History

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.

From the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their tribal communities to attend boarding schools whose stated aim was to "save the Indian" by way of assimilation. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the U.S. government, but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation—were a calculated attempt to dismantle tribes by pulling apart Native families. Children were beaten for speaking their Native languages; denied food, clothing, and comfort; and forced to work menial jobs in terrible conditions, all while utterly deprived of love and affection.

Amongst those thousands of children was Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother, who was was sent to a boarding school in northern Wisconsin at age five. The trauma of her experience cast a pall over Pember's own childhood and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark but hopeful portrait of communities still reckoning with the trauma of acculturation, religion, and abuse caused by the state. Through searing interviews and careful reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of Native cultures and nations in relation to the country that has been intent on eradicating them.

Reviews
“A devastating history. . . . Weaving into her narrative her own mother’s experiences . . . Pember explores the psychological ramifications the schools had on subsequent generations. She comes to many quietly ruinous insights about the emotional neglect she herself suffered at the hands of her wounded mother. . . . Concluding with a searing call for accountability, this strikes a chord.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[Pember’s] extensive research illuminates the attempted cultural erasure by government and religious institutions. Her mother’s story provides a heartbreaking, personal focus.” —Booklist

“Elegantly weaving together her mother’s stories, those of other boarding school students, and concise accounts of federal assimilationist policies and common institutional practices, [Pember] provides an informed and unsettling perspective on the schools’ individual and collective impact. . . . A gripping, often harrowing account of the personal and communal toll of cultural genocide.”—Kirkus

"Mary Annette Pember has left it all on the line. Through her, her Ojibwe ancestors speak boldly about how the US government has treated them and every Indigenous nation in these so-called-United States. I have never read a book that has changed me so profoundly. Pember not only points to what has been done, but also offers a way forward. Everyone, absolutely everyone, should read this book." —Javier Zamora, author of Solito

“So much writing about historical trauma casts a vague, impenetrable cloud over its subjects’ lives. But with electric precision and rigorous care, Mary Annette Pember pierces through, illuminating the real mechanisms by which pain has accumulated and reverberated through generations of boarding school survivors and their descendants, as well all the beauty, love, and humor these same lives contain. In showing us how trauma is made, Pember helps us see that it can be unmade. ‘History flows through us,’ she writes, and nowhere has this idea been so well rendered as here, in this stunning, essential book.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

“Pember has written a searing exploration of the multi-generational trauma visited upon Native people by the boarding school experience, as well as a brilliant account of Indigenous survivance.” —Michael Witgen, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, author of Seeing Red

"I have a shelf full of books on the Indian boarding schools, but nothing quite like this one. Anyone who questions why the U.S. government has finally apologized for these schools and for its brutal assaults on Native children and their families should read Medicine River." —Colin G. Calloway, Professor of History and Native American Studies, Dartmouth College

"Mary Annette Pember reveals that the trauma and rage of surviving the St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School permeates through the generations. Pember has chronicled a deeply personal and first-person account of the dark legacy of incarceration at a ‘civilized’ boarding school and how the trauma of those youngsters impact their living descendants. Pember tells us that resistance and accountability is attainable, and I believe her. This is an essential read."—Devon Mihesuah, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, author of The Bone Picker

"A dauntless and visceral excavation of one family’s residential boarding school legacy. In Medicine River, we can see pain ripple through generations, eclipsed only by Mary Annette Pember's courage and her conviction that, in the search for answers, we can heal."—Anton Treuer, author of Where Wolves Don't Die

Additional Information
304 pages | 6.42" x 9.55" | Hardcover

From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, a sweeping, personal exploration of Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world.

Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic vacation destinations in the country, it was home to the Wampanoag people. Today, as tourists flock to the idyllic beaches, the island has become increasingly unaffordable for tribal members, with nearly three-quarters now living off-island. Growing up Aquinnah Wampanoag, journalist Joseph Lee grappled with what this situation meant for his tribe, how the community can continue to grow, and more broadly, what it means to be Indigenous.

In Nothing More of This Land, Lee weaves his own story and that of his family into a panoramic narrative of Indigenous life around the world. He takes us from the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard to the icy Alaskan tundra, the smoky forests of Northern California to the halls of the United Nations, and beyond. Along the way he meets activists fighting to protect their land, families clashing with their own tribal leaders, and communities working to reclaim tradition.

Together, these stories reject stereotypes to show the diversity of Indigenous people today and chart a way past the stubborn legacy of colonialism.

