Books

Christmas is trumpeted as a time of peace, joy, bounty and goodwill. Believers and non-believers alike covet the spirit of the holidays even when circumstances are screwed up.

Recollections from acclaimed Canadian authors combine with emerging voices from across the country in an anthology that debunks the popular depiction of Christmas while delivering its messages of hope and renewal.

Writers of colour, immigrants, Indigenous authors, members of the queer and transgendered community and those marginalized by personal circumstance share memories of surviving bleak Christmases past: holidays spent in shelters, prisons or on the streets; families marred by alcohol and violence; personal struggles with addiction, poverty or grief; isolation and loneliness. Despite these and other obstacles, contributors strive to salvage the spirit of the season.

With contributions from:

• Tolu Oloruntoba, winner of the Governor-General’s Award and Griffin Prize for poetry
• Sonja Larsen, winner of the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction
• JJ Lee, shortlisted for the Governor General, Hilary Weston and Charles Taylor prizes for non-fiction
• Joseph Kakwinokanasum, named a Rising Star by The Writers Union of Canada

Educator Information
Some but limited Indigenous content; it's up to readers to determine if this will work as an authentic resource for their purposes.

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

A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.

There are secrets in the land.

As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own.

While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.

When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.

But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.

The truth will be unearthed.

Reviews
“Blood Sisters sets its hooks on page one and then pulls relentlessly and colorfully through buried secrets and rediscovered Native heritage.”— C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Storm Front

"Vanessa Lillie’s riveting thriller explores the elusiveness of truth, and the history that binds people together—and to a place—no matter the time or the distance. At once captivating and illuminating, surprising and powerful, Blood Sisters is a story that resonates."—Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls

“Combines pulse-pounding action with Cherokee myth and customs. I loved Syd Walker, a compelling new character who’s dealing with her own disturbing family history while trying to unravel the disappearance of several Native women. I hope we’ll see more of Syd Walker soon!” —David Heska Wanbli Weiden, award-winning author of Winter Counts

“This suspenseful mystery will not only captivate you, but it may just teach you something about Cherokee history, land rights and the plague of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Including queer and Two-Spirit characters, Blood Sisters is a meaningful and compelling thriller.” —Ms. Magazine

Additional Information
384 pages | 6.21" x 9.29" | Hardcover

Krie Redsky is an extraordinary Indigenous child who has both a curse and blessing that allows him to walk between this world and the Spirit Realm. He is also at an age where he is learning to cope with the twists and turns of friendships, the awkwardness of first love, and the self-doubt that must be overcome following loss and betrayal. But, nurtured by Knowledge Keepers as “one who is without fear, and with the ability to cross realities,” he is soon recognized as an individual who can – and will – battle the terrifying ancient spirit stealers known as Bonewalkers. But is he strong enough for what is to come?

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

Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and occasional sleuth, is back on the case after a man is found dead on a rural Minnesota farm in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.

Minnesota, 1970s: It’s spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing fieldwork for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field laborer, and his wife are nowhere to be found, but Cash discovers their young daughter, Shawnee, cowering under a bed. The girl, a possible witness to the killing, is too terrified to speak.

In the wake of the murder, Cash can’t deny her intuitive abilities: she is suspicious of the farmer’s grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash is scouring White Earth Reservation for Shawnee’s missing mother—whom Cash wants to find before the girl is put in the foster system—another body turns up. Concerned by the escalating threat, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.

Broken Fields is a compelling, atmospheric read woven with details of American Indian life in northern Minnesota, abusive farm labor practices and women’s liberation.

Reviews
“A tragic, unforgiving crime novel that emphasizes the perils of the foster care system for Indigenous children.”—Library Journal, Starred Review

“Peyton Place meets Fargo in this clipped tale of misdoings in the Red River Valley . . . Rendon explor[es] the ways the deck is stacked against Cash because she’s a woman, an Ojibwe, and a maverick with limited respect for white men’s rules.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Rendon excels at balancing plot and character, taking time to probe Cash’s psychology while orchestrating a deliciously complicated mystery for her to solve. Readers will be rapt.”—Publishers Weekly

“Outstanding . . . Rendon delivers lots of suspense; a resourceful, rural community-smart heroine in Cash; and wrenching insights into the overt and covert racism endured by Indigenous people.”—Booklist

Series Information
This is the fourth book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon. 

Additional Information
272 pages | 5.83" x 8.60" | Hardcover 

Motherhood, trauma, and familial history are woven together into a powerful collection from the award-winning author of What Became My Grieving Ceremony. Beginning with a revelation of familial sexual abuse, Building a Nest from the Bones of My People charts the impact of this revelation on the speaker. From the pain of estrangement to navigating first-time motherhood in the midst of a family crisis, Morgan explores the complexities of generational and secondary abuse, intertwined as they are with the impacts of colonization.

