Indigenous Peoples in Canada

"Never let anything or anyone stop you from following where your Spirit says it belongs. . ."

Spirit exists in everything on Mother Earth. If we are open to it, Spirit may guide us through even the darkest of moments.

In this genre-defying blend of poetry and story, Ojibway and Mohawk Elder Dawn Smoke shares all that lives within her heart, mind, and soul. As a young girl confronted with the anger and pain of being scooped from her birth family, Dawn bravely discovers her truth and a path towards healing. She is unwavering in her honesty, a protector of Mother Earth, and a fierce advocate against the oppression of Indigenous people.

Reclaiming what was taken is not an easy feat, yet in doing so, Dawn illuminates the Spirit all around us. This striking memoir, told in spoken word, speaks to the devastating realities of colonization and radiates with the resilience found within culture and community.

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

For readers of N.K. Jemisin and Rebecca Roanhorse, a fast-paced, anti-colonial action-adventure fantasy that explores twisted power dynamics and the effects of settler colonialism

After the murder of T’Rayles’s adopted son, the infamous warrior and daughter of the Indigenous Ibinnas returns to the colonized city of Seventhblade, ready to tear the streets asunder in search of her son’s killer. T’Rayles must lean into the dangerous power of her inherited sword and ally herself with questionable forces, including the Broken Fangs, an alliance her mother founded, now fallen into greed and corruption, and the immortal Elraiche, a powerful and manipulative deity exiled from a faraway land. Navigating the power shifts in a colonized city on the edge and contending with a deadly new power emerging from within, T’Rayles must risk everything to find the answers, and the justice, she so desperately desires.

Loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, and set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, Seventhblade is a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright, emerging Indigenous voice.

Reviews
“Tonia [Laird] is a powerhouse.” — Katherena Vermette, award-winning author of The Break and The Strangers

“Tonia Laird tells a gripping story of grief, magic, and revenge while exploring the impact of generational trauma on a colonized people. At times brutal, nuanced, and compassionate, Laird writes with confidence and gives us a fantastic hero in T’Rayles.” — Trick Weekes, author of The Palace Job

“At its core, Seventhblade is a story of a mother’s love, her need for justice, and the discovery of her roots. Drawing on her Indigenous heritage, Tonia Laird weaves the tale of T’Rayles, a half-soul with a mysterious past, set in a world where gods roam freely. Deftly written with intricate worldbuilding and vivid characters, Seventhblade is fantasy at its finest ... and I need a sequel!” — Allison Pang, writer of the Abby Sinclair urban fantasy series

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

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 

Part coming-of-age novel, part searing examination of a community finding itself, Small Ceremonies is a tantalizing and heartbreaking debut.

“I fear for our friendship, for the day it will end, wondering when that day will be . . .”

Tomahawk Shields (a.k.a. Tommy) and Clinton Whiteway are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future rife with possibility and greatness. The two friends play for their high school’s poor-performing hockey team, the Tigers, who learn at the start of the new season that the league wants them out. Their annual goal is now more important than ever: to win their first game in years and break the curse.

As we follow these two Indigenous boys over the course of a year, we are given a panoptic view of Tommy and Clinton’s Winnipeg, where a university student with grand ambitions chooses to bottle her anger when confronted with numerous micro- (and not so micro-) aggressions; an ex-convict must choose between protecting or exploiting his younger brother as he’s dragged deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly; a lonely rink attendant is haunted by the memory of a past lover and contemplates rekindling this old flame; and an aspiring journalist does everything she can to uncover why the league is threatening to remove the Tigers. These are a sampling of the chorus of voices that depicts a community filled with individuals searching for purpose, leading them all to one fateful and tragic night.

Ferociously piercing the heart of an Indigenous city, Kyle Edwards's sparkling debut is a heartbreaking yet humour-flecked portrayal of navigating identity and place, trauma and recovery, and growing up in a land that doesn't love you.

