History

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”

Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.

Reviews
“Meticulously documented, this thought-provoking treatise is sure to generate discussion.”—Booklist

“What is fresh about the book is its comprehensiveness. Dunbar-Ortiz brings together every indictment of white Americans that has been cast upon them over time, and she does so by raising intelligent new questions about many of the current trends of academia, such as multiculturalism. Dunbar-Ortiz’s material succeeds, but will be eye-opening to those who have not previously encountered such a perspective.”—Publishers Weekly

"Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States helped me clarify my place in this country. It confirmed what had been told to me by my ancestors: that Indigenous peoples, from the North Pole to the South, have been here since before the world was known as round. As a conquering nation, the United States has rewritten history to make people of the U.S. forget our past as natives to this land. This is especially apparent in the Mexi-phobic, immigrant-phobic policies of our time.

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014) helped me clarify my place in this country...This book is necessary reading if we are to move into a more humane future."—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

“A must-read for anyone interested in the truth behind this nation’s founding.” —Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, PhD, Jicarilla Apache author, historian, and publisher of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country

“This may well be the most important US history book you will read in your lifetime. . . . Dunbar-Ortiz radically reframes US history, destroying all foundation myths to reveal a brutal settler-colonial structure and ideology designed to cover its bloody tracks. Here, rendered in honest, often poetic words, is the story of those tracks and the people who survived—bloodied but unbowed. Spoiler alert: the colonial era is still here, and so are the Indians.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

“Dunbar Ortiz’s . . . assessment and conclusions are necessary tools for all Indigenous peoples seeking to address and remedy the legacy of US colonial domination that continues to subvert Indigenous human rights in today’s globalized world.”—Mililani B. Trask, Native Hawai‘ian international law expert on Indigenous peoples’ rights and former Kia Aina (prime minister) of Ka La Hui Hawai‘i

Additional Information
328 pages | 6.38" x 9.30" | Hardcover

A retrospective look at the precontact period of the Maritimes, and how precontact cultures changed as they encountered neighbouring Indigenous peoples and European colonists.

In recent decades, the development of Indigenous Archaeology has prompted a shift in how non-Indigenous archaeologists approach the archaeological record, moving toward the inclusion of Indigenous reconstructions of precontact history communicated through oral tradition and traditional practices. Drawing mainly on research conducted since the late 1950s, this book surveys the historical perspective, theory, and methodology of maritime archaeology and offers insight on the lives of the Palaeo (Ancient), Archaic (Long Ago), and Woodland (Clay Pot) peoples. Looking to provide answers to where the earliest inhabitants of the Maritimes came from, what the area was like when they were there, and how they developed their technology and expanded their populations, Archaeology and the Indigenous Peoples of the Maritimes provides a retrospective look at the precontact period and how precontact cultures changed as they encountered neighbouring Indigenous peoples and finally European colonists.

Reviews
"Studies of Indigenous knowledge are challenging not only because of difficulties in cross-cultural communication and understanding but also because of their inevitable political dimensions…This publication serves to help narrow those gaps for future young Mi’kmaw scholars and academics. It also forms a valuable addition to the existing body of knowledge and will serve as a great resource to both Mi’kmaw and non-Mi’kmaw readers in the Atlantic Region." - Roger Lewis, Foreword

Additional Information
6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Called the Northlanders by the Moravian missionaries who sought to colonize them, Avanimiut were Inuit who maintained traditional lifeways, autonomy, and spiritual beliefs in northernmost Labrador. Despite the attempts of the Moravian Mission, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Anglican Church to bring them into their Christian and commercial trading worlds, the Avanimiut often held on to their independence. Avanimiut: A History of Inuit Independence in Northern Labrador is the story of a people often displaced by relocation who survived and thrived despite the hardships they faced.