Reviews
"Cara-Lyn Morgan offers not only loss, grief, and anger in this powerful collection, but also resolve, resistance, and reckoning—with the past, with what we bequeath our children, and the intentionality of those decisions. A brilliant and resonant meditation on becoming a mother and what it takes to build a new nest from the salvage of what’s been given to us. 'Burn the sage. / we’re done.'"—Lisa Bird-Wilson, author of Probably Ruby

"With her new collection, Cara-Lyn Morgan, demonstrates the lyrical alchemy of transforming ancestral pain into poetic gold through the unflinching art of truth-telling. These poems are raw as nerve endings, encapsulating wisdom enduring as teeth and bones. They are tender, well-crafted, and fearless—reminding us how speaking out into stifling silence can create muscle strong enough to move a woman from fearful mourning to courageous motherhood. Through Building a Nest from the Bones of My People, the pain of the past is excavated like an aching, crooked bone—rebroken to set the future on firm footing. Smoldering embers of generational trauma are doused, ghosts are set to rest and the seeds of hope begin to blossom. We can all heal. With this hauntingly beautiful collection, Morgan shows us how."—Andrea Thompson, author of A Selected History of Soul Speak

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.13" x 8.03" | Paperback

Reconciliation is for businesses, too.

From colonization through the Indian Act and residential schools, there is a lot of complicated history in the country we now call Canada. Between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people there is a disconnect, a fractured relationship we now need to make right. But what does Reconciliation mean, and specifically what does it mean for businesses?

The Canadian Business Owner’s Guide to Reconciliation is about how our history affects the present, and how we need to deal with the past so we can move into the future together. It’s about creating opportunities to include Indigenous voices in business, education around Indigenous history and best practices for businesses, and how we can reverse some of the unfair and unsustainable practices to create a better, more inclusive climate.

Author Alison Tedford brings her experience working with government, business, and nonprofits on Indigenous issues including reconciliation over the past two decades to this book.

If you're in business in Canada, you need to know how you can participate in reconciliation and transforming relations for a brighter future.

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

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.

For five years, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Established in 2017 initially through a crowd-funded campaign by lawyer Robin Parker and author Silvia Moreno-Garcia that set an initial fundraising goal of $10,000, the initiative raised over $116,000 in just four months.

Through generous support from organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, CELA, and others, the award has grown and have helped usher in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVA recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also help promote the works of unpublished writers, helping launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.

For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Carleigh Baker, Jordan Abel, and Indigenous scholar Madeleine Reddon, this anthology will be a true celebration of Indigenous storytelling that will both introduce readers to emerging luminaries as well as return them to treasured favourites.

Educator Information
Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology: A collection of prose and poetry from emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada includes a selection of standout work from the first five years of the Indigenous Voices Awards.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

Un plan de lecon de l'enseignant pour approfondir le livre. Peut inclure des questions de comprehension, des activites de groupe, des amorces de conversation, des quiz, des activites d'arts du langage et des pages a colorier. Apprenez ce que veut dire la phrase « Chaque enfant compte ». Phyllis Webstad, la fondatrice de la Journee du chandail orange, presente un apercu de ce mouvement sincere. Chaque enfant compte honore l'histoire et la resilience des peuples autochtones sur l'Ile de la Tortue et nous permet de tous cheminer vers la verite et la reconciliation. Si vous etes un survivant des pensionnats ou un survivant intergenerationnel, vous comptez. Pour les enfants qui ne sont pas revenus a la maison, vous comptez. L'enfant en chacun de nous compte. Chaque enfant compte.

Educator Information
For ages 6 to 10.

Find the student resource here: Chaque enfant compte

This lesson plan is also available in English: Every Child Matters Teacher Lesson Plan 

Additional Information
12 pages | 8.75" x 11.00" | Paper packet 

“Canadians and politicians have a common responsibility: to learn from the mistakes inherited from a colonialist legacy; and to not repeat the wrongs, corruption, and injustices our people suffered in the hands of government officials, politicians, and their oppressive laws. Reading and learning from Cheated would be a good place to start reconciliation and reparation.” — Ovide Mercredi, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations

The story of how Laurier Liberals took hold of the Department of Indian Affairs in 1896 and transformed it into a machine for expropriating Indigenous land.