Reviews
"Nothing More Of This Land is a stark, beautifully rendered reminder of all that had to occur for the happening of our existences to take place, and all who lived and fought against their own erasure to maintain a semblance of a legacy. This is a profound, and moving book, a powerful indictment of the colonial mindset that firmly balances an ode to people, to place, to remaining."—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

"A forcefully illuminating and utterly compelling blend of personal narrative and vivid reportage, Joseph Lee’s Nothing More of this Land is a triumph of complexity and insight. We follow Lee from the red clay cliffs of Aquinnah to the halls of the UN, from the Klamath River basin to a feast of muktuk and tundra greens in Bethel, Alaska; and very early on I realized I’d follow him anywhere. Lee has given us a timely reckoning with Native sovereignty and community that is adroitly committed to the mess and nuance of lived experience, rather than sentimentalized accounts of victimhood or resilience. Nothing More of this Land is tender, ferocious, surprising, and tenaciously thoughtful; its existence makes the world a bigger and truer place."—Leslie Jamison, bestselling author of The Empathy Exams

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

An unflinching examination of the impacts of settler colonialism from first contact to the contemporary nation state.

On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples is the first installment in a comprehensive collection investigating settler colonialism as a state mandate, a structuring logic of institutions, and an alibi for violence and death. The book examines how settler identities are fashioned in opposition to nature and how eras of settler colonialism have come to be defined. Scholars and thinkers explore how settlers understood themselves as servants of empire, how settler identities came to be predicated on racialization and white supremacy, and more recently, how they have been constructed in relation to multiculturalism.

Featuring perspectives from Indigenous, Black, mixed-race, and other racialized, queer, and white European-descended thinkers from across a range of disciplines, On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples addresses the fundamental truths of this country. Essays engage contemporary questions on the legacy of displacement that settler colonialism has wrought for Indigenous people and racialized settlers caught up in the global implications of empire.

Asserting that reconciliation is a shared endeavor, the collection’s final section exposes the myth at the heart of Canada’s constitutional legitimacy and describes the importance of affirming Indigenous rights, protecting Indigenous people (especially women) from systemic violence, and holding the Canadian settler nation state—which has benefited from the creation and maintenance of genocidal institutions for generations—accountable.

Reviews
“Remarkable...likely to become a landmark reference work for scholars and interested individuals alike.” — Lorenzo Veracini, author of Colonialism: A Global History

“Positive shared futures with all our relations depend on perpetual truth-telling and (re)conciliation. This book guides us through the dark and toward the light.”— David Garneau, author of Dark Chapters

"A thought-provoking and insightful ‘must read’ for all those seeking reconciliation based on truth, justice, and accountability.” — Paulette Regan, author of Unsettling the Settler Within and former research director for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off! That observation best describes the power of this fabulous book that every Canadian should read.”— Val Napoleon, Professor and Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance, University of Victoria

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the On Settler Colonialism in Canada series.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 
Contributor Biographies

David B MacDonald and Emily Grafton, “Introduction: Critical Engagements with Canadian Settler Colonialism: Colonization, Land Theft, Gender Violence, Imperialism, and Genocide” 

Section 1: Considering Violence and Genocide in the Canadian Settler State

Karine Duhamel, “I feel like my spirit knows violence: interrogating the language of temporality and crisis for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ people.”

James Daschuck, “The Battleford hangings and the rise of the settler colonial state.”

David B MacDonald, “Match and Exceed: Why Recognizing Genocide in Canada is Only the First Step in Promoting Indigenous Self-Determination.”

Malissa Bryan, “Unsettled Arrivants: Imagining Black & Indigenous Solidarity Under Settler Colonialism.”

Angie Wong, “Labouring and Living in Canada: Early Chinese Arrivants and Making Settler Colonial Canada.” 

Section 2: Logics of Empire, Colonialism, and Unsettlement

Liam Midzain-Gobin, “Imperial circulation, implicatedness and co-conspiracy, racialized interruptions of settler colonialism in Canada.”

Peter Kulchyski, “A Contribution to Periodizing Settler Colonial History in Canada”

Ajay Parasram, “Learning Settler Colonialism: Double Diaspora and Transnational Imperial Refraction.”

Andrew Woolford, “Settler natures: becoming settler against water.” 

Section 3: Settler colonial society: Relating, Reckoning, and Unreconciliation

Chris Lindgren and Michelle Stewart, “Reckoning and Unreconciled: Neil Stonechild, Starlight Tours, and Racialized Policing in the Settler State.”

Fazeela Jiwa, “On shitheads and revolutionaries: claiming my displaced kin.”