Reviews
“The geographical and familial landscape of the ironically named Whiteway clan yields a subtle and fascinating portrait of growing up Native in Manitoba. The understatement underscores the intensity and contradictions of outgrowing your home and self. This is a truly fine novel.”—Percival Everett, author of James

“Small Ceremonies dropped my jaw with the glittering precision of its detail, and the life-affirming humanity of its characters. Kyle Edwards knows this world of frozen hockey rinks and fishing shacks just as intimately as he knows the warm and broken hearts of this Winnipeg community that he writes about. I haven’t been this excited about a debut in years.”—Michael Christie, author of Greenwood

"Small Ceremonies flattens the grass for us all. A power play of wit, grit, and generational spirit, phenom Kyle Edwards has you rooting for the Tigers when few will. With its scars, scores, and hard-won triumphs, this polyphony of neechies carries us through overtime into glory. A dignified, accomplished, and suave figure-eight of a novel."—Cody Caetano, author of Half-Bads in White Regalia

"In this compelling, multi-voiced first novel, Kyle Edwards carries us north to the landscape of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and into the geography of youth itself. This book—bracing, kaleidoscopic—made me relive those gritty, tender, fragile years before you are fully grown, when you still believe you can do both—stay rooted and fly free."—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia and Colored Television

"Such a chorus of compelling voices here! I would find myself growing attached to one character only to find the next equally engaging. Edwards is, at once, bracingly honest about and deeply tender towards everyone in this novel. A stunning debut."—Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade

Additional Information
368 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Hardcover 

A poetic memoir as intricately woven as a dreamcatcher about overcoming the pain of generational trauma with the power of traditional healing.

In her deeply affecting memoir, Soft as Bones, Chyana Marie Sage shares the pain of growing up with her father: a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister. She details the shame and guilt she carried for years after her family's trauma as she went from one dysfunctional relationship to another, from one illegal drug to another. In revisiting her family's history and weaving in the perspectives of her mother and sisters, Chyana examines the legacy of generational abuse, which began with her father's father, who was forcibly removed from his family by the residential schools and Sixties Scoops programs.Yet hers is also a story of hope, as it was the traditions of her people that saved her life. In candid, incisive, and delicate prose, Chyana braids personal narrative with Cree stories and ceremonies, all as a means of healing one small piece of the mosaic that makes up the dark past of colonialism shared by Indigenous people throughout Turtle Island.

Reviews
"Chyana Marie Sage's writing is a gift that gleams with all of its teeth and skin and soft parts of the earth ... A stunning new voice that pushes the boundaries of form, whose stories swirl across time like sweetgrass braids, like tendrils of smoke." — Kinsale Drake, author of The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket

"A searing, poetic memoir filled with resilience and strength ... for anyone on a journey of reconciling the pain of the past with the hopes for the next generations." — Dallas Goldtooth, writer, actor, and community organizer

"Chyana Marie Sage writes with an unflinching emotional clarity, lyrical prose, and a wisdom well beyond her years." — Tanya Talaga, author of The Knowing

"Soft as Bones moves like a river across vast territories of recovery and reckoning: it moves powerfully and runs deep, with prose that carries many worlds on its shoulders ... Chyana Marie Sage is a truth-teller, and she has given us an incredible gift." — Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

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

Something for the Dark centres Indigenous knowledge to probe the limits of what we know, confront the unknown, and reckon with our place in the world.

Randy Lundy’s newest collection of poetry—the final in a trilogy that began with Blackbird Song and continued with Field Notes for the Self—turns the poem to our relationships with the land, animals, and people, showing how our failures to see and live by the personhood of all other beings in the world, human and non-, leads inevitably to heartbreak.

As Lundy’s poems accumulate like snow on cedar, his recounting of experiences that transcend language invites the reader to bend their understanding and notice what was once unseen—how a red-winged blackbird clings to a swaying reed, how mist rises after rainfall, how dogs keen and howl, how fingers taste bitter after lighting sage, how hunger smarts, how liquor burns, and how the pain survivors carry is not merely their own.