You won’t find the Ocean Man and Pheasant Rump reserves on a map of southeastern Saskatchewan. In 1901, the two Nakoda bands reluctantly surrendered the 70 square miles granted to them under treaty. It’s just one of more than two dozen surrenders aggressively pursued by the Laurier Liberal government over a fifteen-year period. One in five acres was taken from First Nations.

This confiscation was justified on the grounds that prairie bands had too much land and that it would be better used by white settlers. In reality, the surrendered land was largely scooped up by Liberal speculators — including three senior civil servants and a Liberal cabinet minister —and flipped for a tidy profit. None were held to account.

Cheated is a gripping story of single-minded politicians, uncompromising Indian Affairs officials, grasping government appointees, and well-connected Liberal speculators, set against a backdrop of politics, power, patronage, and profit. The Laurier government’s settlement of western Canada can never be looked at the same way again.

Additional Information
352 pages | 5.75" x 8.75" | 68 b&w photos; 3 maps | Paperback

More than seventy delectable recipes that bring California’s Indigenous cuisines into kitchens today.

In this sumptuous cookbook, Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk) reimagines some of the oldest foods in California for home cooks today. Meaning “Let’s eat!” in the Karuk language, Chími Nu’am shares the author’s delicious and inventive takes on Native food styles from across California. Over seventy seasonal recipes centered on a rich array of Indigenous ingredients follow the year from Fall (elk chili beans, acorn crepes) to Winter (wild boar pozole, huckleberry hand pies) to Spring (wildflower spring rolls, peppernut mole chicken) to Summer (blackberry braised smoked salmon, acorn milk freezer pops). Special sections offer guidance on acorn preparation, traditional uses of proteins, and mindful ingredient sourcing. Calvosa Olson has spent many years connecting her family’s foodways with a growing community, and these recipes, techniques, and insights invite everyone to Calvosa Olson’s table. Designed as an accessible entry for people beginning their journey toward a decolonized diet, Chími Nu’am welcomes readers in with Calvosa Olson’s politically attuned and irresistibly funny writing. With more than 100 photographs, this cookbook is a culinary gift that will add warmth and mouthwatering aromas to any kitchen.

Reviews
"This cookbook designed to uplift Indigenous California foods will delight foragers, adventurous home cooks, and those looking to connect with Native roots. It's a valuable addition to library shelves that will connect Native and non-Native Americans to the earth and its abundant gift of ingredients." —Library Journal

"With Chími Nu'am, Olson looks to encourage people to start thinking about a decolonized diet, connecting to the land and native ingredients prior to European colonization [... and] aims to make Indigenous ingredients and traditional Karuk recipes accessible to a whole range of home cooks." —Nina Friend, BBC World's Table

"Chími Nu’am is serious about taking a holistic view of reintegrating the healthfulness of traditional diets into modern lives, benefiting both personal well-being and the greater good." —Naomi Tomky, Atlas Obscura

"Calvosa Olson has written a book that will speak to multiple audiences. But whether she's guiding Indigenous readers to embrace more of their cultural foods or making recommendations for non-Indigenous readers interested in decolonizing their diets in an ethical way (hint: it's about reciprocity), her voice and philosophy come through clearly on the page." —Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats

"To say that Chími Nu'am is just a cookbook is inaccurate. What took Calvosa Olson more than two years to write and publish is an expression of her life and an act of stewardship for the earth. [...] The author was raised to believe that if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you." —Prism

"Calvosa Olson invites readers to forage for and become more attuned to Indigenous and seasonal ingredients—nurturing a deeper connection to place and enhancing one’s role as an environmental steward." —Uprooted

"Connecting with nature is an approach to cooking that is often overlooked—but not for Sara Calvosa Olson. A native Californian raised by a Karuk mother, she is leading people on a path to decolonize their diets, one cup of manzanita flour at a time." —KCRW Good Food

"Connection to people and planet is central to both Calvosa Olson's personal approach to food as well as the message of Chími Nu'am." —Rachel Askinasi, The Messenger

"Besides being a creative, accessible cookbook, Calvosa Olson's work is a call for stewardship of the environment and an introduction to some local foods that have long been part of Native diets. It’s a terrific resource for foragers, teachers, libraries, classrooms, cooks, and anyone looking to learn more about the foodways of California's Indigenous peoples." —Edible East Bay

Additional Information
288 pages | 7.50" x 10.00" | Hardcover

Additional Information
Spiral bound

Additional Information
Spiral bound

Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing—held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.

Housty’s poems are textural—blossoms, feathers, stubborn blots of snow—and reading them is a sensory offering that invites the reader’s whole body to be transported in the experience. Their writing converses with mountains, animals and all our kin beyond the human realm as they sit beside their ancestors’ bones and move throughout the geography of their homeland. Housty’s exploration of history and futurity, ceremony and sexuality, grieving and thriving invites us to look both inward and outward to redefine our sense of community.

