attempted to navigate colonial realities while defending and building their own nations.

This original, meticulously researched book is deeply connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence. It is one story of the "slow violence" of Canada’s legal and environmental conquest of Indigenous peoples and lands, and the persistence of one Indigenous nation in the face of the onslaught.

This book will appeal to legal historians, historical geographers, and scholars of Quebec history, Canadian history, and Indigenous studies.

Reviews
"In this excellent book, Daniel Rück has woven a seamless web of law, history, geography, and Indigenous knowledge, and has made it all look easy." — Philip Girard, professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

"The Laws and the Land is an account of colonial harm. It is an unprecedented look at the dispossession and oppression of the People of Kahnawà:ke by slowly taking their lands away. This book is a must-read for our People but also for all Indigenous peoples who have been dispossessed by the settler governments, churches, and unscrupulous individuals. And it also shows the perseverance and survival of a Mohawk community." — Kenneth Deer, former secretary of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawà:ke and honorary doctor of laws, Concordia University

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Introduction

1 Kahnawà:ke and Canada: Relationships of Laws and Lands

2 "Whereas the Seigniory of Sault St. Louis Is the Property of the Iroquois Nation": Dissidents, Property, and Power, 1790–1815

3 "Out of the beaten track": Before the Railroad, 1815–50

4 "In What Legal Anarchy Will Questions of Property Soon Find Themselves": The Era of Confederation, 1850–75

5 "The Consequences of This Promiscuous Ownership": Wood and the Indian Act, 1867–1883

6 "Equal to an Ordnance Map of the Old Country": The Walbank Survey, 1880–93

7 "It is Necessary to Follow the Custom of the Reserve Which is Contrary to Law": Rupture and Continuity, 1885–1900

Conclusion

Notes; Bibliography; Index

Additional Information
336 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 27 b&w photos, 5 maps | Hardcover

A spellbinding novel celebrating Indigenous sensuality; the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French, now available in English.

When it was first published in Quebec, The Lover, The Lake was heralded as the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French. Today, as it is translated into English for the first time, author Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau would rather call it a celebration of sensuality, another first. At a time when Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed of their land and history as well as their relationship to the body, the love explored by Wabougouni and Gabriel is an act of defiance. Their intimate connection plays out on the shores of Lake Abitibi in an affair as turbulent and unfathomable as the lake itself.

"The aim here is to break free of the bonds of wounds the priests' abuse has left on our bodies and souls, wounds linked to loss--of land, of intimate spaces, of identity both as an individual and community member, of sexual identity, of delight in the body, of innocence and the uncomplicated nature of lovemaking. My hope is that this novel will serve to unearth the seed of joy buried deep in our culture, still profoundly alive . . . The Lover, The Lake shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure." -- Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau, from the prologue

Reviews
"A gift to its readers." - Montreal Review of Books

"Both raw and poetic... about healing and continuance... May more French Indigenous writing find its way into English." - Globe and Mail

Additional Information
170 pages | 5.50" x 8.00"

In this latest novel from Stephen Graham Jones comes a “heartbreakingly beautiful story” (Library Journal, starred review) of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians is “a masterpiece. Intimate, devastating, brutal, terrifying, warm, and heartbreaking in the best way” (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts). This novel follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in violent, vengeful ways. Labeled “one of 2020’s buzziest horror novels” (Entertainment Weekly), this is a remarkable horror story “will give you nightmares—the good kind of course” (BuzzFeed).

