First Nations

In 1867, Canada’s federal government became responsible for the education of Indigenous peoples: Status Indians and some Métis would attend schools on reserves; non-Status Indians and some Métis would attend provincial schools. The chapters in this collection – some reflective, some piercing, all of them insightful – show that this system set the stage for decades of broken promises and misguided experiments that are only now being rectified in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. The contributors individually explore what must change in order to work toward reconciliation; collectively, they reveal the possibilities and challenges associated with incorporating Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous teaching and healing practices into school courses and programs.

Reviews
"This book provides innovative reflections on long-standing issues in Indigenous education in Canada and suggests possible pathways to address the educational debt that Canada owes Indigenous peoples. I recommend it to educators, students, and administrators, to anyone interested in learning about the history of residential schools, and to all readers who are interested in reconciliation and decolonisation." — Valentina de Riso, Nottingham Trent University, British Journal of Canadian Studies

"There is no doubting the importance of the subject tackled by this edited collection... In eleven highly diverse chapters, plus a substantial introduction by editor Sheila Carr-Stewart, this collection seeks to shed light on the mechanisms of educational exclusion and sound out the prospects for a different kind of education in the future." — Mark Fettes, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto Quarterly

"Readers who are new to the topic, such as practicing teachers who wish to enhance their responsiveness to Indigenous students or undergraduate history majors, will gain accessible historical and policy context, alongside complex and nuanced representations of the challenges that pervade Indigenous education today." — Heather E. McGregor, Historical Studies in Education

"Knowing the Past, Facing the Future is critical reading for those invested in Indigenous education, as all Canadians ought to be. By confronting colonialism and racism as they intersect with reconciliation, the contributors of this collected work address the role and responsibility of education in decolonizing a society. I recommend this book be read by all educators."— Margaret Kovach, author of Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts

"New and seasoned readers to Indigenous education in Canada will value how the authors tackle old issues in new ways, uncover challenges that have been ignored, and present innovative possibilities that learn from the past for a much better future."— Jo-ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem), co-editor of Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology

"This must-read collection of essays provides needed historic reflections on treaties and Indigenous peoples’ aspirations for education, and much needed insight, support, and research to address the reconciliation agenda and correct the longstanding educational debt owed Indigenous peoples."— Marie Battiste, author of Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit

Educator Information
Contributors: Jonathan Anuik, Michael Cottrell, Karlee D. Fellner, Rosalind Hardie, Darryl Hunter, Harry Lafond, Solange Lalonde, Brooke Madden, Yvonne Poitras Pratt, Jane P. Preston, Larry Prochner, Noella Steinhauer

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

A vexatious shapeshifter walks among humans. Shadowy beasts skulk at the edges of the woods. A ghostly apparition haunts a lonely stretch of highway. Spirits and legends rise and join together to protect the north.

Land-Water-Sky/Ndè-Tı-Yat’a is the debut novel from Dene author Katłįà. Set in Canada’s far north, this layered composite novel traverses space and time, from a community being stalked by a dark presence, a group of teenagers out for a dangerous joyride, to an archeological site on a mysterious island that holds a powerful secret.

Riveting, subtle, and unforgettable, Katłįà gives us a unique perspective into what the world might look like today if Indigenous legends walked amongst us, disguised as humans, and ensures that the spiritual significance and teachings behind the stories of Indigenous legends are respected and honored.

Reviews
“This book brought a lot of memory for me when Elders used to tell stories sitting around and visiting my parents and telling stories about nąhgąąÌ. The story was so descriptive the way the Elders told stories. I related to all the events of the story because its very similar to the stories I’ve heard. MahsıÌ Cho for keeping our stories alive.”— Maro Sundberg, Executive Director at Goyatiko Language Society

“In the era of pre-contact, ancient stories were deeply engrained in the landscape from which it derives from. They inspire traditional storytellers to pass onto current times, a frame to support today’s tellings and in this writing, it’s an extension too snippets of stories heard, the collisions of changing times of life in the raw, taking many forms of intrigue, an ongoing tradition, a shapeshifting.” — John B. Zoe, traditional knowledge expert from Tlicho Territory, Senior Advisor with the Tłı̨chǫ Government, Chairperson of Dedats’eetsaa: the Tłı̨chǫ Research & Training Institute