Jerome Melancon, “Relying upon the Colonial Project: Francophone Communities in Minority Settings within the Bilingual Settler Colonial State.”

Desmond McAllister, “Straddling Different Worlds.”

Bernie Farber and Len Rudner, “B’Chol Dor v’Dor: In each and Every Generation.” 

Section 4: Asserting Indigenous Knowledges in settler colonial Canada

Solomon Ratt (poetry) “stolen childhood” and “asastîwa – They pile up”

Joyce Green, “Being and Knowing Home.”

Rebecca Major, “Surviving Institutions in Canada’s Polite Society.”

Paul Simard Smith, “On the Illegitimacy of the Canadian Constitutional Order.”

Emily Grafton, “Resistance and Resurgence: Asserting Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Settler Colonial Canada.” 

“Afterword,” Jeremy Patzer

Additional Information
384 pages | 6.02" x 9.01" | Paperback

Mapping Métis history and cultural heritage through women's work.

Centring kinship and the strength of women, Putting Down Roots reframes Métis road allowance communities as sites of profound resistance and resilience, restoring Métis life in places, times, and scholarship where it has been obscured by settler narratives. These communities were not peripheral spaces where Métis lived as squatters, but places where families culturally thrived by visiting each other, telling stories, sharing food, and providing mutual aid. With stories of Métis li vyeu (Elders) as its foundation, this innovative study reveals the agency embedded in the everyday actions of women's work, which sustained Métis identity, family systems, and relationships to land.

Cheryl Troupe charts a century of Métis presence and persistence in the Qu'Appelle Valley, from the end of the buffalo hunt in the 1850s, through displacement following the northwest resistances, resettlement on fringe Crown lands, ongoing political activism and opposition to Canadian land-use practices, and finally the dissolution of the road allowance community along Katepwa Lake in the 1950s. Focusing on female kinship relationships and food production, Putting Down Roots illuminates the ways women created the stability necessary to adapt to the rapidly changing economic, social, and political conditions that defined this period of Canadian history.

Troupe's sophisticated use of oral histories, archival sources, genealogies, photographs, and deep mapping links people and their stories to the spaces that are important to them. Adding a new dimension to the study of Métis history, Putting Down Roots brings to life the tremendous cultural strength that characterized Métis road allowance communities.

Reviews
"Engaging and well-documented, Putting Down Roots details the economic production of Métis women and should serve to permanently dispel the trope that Métis men were the dominant breadwinners in their society. Compelling anecdotes provided through the collected oral histories clearly delineate the major role of Métis women in family and community formation."— Heather Devine

Educator Information
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. “Down there in the Valley”: Introducing Bob and Margaret
Chapter 2. Daughters of the Country: Women’s Labour in the Métis World
Chapter 3. Petitioning for Rights and Taking up Agriculture
Chapter 4. Asserting Sovereignty to Secure Land
Chapter 5. Securing Land Tenure: The North-West Half-Breed Scrip Commission and Homesteading
Chapter 6. “We Got Our House Built by Seneca Roots”: Life on the Road Allowance
Chapter 7. Going Hunting Rabbits: Women’s Labour in Feeding the Family
Chapter 8. Contesting Government Intervention into Harvesting Spaces
Chapter 9. “This is a Michif Road”: Métis Labour and Relief
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes

Additional Information
408 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 29 b&w illustrations, 10 b&w tables, 14 maps, index, bibliography | Paperback

For thousands of years, Inuit practiced the traditional art of tattooing. Created the ancient way, with bone needles and caribou sinew soaked in seal oil, sod, or soot, these tattoos were an important tradition for many Inuit women, symbols etched on their skin that connected them to their families and communities. But with the rise of missionaries and residential schools in the North, the tradition of tattooing was almost lost. In 2005, when Angela Hovak Johnston heard that the last Inuk woman tattooed in the old way had died, she set out to tattoo herself in tribute to this ancient custom and learn how to tattoo others. What was at first a personal quest became a project to bring the art of traditional tattooing back to Inuit women across Nunavut, starting with Johnston’s home community of Kugluktuk. Collected in this beautiful book are moving photos and stories from more than two dozen women who participated in Johnston’s project. Together, these women have united to bring to life an ancient tradition, reawakening their ancestors’ lines and sharing this knowledge with future generations.

Awards

• 2018 NorthWords Book Prize Winner 

Reviews
"This gorgeous photographic essay on the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project is a deeply personal and affirming work about learning and preserving traditions-and reclaiming what residential schools tried to destroy."-School Library Journal

Additional Information
72 pages | 10.00" x 10.00" | Paperback 

With Indigenous Métis herbalist LoriAnn Bird as your guide, connect with the ancestral wisdom of over 90 wild edible and medicinal plants from across North America.