Reviews
“Such longing! ‘These days I wrestle no angels. I wrestle / with words. And no one is saved.’ writes Randy Lundy. In Something for the Dark, he presents tâpwêwina—truths drawn from the hand dealt and the life lived. ‘Nothing is hidden,’ he suggests, if we take the time to observe from a distance and wait in silence.” — Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.51" x 8.50" | Paperback

In their second poetry collection, Tawahum Bige explores belonging and voice of a Two-Spirit Dene youth.

These poems are a stark plunge—an answer to how voice emerges for a young Two Spirit growing up in so-called “Surrey, BC,” far from his Łutselk'e Dene territories. The fundamental thrum in which vocal cords produce sound to whisper, cry, holler and laugh—these inner workings are made corporeal through moments of growth from childhood to young adulthood to show how the seeds sprouted for someone who needed to learn to express to find their path.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | 25 colour and b&w photographs | Paperback 

A collection of graduate research by Indigenous social work scholars.

Stitching Our Stories Together showcases emerging scholars who, by centering their own nations, communities, and individual realities, demonstrate how Indigenous knowledges can challenge settler ideas and myths around pan-Indigeneity.

This collection is bookended with reflections from the scholars’ thesis supervisors, who describe their philosophy of mentoring and supporting students through an Indigenous lens, and how their pedagogies embrace the significance of relationality in Indigenous worldviews.

Stitching Our Stories Together points toward a future where Indigenous ways of knowing and being take their rightful place in spaces of higher learning and social work practice—a necessary intervention in a discipline that has historically been complicit in colonialist harm.

Reviews
“For those wanting to learn about the next thread shaping the tapestry of Indigenous scholarship, Stitching Our Stories Together is a must read.” —Margaret Kovach, University of British Columbia

“These teachings of Indigenous ways of knowing and being, written by Indigenous graduate students who share their ideas, stories, and life experiences, open the door for new ways of doing within academia, within social work practice, and within broader society.” —Dr. Sheri M. McConnell, Memorial University

“The profound and transformative impact of Indigenous senior scholars uplifting Indigenous graduate students pursuing thesis research is truly remarkable...The intergenerational exchange of knowledge and support creates a powerful legacy, ensuring that the voices and perspectives of Indigenous scholars continue to flourish and inspire future generations.” —Dr. Amanda LaVallee

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi
Introduction by Catherine Richardson and Jeannine Carrièrexiii

1. Supervision and Mentoring: Beyond the Destination 1
Jeannine Carrière and Catherine Richardson

PART ONE. EMBEDDING CHILD WELFARE RESEARCH INTO INDIGENOUS METHODOLOGIES

2. Researching Culturally Informed Approaches: Supporting Indigenous Youth Aging Out of Ministry Care 25
Robert Mahikwa

3. A Métis Grandmother’s Knowledge: Stories of Grandmother Teachings and Métis Child Welfare in British Columbia 45
Shelley Lafrance

4. An Inquiry Into the Stories of Indigenous Fathers and Their Paths Into Fatherhood: A Narrative Analysis Conducted With Kwakwaka’wakw Fathers 71
Tanille Johnston

PART TWO. ARTS-BASED KNOWLEDGES AND PRACTICES

5. centring stories by urban indigiqueers/trans/two-spirit people and indigenous women: on practices of decolonization, collective care, and self-care 91
mel lefebvre

6. Stitching Ourselves Back Together: Urban Indigenous Women’s Experience of Reconnecting with Identity through Beadwork 123
Shawna Bowler

7. Reconstituting Indigenous Identities through Portraiture and Storytelling: Reclaiming Representation for Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People 145
Juliet Mackie

PART THREE. INDIGENOUS BODIES AND MEANING MAKING

8. Dancing My Way Home: Cultural Reclamation Through the Embodiment of the Michif Language 167
Victoria May

9. Researching Through miyo ohpikinâwasowin (Good Child-Rearing): A Framework for Knowledge Emergence and Transmission 203
Lindsay DuPré

10. Fat Bodies in Space: Explorations of an Alternate Narrative 219
N. Katie Webb

Conclusion by Jeannine Carrière and Catherine Richardson239
Epilogue 253
Contributors 257

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

Stolen Sisters is a first-of-its-kind play that gives voice to the lives and legacies of three Beothuk women and girls whose names have survived in historical record.