"Katlıa has created a masterpiece that brilliantly weaves intriguing characters, history, culture, love for the land, water and sky into a riveting and magnificent read." — Monique Gray Smith, author of Tilly and the Crazy Eights

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176 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

As a follow-up to his award-winning The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality, Blair Stonechild continues his exploration of the Indigenous spiritual teachings passed down to him by Elders, and then moves his study further afield. He identifies the rise of what he terms a dominant wetigo worldview, marked by an all-consuming and destructive appetite that is antithetical to the relational philosophy of Indigenous thinking whereby all things are interrelated and in need of care and respect.

Based on Stonechild’s work with Indigenous peoples around the world, from Inuit communities in northern Canada, to the Mapuche in Chile, the Dalits in India and the Uighurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, The Loss of Indigenous Eden and the Fall of Spirituality brings together and highlights the fundamental commonalities that connect all Indigenous nations, while calling for global recognition and respect of their rights and spirituality.

Reviews
“One of the best articulations in print of some introductory teachings of a contemporary Elder.” —Mark Rumi, professor of Religion and Culture, University of Winnipeg

“It is thought-provoking, philosophical, informative, and celebrates the resilience and strength of Indigenous spirituality and our relationships to the sacred.” —Kathleen E. Absolon-King, author of Kaandossiwin

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288 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Mācī-Anihšināpēmowin / Beginning Saulteaux is an introductory look at one of the most widely spoken of all North American Indigenous languages, regionally known as Saulteaux, Ojibway, Ottawa (Odawa), Chippewa, and Algonquian. In an easy-to-use and easy-to-read series of lessons, both designed for self-study or for use in the classroom, Beginning Saulteaux will guide beginners through the language’s grammatical structures and spelling systems, as well as everyday terms and phrases. The book grounds the language in both traditional and contemporary contexts, and sheds light on the Saulteaux world view. For example, there is no word for good-bye in the language, so upon parting people will usually say Kika-wāpamin mīnawā, meaning “I’ll see you again.”

Educator & Series Information
The third in our Indigenous Languages for Beginners series, Beginning Saulteaux is an invaluable resource produced in consultation with Elders, Language Keepers, and community members, and continues our commitment to revitalizing Indigenous languages.

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304 pages | 8.50" x 11.00" | Spiral Bound

Canada’s Indian Act is infamously sexist. Through many iterations of the legislation a woman’s status rights flowed from her husband, and even once it was amended to reinstate rights lost through marriage or widowhood, First Nations women could not necessarily pass status on to their descendants.

That injustice has rightly been subject to much scrutiny, but what has it meant for First Nations men? In an original complement to studies focused on the implications of the act for women, Martin J. Cannon challenges the decades-long assumption of case law and politics that the act has affected Indigenous people as either “women” or “Indians” – but not both. He argues that sexism and racialization must instead be understood as interlocking within the law. This double discrimination has been used to disrupt gender complementarity between Indigenous men and women, and to undercut the identities of Indigenous men through their female forebears.

By restorying historically patriarchal legislation and Indigenous masculinity, Men, Masculinity, and the Indian Act encourages Indigenous men to begin to articulate the complex ways in which their life’s journey is shaped by discrimination directed at Indigenous women. Only then can a transformative discussion about Indigenous nationhood, citizenship, and reconciliation take place.

Scholars and students of Indigenous studies and gender studies will find this book of interest, as will activists, legal practitioners, and others concerned with Indigenous rights, feminism, nationhood, identity, and the Indian Act.

Reviews"
We need Martin Cannon’s meticulous and critical work to help us reimagine Indigenous identity in Canada. This book will long be a go-to reference for understanding the intersections of sexism and racism brought on by the Indian Act, and for determining sovereign identity pathways forward." — Kim Anderson, author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood

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192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

From Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel comes a groundbreaking and emotionally devastating autobiographical meditation on the complicated legacies that Canada's reservation school system has cast on his grandparents', his parents' and his own generation.