A purposeful and powerful reference to the lessons, nourishment, healing, and history of our “plant teachers,” Revered Roots shares guidance on exploring, gathering, and reclaiming these long-revered plants as food and medicine. Separated into two sections, LoriAnn first reveals her own journey to understanding and respecting our plant elders. She offers teachings and lessons about remembering our relationship to the plants around us and our responsibility to the earth that sustains us.

The second part of the book is filled with insightful illustrated plant profiles detailing the identification, uses, and Indigenous folklore of some of the continent’s most treasured ancestral plants. Included are edible and medicinal bark, berries, and buds from trees and shrubs, as well as foliage, flowers, and fronds from herbs, “weeds,” and wildflowers; some native to the continent, others introduced generations ago.

Learn about the gifts our Rooted Nation of plants has to offer, including:

• Evergreen tips from spruces, pines, and firs
• Hawthorn berries, leaves, and flowers
• Plantain seeds and foliage
• Oswego tea leaves and blooms
• Slippery elm bark
• Motherwort flowers, stems, and leaves
• Black cohosh roots and rhizomes
• Marshmallow root
• Cottonwood buds and bark
• Plus dozens more

Reclaiming our natural rhythms and connections to the earth we walk on is essential to our health and well-being, both as individuals and as a community. One simple way to do that is by appreciating, respecting, and seeking to understand the plants around us.

Reviews
“With elegant reverence, LoriAnn Bird weaves connections among ancestral herbalist teachings from several lineages. She invites us into our own personal journey with plant medicine, giving us lessons on how to respect and honor the power of plants and their human knowledge keepers. She carefully and lovingly attributes each piece of teaching to its source. This book is a powerful legacy that we need more than ever at this time of healing and reconciliation. May its words fly into the world and land softly in the hearts of all who need them.”—Lori Weidenhammer, author of Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees

“Revered Roots is truly an essential work of art that imparts the sacredness of each plant, in each harvesting step and in the interspecies relationships with all of life. The authentic and grounded nature of LoriAnn Bird comes through the pages to connect us with a sense of belonging and reverence.”—Katrina Blair, founder of Turtle Lake Refuge; author of The Wild Wisdom of Weeds

“LoriAnn Bird, in her book Revered Roots, creates a beautiful story about our plant relatives with our history woven between the leaves of each page. She highlights each being and allows them to tell their story, including who they are, their benefits, uses, ways to eat, look-alikes, and what makes them unique. It's like looking at an old family album and finally knowing who each person is and what their spirit has to offer the world. The book, complete with information about our relatives, wrapped its warm arms around me as I nestled in to read each page, excited to learn more about family. LoriAnn’s voice provides a continuous honoring of our ancestors, our brilliance, and our resilience.”—Jenna Jasek, Shuswap (Kenpesq't) Band member, Director of Indigenous Learning, The Outdoor Learning School

“LoriAnn Bird weaves stories of plants into a tapestry of vivid imagery and teachings, allowing us to experience earth medicine in a way we never have before. Like a family gathered around the table exchanging stories of cherished ones, Lori Ann’s plant musings draw us into an intimate connection with our More-Than-Human Kin. From a small moment in a back alley in East Vancouver to hundreds of years of history from around the world, Revered Roots feels like an equal blend of encyclopedia, history book, and love letter. Get to know plants in a truly profound way through the words of a master storyteller, sister, friend, mother, and plant protector.”—Stephanie Rose, founder of Garden Therapy; author of Garden Alchemy and The Regenerative Garden

“This is a beautiful book on every level; the gorgeous drawings and painting of plants, the photography and images throughout, but also the words and the feelings on each page. Intensely moving and remarkably practical, deeply personal and filled with worldly wisdom, this book offers the reader a glimpse into a whole new way of seeing the nature. With a plant centered focus, through a biophilia lens, the author invites us to re-evaluate and re-vision our own relationships with plants and the natural world. This book is destined to be a classic.”—Chanchal Cabrera MSc, FNIMH, Medical Herbalist; Horticulture Therapist; author of Holistic Cancer Care

“LoriAnn has put a lifetime of collected knowledge into a work that connects people to plants in ways both honorable and honest. Revered Roots extols both the practical and sacred uses of the plants we see around us, while also nurturing our respect for our More-Than-Human Kin and our responsibility to the greater world. It has been a pleasure to be a teacher and herbal mentor to LoriAnn for many years.”—Don Ollsin, Master Herbalist; Conscious Spiritual Elder, Alchemy of Aging; author of Pathways to Healing