Through these poems we can explore living and loving as a practice, and placemaking as an essential part of exploring our humanity and relationality.

Awards

• 2024 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award winner
• 2024 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award winner

Reviews
"When the mountains of your territory are your ancestors, you paint the landscapes as Jess Housty does in this evocative, powerful collection of poetry: in the language of ceremony as taut as the inner surface of a mussel shell when the meat is stripped away. Their hyperlocality is precise medicine, an expansive, generous meditation on the mutual care of mountains, the forgiving veins of rivers, all the liminal territories and beings soaked in the verdant magic of the Pacific Northwest Coast." — Eden Robinson

"I return to read and then stop to wonder, return to read and still wonder: How is this so true? Let these words love you. They’ll sing." — Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Additional Information
132 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory.

This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Now in its eagerly awaited third edition, this bestselling book includes a co-written introduction features contributions from indigenous scholars on the book's continued relevance to current research. It also features a chapter with twenty-five indigenous projects and a collection of poetry.

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Third Edition
Foreword
Introduction
1. Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory
2. Research through Imperial Eyes
3. Colonizing Knowledges
4. Research Adventures on Indigenous Land
5. Notes from Down Under
6. The Indigenous People's Project: Setting a New Agenda
7. Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda
8. Twenty-Five Indigenous Projects
9. Responding to the Imperatives of an Indigenous Agenda: A Case Study of Maori
10. Towards Developing Indigenous Methodologies: Kaupapa Maori Research
11. Choosing the Margins: The Role of Research in Indigenous Struggles for Social Justice
12. Getting the Story Right, Telling the Story Well: Indigenous Activism, Indigenous Research
Conclusion: A Personal Journey
Twenty Further Indigenous Projects
Poems
Index

Additional Information
352 pages | 5.28" x 8.35" | 3rd Edition | Paperback

Indigenous Peoples have taken physical recreational activity – sport – back from the colonizers. One of very few books to show the two edges of sport: it colonized but is now decolonizing.

Decolonizing Sport tells the stories of sport colonizing Indigenous Peoples and of Indigenous Peoples using sport to decolonize. Spanning several lands — Turtle Island, the US, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Kenya — the authors demonstrate the two sharp edges of sport in the history of colonialism. Colonizers used sport, their own and Indigenous recreational activities they appropriated, as part of the process of dispossession of land and culture. Indigenous mascots and team names, hockey at residential schools, lacrosse and many other examples show the subjugating force of sport. Yet, Indigenous Peoples used sport, playing their own games and those of the colonizers, including hockey, horse racing and fishing, and subverting colonial sport rules as liberation from colonialism. This collection stands apart from recent publications in the area of sport with its focus on Indigenous Peoples, sport and decolonization, as well as in imagining a new way forward.

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Sport, Colonialism and Decolonization (Janice Forsyth, Christine O’Bonsawin, Murray G. Phillips and Russell Field)

Section 1: Storytelling Beyond Competition: An Indigenous Perspective on Organized Sport (Brian Rice)

More Than a Mascot: How the Mascot Debate Erases Indigenous People in Sport (Natalie Welch)

Section 2: Interrogating the Archive Witnessing Painful Pasts: Understanding Images of Sports at Canadian Indian Residential Schools (Taylor McKee and Janice Forsyth)

On the Absence of Indigenous Moving Bodies: Whiteness, Decolonization and Indigenous/Indigenizing Sport History (Malcolm MacLean)

Section 3: Rights and Reconciliation # 87: Reconciliation, Sport History and Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Victoria Paraschak)

Taken at Face Value: The Legal Feasibility of Indigenous-Led Olympic Games (Christine O’Bonsawin)

Section 4: Settler Colonialism Canoe Races to Fishing Guides: Sport and Settler Colonialism in Mi’kma’ki (John Reid)

Moments of Transcending Colonialism? Rodeos and Races in Lethbridge (Robert Kossuth)

“Men Pride Themselves on Feats of Endurance”: Masculinities and Movement Cultures in Kenyan Running History (Michelle M. Sikes)

Section 5: Resistance and Activism Stealing, Drinking and Non-Cooperation: Sport, Everyday Resistance in Aboriginal Settlements in Australia (Gary Osmond)

Let’s Make Baseball! Practices of Unsettling on the Recreational Ball Diamonds of Tkaronto/Toronto (Craig Fortier and Colin Hastings)

Subjugating and Liberating at Once: Indigenous Sport History as a Double Edged Sword (Brendan Hokowhitu)

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