NISHGA is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence. As a Nisga'a writer, Jordan Abel often finds himself in a position where he is asked to explain his relationship to Nisga'a language, Nisga'a community, and Nisga'a cultural knowledge. However, as an intergenerational survivor of residential school--both of his grandparents attended the same residential school in Chilliwack, British Columbia--his relationship to his own Indigenous identity is complicated to say the least.

NISHGA explores those complications and is invested in understanding how the colonial violence originating at the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School impacted his grandparents' generation, then his father's generation, and ultimately his own. The project is rooted in a desire to illuminate the realities of intergenerational survivors of residential school, but sheds light on Indigenous experiences that may not seem to be immediately (or inherently) Indigenous.

Drawing on autobiography, a series of interconnected documents (including pieces of memoir, transcriptions of talks, and photography), NISHGA is a book about confronting difficult truths and it is about how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples engage with a history of colonial violence that is quite often rendered invisible.

Reviews
“With NISHGA, Jordan Abel has reinvented the memoir, incorporating personal anecdotes, archival footage, legal documentation, photos and concrete poetry to create an unforgettable portrait of an Indigenous artist trying to find his place in a world that insists Indigeneity can only ever be the things that he is not. Abel deftly shows us the devastating impact this gate-keeping has had on those who, through no decisions of their own, have been ripped from our communities and forced to claw their way back home, or to a semblance of home, often unassisted. This is a brave, vulnerable, brilliant work that will change the face of nonfiction, as well as the conversations around what constitutes Indigenous identity. It's a work I will return to again and again.” —Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

“In NISHGA, Jordan Abel puts to use the documentary impulse that has already established him as an artist of inimitable methodological flair. By way of a mixture of testimonial vignettes, recordings of academic talks, found text/art, and visual art/concrete poetry, Abel sculpts a narrative of dislocation and self-examination that pressurizes received notions of “Canada” and “history” and “art” and “literature” and “belonging” and “forgiveness.” Yes, it is a book of that magnitude, of that enormity and power. By its Afterword, NISHGA adds up to a work of personal and national reckoning that is by turns heartbreaking and scathing.” —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of NDN Coping Mechanisms and A History of My Brief Body

"This is a heart-shattering read, and will also be a blanket for others looking for home. NISHGA is a work of absolute courage and vulnerability. I am in complete awe of the sorrow here and the bravery. Mahsi cho, Jordan.” —Richard Van Camp, author of Moccasin Square Gardens

“Jordan Abel digs deeply into the questions we should all be asking. Questions that need no explanation but ones that require us to crawl back into our bones, back into the marrow of our understanding. NISHGA is a ceremony where we need to be silent. Where we need to listen.” —Gregory Scofield, author of Witness, I Am

Additional Information
288 pages | 7.25" x 8.62"

Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics.

Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves.

Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.

Reviews
"Noopiming is a rare parcel of beauty and power, at once a creator and destroyer of forms. All of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s myriad literary gifts shine here — her scalpel-sharp humour, her eye for the smallest human details, the prodigious scope of her imaginative and poetic generosity. The result is a book at once fierce, uproarious, heartbreaking, and, throughout and above all else, rooted in love.” — Omar El Akkad, bestselling author of American War

"Noopiming is a novel that is as philosophically generative as it is stylistically original. It begins with someone who is frozen in a lake, waiting, and from whom we learn that: ‘being frozen in the lake is another kind of life.’ Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s expansive work explores the indivisibility of beings — old woman, old man, tree, caribou, stone, ice, spirit, geese, the brain, and more, all watching, grieving, thinking, acting, and listening amidst the ongoing and quotidian urgencies of capital. They are sleepless, ceaseless, trying to alter and to recode the world of consumerism, and their survival means that they must daily and collectively reconstruct existence in the city and its coterminous forests. Noopiming is far ahead of us in so many registers of story, language, and worldview; its cumulative effect is a new cosmography.” — Dionne Brand, award-winning author of Theory