Additional Information
240 pages | 8.00" x 9.55" | Hardcover 

The history and ecology of the Skeena River region in the Pacific Northwest is characterized by a complex landscape of interwoven phenomena, driven by biophysical and cultural changes over millennia. Combining archaeological, botanical, and historical research, together with first-hand accounts provided by Gitselasu knowledge holders, this book critically assesses and debunks settler colonial narratives of a wild and untouched landscape in northwestern British Columbia. By focusing on people-plant interactions and landscape changes through time, Silm Da’axk offers insights into the diverse and bustling territories of Gitselasu Ts’msyen. Augmenting these discussions is a vividly illustrated guide to the plants that grow in the region.

From the middle Skeena River to the coast, along creek beds and into alpine meadows, Gitselasu continue to thrive, representing one of the oldest and longest enduring Ts’msyen Nations. Tapping into historical knowledge of the laws (adawx) surrounding plant use and territory ownership, this book highlights the intricate relationships that exist among people, places, and plants.

Educator Information
Gitselasu Knowledge Holders include the many teachers and Elders who contributed to this book, including Wilfred Bennett, Amy Bevan, Mel Bevan, Geneva Mason, Alfie McDames, Isabelle McKee, CJ Nabess, Pat Squires, and countless others. This collaboration was guided by the Kitselas Lands and Resource Department, stewards of Gitselasu lands and waters.

Subjects: Archaeology, Canadian History, Indigenous History, Geography and Landscape, Indigenous Studies.

Additional Information
376 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 80 colour illustrations | Paperback 

An essential and easy-to-read guide to treaties, Indigenous sovereignty, and land for all Canadians

Treaties cover much of Canada. Some were established thousands of years ago, with land and animals, and others date back to the time when Europeans first arrived in North America. These agreements make it possible for all of us to live, work, play, and profit on these lands. Additionally, treaties have profoundly shaped the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In Talk Treaty to Me, Crystal Gail Fraser and Sara Komarnisky untangle the complexities of treaties and set a path forward for greater understanding of all our roles, rights, and responsibilities. In this accessible, clear, and concise book, they discuss:

· Treaties among and between Indigenous Peoples

· The history of treaty-making between Indigenous Peoples and Britain, then Canada, from the very beginning to the present day

· Concepts like Métis scrip, modern land claims, Indigenous sovereignty, and unceded territory

· The (dis)honouring of treaties and the role of Canadian settler colonialism

· How the creation of Canadian borders interrupts Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood

· Important insights from gendered and queer perspectives on treaty and land

· The politics of land acknowledgements

· Reconciliation and Land Back movements

And more.

With a quick-reference timeline, maps, and black-and-white photographs throughout, Talk Treaty to Me concludes with a call to action and specific, tangible steps that all of us can take every day to support reconciliation.

Additional Information
256 pages | 5.25" x 8.00" | 40 b&w photos, spot illustrations & maps | Paperback 

This community history chronicles the processes that led to the founding of the Fort McKay Métis Nation in northern Alberta.

This is the definitive history of the Fort McKay Métis Nation. It traces the evolution of the community from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, paying special attention to genealogy, land-use, land-tenure, and responses to mass oil sands development.

The Fort McKay Métis Nation carefully considers the community’s unique historical context, drawing on a broad range of sources including archival research, oral histories, grey literature, and community literature. It examines the complex interrelations between the Fort McKay Metis Nation and their neighbors, the Fort McKay First Nation, and their ways they have connected with each other.

Completed in partnership with the community, The Fort McKay Métis Nation provides perspectives which have never before been shared. It is an important, unique history of a community in the heart of the oil sands.

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

Indigenomics in action-moving beyond Indian Act economics towards Indigenous economic sovereignty

In this groundbreaking new work, Carol Anne Hilton, author of the bestselling Indigenomics, explores the phenomenon of growing Indigenous economic power and sovereignty, achieved despite monumental historic injustices.

The Indigenous economy in Canada is on track to exceed $100 billion. Yet full Indigenous participation at the economic table is still fundamentally lacking, due in large part to the inherently colonial and racist policies of the Indian Act. Hilton deconstructs these systemic barriers and maps an ethical way forward based on radical inclusion and Indigenomics in action.

Coverage includes:

• The far-reaching social and moral consequences of Indian Act economics-a tool used to legislate away Indigenous rights and jurisdiction with the express purpose of erasing First Nations
• The true cost of maintaining the status quo, from perpetuating inequality and cycles of Indigenous poverty, to lost opportunities for value-creation in Indigenous and settler economies
• Twenty-five transformative trends driving Indigenous economic growth.