Reviews
“The Only Good Indians is scary good. Stephen Graham Jones is one of our most talented and prolific living writers. The book is full of humor and bone chilling images. It’s got love and revenge, blood and basketball. More than I could have asked for in a novel. It also both reveals and subverts ideas about contemporary Native life and identity. Novels can do some much to render actual and possible lives lived. Stephen Graham Jones truly knows how to do this, and how to move us through a story at breakneck (literally) speed. I’ll never see an elk or hunting, or what a horror novel can do the same way again.”—Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize finalist of There There

Additional Information
336 pages | 5.50" x 8.37"

Popularly thought of as a recreational vehicle and one of the key ingredients of an ideal wilderness getaway, the canoe is also a political vessel. A potent symbol and practice of Indigenous cultures and traditions, the canoe has also been adopted to assert conservation ideals, feminist empowerment, citizenship practices, and multicultural goals. Documenting many of these various uses, this book asserts that the canoe is not merely a matter of leisure and pleasure; it is folded into many facets of our political life.

Taking a critical stance on the canoe, The Politics of the Canoe expands and enlarges the stories that we tell about the canoe’s relationship to, for example, colonialism, nationalism, environmentalism, and resource politics. To think about the canoe as a political vessel is to recognize how intertwined canoes are in the public life, governance, authority, social conditions, and ideologies of particular cultures, nations, and states.

Almost everywhere we turn, and any way we look at it, the canoe both affects and is affected by complex political and cultural histories. Across Canada and the U.S., canoeing cultures have been born of activism and resistance as much as of adherence to the mythologies of wilderness and nation building. The essays in this volume show that canoes can enhance how we engage with and interpret not only our physical environments but also our histories and present-day societies.

Reviews
“An engaging study of where the canoe finds itself in post Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada. From being coopted and used by settlers as a symbol of Canadian nationalism, this collection of essays from academics, activists, and community leaders demonstrates how the canoe has been reclaimed by Indigenous people and is being used as a powerful tool for to build Indigenous sovereignty and heal communities.” – Dale Barbour, Department of History, Brandon University

Educator Information
Contributors Include: Cameron Baldassarra, Hillary Beattie, Albert Braz, Frank Brown, Vina Brown, Chris Ling Chapman, Chuck Commanda, Rachel L. Cushman, Jon D. Daehnke, Jessica Dunkin, Danielle Gendron, Jonathan Goldner, Tony A. Johnson, Ian Mauro, Larry McDermott, Sarah Nelson, Peter H. Wood, John B. Zoe

Topics: Indigenous Studies, Social History, Sports and Recreation

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 40 b&w illustrations, maps, index, bibliography

Authenticity Note: This book has received out authentic Indigenous text label because it contains Indigenous contributions.  It is up to readers to determine if it's authentic for their purposes.

The hilarious story of an unlikely group of Indigenous dancers who find themselves thrown together on a performance tour of Europe.

The Tour is all prepared. The Prairie Chicken dance troupe is all set for a fifteen-day trek through Europe, performing at festivals and cultural events. But then the performers all come down with the flu. And John Greyeyes, a retired cowboy who hasn't danced in fifteen years, finds himself abruptly thrust into the position of leading a hastily-assembled group of replacement dancers.

A group of expert dancers they are not. There's a middle-aged woman with advanced arthritis, her nineteen-year-old niece who is far more interested in flirtations than pow-wow, and an enigmatic man from the U.S. -- all being chased by Nadine, the organizer of the original tour who is determined to be a part of the action, and the handsome man she picked up in a gas-station bathroom. They're all looking to John, who has never left the continent, to guide them through a world that he knows nothing about. As the gang makes its way from one stop to another, absolutely nothing goes as planned and the tour becomes a string of madcap adventures.

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is loosely based -- like, hospital-gown loose -- on the true story of a group of Indigenous dancers who left Saskatchewan and toured through Europe in the 1970s. Dawn Dumont brings her signature razor-sharp wit and impeccable comedic timing to this hilarious, warm, and wildly entertaining novel.

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

When the Red Nation released their call for a Red Deal, it generated coverage in places from Teen Vogue to Jacobin to the New Republic, was endorsed by the DSA, and has galvanized organizing and action. Now, in response to popular demand, the Red Nation expands their original statement filling in the histories and ideas that formed it and forwarding an even more powerful case for the actions it demands.