"This imaginative book is what would happen if we gave pen and paper to the deepest, most secretive parts of ourselves. Down to the fibres, down to each breath, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson dares to not only explore the humanity of a character, but the humanity of the parts that make us whole, in a world running on empty.” — Catherine Hernandez, bestselling author of Scarborough

"Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Noopiming once again confirms her position as a brilliant, daring experimentalist and a beautiful, radical portraitist of contemporary NDN life. The prose hums with a lovingness that moved me to tears and with a humour that felt plucked right out of my rez adolescence. The chorus of thinkers, dreamers, revolutionaries, poets, and misfits that Simpson conjures here feels like a miracle. My heart ached and swelled for all of them. What I adored most about this book is that it has so little to do with the white gaze. Simpson writes for us, for NDNs, those made to make other kinds of beauty, to build other kinds of beautiful lives, where no one is looking. Noopiming is a book from the future! Simpson is our much-needed historian of the future!” — Billy-Ray Belcourt, award-winning author of This Wound is a World and NDN Coping Mechanisms

"How is it that Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s fiction can feel both familiar and warm like old teachings and absolutely fresh and brand new? Is it even fiction? Noopiming seems to exist somewhere in the in-between, with all the best parts of poetry and story. As always, I am in awe of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, prolific in every way.” — Katherena Vermette, bestselling author of The Break 

Additional Information
368 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Western theory and practice are over-represented in child welfare services for Indigenous peoples, not the other way around. Contributors to this collection invert the long-held, colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and systems of child welfare in Canada. By understanding the problem as the prevalence of the Western universe in child welfare services rather than Indigenous peoples, efforts to understand and support Indigenous children and families are fundamentally transformed. Child welfare for Indigenous peoples must be informed and guided by Indigenous practices and understandings. Privileging the iyiniw (First people, people of the land) universe leads to reinvigorating traditional knowledges, practices and ceremonies related to children and families that have existed for centuries.

The chapters of ohpikinâwasowin/Growing a Child describe wisdom-seeking journeys and service-provision changes that occurred in Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 8 territory on Turtle Island. Many of the teachings are nehiyaw (Cree) and some are from the Blackfoot people. Taken together, this collection forms a whole related to the Turtle Lodge Teachings, which expresses nehiyaw stages of development, and works to undo the colonial trappings of Canada’s current child welfare system.

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Introduction: Entering the Circle (Leona Makokis, Ralph Bodor, Avery Calhoun, and Stephanie Tyler)

iyiniw tâpwêwin ekwa kiskeyitamowin (Leona Makokis, Ralph Bodor, Avery Calhoun, Stephanie Tyler, Amanda McLellan, Ariel Veldhuisen, Kristina Kopp, Suzanne McLeod, and Sharon Goulet)

miyawata. Family Teachings on Turtle Island (Carolyn Barker)

kayiwatisi. Indigenous Program Indicators (Carol Turner and Ralph Bodor)

ayahpatisi. Practice as Ceremony (Amber Dion, Stephanie Tyler, Christie Pace, and Karen Delver)

tâpwêwin. Foundations of wīcihitāsowin (Angie Pinder and Avery Calhoun)

kîseyihtamowin. miyo ohpikinâwasowin: Igniting Spiritual Fires (Kristina Kopp, Caleb Anacker, Angie Pinder, and Bonda Thompson)

ayawawasowin. pe kīwe Come Home: Indigenous Adoptee Re-Connection with Self, Family and Community (Fran Kuefler Jose and Judy McRee)

kakehtawewin. Bringing Ceremony Home: An Inaugural kiskinohamakewin (Stephanie Tyler and Avery Calhoun)

Conclusion: Closing the Circle

Glossary: English Meaning and Pronunciation of nehiyaw Words
Glossary: English Meaning of nehiyaw Kinship Terms
References
Index

Additional Information
224 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

A vision shared. A manifesto. This remarkable work argues that Anishinabeg need to reconnect with non-colonized modes of thinking, social organization, and decision making in order to achieve genuine sovereignty. In Our Hearts Are as One Fire, Jerry Fontaine recounts the stories of three Ota’wa, Shawnee, and Ojibway-Anishinabe leaders who challenged aggressive colonial expansion – Obwandiac, Tecumtha, and Shingwauk. He weaves Ojibwaymowin language and knowledge with conversations with elders and descendants of the three leaders. The result is a book that reframes the history of Manitou Aki, sharing a vision of how Anishinabe spiritual, cultural, legal, and political principles will support the leaders of today and tomorrow.