The first version of Avanimiut, a 1996 report titled “Northlanders,” was commissioned by the Labrador Inuit Association and written by Carol Brice-Bennett. Lena Onalik and Andrea Procter have modified the original manuscript to incorporate historical Inuit writing and interviews, including the Inuit voices that had previously been almost entirely omitted. Avanimiut presents these voices alongside the colonial accounts of Inuit families who continued to live in their ancestral territories of Labrador, providing a glimpse into their lives, families, and relationships.

From the earliest interactions between Inuit and Europeans in Labrador to the final eviction of Inuit from their northern homeland, this book illustrates the dignified history of Avanimiut families and honours the strength, resilience, and survival of their ancestors in the north.

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

“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

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

In this quietly powerful and deeply human book, Ruth DyckFehderau and twenty-one James Bay Cree storytellers put a face to Canada’s Indian Residential School cultural genocide.

Through intimate personal stories of trauma, loss, recovery, and joy, they tell of experiences in the residential schools themselves, in the homes when the children were taken, and on the territory after survivors returned and worked to recover from their experiences and to live with dignity. The prose is clear and accessible, the stories remarkably individual, the detail vivid but not sensational.

Together they reveal the astonishing courage and strength of children along with the complexity and myriad methods of their oppressors. A tough, often funny, and ultimately uplifting book that’s not quite like anything else out there.

This book is published by Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay and distributed by WLU Press.

Reviews
“These previously unwritten stories of lived, traumatized experiences are testament to the storytellers’ courage and strength and resilience. When the rich Cree traditional and spiritual relationship with land and with family is harmed by separation, hatred, and fear - a harm resulting in anger and loss of values, identity, and self-worth - these storytellers find ways to heal. Through their stories, you learn about culture as treatment, about the power of forgiveness and love, and about peaceful co-existence in community as essential to healing, belief, and advancing true reconciliation.” —Chief Willie Littlechild, Ermineskin Cree Nation, Former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, Former residential school student athlete, Order of Canada; Order of Sport, Member of Sports Halls of Fame, Canada and North America

“These Cree stories, told with utmost respect and a feeling of safety, are gifts. They are medicine.” —Joanna Campiou, Woodland/Plains Cree Knowledge Keeper

“This is a difficult but necessary book. There’s a power to truth and to the realities of the Indian Residential School system, but for those wanting to see strength and movement toward hope, this is the book for you. These stories hold that hope close to the heart. What shines through is a love of the land, a love of community, a love of the Cree language, a love of family – exactly what colonial forces like the IRS system tried to destroy but couldn’t.” —Conor Kerr, Metis/Ukrainian author, Avenue of Champions, Giller Prize longlist

Additional Information
320 pages | 7.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers write about working with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples through their trials and tribulations with the criminal justice system. The stories are a mix of previously published essays from the Durvile True Cases anthologies with an equal number of new chapters by legal and law enforcement professionals including Justice Thomas Berger (posthumous), Justice Nancy Morrison, Justice John Reilly, Senator Kim Pate, lawyers Eleanore Sunchild, Brian Beresh, and John L. Hill, and parole and police officers Doug Heckbert, Ernie Louttit, Val Hoglund, and Sharon Bourque.

Reviews
“I’m struck by how the True Cases series has a multiplicity of authentic perspectives that are able to be our proxy or conduit into amazing worlds... Stories that are happening in our community and to our neighbours that we should know about but don’t.” —Grant Stovers, CKUA Radio

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

What would Indigenous resurgence look like if the parameters were not set with a focus on the state, settlers, or an achievement of reconciliation? Indigenous Resurgence in an Age of Reconciliation explores the central concerns and challenges facing Indigenous nations in their resurgence efforts, while also mapping the gaps and limitations of both reconciliation and resurgence frameworks.

The essays in this collection centre the work of Indigenous communities, knowledge, and strategies for resurgence and, where appropriate, reconciliation. The book challenges narrow interpretations of indigeneity and resurgence, asking readers to take up a critical analysis of how settler colonial and heteronormative framings have infiltrated our own ways of relating to our selves, one another, and to place. The authors seek to (re)claim Indigenous relationships to the political and offer critical self-reflection to ensure Indigenous resurgence efforts do not reproduce the very conditions and contexts from which liberation is sought.

