Adult Book

Every single year in Canada, one-third of all deaths among Indigenous youth are due to suicide. Studies indicate youth between the ages of ten and nineteen, living on reserve, are five to six times more likely to commit suicide than their peers in the rest of the population. Suicide is a new behaviour for First Nations people. There is no record of any suicide epidemics prior to the establishment of the 130 residential schools across Canada.

Bestselling and award-winning author Tanya Talaga argues that the aftershocks of cultural genocide have resulted in a disturbing rise in youth suicides in Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond. She examinees the tragic reality of children feeling so hopeless they want to die, of kids perishing in clusters, forming suicide pacts, or becoming romanced by the notion of dying — a phenomenon that experts call “suicidal ideation.” She also looks at the rising global crisis, as evidenced by the high suicide rates among the Inuit of Greenland and Aboriginal youth in Australia. Finally, she documents suicide prevention strategies in Nunavut, Seabird Island, and Greenland; Facebook’s development of AI software to actively link kids in crisis with mental health providers; and the push by First Nations leadership in Northern Ontario for a new national health strategy that could ultimately lead communities towards healing from the pain of suicide.

Based on her Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy series, Tanya Talaga’s 2018 Massey Lectures is a powerful call for action and justice for Indigenous communities and youth.

Educator Information
Curriculum Connections: Indigenous Studies, History, Humanities and Social Sciences, Health

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.00" x 8.00"

Fully illustrated with gorgeous color photographs of the forest and its inhabitants, Among Trees is a lush guided journal that helps you record and reflect on your therapeutic trips into the woods. Use the blank pages to capture the date, season, weather, and location of specific outings. Creative prompts throughout will help you deepen your experience. Inspirational quotes and sidebars on the benefits of forest bathing pepper the pages for added motivation and depth.

Reviews
"[This journal] can help you add this delightful practice to your life and help you experience greater health on all levels.” —New Spirit Journal​

Additional Information
224 Pages | 6" x 8.25"

Animal Tracks provides a simplified field reference to familiar tracks and signs of over 65 North American mammals and birds. Laminated for durability. Features a ruler for measuring animal tracks. It is a great source of portable information and ideal for field use by novices and experts alike.

Additional Information
12 pages | 3.75" x 8.25" | Full Colour

Teaching and learning for a changing world

How do we help students makes sense of our increasingly complex digital world? This third edition of this classic text shows teachers how to empower students with the skills they need to ask critical and reflective questions about the overwhelming amount of information around them.

Asking Better Questions offers comprehensive tools and strategies to promote critical thinking and discussion in the classroom and encourage engaged and empathetic listening. Stimulating activities throughout the book promote lifelong inquiry skills that will help teachers and students grow in the classroom and explore broader issues in the community beyond. Challenge your students to assume a deeper ownership of their learning, ask questions that are important to them, and care about the answers.

On Twitter: #ABQ3

Educator Information
For students 5 - 14.

Additional Information
160 Pages 

Grow more food, with less work, in any yard – now completely revised and expanded!

Are you itching to start your own garden or grow more in the one you have, but feel that gardening is too challenging or time-consuming for your busy schedule?

Now completely updated and expanded, Backyard Bounty will demystify gardening, bringing it back to the down-to-earth, environmentally practical activity that anyone can enjoy.

Author and master gardener Linda Gilkeson covers everything you'll need to grow a successful garden, including:

• Planning your garden and preparing the soil
• Organic fertilizers and simplified composting
• Planting for winter harvests and intensive planting schedules
• Comprehensive information on pests, diseases, and working with an unstable climate
• Greenhouses, tunnels and containers
• Organic pest management.

Packed with a wealth of information specific to the Pacific Northwest, this complete guide emphasizes low-maintenance methods, covers problems related to common pests and climate concerns, includes a monthly garden schedule for year-round planting and harvesting, and features plant profiles for everything from apples to zucchini.

Perfect for novice and experienced gardeners alike, Backyard Bounty shows how even the smallest garden can produce a surprising amount of food twelve months of the year.

