Indigenous Stories

Compiled by Craig Charbonneau Fontaine, these stories by Elder Alexander Grisdale were first printed in the Winnipeg Free Press in the 1960s. The collection demonstrates the traditional narrative of Anishanabe storytelling, in written form, and illustrates how the land we know as Canada carries stories and experiences that predate European colonization.

Humour is not only the best medicine; it is also an exceptionally useful teaching tool.

So often, it is through humour that the big lessons in life are learned--about responsibility, honour, hard work, and respect. Cree people are known for their wit, so the tales in Woods Cree Stories are filled with humour. The book includes nine stories--including Boys Get Lost, Foolishness, and Animals Become Friends--and a Woods Cree-to-English glossary.

All the stories are presented in Cree syllabics, Standard Roman Orthography, and English translation and can be enjoyed by those new to the language and more advanced learners.

Educator & Series Information
Woods Cree Stories is part of the First Nations Language Readers series. With a mix of traditional and new stories, each First Nations Language Reader introduces an Indigenous language and demonstrates how each language is used today. The University of Regina Press’s long-term goal is to publish all 60+ Indigenous languages of Canada.

Additional Information
138 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" 

Each volume in the Kappianaqtut series provides readers with an in-depth academic examination of two mythological creatures from Inuit mythology. The series examines Inuit myths from an ethnographic perspective and fosters discussion on the variations and multiple representations of the myths and creatures in question.

This volume, which explores the giants of the North and the mother of the sea mammals, has been fully revised and updated.

Kappianaqtut represents the first book-length study of Inuit mythological beings written from a Northern perspective.

These seven tales are the traditional teaching stories of Nenapohs, the Saulteaux culture hero and trickster. Oral in origin, they have been passed on through generations by the traditional teachers, the Elders.

For the first time, they are published and made available in Nahkawewin or Saulteaux, the westernmost dialect of the Ojibwe language. Each story is illustrated and is presented in both Standard Roman Orthography and syllabics, with English translation. The book also includes a pronunciation guide and a Saulteaux-to-English glossary.

Educator & Series Information
Nenapohs Legends is part of the First Nations Language Readers series. With a mix of traditional and new stories, each First Nations Language Reader introduces an Indigenous language and demonstrates how each language is used today. The University of Regina Press’s long-term goal is to publish all 60+ Indigenous languages of Canada.

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Narrated by Saulteaux Elders, Transcribed and Translated by Margaret Cote

Many people have a mental picture of the Canadian north that juxtaposes beauty with harshness. For the Van Tat Gwich'in, the northern Yukon is home, with a living history passed on from elders to youth. This book consists of oral accounts that the Elders have been recording for 50 years, representing more than 150 years of their history, all meticulously translated from Gwich'in. Yet this is more than a gathering of history; collaborator Shirleen Smith provides context for the stories, whether they are focused on an individual or international politics. Anthropologists, folklorists, ethnohistorians, political scientists, economists, members of First Nations, and readers interested in Canada's northernmost regions will find much to fascinate them.

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A lyrical, epic narrative about Aboriginal knowledge and education.

we are narrators narratives voices interlocutors of our own knowings 
we can determine for ourselves what our educational needs are 
before the coming of churches residential schools prisons 
before we knew how we knew we knew

In a gesture toward traditional First Nations orality, Peter Cole blends poetic and dramatic voices with storytelling. A conversation between two tricksters, Coyote and Raven, and the colonized and the colonizers, his narrative takes the form of a canoe journey. Cole draws on traditional Aboriginal knowledge to move away from the western genres that have long contained, shaped, and determined ab/originality. Written in free verse, Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing is meant to be read aloud and breaks new ground by making orality the foundation of its scholarship.

Cole moves beyond the rhetoric and presumption of white academic (de/re)colonizers to aboriginal spaces recreated by aboriginal peoples. Rather than employing the traditional western practice of gathering information about exoticized other, demonized other, contained other, Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing is a celebration of aboriginal thought, spirituality, and practice, a sharing of lived experience as First Peoples.

Reviews

Additional Information
352 pages | 7.00" x 9.50"

Following on two previous collections— Write It on Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (1989) and Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller (2004)—Living by Stories is the third volume of oral narratives by Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson. This third collection documents how the arrival of whites forever altered the Salish cultural landscape.

Living by Stories includes a number of classic stories set in the “mythological age” about the trickster/transformer, Coyote, and his efforts to rid the world of bad people— spatla or “monsters,” but this new volume is more important for its presentation of historical narratives set in the more recent past. As with the mythological accounts, there is much chaos and conflict in these stories, mainly due to the arrival of new quasi-monsters—“SHAmas” (Whites)—who dispossess “Indians” of their lands and rights, impose new political and legal systems, and erect roads, rail lines, mines, farms, ranches and towns on the landscape.

With permission from Harry Robinson, Wendy Wickwire began recording Robinson's oral stories in 1977. Robinson took his role as a storyteller very seriously and worried about the survival of the oral tradition and his stories. “I’m going to disappear”, he told one reporter, “and there’ll be no more telling stories.”

Review
Whenever I need to be reminded that language is magic and that stories can change the world, I go to Robinson.
- Thomas King

Additional Information
288 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Stories from Harry Robinson
Edited and compiled by Wendy Wickwire

Many of the stories in Harry Robinson's second collection feature the shoo-MISH, or "nature helpers" that assist humans and sometimes provide them with special powers. Some tell of individuals who use these powers to heal themselves; others tell of Indian doctors who have been given the power to heal others. Still others tell of power encounters: a woman "comes alive" after death; a boy meets a singing squirrel; a voice from nowhere predicts the future.

Award
BC Book Prize Winner, 1993.

Review
Epic, mesmerizing tales by a great Okanagan storyteller that lift [one] eerily and movingly into a different world.
- Michele Landsberg, Toronto Star

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

2nd edition (First Edition published 1992)

Stories from Harry Robinson
Edited and compiled by Wendy Wickwire

Dene Elder George Blondin creates a spiritual guidebook that weaves together oral stories with the recounting of how the northern Canadian Dene came to depend on the European fur traders. The result is a magical journey for readers of any heritage.

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240 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Ten masterful, complex drawings by Bill Reid are accompanied by ten episodes from Haida mythology told by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst. The result brings Haida art and mythology alive as never before in an English-speaking world. The collection includes, says Reid, "a good selection of bestiality, adultery, violence, thievery and assault, for those who like that sort of thing."

Educator Information
This work is available in French: Corbeau vole la lumiere

Additional Information
112 pages | 6.13" x 8.44"