Reviews
"A critically important manifesto written by an Anishinabe leader. Every First Nations leader in North America must read Our Hearts Are as One Fire. It is the book we have all been waiting for." — Matthew L.M. Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, Michigan State University

"makwa ogimaa presents an intimate story of Anishinabe traditional leadership, one that reflects the place of “an ethics of relationship” that is so urgently needed as we search for paradigms of leadership that once again connect us to each other and to the Earth."— Gregory A. Cajete, professor of Native American Studies and Education, University of New Mexico

Educator Information

Table of Contents
Foreword / Lee Anne Cameron

Ah-di-so-kay Anishinabeg / Traditional Storytellers

Maaitaa / Prologue

Nitam igo / Introduction

1 Gah-o-mah-mah-wahn-dah-wi-zid gah-ki-nah-gay-goo ji-gi-kayn-dah-so aki / A prophet is someone who has a completed view of the world

2 Obwandiac / The Man who Travelled and Stopped at Many Places

3 Tecumtha / He Walked Across

4 Shingwauk / The White Pine, Boss of All the Trees

5 N’swi-ish-ko-day-kawn Anishinabeg O’dish-ko-day-kawn / Our Hearts Are as One Fire

6 Meegwetch bi-zhin-dah-wi-yeg / Thank you for listening to me

Wayekwaase / It is finished

Appendix

Timeline

Glossary; Notes; Index

Additional Information
280 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Tiré d’un classique de la littérature haïda, ce roman graphique spectaculaire tout couleur nous raconte l’histoire tragique d’un chef autochtone si aveuglé par la revanche qu’il conduit sa communauté vers la guerre et la destruction. Red est le fier chef d’un petit village dans une des îles de la côte nord-ouest de la Colombie-Britannique. Sa soeur qui a été enlevée jadis par des pilleurs est localisée récemment dans un village environnant. Red s’engage à la sauver et à prendre sa revanche sur ses ravisseurs.Le livre comprend 108 pages illustrées et peintes à la main. Il est un métissage adroit entre l’imaginaire haïda et le manga japonais. Cet impressionnant roman d’action graphique sonne l’alarme sur les effets dévastateurs de la rage et de la vengeance.

Educator Information
This book is available in English: Red: A Haida Manga

Additional Information
122 pages | 8.50" x 9.00" | Paperback

Spawn is a braided collection of brief, untitled poems, a coming-of-age lyric set in the Mashteuiatsh Reserve on the shores of Lake Piekuakami (Saint-Jean) in Quebec. Undeniably political, Marie-Andrée Gill's poems ask: How can one reclaim a narrative that has been confiscated and distorted by colonizers?

The poet's young avatar reaches new levels on Nintendo, stays up too late online, wakes to her period on class photo day, and carves her lovers' names into every surface imaginable. Encompassing twenty-first-century imperialism, coercive assimilation, and 90s-kid culture, the collection is threaded with the speaker's desires, her searching: for fresh water to "take the edge off," for a "habitable word," for sex. For her "true north"—her voice and her identity.

Like the life cycle of the ouananiche that frames this collection, the speaker's journey is cyclical; immersed in teenage moments of confusion and life on the reserve, she retraces her scars to let in what light she can, and perhaps in the end discover what to "make of herself".

Reviews
"Spawn is an epic journey that follows the ouananiche in their steadfast ability to hold: rigid, shimmering, hardened to the frigid waters of winter, in all of its capacities of and for whiteness. Here, poems summon a spawn of wonderworking dreams: 'a woman risen up from all these winter worlds, heaped with ice [and] ready to start again'." —Joshua Whitehead, author of Jonny Appleseed

"Spawn is unforgettable poetry of the highest order." —Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf

"Gill's poems are like small treasures clutched in buried tree roots, preserving 'the chalky veins' of ancestral memory pulsing just below our modern hustle." —Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 resource list for grade 12 for English Language Arts and Social Justice.

