First Nations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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256 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

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

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120 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

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

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

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126 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

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

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

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140 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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480 pages | 6.12" x 9.25" | Hardcover 

A powerful, lyrical collection of essays from the award-winning author of Following the River, exploring the pivotal moments in her life, and how art and nature have shaped her.

Like both memory and the moon, what's written here aims to shed what light it can, bringing it home to now.

How does a woman compose a life? The Old Moon in Her Arms is a hybrid book of fragments, pivotal moments and images in the phases of a woman's life, turning points rendered in Lorri Neilsen Glenn's lyrical prose.

Like the shifting images in a kaleidoscope, these glimpses into the life of an ordinary woman lay bare the ways family, landscape, loss, and a lifelong pursuit of knowledge have forced the author in her later years to examine what really matters. Here, readers bear witness to the making of a daughter, a student, a wife, a friend, a teacher, a mother, a feminist, an award-winning scholar and writer. Neilsen Glenn's artistry weaves personal history, philosophy, pop culture, and contemporary thought to examine moments and people who've inhabited her life. "Over time and circumstance," she says, "haven't we all been various?"

Guiding her exploration are the Cree concept of wahkohtowin, the kinship in all of creation, and the elliptical path of the moon.

This hybrid collection of singular moments celebrates connection, wonder and endless curiosity.

Educator Information
Subjects/Themes: Memoir, Creativity, Aging, Literacy Collection, Prose, Poetry

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272 pages | 6.00" x 8.00"| Paperback

This art book features artwork by Anishinaabe artist Donna Langhorne.

In the Seven Visions, Anishinaabe artist Donna Langhorne describes to you the meaning behind her seven pieces of artwork. Her visions were inspired by the seven sacred teachings, and draw on contemporary issues affecting Indigenous people.

Diana Frost from Colouring It Forward adds suggestions of activities that you can engage in to do something about these issues and to participate in reconciliation.

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8.5"x11", 24 pages, full colour book

A story of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation): past, present, and future.

One hundred years after Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) leadership signed an amalgamation agreement that declared several communities in Squamish territory as one nation, this accessible history of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people traces our stories from ancient times to the present. Tiná7 Cht Ti Temíxw: We Come from This Land offers the culmination of generations of knowledge about the Squamish People and Sḵwx̱wú7meshulh Temíx̱w (Squamish People’s Territory).

Today, we are over 4,100 people and growing, living within Sḵwx̱wú7meshulh Temíx̱w and beyond. Our 6,732-square-kilometre territory includes the watersheds of the Squamish River, Mamquam River, and Howe Sound in the north, and English Bay, False Creek, and Burrard Inlet in the south. It encompasses saltwater and rushing rivers, old-growth forests at valley bottoms, and alpine forests high above the ocean.

Oral histories and archaeological sites demonstrate our relationship with the lands and waters going back over twelve thousand years. Here, we introduce ancient Squamish stories and ways, as well as describe relationships with our neighbours from time immemorial. We discuss early contact with Europeans and the disastrous effects of racism and colonialism, the Indian Act, reserves, and residential schools. We detail our engagement with the imperfect tool of the Canadian judicial system in several significant court cases that have advanced Indigenous rights. And we show how the Squamish Nation is taking back ownership and stewardship within our homelands.

Tiná7 Cht Ti Temíxw: We Come from This Land is a powerful introduction to our vast history and a launching point for discovering more about the different places, people, and stories offered here.

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416 pages | 6.50" x 9.50" | Paperback

Academia remains an unwelcoming space for Indigenous scholars. What space it does cede to Indigenous knowledge is dictated and narrowly defined. W̱SÁNEĆ scholar Jack Horne, author of TOL, NEW̱ SEN TŦE SOȽ: I Know the Road articulates his own negotiation with academia:

“In response to the question of how I, a W̱SÁNEĆ artist and scholar, use embodied W̱SÁNEĆ knowledge in my artistic and academic work, this book advocates for a move away from standard social sciences theories, methodologies and paradigms while forcefully insisting on a W̱SÁNEĆ paradigm.”

To accomplish this constructive goal, Horne argues, “requires a negotiation of embodied W̱SÁNEĆ knowledge, performance studies theory, and western eurocentric social sciences paradigms.”

Written through beautiful storytelling practices with this goal in mind, TOL, NEW̱ SEN TŦE SOȽ: I Know the Road is thus part personal and cultural history, and part contemporary critique. Horne uses a variety of research, letters, and even fragments from his plays, to create a compelling challenge to outmoded academic structures, proposing an alternative that embraces and tools historically suppressed W̱SÁNEĆ ways of knowing. Not only does Horne’s writing confront white supremacy and anti-Indigenous racism in academia, it offers material alternatives to status quo, white-centric pedagogy. With its focus on W̱SÁNEĆ history and knowledge practices, this book offers a praxis of Indigenous knowledge and performance study theory that delivers a unique and deeply valuable pedagogic project.

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216 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"| Paperback

Breaks the deafening silence of Indigenous women’s voices in academic leadership positions.

Since the 2015 release of the report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, new Indigenous policies have been enacted in universities and a variety of interconnecting Indigenous senior administrative roles have been created. Many of these newly created roles have been filled by Indigenous women. But what does it mean for Indigenous women to be recruited to Indigenize Western institutions that have not undergone introspective, structural change?