Reviews
"Backyard Bounty is very likely the best book ever written on growing food in the Pacific Northwest, and it sets a whole new standard for garden writing. By acknowledging the impacts of climate change on our gardens, Gilkeson further elevates the literature. This is the first “real time” gardening book. It is fresh and timely, and every page courses with practical advice and revelations. All growers should own this amazing and insightful book, and we should refer back to it often." —Mark Macdonald, West Coast Seeds

"Ideal for both new and seasoned gardeners, this new edition adds more listings to the detailed fruit and vegetable profiles, updates variety choices, and supplies practical information on dealing with common pests and diseases, including new ones to our region. Tips on adapting gardening practices to changing weather patterns are eminently helpful, as is a focus on the soil as a life force that fosters health in plants." —Helen Chesnut, Garden columnist, Times Colonist

"Whether you have a small or large lot, little or plenty of time, this book shows you how to grow your own toxic-free fruit and vegetables the whole year-round. From preparing the ground to harvesting and storing the ripened produce, all is clearly explained. An invaluable book for novices and experienced gardeners". —Barry Roberts, Past-President, Master Gardeners Association of BC

Additional Information
384 pages | 7.50" x 9.00" | 120 b&w illustrations and photographs 

“Our stories identify for us the land which surrounds us and tie us to our ancestors. We find ourselves inextricably linked to the past, to the land, to the river, to each other, to the future.” —Shirley Hardman, contributor

This impressive volume tells of the First Peoples of the area through vivid narratives from the past and present.

The traditional territory of the Ts’elxwéyeqw First Peoples covers over 95,000 hectares of land in Southwestern BC. It extends throughout the central Fraser Valley, encompassing the entire Chilliwack River Valley (including Chilliwack Lake, Chilliwack River, Cultus Lake and areas, and parts of the Chilliwack municipal areas). In addition to being an area of natural beauty and abundant resources, it also has a rich cultural history. The Chilliwack region gets its name from the Ts’elxwéyeqw tribe, and this volume delves into what this name means—and also what it means to be Ts’elxwéyeqw. Being Ts’elxwéyeqw portrays the people, artifacts and landscapes that are central to the Ts’elxwéyeqw people, and represents a rich oral record of an aboriginal heritage that has been kept alive—even through adversity—for thousands of years.

Lavishly illustrated with over seven hundred historic and current photos and maps, this book amalgamates a variety of voices and personal histories from elders, while providing background into eighty-five place names within the region. The book’s unique composition—with an emphasis on visual storytelling—showcases a culture with a deep connection to the surrounding land and the watershed.

Educator Information
Recommended for Grades 5-12 for the following subject areas: Geography, Social Studies, Science.  Also a useful Teacher Resource.

Note: Educators should pre-read sections of this book that they are considering using from this reference book, as reading levels vary greatly.

Additional Information
304 pages | 11.00" x 14.00"

An exquisite series of meditations on memory, evanescence and the land. Randy Lundy draws deeply from his Cree heritage and equally from European and Asian traditions. Readers will be reminded by turns of Simon Ortiz, P?r Lagerkvist, and Jane Hirshfield. This is the mind of prayer, a seeing and re-seeing of the immense cyclic beauty of the earth.

Reviews
“Lundy has entered the place where the masters reside. His poems join the shades that walk among them. There aren’t many people who get to that place and sometimes it can feel very lonely there, but the masters are saved by the brilliant and humble work they have done, their poems the crevices in our lives where the light shines through." – Patrick Lane, author of Washita

“Randy Lundy’s poems bring forward the spirit of his Cree ancestry, and place our species humbly among the creatures of Earth—who are all observed with deep reverence and perceptive care.” – Don McKay, author of Strike/Slip

“This is the book of poems I’ve been waiting for … His poems burn us, feed us, and make us feel beloved even if we have been broken. Language, as he uses it, holds us and leads us to a place where we can mourn and pray and wonder.” – Lorna Crozier, author of What the Soul Doesn’t Want

Educator & Series Information
The Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools list recommends this resource for Grades 10-12 for English Language Arts.

Caution: Some poems contain content that may cause trigger reactions for readers. Pre-read poems before using them with students.

This work is part of the Oskana Poetry & Poetics series. Publishing new and established authors, Oskana Poetry & Poetics offers both contemporary poetry at its best and probing discussions of poetry’s cultural role. Oskana is the Cree word for "bones," and it is used with the blessing of Elder Noel Starblanket. The name reflects a commitment to speak to the deepest and most urgent issues of our time, including environmental crisis and Indigenous justice. 

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

In this, her third volume of poetry, this Aboriginal writer from Quebec again confronts the loss of her landscape and language.

On my left hip
a face

I walk
I walk upright
like a shadow

a people on my hip
a boatload of fruit
and the dream inside
women and children first

"A cry rises in me and transfigures me. The world waits for woman to come back as she was born: woman standing, woman powerful, woman resurgent. A call rises in me and I've decided to say yes to my birth."