Required reading for Indigenous organizations, Nations, and allies; business leaders and investors; lawyers and policymakers; governments at all levels; and everyone interested in reconciliation, decolonization, and building a just, prosperous, and inclusive society.

Reviews
"Hilton's work reaffirms the significance of relationship economics. Her words clearly illustrate that Indigenomics is the path for the future. As we move through the portal of this time, knowing that pandemics change our world, let's walk through to a path of restorative economics, founded on land, spirit, and the reality of Mother Earth's wealth, which is our responsibility to acknowledge and respect. The time of Keynesian economic analysis has passed, along with the empire. The time of cooperation is here." -Winona LaDuke, executive director, Honor the Earth Carol Anne

"Hilton mounts a convincing case that the rigidity of the Indian Act has put the rest of Canada in a static status-quo headspace that sees Indigenous Peoples as taken care of; meaning they don't see how adept they are in their economic empowerment as they consistently score in the open net." -Bill Gallagher, resource strategist

"A dynamic pathway to equitable Indigenous economic liberation and advancement." -Ruth Mojeed Ramirez, Chief Equity Officer, The Inclusion Project

"A comprehensively insightful guide for advancing Indigenous economic growth and inclusion." -Vinod Rajasekaran, CEO, Future of Good

"An essential primer for those seeking to understand and celebrate the economic rebirth of Indigenous communities." -Ken Coates, professor emeritus, University of Saskatchewan

Educator Information
The Indigenous economy is surging, but full Indigenous economic participation is still lacking, thwarted by the colonial and racist policies of Canada’s Indian Act. The Rise of Indigenous Economic Power deconstructs these historic and systemic barriers and presents an ethical response based on Indigenomics in action.

Additional Information
264 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 5 b&w illustrations | Paperback 

The pelt of a dog named “Mutton” languished in a drawer at the Smithsonian for 150 years until it was discovered, almost accidentally, by an amateur archivist. This book tells Mutton's story and explores what it can teach us about Coast Salish Woolly Dogs and their cultural significance.

Until now, there has been very little written about the enigmatic Coast Salish Woolly Dog, or sqʷəmey̓ in the Hul'q'umi'num language. According to Indigenous Oral Histories of the Pacific Northwest, this small dog was bred for thousands of years for its woolly fibres, which were woven into traditional blankets, robes and regalia. Although the dogs were carefully protected by Coast Salish peoples, by the 1900s, the Woolly Dog had become so rare it is now considered extinct.

Co-authored with weavers, Knowledge Keepers, and Elders, The Teachings of Mutton interweaves perspectives from Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō, Suquamish, Cowichan, Katzie, Snuneymuxw, and Skokomish cultures with narratives of science, post-contact history, and the lasting and devastating impacts of colonization. Binding it all together is Mutton's story—a tale of research, reawakening, and resurgence.

Reviews
“What a compelling story, reflecting a way of life, practical knowledge, artistry and change in the Pacific Northwest! Mutton, the domesticated woolly dog, represents so much more than a museum collection or a source of weaving material. Generations of breeding, learning and sharing, caring and trading are mirrored in the discovery of his pelt in a drawer at the Smithsonian. Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa and her respected Salishan co-authors and Knowledge Keepers have brought Mutton into the present, and in doing so, have given us a new and unique perspective on the complex history of this region and on the meaning of Truth and Reconciliation. The book is clearly and thoughtfully written, and supplemented with excellent illustrations. It is a ‘must read’ for anyone wishing to know more about weaving arts, dog breeds, Indigenous cultures and/or history in northwestern North America.” — Nancy J. Turner, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Victoria

“Conscientious and accessible, The Teachings of Mutton weaves a charming and informative history, walking through the discovery of his pelt in a museum drawer to the modern science that reveals the shape of this dog’s life. Highlighting and correcting generations of non-Indigenous misinterpretation, the intertwined histories provided by Salish knowledge keepers reveal the nuanced Indigenous sciences of dog husbandry, spinning, weaving, and the cultural significance of Woolly Dogs while telling a lively story.” — Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, PhD, curator of Northwest Native art and director of the Bill Holm Center for

Additional Information
264 pages | 8.00" x 10.00"

From ground zero of this country's most important project: reconciliation

Niigaan Sinclair has been called provocative, revolutionary, and one of this country's most influential thinkers on the issues impacting Indigenous cultures, communities, and reconciliation in Canada. In his debut collection of stories, observations, and thoughts about Winnipeg, the place he calls "ground zero" of Canada's future, read about the complex history and contributions of this place alongside the radical solutions to injustice and violence found here, presenting solutions for a country that has forgotten principles of treaty and inclusivity. It is here, in the place where Canada began—where the land, water, people, and animals meet— that a path "from the centre" is happening for all to see.