Informed by her own experiences and the stories of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities, Candace Brunette-Debassige explores the triple-binding position Indigenous women often find themselves trapped in when trying to implement reconciliation in institutions that remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The author considers too the gendered, emotional labour Indigenous women are tasked with when universities rush to Indigenize without the necessary preparatory work of decolonization.

Drawing on an Indigenous feminist decolonial theoretical lens and positioning Indigenous story as theory, Brunette-Debassige illustrates how Indigenous women can and do preserve and enact their agency through resistance, and help lead deeper transformative changes in Canadian universities. Ultimately, her work provides a model for how reconciliation and Indigenization can be done at an institutional level.

Reviews
“This book helped me make sense of the ‘trickiness’ of my own experiences as an Indigenous woman in Canadian universities.” —Kim Anderson, University of Guelph

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

There is one question Canadians have asked Jody Wilson-Raybould more than any other: What can I do to help advance reconciliation? It is clear that people from all over the country want to take concrete and tan­gible action that will make real change. We just need to know how to get started. This book provides that next step. For Wilson-Raybould, what individuals and organizations need to do to advance true reconciliation is self-evident, accessible, and achievable. True Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices—Learn, Understand, and Act—that can be applied by individuals, communities, organiza­tions, and governments.

The practices are based not only on the historical and con­temporary experience of Indigenous peoples in their relentless efforts to effect transformative change and decolonization, but also on the deep understanding and expertise about what has been effective in the past, what we are doing right, and wrong, today, and what our collective future requires. Fundamental to a shared way of thinking is an understand­ing of the Indigenous experience throughout the story of Canada. In a manner that reflects how work is done in the Big House, True Reconciliation features an “oral” history of these lands, told through Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from our past and present.

The ultimate and attainable goal of True Reconciliation is to break down the silos we’ve created that prevent meaning­ful change, to be empowered to increasingly act as “inbe­tweeners,” and to take full advantage of this moment in our history to positively transform the country into a place we can all be proud of.

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352 pages | 5.17" x 7.99" | Paperback

Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds.

As a Gitxsan teenager navigating life on the streets, Angela Sterritt wrote in her journal to help her survive and find her place in the world. Now an acclaimed journalist, she writes for major news outlets to push for justice and to light a path for Indigenous women, girls, and survivors. In her brilliant debut, Sterritt shares her memoir alongside investigative reporting into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, showing how colonialism and racism led to a society where Sterritt struggled to survive as a young person, and where the lives of Indigenous women and girls are ignored and devalued.

Growing up, Sterritt was steeped in the stories of her ancestors: grandparents who carried bentwood boxes of berries, hunted and trapped, and later fought for rights and title to that land. But as a vulnerable young woman, kicked out of the family home and living on the street, Sterritt inhabited places that, today, are infamous for being communities where women have gone missing or been murdered: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and, later on, Northern BC's Highway of Tears. Sterritt faced darkness: she experienced violence from partners and strangers and saw friends and community members die or go missing. But she navigated the street, group homes, and SROs to finally find her place in journalism and academic excellence at university, relying entirely on her own strength, resilience, and creativity along with the support of her ancestors and community to find her way.

"She could have been me," Sterritt acknowledges today, and her empathy for victims, survivors, and families drives her present-day investigations into the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In the end, Sterritt steps into a place of power, demanding accountability from the media and the public, exposing racism, and showing that there is much work to do on the path towards understanding the truth. But most importantly, she proves that the strength and brilliance of Indigenous women is unbroken, and that together, they can build lives of joy and abundance.

Reviews
"Sterritt's story is living proof of how courageous Indigenous women are. Listen to her voice and hear the sound of the land, hear the sound of our women weeping but also raging—refusing to be neglected or ignored any longer."—Tanya Talaga, author of Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations

"A fierce, necessary, deeply moving book. Sterritt uses her difficult personal journey to frame the terrible history of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Haunting and illuminating."— Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster

"Angela Sterritt takes on Canada's deeply flawed justice system, deftly exposing systemic racism and the continuing impacts of colonialism. This book is a compelling read and a well-researched and powerful heart-centered memoir."—Lorimer Shenher, author of That Lonely Section of Hell

"With facts and humanity, Angela Sterritt effortlessly draws us into this emotional and important read. A courageous Indigenous voice who uses her personal journey to educate all of us about critical and urgent issues we must address, including Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls."— Jody Wilson-Raybould

"A new clear, compelling, and urgent voice illuminates a critical topic of our times with the passion and profound caring of a devoted sister. A tour de force."—Darrel McLeod, author of Mamaskatch and Peyakow

"A remarkable life story. . . Angela Sterritt is a formidable storyteller and a passionate advocate."—Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves

"[A] thought-provoking memoir. . . Beginning with a haunting list of names of Indigenous women and girls who were either murdered or missing along the Highway of Tears, the book tells the stories of such ignored and abused victims. . . The final product is eyeopening, making use of tragic firsthand accounts from grieving families and Sterritt's personal memories, all raw and rich with detail. . . [P]owerful."—Foreword Reviews

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6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.

In this intimate collection, Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the story “The Berry Pickers,” which inspired Peters’ critically acclaimed novel of the same name, as well as the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “Pejipug (Winter Arrives).”

At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.

Educator Information
Waiting for the Long Night Moon is a collection of short stories.

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