Caution: Some foul language, sexual and violent content.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.25" x 7.75" | Translated by Kristen Renee Miller

A remarkable and profound collection of reflections by one of North America’s most important Indigenous leaders.

My name is Wa’xaid, given to me by my people. ‘Wa’ is ‘the river’, ‘Xaid’ is ‘good’ – good river. Sometimes the river is not good. I am a Xenaksiala, I am from the Killer Whale Clan. I would like to walk with you in Xenaksiala lands. Where I will take you is the place of my birth. They call it the Kitlope. It is called Xesdu’wäxw (Huschduwaschdu) for ‘blue, milky, glacial water’. Our destination is what I would like to talk about, and a boat – I call it my magic canoe. It is a magical canoe because there is room for everyone who wants to come into it to paddle together. The currents against it are very strong but I believe we can reach that destination and this is the reason for our survival. —Cecil Paul

Who better to tell the narrative of our times about the restoration of land and culture than Wa’xaid (the good river), or Cecil Paul, a Xenaksiala elder who pursued both in his ancestral home, the Kitlope — now the largest protected unlogged temperate rainforest left on the planet. Paul’s cultural teachings are more relevant today than ever in the face of environmental threats, climate change and social unrest, while his personal stories of loss from residential schools, industrialization and theft of cultural property (the world-renowned Gps’golox pole) put a human face to the survivors of this particular brand of genocide.

Told in Cecil Paul’s singular, vernacular voice, Stories from the Magic Canoe spans a lifetime of experience, suffering and survival. This beautifully produced volume is in Cecil’s own words, as told to Briony Penn and other friends, and has been meticulously transcribed. Along with Penn’s biography of Cecil Paul, Following the Good River, Stories from the Magic Canoe provides a valuable documented history of a generation that continues to deal with the impacts of brutal colonization and environmental change at the hands of politicians, industrialists and those who willingly ignore the power of ancestral lands and traditional knowledge.

Reviews
“The Magic Canoe brings peace to one’s soul. It is a warm wind moving our hearts. Wa’xaid takes us on a journey that regenerates and empowers us. T’ismista, the stone hunter, looks down on the Magic Canoe and reminds us to listen to storytellers like Cecil Paul. This is a story for the family of man; we are all in the canoe together and our stories need to be shared with each other.” – Roy Henry Vickers

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list, as well as the 2020-2021 resource list, for grades 9 to 12 for English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science.

Additional Information
224 pages | 5.00" x 7.00" | Paperback

In August of 2016, Cree youth Colten Boushie was shot dead by Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley. Using colonial and socio-political narratives that underlie white rural settler life, the authors position the death of Boushie and trial of Stanley in relation to Indigenous histories and experiences in Saskatchewan. They point to the Stanley case as just one instance of Indigenous peoples' presence being seen as a threat to settler-colonial security, then used to sanction the exclusion, violent treatment, and death of Indigenous peoples and communities.

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.00" x 7.00"

The East Side of It All draws on Joseph Dandurand’s first-hand experiences of life as a drug user and single-room occupant in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and of the ongoing process of healing through reconnection with family, the natural world and traditional Indigenous (Kwantlen) storytelling. His voice is lyrical yet intimate, obscured yet sitting with you at the kitchen table having a cigarette. The East Side of It All is the journey of a broken man who finally accepts his storytelling gift and shares with the world his misery, joy and laughter. 

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.00"

“My million years of immortality have barely begun…”

Pursued by warring human/alien hybrids, the immortal Kyrill, also known as Salamander, is the key to a prison forged by the seven gods of creation. While one of the warring factions moves to protect him, the other seeks to use him to open the prison. Kyrill’s story unfolds in a war-ravaged dystopia where his people, Indigenous North Americans, are space pirates who control the solar system’s spaceways. The Krillian Key: Salamander Run is a fun, sassy and fast-paced graphic novel set in the post-apocalyptic future of Neo-New York circa 2242, with flashbacks to modern-day Canada.

Additional Information
200 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | black and white illustrations