Reviews
"Poetess, painter, actress, slammer ... Natasha Kanapé Fontaine speaks with a soft voice, but her words are powerful. In a few years, the young Innue has become a model for young people and for her community." —La Presse

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 9-12 for English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Additional Information
72 pages | 5.00" x 7.50" | Translated from French by Howard Scott.

This trailblazing history of early British Columbia focuses on a single year, 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush - the third great mass-migration of gold seekers after the Californian and Australian rushes in search of a new El Dorado. Marshall's history becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of British Columbia's "founding" event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. Marshall unsettles many of our most taken-for-granted assumptions: he shows how foreign miner-militias crossed the 49th parallel, taking the law into their own hands, and conducting extermination campaigns against Indigenous peoples while forcibly claiming the land. Drawing on new evidence, Marshall explores the three principal cultures of the goldfields - those of the fur trade (both Native and the Hudson's Bay Company), Californian, and British world views. The year 1858 was a year of chaos unlike any other in British Columbia and American Pacific Northwest history. It produced not only violence but the formal inauguration of colonialism, Native reserves and, ultimately, the expansion of Canada to the Pacific Slope. Among the haunting legacies of this rush are the cryptic place names that remain - such as American Creek, Texas Bar, Boston Bar, and New York Bar - while the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty continues to claim the land.

Additional Information
6.00" x 9.00" | Bibliography | 30 black & white photos

I open my eyes in the darkness, laying on my side, half my vision is of the earth and shadows; the other is of the sky, treetops, and stars. I should write Clifford’s story. The thought emerges fully formed . . . The thought dissipates. I close my eyes and the earth and the sky disappear. The warmth of my sleeping bag wraps around me and sleep pulls me under into that half-world where reality and fantasy mingle in a place where coherent thoughts disintegrate.

When Harold Johnson returns to his childhood home in a northern Saskatchewan Indigenous community for his brother Clifford’s funeral, the first thing his eyes fall on is a chair. It stands on three legs, the fourth broken off and missing. So begins a journey through the past, a retrieval of recollections that have too long sat dormant. Moving from the old family home to the log cabin, the garden, and finally settling deep in the forest surrounding the property, his mind circles back, shifting in time and space, weaving in and out of memories of his silent, powerful Swedish father; his formidable Cree mother, an expert trapper and a source of great strength; and his brother Clifford, a precocious young boy who is drawn to the mysterious workings of the universe.

As the night unfolds, memories of Clifford surface in Harold’s mind’s eye: teaching his younger brother how to tie his shoelaces; jousting on a bicycle without rubber wheels; building a motorcycle. Memory, fiction, and fantasy collide, and Clifford comes to life as the scientist he was meant to be, culminating in his discovery of the Grand Unified Theory.

Exquisitely crafted, funny, visionary, and wholly moving, Clifford is an extraordinary work for the way it defies strict category and embraces myriad forms of storytelling. To read it is to be immersed in a home, a family, a community, the wider world, the entire cosmos.

Reviews
“Clifford is a luminous, genre-bending memoir. Heartache and hardship are no match for the disarming whimsy, the layered storytelling shot through with love. The power of land, the pull of family, the turbulence of poverty are threads woven together with explorations of reality, tackling truth with a trickster slant.” — Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster

“Clifford is a story only Harold Johnson could tell. By turns soft and harsh, intellectual and emotional, Johnson weaves truth, fiction, science, and science fiction into a tapestry that is rich with meaning and maybes. A natural storyteller, Johnson seeks imagined pasts and futurity with equal parts longing and care. This work allows readers and writers the possibility of new and ancient modes of storytelling.” — Tracey Lindberg, author of Birdie

“Harold R. Johnson is a wonderful writer, and Clifford is his best work yet. For fans of Jack Finney and Richard Matheson, this terrific book is a wonderfully human tale of memory both bitter and sweet, as well as a poignant exploration of time’s hold over all of us.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award–winning author of Quantum Night

“Clifford is unlike anything I’ve read — it is at once a story of science and magic, love and loss, and a case for the infinite potential of humanity. It is a book of profound wisdom — an unpacking of the deepest truths of science in an effort to transform the pain of grief and regret into healing and forgiveness.” — Patti Laboucane-Benson, author of The Outside Circle

Educator Information
Curriculum Connections: English, Biographies, Family 

Additional Information
264 pages | 5.25" x 8.00"

What can we do, right now, in our own landscapes, to help solve climate change?

Predictions about future effects of climate change range from mild to dire - but we're already seeing warmer winters, hotter summers, and more extreme storms. Proposed solutions often seem expensive and complex, and can leave us as individuals at a loss, wondering what, if anything, can be done.