Illuminating the interconnectivity between and across life in all its forms, this important collection calls on readers to think expansively and critically about Indigenous resurgence in an age of reconciliation.

Reviews
"This book is an undoubtedly critical, original, and powerful contribution to the field of Indigenous studies and beyond. With sound scholarship, the contributors show us how disentangling from reconciliation discourses is not only a tool of critique, but also a methodology for understanding how settler concepts of territoriality and authority have shaped Indigenous peoples’ understandings of themselves, their governments, and their relationships to land and to one another." — Shiri Pasternak, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University

"The relationship between reconciliation and resurgence is a complicated and, at times, deeply contested one. This volume does an excellent job of situating itself within the wider literature on resurgence and reconciliation and their conflicted and/or complimentary relationship. This is an important contribution to a fraught conversation, and it provides many different perspectives that help to, if not resolve, then guide the conversation beyond its current roadblocks towards something better." — Joshua Nichols, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, McGill University

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

The gripping, forgotten tale of Ira Hayes—a Native American icon and World War II legend who famously helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima but spent the latter half of his life haunted by being a war hero.

IRA HAYES tells the story of Ira Hamilton Hayes from the perspective of a Native American combat veteran of the Vietnam generation. Hayes, along with five other Marines, was captured in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of raising the stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi during the battle for the Japanese Island of Iwo Jima. The photograph was the inspiration and model for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington.

Between the time he helped raise that flag and his death—and beyond—he was the subject of more newspaper columns than any other Native person. He was hailed as a hero and maligned as a chronic alcoholic unable to take care of himself. IRA HAYES explores these fluctuating views of Ira Hayes. It reveals that they were primarily the product of American misconceptions about Native people, the nature of combat, and even alcoholism. Like most surviving veterans of combat, Ira did not think of himself as a heroic figure. There can be no doubt that Ira suffered from PTSD, which is a compound of survivor’s guilt, the shock of seeing death, especially of one’s friends, and the isolation brought on by feeling that no one could understand what he had been through. Ira’s life has been a subject of two motion pictures and a television drama. All these dramas sympathize with him, but ultimately fail to see his binge drinking as his way of temporarily escaping the melancholy, the rage he felt, his sense of betrayal, and the sheer boredom of peacetime.

IRA HAYES breaks apart the complexities of Ira’s short life in honor of all Native veterans who have been to war in the service of the United States. This is equally their story.

Reviews
"Written with page-turning excitement, Tom Holm, a Native scholar and veteran of Vietnam, offers an Indigenous realism through the heroic life of Ira Hayes, an Akimel O’odam marine in World War II. You will re-live the life of Ira Hayes who helped to raise the American flag at Iwo Jima after the bloodiest battle in Pacific during the war and became a legend. A gifted storyteller, Holm writes with an engaging insight making the reader feel right beside Ira Hayes in boarding school, combat, and struggling with PTSD."—Donald L. Fixico (Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee and Sac and Fox), Regents’ and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History, Arizona State University

“WWII hero Ira Hayes would have appreciated this book. Author Tom Holm uses Ira’s courage and humility as tools to dissect the historic and current fate of his Native American people. And Ira’s challenges focus light upon the tragedy of war and the horrors of PTSD. A meaningful and beautifully-researched read.”—Judy Avila, bestselling author of Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

“Tom Holm brilliantly and respectfully offers readers a rich and long overdue account of the life and tragic death of Ira Hayes that pierces through the stereotypes and misconceptions that plagued his during his life and long after his passing. It is a sensitive work that reminds us of the enormous emotional, psychological, and cultural difficulties Hayes had to cope with throughout his life. It is a splendid and timely contribution.” —Dr. David Wilkins, E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies and citizen of the Lumbee Nation of North Carolina