One-part visionary platform, one-part practical toolkit, the Red Deal is a platform that encompasses everyone, including non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live on Indigenous land. We—Indigenous, Black and people of color, women and trans folks, migrants, and working people—did not create this disaster, but we have inherited it. We have barely a decade to turn back the tide of climate disaster. It is time to reclaim the life and destiny that has been stolen from us and riseup together to confront this challenge and build a world where all life can thrive. Only mass movements can do what the moment demands. Politicians may or may not follow--it is up to them--but we will design, build, and lead this movement with or without them.

The Red Deal is a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives. The Red Deal is not a response to the Green New Deal, or a “bargain” with the elite and powerful. It’s a deal with the humble people of the earth; a pact that we shall strive for peace and justice and a declaration that movements for justice must come from below and to the left.

Reviews
“The Red Nation has given us The Red Deal, an Indigenous Peoples’ world view and practice that leads to profound changes in existing human relations. Five hundred years of European colonialism, which produced capitalist economic and social relations, has nearly destroyed life itself. Technology can be marshaled to reverse this death march, but it will require a vision for the future and a path to follow to arrive there, and that is what The Red Deal provides.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

"The Red Deal is an incendiary and necessary compilation. With momentum for a Green New Deal mounting, the humble and powerful organizers of The Red Nation remind us that a Green New Deal must also be Red—socialist, committed to class struggle, internationalist in orientation, and opposed to the settler-colonial theft of Indigenous lands and resources. Redistribution also requires reparations and land back. The Red Deal is a profound call to action for us all."—Harsha Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

“We really need The Red Deal because it forces open a critical conversation on how Land Back can be a platform for mass mobilization and collective struggle. The Red Deal poignantly argues that if we do not foreground decolonization and Indigenous liberation in climate justice strategies such as the Green New Deal, we will reproduce the violence of the original New Deal that dammed life-giving rivers and further dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their lands. Strategically, The Red Deal shows how, if we understand green infrastructure and economic restructuring as anticolonial struggle, as well as an anticapitalist, we can move from reforms that deny Indigenous jurisdiction towards just coalitions for repossession that radically rethink environmental policy and land protection without sacrificing Indigenous life and relations.”—Shiri Pasternak, author of Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State

“The Red Deal asserts that the fight for climate justice must center Native people when it comes to the issues that disproportionately impact Native communities, but it also communicates what the Green New Deal does not — namely, that public lands are stolen lands and climate change is significantly caused by just a few industries, which the government has at worst neglected to hold accountable and at best assisted in their efforts to mine the earth for resources in a move that put profits over people.” —Teen Vogue

“For the Red Nation, living and being interdependent with Mother Nature is explicitly anticapitalist. An ethos merely hinted at in the Green New Deal, The Red Deal understands that capitalism fundamentally protects wealth, not life”—The Politic

“The Red Nation also names Black abolitionists as an inspiration for the Red Deal, citing the links between mass incarceration and detention and climate change. They further note that police departments, prisons, and the U.S. military receive billions of taxpayer dollars annually while doing irreparable harm to Native Americans, Black people, and the Earth.” —Essence

Educator Information
Excerpt from the book:

The Red Deal begins with the oldest yet often forgotten struggle on this continent: ending the occupation. While usually erased from the history of this nation, settler colonial occupation has fundamentally shaped the development of the United States and indeed the world that it dominates economically and politically. Ending the occupation links those of us in the seat of empire with those who face its weapons, soldiers, and policies around the world. Together we share the common enemy of US imperialism, and Indigenous people here have fought against it since the first settlers began to occupy our lands by force. It is important to remember that the very first act of US imperialism was the military and settler incursions on Indigenous land as the fledgling colonies expanded westward. This is why we begin with ending the occupation.