Sue Reed and Ginny Stibolt offer a rallying cry in response - instead of wringing our hands, let's roll up our sleeves. Based on decades of experience, this book is packed with simple, practical steps anyone can take to beautify any landscape or garden, while helping protect the planet and the species that call it home. Topics include:

• Working actively to shrink our carbon footprint through mindful landscaping and gardening
• Creating cleaner air and water
• Increasing physical comfort during hotter seasons
• Supporting birds, butterflies, pollinators, and other wildlife.

This book is the ideal tool for homeowners, gardeners, and landscape professionals who want to be part of the solution to climate change.

Reviews
"Sue Reed and Ginny Stibolt bring complementary backgrounds to bear on the subject of how we can adapt our landscapes to a changing climate. Starting from the premise that the impacts of climate change will only become more severe in the future, the authors have created a comprehensive book that outlines dozens of actions that people can take to adjust to evolving climate regimes. In the process, they articulate a new gardening aesthetic for people who work with small garden plots, farms and woodlots. The result is a positive and hopeful story of how people can use their imagination and ingenuity to help craft more resilient landscapes." -Dr. Peter Robinson, former CEO, David Suzuki Foundation

"Climate-Wise Landscaping is a comprehensive, yet easy to read, source of information on climate-change adaptation and mitigation actions for the homeowner, gardener, and landscape professional. Beautiful photos and pleasing graphics illustrate key ideas and actions while informative sidebars and inspiring quotes from climate and landscape experts provide clarity of complex systems and motivation to adapt to a changing future. The text provides an engaging blend of broad ideas along with specific actions we can take to adapt to climate-change at the level of our home landscapes, whether a small garden plot within an urban area or twenty acres in the countryside." -Julie Richburg, Ph.D., Ecologist

"Given the lateness of the hour, a book on climate-wise landscaping could not be more timely or more necessary. We are moving into a new and critical era, and this book takes landscape professionals and home gardeners where they need to go. The facts, well-presented and practical, will be an eye-opener for many people, and empower us as horticulturists of all stripes to do what is both helpful and imperative. Landscaping has always been more than just exterior decorating, and now we have one more tool in our kit to make the landscape ecosystem a part of the solution. Thank you, Sue and Ginny, for hitting a home run." -Owen Dell RLA, ASLA, landscape architect, educator, author, Owen Dell & Associates

"Gardening is not always as green and good for the planet as we might think. Sue Reed and Ginny Stibolt open our eyes to surprisingly common, unsustainable landscaping practices and inspire us to rethink how we create and care for land. This fantastic resource is filled with climate-wise solutions for anyone who owns or manages a piece of ground – even if it’s just a few containers on a tiny rooftop garden. You will quickly learn about exiting ways to offset some of the effects we people have on the planet. The book is easy to navigate and it passionately links better gardening practices with better life quality and a brighter future for our planet." -Claudia West ASLA, Principal, PHYTO STUDIO LLC

Additional Information
320 pages | 7.50" x 9.00" | full colour throughout

Thumps DreadfulWater has finally found some peace and quiet. His past as a California cop now far behind him, he’s living out his retirement as a fine-arts photographer in the small town of Chinook. His health isn’t great, and he could use a new stove, but as long as he’s got his cat and a halfway decent plate of eggs, life is good.

All that changes when a body turns up on the eve of a major water conference and the understaffed sheriff’s department turns to Thumps for help. Thumps wants none of it, but even he is intrigued when he learns the deceased was developing a new technology that could revolutionize water and oil drilling . . . and that could also lose some very powerful people a lot of money. As strangers begin to pour into Chinook for the conference, Thumps finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into a conflict between secretive players who will kill to get what they want.

In Cold Skies, the sly, wry, reluctant investigator of DreadfulWater and The Red Power Murders returns for another irresistible mystery that only Thomas King could tell.

Reviews
“Whimsical and wry, large-hearted and at times laugh out loud funny, but with an underlying gravitas and significance.” — Quill & Quire

“Even armchair sleuths who can see the solution from a mile away will appreciate GoodWeather’s unerring knack for converting social, racial, and economic conflict into blissful farce.”— Kirkus Reviews

Series Information
This novel is part of the DreadfulWater Mystery series from Thomas King.

Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information
464 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Native Elements - Colouring Our Drums: Northwest Coast First Nations and Art

We are all born to the beat of a drum, it is within us. Our drum beat is what leads us to find our own path through our journey in life. - Doug Horne, Coast Salish

Features:

Features 32 pages of original drum drawings from Northwest Coast Indigenous artists.  One page at the beginning of the book includes words and insights from the artists about drums.