“As a historian and a veteran, Tom Holm is uniquely positioned to write this important story, the first scholarly treatment of Hayes' life and times. Holm examines Hayes' struggles with fame and illness after World War II while offering insights into a post-war America hostile to Native identity and sovereignty despite the sacrifices made by Hayes and thousands of other Native Americans.”—Paul C. Rosier, Ph.D., Professor of History at Villanova University and author of Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century

"An excellent piece of scholarship; the definitive work on this Native American veteran. Carefully nuanced and rich in context, Holm transcends and dispels the stereotypes of Ira Haye’s life to show the complexity of the Akimel O’odham experience, the impacts of World War II, the social use of alcohol in 1940s America, and his personal experiences from poverty, racism, and the unwanted and unending attention following the flag raising on Mount Suribachi. As Holm concludes, 'He should be remembered for who he was rather that for what the dominant society has been led to believe about him.'"—William C. Meadows, Missouri State University

"Tom Holm deservedly looms large in the history of Indigenous peoples’ military service in the wars of the twentieth century. In his new book, IRA HAYES, Holm reintroduces us to the iconic individual in ‘The Photograph’ of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. Holm extricates Hayes from the trope of tragedy and the racist stereotype of the ‘drunken Indian’ into which his story was confined during his lifetime and in which it remained trapped since his death. Instead, a complex Ira Hayes comes to life in the long context of his Akimel O’odham culture and community, American colonialism and racism, his military service, and his likely suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This tour de force is, by turns, compelling, devastating, and intensely humanizing."—R. Scott Sheffield, Professor of History at University of the Fraser Valley and co-author of Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

“A strong contribution to the literature of World War II, Native American warriors, and the unseen wounds of war.”—Kirkus Reviews

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.35" x 9.25" | Hardcover

Illuminating the First Nations struggles against the Canadian state, It’s All about the Land exposes how racism underpins and shapes Indigenous-settler relationships. Renowned Kahnawà:ke Mohawk activist and scholar Taiaiake Alfred explains how the Canadian government’s reconciliation agenda is a new form of colonization that is also guaranteed to fail.

Bringing together Alfred’s speeches and interviews from over the past two decades, the book shows that Indigenous peoples across the world face a stark choice: reconnect with their authentic cultures and values or continue following a slow road to annihilation. Alfred proposes a radical vision for contesting and confronting the ongoing genocide of the original peoples of this land: Indigenous Resurgence. This way of thinking, being, and practising represents an authentic politics that roots resistance in the spirit, knowledge, and laws of the ancestors.

Set against the historic arc of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada and drawing on the rich heritage of First Nations resistance movements, It’s All about the Land traces the evolution of Indigenous struggle and liberation through the dynamic processes of oratory, dialogue, action, and reflection.

Reviews
"It is Taiaiake’s call to face the uncomfortable truths of colonization and the impacts it has had on our Nations, families, and individuals that makes his work stand out. As his work is such a challenge to the current unjust status quo, it has been both embraced and rejected. This is a clear sign that he is on to something" — Pam Palmater, from the Foreword

“It’s All About the Land is a long-awaited, vital contribution and is an essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the injustices Native people live under and what we should be doing about it.” — Grand Chief Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer, Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke

“Taiaiake Alfred is a thought shifter who builds fires with his words. Anyone who cares about Indigenous issues and craves to be jolted into action should read this book -- a real counter narrative to the status quo.” — Chelsey Luger, Lakota and Anishinaabe, author of The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well

“It’s All About the Land takes mainstream assumptions about reconciliation as seen and processed through a colonial filter and turns them on their head. Insightful, informative, and deeply thoughtful, this book will have you thinking differently about decolonization and what reconciliation really stands for. Ultimately, it asks all of us to do and be more.” — Toula Drimonis, writer, columnist, and author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada

“Some may be surprised, given my position and our respective philosophical world views, that I count Taiaiake as a friend, but his work forces me to scrutinize and constantly question my actions and those of my government so as not to reproduce the horrific social experiment that has devastated Indigenous peoples.” — The Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations  

Educator Information
This book challenges conventional thinking about reconciliation. Renowned Kahnawà:ke Mohawk activist and scholar Taiaiake Alfred argues that reconciliation is another form of colonization and instead proposes Indigenous Resurgence as a radical vision for contesting and confronting the continuing genocide of the Original Peoples. 