At a crucial and fragile moment in Canada's long history with Indigenous peoples, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance.

Based on years' worth of columns, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of colonialism, the Indian Act, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities.

Sinclair uses the story of Winnipeg to illuminate the reality of Indigenous life all over what is called Canada. This is a book that demands change and celebrates those fighting for it, that reminds us of what must be reconciled and holds accountable those who must do the work. It's a book that reminds us of the power that comes from loving a place, even as that place is violently taken away from you, and the magic of fighting your way back to it.

Awards

•  Winner of the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Additional Information
384 pages | 5.14" x 7.92" | b&w photos throughout | Paperback

Honouring the scholarship of Métis matriarchs

While surveying the field of Indigenous studies, Laura Forsythe and Jennifer Markides recognized a critical need for not only a Métis-focused volume, but one focused on the contributions of Métis women. To address this need, they brought together work by new and established scholars, artists, storytellers, and community leaders that reflects the diversity of research created by Métis women as it is lived, considered, conceptualized, and re-imagined.

With writing by Emma LaRocque and other pioneers of Métis studies, Around the Kitchen Table looks beyond the patriarchy to document and celebrate the scholarship of Métis women. Focusing on experiences in post-secondary environments, this collection necessarily traverses a range of methodologies. Spanning disciplines of social work, education, history, health care, urban studies, sociology, archaeology, and governance, contributors bring their own stories to explorations of spirituality, material culture, colonialism, land-based education, sexuality, language, and representation. The result is an expansive, heartfelt, and accessible "community of Métis thought," as articulated by Markides.

Reverent and revelatory, this collection centres the strong aunties and grandmothers who have shaped Métis communities, culture, and identities with teachings shared in classrooms, auditoriums, and around the kitchen table.

Reviews
"Inspiring, healing, and future-facing, this long overdue book gives us valuable new insights into the histories and identities of Métis people." — Kim Anderson

"Around the Kitchen Table is an exciting and thought-provoking contribution to the fields of Métis Studies and Indigenous feminism. Reading this book is like sitting down to visit with a strong cup of tea and your favourite aunties. It will inspire readers to think about matriarchy in new and exciting ways, teaching us what it means to be Métis women, good relatives, and innovative scholars." — Cheryl Troupe

Educator Information
Other contributors: Jennifer Adese, Christi Belcourt, Hannah Bouvier, Rita Bouvier, Vicki Bouvier, Robline Davey, Leah Marie Dorion, Marilyn Dumont, Nicki Ferland, Chantal Fiola, Lucy Fowler, Chelsea Gabel, Janice Cindy Gaudet, Emily Haines, Shalene Jobin, Emma LaRocque, Amanda LaVallee, Lynn Lavallee, Avery Letendre, Kirsten Lindquist, Yvonne Poitras Pratt, Angela Rancourt, Lisa Shepherd, Allyson Stevenson, Kisha Supernant, Caroline Tait, Angie Tucker, Dawn Wambold

Table of Contents

Contributors
Foreword by Caroline Tait
The Work of Métis Women: An Introduction – Jennifer Markides

Part One: Identity

1. Brown Names – Marilyn Dumont
2. We Know Ourselves – Lisa Shepherd
3. Kaa-waakohtoochik: The Ones Who Are Related to Each Other – Vicki Bouvier
4. The Roots Always Remain: Reconnecting to Our Communities in the Twenty-First Century – Angie Tucker
5. For the Love of Place―Not Just Any Place: Selected Metis Writings – Emma Larocque
6. Coming Home through Métis Research – Allyson Stevenson
7. Valuing Métis Identity in the Prairies through a “5 R” Lens: Our Digital Storytelling Journey – Chelsea Gabel and Amanda LaVallee
8. Prenatal/Postpartum Ceremonies and Parenting as Michif Self-Determination – Chantal Fiola
9. Medicine Women – Jennifer Adese
10. Lii Michif – Lisa Shepherd

Part Two: Women in the Academy

11. Metis Women as Contributors to the Academy Despite Colonial Patriarchy – Laura Forsythe
12. Connecting to Our Ancestors Through Archaeology: Stories of Three Métis Women Academics – Kisha Supernant, Dawn Wambold, and Emily Haines
13. Métis Women Educating in the Academy – Yvonne Poitras Pratt and Jennifer Markides
14. Structural and Lateral Violence Toward Metis Women in the Academy – Lynn Lavallee