Printed in Canada using non-toxic, vegetable based ink, and water based coating.

32 pages; measures 8.5" x 11".

Additional Information
This is a colouring book for adults and young adults; however, intermediate and secondary students would still enjoy colouring in the intricate drum drawings.

Since the 1970s, the Site C Dam in northeastern British Columbia's Peace River Valley has been touted by B.C. Hydro and successive governments as necessary to meet the province's increasing energy needs. With its enormous $10 billion price tag, the dam would be the largest public works project in BC history. It would be the third dam on the Peace River, and destroy traditional unceded territory belonging to Treaty 8 First Nations.

Following the last provincial election, the newly appointed NDP government called for a review of the project, but work on the dam continues. This comes after protests by aboriginal groups and landowners, several lawsuits against the government, and federal government intervention to let the dam go ahead. More recently, there has been a call from a United Nations panel to review how the dam will affect Indigenous land.

This book presents the independent voices of citizen experts describing every important impact of the dam, including:

• Sustainable energy expert Guy Dauncey on future energy demand, and whether there is likely to be a need for the dam's electricity
• An interview with aboriginal activist Helen Knott on the dam's assault on traditional lands and culture, in particular Indigenous women
• Agrologist Wendy Holm on the farm land impact — prime horticulture land important to food security and nutrition
• Family physician Warren Bell on the effect that loss of traditional way of life and connection to the land has had on the health of aboriginal people
• Wildlife biologist Brian Churchill with forty years' experience of studying its land and wildlife
• Former environmental minister Joan Sawicki on government cover-ups and smoking guns
• Energy industry watchdog Andrew Nikiforuk on the links between dams, fracking and earthquakes
• Award-winning broadcaster Rafe Mair on how party politics corrupts political leadership, and the role of activism and civil disobedience in shaping government decision-making
• David Schindler, one of the world's foremost water ecologists, explains the role dams like Site C will play in Canada's climate change strategy
• Joyce Nelson connects the dots between the Site C dam and continental water sharing plans

Reviews
"Wendy Holm brings another perspective to the case against Site C, that of the production of crops." — Nelson Star, January 2018

"A massive, $10 billion hydroelectric dam project on British Columbia’s Peace River could threaten the First Nations peoples who live nearby. This volume dives deep into the potential impacts and decades of governmental cover-ups related to this long-planned project."— John R. Platt, The Revelator, April 2018

"This book provides an organized and rigorous “how to” guide on the intellectual and fact-based opposition to Site C, and in doing this becomes a great model for a book on any long-term protest. Its ambition is to inform on the subject from every possible angle, keeping the Peace River, the region and its people in mind, rather than the expediency of the business and government angle, which is usually given at least equal weight by the mainstream media." — Cathryn Atkinson, Rabble, June 2018

"There is an "elephant in the room" — not the huge white elephant that you see at No-Site C rallies. This elephant is dark and invisible. The government does not talk about it ... No. This elephant is rather more sinister. Wendy Holm confronts it and exposes it. It's about exporting water."— John Gellard, The Ormsby Review, August 2018

"Damming the Peace is an accessible, thoughtful and informative collection of essays that reveal the grave environmental, human and economic costs if the Site C dam is built."— Tim Pelzer, People's Voice, October 2018

Educator Information
Includes Indigenous content/perspectives and an Interview with Indigenous activist Helen Knott.

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Known for her expansive multidisciplinary approach to art making Vancouver-based Dana Claxton, who is Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux), has investigated notions of Indigenous identity, beauty, gender and the body, as well as broader social and political issues through a practice which encompasses photography, film, video and performance. Rooted in contemporary art strategies, her practice critiques the representations of Indigenous people that circulate in art, literature and popular culture in general. In doing so, Claxton regularly combines Lakota traditions with "Western" influences, using a powerful and emotive "mix, meld and mash" approach to address the oppressive legacies of colonialism and to articulate Indigenous world views, histories and spirituality. This timely catalogue is the first monograph to examine the full breadth and scope of Claxton's practice. It's extensively illustrated and includes essays by Claxton's colleague Jaleh Mansoor, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia; Monika Kin Gagnon, Professor in the Communications Department at Concordia University, who has followed Claxton's work for 25 years; Olivia Michiko Gagnon, a New York-based scholar and doctoral student in Performance Studies; and Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Additional Information
160 pages | 9.08" x 10.60"