Contents
Foreword: The Battle to Decolonize Ourselves Inside and Out
Pamela Palmater

Introduction
Ann Rogers

Wasáse Redux
June 2005, TV Ontario

From Noble Savage to Righteous Warrior
March 6, 2010, Vancouver, BC

The Psychic Landscape of Contemporary Colonialism
November 9, 2011, Ottawa

Practical Decolonization 
April 9, 2012, Kingston, ON

Warrior Scholarship
March 18, 2013, Victoria, BC

Constitutional Recognition and Colonial Doublespeak
November 27, 2013, Melbourne, Australia

On Being and Becoming Indigenous
November 28, 2013, Melbourne, Australia

Reconciliation as Recolonization
September 20, 2016, Montreal, QC

From Red Power to Resurgence
November 2, 2018, Vancouver, BC

Rebuilding the Fire: In Conversation with Pamela Palmater
July 5, 2019, Warrior Life Podcast

Ronón:kwe
January 19, 2021, The Mythic Masculine Podcast

Rooted Responsibility
March 2021, Victoria, BC

You Can’t Decolonize Colonization
September 16, 2022, The Decolonized Buffalo Podcast

Afterword: Wa'tkwanonhwerá:ton
Taiaiake Alfred

Bonus Track: The Four Intuitions
April 20, 2003, TV Ontario

A Note on the Sources 
Index

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 11 b&w illustrations | Paperback

With gorgeous imagery, visual artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast.

Yahgulanaas uses a blend of traditional and modern art, eschewing the traditional boxes of comic books for the flowing shapes of North Pacific iconography. The panels are filled with colourful and expressive watercolour paintings. The panels of each page, if removed and assembled into one whole image, form a large image reminiscent of a woven robe.

The story follows several historical figures, including Johan Adrian Jacobsen (JAJ), who comes to the Haida village of Masset to collect specimens for a German museum, through a time span that includes first contact, the devastation of the smallpox epidemic, and the mass resettlement of disenfranchised peoples, both Indigenous and European.

Reviews
“This book is a necessary tale told by the perfect voice at the right time. It also uses graphic imagery in a way I've not seen before, and it feels ground-breaking.” — Douglas Coupland

Additional Information
132 pages | 8.00" x 10.00" | Hardcover

“We need to learn and grow together, and if we are able to do this, we will create harmony,” counsels Tom Sampson, an elder of Tsartlip First Nation in British Columbia.

Dynamic and diverse, Coast Salish culture is bound together by shared values and relations that generate a resilient worldview. Jesintel—"to learn and grow together"—characterizes the spirit of this book, which brings the cultural teachings of nineteen elders to new generations.

Featuring interviews that share powerful experiences and stories, Jesintel illuminates the importance of ethical reciprocal relationships and the interconnectedness of places, land, water, and the spirit within all things. Elders offer their perspectives on language revitalization, Coast Salish family values and naming practices, salmon, sovereignty, canoe racing, and storytelling. They also share traumatic memories, including of their boarding school experiences and the epidemics that ravished their communities. Jesintel highlights the importance of maintaining relations and traditions in the face of ongoing struggles. Collaboration is at the heart of this work and informs how the editors and community came together to honor the boundless relations of Coast Salish people and their territories.