The struggle against occupation on this continent has remained strong throughout history and continues to this day. We’ve seen this in the global uprisings led by Black relatives who have been resisting the colonization of Africa and the enslavement and oppression of African people stolen to work on this continent for centuries. The uprisings during the summer of 2020, even with the global COVID-19 pandemic, built upon the decades of Black resistance to police violence and the everyday brutality of American society towards Black people, and exploded into some of the largest mobilizations in US history. The spread of uprisings throughout cities across the country was also marked by the sharpening of tactics and clarity of the roots of the issues, with images of burnt down police precincts and flipped cop cars evoking memories of Black and Indigenous resistance to slave plantations and frontier forts. Calls for abolition of police and prisons arose with renewed volume, stretching forward from a long history of abolitionist struggle.

It is important that we continue nurturing these histories and movements of struggle against occupation on these lands and continue to build relationships with others globally who face the violence of occupation. We begin with addressing those things that act as obstacles to our collective liberation: the prisons and detention centers filled with our family members; the police officers and prison guards who stand between us and the capitalist interests they defend; and the military, police, and vigilantes who murder our relatives. As we know, colonial occupation is upheld by constant threats of violence and in many instances, actual violence. It is therefore no surprise that these obstacles to our life and wellbeing that employ violence in order to maintain the occupation, receive the largest proportions of resources by the US settler state. We seek to dismantle these institutions that get in our way of living good lives, and we aim to divert resources away from them through divestment.

This is just the first step, though. It is not enough to be against any one thing, even something as big, evil, and all-encompassing as colonial occupation. Ending the occupation gives us the space to breathe and envision other possibilities that we are for, and we must be clear about what we are for. We are for Indigenous life, for the life of all human and other-than-human beings. And in order to live good lives, we must heal ourselves from the destruction caused by colonialism and capitalism by stopping what harms us and desecrates our land and begin to build what will sustain us.

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.00" x 7.00" | b&w illustrations

Authenticity Note: The Red Nation is a coalition of Native and non-Native activists, educators, students, and community organizers advocating Native liberation. The Red Deal was written collectively by members of the Red Nation and the allied movements and community members who comprised the Red Deal coalition. Everyone from youth to elders; from knowledge keepers to farmers contributed to the creation of The Red Deal. It's up to readers to determine if this title works as an authentic resource for their purposes

Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago—from National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson.

In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, Sonja, leads a life of solitude, punctuated only by spells of dizzying romantic obsession. And their son, Edgar, fled home long ago, turning to drugs to mute his feelings of alienation.

With the family’s annual bonfire approaching—an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday and Ray-Ray’s death, and a rare moment in which they openly talk about his memory—Maria attempts to call the family together from their physical and emotional distances once more. But as the bonfire draws near, each of them feels a strange blurring of the boundary between normal life and the spirit world. Maria and Ernest take in a foster child who seems to almost miraculously keep Ernest’s mental fog at bay. Sonja becomes dangerously fixated on a man named Vin, despite—or perhaps because of—his ties to tragedy in her lifetime and lifetimes before. And in the wake of a suicide attempt, Edgar finds himself in the mysterious Darkening Land: a place between the living and the dead, where old atrocities echo.

Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, The Removed seamlessly blends the real and spiritual to excavate the deep reverberations of trauma—a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.

Reviews
“Brandon Hobson has given us a haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family’s reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family’s way home is full—in equal measure—of melancholy and love. The Removed is spirited, droll, and as quietly devastating as rain lifting from earth to sky.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There

"Hobson is a master storyteller and illustrates in gently poetic prose how for many Native Americans the line between this world and the next isn’t so sharp. This will stay long in readers’ minds."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Mesmerizing…. Spare, strange, bird-haunted, and mediated by grief, the novel defies its own bleakness as its calls forth a delicate and monumental endurance.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A multilayered, emotionally radiant second novel…. Hobson uses Cherokee tradition and the Echotas’ story to amplify each other, blending past and present in a narrative of blistering loss and final healing. Highly recommended.”— Library Journal (starred review)

"With elegiac grace, The Removed tells of one family’s struggles to find wholeness after tragedy."— Booklist