Part Three: Research Methodology

15. Métis Research and Relationality: Auntie Governance, the Visiting Way, and Kitchen Table Reflections – Kirsten Lindquist, Shalene Jobin, Avery Letendre
16. Lii Taab di Faam Michif/Metis Women’s Kitchen Table: Practicing Our Sovereignty – Cindy Gaudet and Angela Rancourt
17. Wahkotowin: An Approach to Indigenous (Land-Based) Education – Nicki Ferland
18. Kaa-natoonamaan taanshi chi-ishi-natoonikeeyaan: My Search for how to Research Things (in a Queer Métis paradigm) – Lucy Fowler
19. Differentiating Métis Feminism – Robline Davey
20. Celebrating the Wisdom of Our Métis Matriarchs: Sewing Our Wellness All Together—Kood Toot Aansamb – Leah Dorion, Janice Cindy Gaudet, Hannah Bouvier
21. if the land could speak – Rita Bouvier

Bibliography
Art – Christi Belcourt

Additional Information
200 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | index, bibliography | Paperback

The first comprehensive study of Indian residential schools in the North.

In this ground-breaking book, Crystal Gail Fraser draws on Dinjii Zhuh (Gwich'in) concepts of individual and collective strength to illuminate student experiences in northern residential schools, revealing the many ways Indigenous communities resisted the institutionalization of their children.

After 1945, federal bureaucrats and politicians increasingly sought to assimilate Indigenous northerners--who had remained comparatively outside of their control--into broader Canadian society through policies that were designed to destroy Indigenous ways of life. Foremost among these was an aggressive new schooling policy that mandated the construction of Grollier and Stringer Halls: massive residential schools that opened in Inuvik in 1959, eleven years after a special joint committee of the House of Commons and the Senate recommended that all residential schools in Canada be closed.

By Strength, We Are Still Here shares the lived experiences of Indigenous northerners from 1959 until 1982, when the territorial government published a comprehensive plan for educational reform. Led by Survivor testimony, Fraser shows the roles both students and their families played in disrupting state agendas, including questioning and changing the system to protect their cultures and communities.

Centring the expertise of Knowledge Keepers, By Strength, We Are Still Here makes a crucial contribution to Indigenous research methodologies and to understandings of Canadian and Indigenous histories during the second half of the twentieth century.

Reviews
"By Strength, We Are Still Here demonstrates an intergenerational process of love and strength. Fraser's methodology, theory work, and incredibly thorough research are in and of themselves lifegiving, vital, and serve as an example to all other scholars." — Omeasoo Wahpasiw

"By integrating survivor testimony with archives, Fraser points towards the Indigenous resistance revealed in the ellipses and gaps in the colonial record. This is very important work." — Chris Trott

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Glossary

A Note on Region and Terminology

Introduction—By Strength, We Are Still Here.

Chapter One—“If anyone is going to jail for this, I’m taking it”: Our Relatives Speak

• Education in Nanhkak Thak Before the Arrival of Settlers
• Indian Day and Residential Schools
• The Construction of Inuvik

Chapter Two—Calls Grow. “Listen! It’s louder now. From here, from there. Indian voices, Métis voices, demanding attention, demanding equality!"

Chapter Three—“The long process of tearing our family apart”

Chapter Four—“Making us into nice white kids.”

Chapter Five—“The hazards that can result from too permissive or undisciplined sexual behaviour.”

Chapter Six—“To find that inner peace, it was so important for us all.”

Chapter Seven—“These are our children and they are very precious to us.”

Conclusion—“We knew the value of strength.”

Appendix A

Endnotes

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 69 b&w illustrations, index, bibliography | Paperback 

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the ‘90s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land over a century later.

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests—in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples. That changed on July 9, 2020, when a high-profile Supreme Court case—which originated with a small-town murder two decades earlier—affirmed the reservation of Muscogee Nation. The ruling resulted in the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history, merely because the Court chose to follow the law.

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was create on top of their land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, when a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen, his defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma argued that reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court said: no more; a ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle tells the story of the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in Eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed in its long history of greed, corruption and lawlessness, and the Native battle for the right to be here that has shaped our country.

Educator Information
By the Fire We Carry is hard-hitting American history that expands on the nation's story. It tells of the treatment of Native Americans, their removal and displacement, and the genocide committed against them by the US government from their viewpoint. 

Additional Information
352 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 23 b/w photographs and maps | Hardcover