Elders Interviewed:
Tom Sampson (Tsartlip First Nation)
Virginia Cross (Muckleshoot Tribe)
Ernestine Gensaw (Lummi Nation)
Steve and Gwen Point (Stó:lō Nation)
Gene and Wendy Harry (Malahat Nation)
Claude Wilbur (Swinomish Tribe)
Richard Solomon (Lummi Nation)
Elaine Grinell (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe)
Arvid Charlie (Cowichan Nation)
Amy George (Tsleil-Waututh Nation)
Nancy Shippentower (Nisqually Tribe)
Nolan Charles (Musqueam Indian Band)
Andy de los Angeles (Snoqualmie Tribe)
Jewell James (Lummi Nation)
Kenny Moses Sr. Family (Tulalip Tribal Nation)
Ramona Morris (Lummi Nation)

Reviews
"A beautiful sharing of thriving Coast Salish communities. Indigenous elders, cultures, and languages have so much precious wisdom to share, and Jesintel celebrates these through storytelling and photos. It is a generous gift to anyone who wants to better understand the resilience of Indigenous communities."- Michelle M. Jacob (Yakama), author of The Auntie Way: Stories Celebrating Kindness, Fierceness, and Creativity

Educator Information
Nineteen elders from Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia offer a portrait of their perspectives on language, revitalization, and Coast Salish family values. Topics include naming practices, salmon, canoe journeys and storytelling.

Additional Information
224 pages | 9.00" x 10.00" | 144 colour illustrations | 1 map | Paperback

The 25th anniversary of a historically significant collection, presented in Cree and English.

kôhkominawak otâcimowiniwâwa / Our Grandmothers’ Lives is a collection of reminiscences and personal stories from the daily lives of seven Cree women over the past century, presented here in Cree and English. Recorded in their own language, these women share their memories of their lives and the history of their peoples, describing activities such as household chores, snaring rabbits and picking berries, going to school, marriage, bearing and raising children, and providing insights into the traditional teachings of a society in which the practical and spiritual are never far apart.

Reviews
"[T]hese ... are good stories to share ... and are absolute treasures." —Chelsea Vowel, author of Buffalo is the New Buffalo 

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Our Own Words series.

Presented in Cree and English.

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

Bringing the Legends home

Legends of the Capilano updates E. Pauline Johnson’s 1911 classic Legends of Vancouver, restoring Johnson’s intended title for the first time. This new edition celebrates the storytelling abilities of Johnson’s Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) collaborators, Joe and Mary Capilano, and supplements the original fifteen legends with five additional stories narrated solely or in part by Mary Capilano, highlighting her previously overlooked contributions to the book.

Alongside photographs and biographical entries for E. Pauline Johnson, Joe Capilano, and Mary Capilano, editor Alix Shield provides a detailed publishing history of Legends since its first appearance in 1911. Interviews with literary scholar Rick Monture (Mohawk) and archaeologist Rudy Reimer (Skwxwú7mesh) further considers the legacy of Legends in both scholars’ home communities. Compiled in consultation with the Mathias family, the direct descendants of Joe and Mary Capilano and members of the Skwxwú7mesh Nation, this edition reframes, reconnects, and reclaims the stewardship of these stories.

Reviews
"Shield has skilfully opened up a new avenue to the past with potentially wide-ranging appeal both to scholars and students and to general readers."— Jean Barman

Educator Information
This book is part of the First Voices, First Texts series.

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

Eight years in the making, Lha yudit’ih (We Always Find a Way) is a community oral history of Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, the first case in Canada to result in a declaration of Aboriginal Rights and Title to a specific piece of land. Told from the perspective of the Plaintiff, Chief Roger William, joined by fifty Xeni Gwet’ins, Tŝilhqot’ins, and allies, this book encompasses ancient stories of creation, modern stories of genocide through smallpox and residential school, and stories of resistance including the Tŝilhqot’in War, direct actions against logging and mining, and the twenty-five-year battle in Canadian courts to win recognition of what Tŝilhqot’ins never gave up and have always known. “We are the land,” as Chief Roger says. After the violence of colonialism, he understands the court case as “bringing our sight back.” This book witnesses the power of that vision, its continuity with the Tŝilhqot’in world before the arrival of colonizers two centuries ago, and its potential for a future of freedom and self-determination for the Tŝilhqot’in People.

Additional Information
480 pages | 6.49" x 9.48" | 32 page colour photograph insert and black and white photos and illustrations and maps throughout | Paperback