“There are many stories in The Removed, a mystical, deep, and compassionate novel that explores how the intimate lives of a family are shaped by powerful ancestral legacies. The traumas of the past, both personal and historical, are forever with us, but—and here is the miraculous heart of this novel—people can still abide, resist, and even recover. Every character in The Removed seems to contain an intricate, particular, fully realized world. A quietly dazzling and haunting achievement.”— Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document

“Astonishing. This moving and affecting novel tells the story of a Native family in crisis, each person dealing with the aftereffects of grief and trauma following the murder of a beloved son. But this is a book of hope and healing, a remarkable tale of resilience in the face of unimaginable pain. Written with lyrical and evocative prose and a deep reverence for Cherokee culture and tradition, The Removed is an important contribution to indigenous fiction and American literature.”— David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts

Additional Information
288 pages | 5.31" x 8.00" | Paperback

A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.

On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.

Reviews
“With compelling characters and images that linger long after the final page is turned, The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“As seeds are a gift from one generation to another, the song and the word of the seeds return to us, reminding us of our covenant, and also of the promise of love and rebirth. Always, I remember the Zapatista proverb ‘They thought they buried us, they forgot that we were seeds.’ That we are, and Diane Wilson’s narrative of intergenerational loss and rebirth fills my heart with gratitude.”—Winona LaDuke, author of Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming

“A gracefully told story of continuity through seeds saved and nurtured by Dakota women, The Seed Keeper is lush and sustaining—a read that feeds heart and spirit in the same way as do the gardens that are their legacy.”—Linda LeGarde Grover, author of Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year

Additional Information
440 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

The Canadian public largely understands reconciliation as the harmonization of Indigenous–settler relations for the benefit of the nation. But is this really happening? Reconciliation politics, as developed in South America and South Africa, work counter to retributive justice. The Theatre of Regret asks whether – within the contexts of settler colonialism – the approach to reconciliation will ultimately favour the state over the needs and requirements of Indigenous peoples.

Interweaving literature, art, and other creative media throughout his analysis, David Gaertner questions the state-centred frameworks of reconciliation by exploring the critical roles that Indigenous and allied authors play in defining, challenging, and refusing settler regret. In 2007, Canada became the first liberal democracy to formally implement a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process, a prominent element of global intrastate politics in the 1990s. Through close examination of core concepts in reconciliation theory – acknowledgment, apology, redress, and forgiveness – Gaertner unpacks reconciliation within the contexts of Canadian settler colonialism and the international history of the TRC. In so doing, he exposes the deeply embedded colonial ideologies that often define reconciliation in settler-colonial states.

The Theatre of Regret redirects current debates about reconciliation and provides a roadmap for the deconstruction of state-centred discourses of regret.

Reviews
"The Theatre of Regret makes a vital contribution to discussions about reconciliation in Canada by foregrounding the importance of Indigenous literatures for engaging, troubling, and, most crucially, speaking far beyond reconciliation’s limits. Gaertner listens deeply to how Indigenous artists speak truths that cannot be unheard and give resonant voice to world-altering ways of living in good relation." — Pauline Wakeham, coeditor of Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

Educator Information
Scholars and students of Indigenous studies, cultural studies, Canadian studies, literature, law, and political science will find this book challenging and necessary, as will thoughtful Canadian readers.

Table of Contents
Introduction: Bearing Witness to the TRC

1 The Theatre of Regret: The Politics of Reconciliation after the Second World War

2 Listen to the Bones: Colonial Static and the Call for Reconciliation

3 To Acknowledge, but Not to Accept: Critical Reflections on Settler State Apologies

4 Redress as a Gift: Historical Reparations and the Logic of the Gift

5 An Exercise in Forgiveness: Confronting the Risk of Forgiveness and Empathy

Conclusion: “Shallow Reconciliation” and the Indigenous Future Imaginary

Notes, Selected Bibliography, Index

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