These are stories that have been mis-told, misrepresented, and mythologized by colonial interference. By shifting the lens of history to reflect Indigenous perspective and experience, the women brought to life in Stolen Sisters set the record straight, telling their own stories with both humour and unflinching honestly. Based on the oral and written Indigenous histories of colonization locally and worldwide, the voices of Stolen Sisters shine a light on the global experience of Indigenous women and girls and, in particular, Newfoundland's part in that legacy.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.57" x 8.37" | Paperback 

This updated Teacher Guide for Surviving the City is designed to accompany the Surviving the City series of graphic novels written by Tasha Spillett. This guide provides support for teachers to address sensitive topics in the classroom including racism; caregiver illness; the child welfare system; residential schools; and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People. With the release of the third volume of Surviving the City, this guide has been updated to include revisions to the original lessons, two brand-new lessons, as well as up-to-date curriculum correlation charts that match current curriculum outcomes and expectations in Ontario, British Columbia, and Manitoba.

This teacher guide is designed to be a no-prep resource for educators suitable for stand-alone lessons or as a complete unit plan. The lessons in this teacher guide:

• support teachers with clear and concise instructions using the Activate, Acquire, Apply, and Assess (AAAA) format
• guide students in exploring, researching, and sharing the essential themes of the graphic novels
• are infused with Indigenous pedagogical practices

The Teacher Guide for Surviving the City is best suited for use with students in grades 7–12 taking English Language Arts; First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Studies; Global Issues; and similar subjects.

Educator Information
The student books for this work can be found here: Surviving the City Series.

Additional Information
91 pages | 8.50" x 11.00" | Paperback

This new collection of horror short fiction weaves together contemporary Arctic settings with ancient monsters and mysterious beings that have been said to stalk the tundra for centuries.

Featuring authors from across the Canadian Arctic, this new volume of Taaqtumi—an Inuktitut word that means “In the Dark”—reveals just how horrifying the dark can be.

Featuring new fiction from award-winning authors Aviaq Johnston, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley and Jamesie Fournier, as well as new voices in the genre, this collection is perfect for any horror lover.

Educator & Series Information
Includes stories from Indigenous authors across the Canadian Arctic.

This book is part of the Taaqtumi series.

Additional Information
184 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | b&w 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 

Bestselling author of Birdie, Tracey Lindberg, and renowned artist George Littlechild join together in a stunning collaboration of story and art to explore love in all its forms—romantic, familial, community and kin—in the Cree experience.

In The Cree Word for Love, author Tracey Lindberg and artist George Littlechild consider a teaching from an Elder that in their culture, the notion of love as constructed in Western society does not exist. Here, through original fiction and select iconic paintings, Lindberg and Littlechild respond.

Together they have created and curated this collaboration which travels, season by season, mirroring the four rounds in ceremony, through the themes of the love within a family, ties of kinship, desire for romantic love and connection, strength in the face of loss and violence, and importance of self-love, as well as, crucially, a deeper exploration of the meaning of “all my relations.”

Together, art and story inspire and move readers to recall our responsibilities to our human and more than human relations, to think about the obligation that is love, and to imagine what it could possibly mean to have no Cree word for love. The result is a powerful story about where we find connection, strength, and the many forms of what it means to live lovingly.

Additional Information
224 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | 20 full-color photos of paintings | Hardcover 

Emma LaRocque was born in 1949 in Lac La Biche into a Cree-speaking Métis family. She grew up in a one-room, kerosene-lit log cabin built by her father. At the age of nine, she fought her parents to attend school, where she encountered English and the colonizer’s harmful stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. Confronting the contradictions of colonialism sparked her journey as a writer and scholar, as she sought to understand the dissonance between her identity and the world around her.

The Emma LaRocque Reader is a comprehensive collection of her most significant writings, poetry and prose, offering an intimate window into the mind of one of Canada’s foremost Indigenous scholars. Through her work, LaRocque provides profound insights into the intersections of colonialism, sexism, and racism in Canada, while also critically celebrating the beauty of her community and culture. In the afterword, she reflects on fifty years of challenging the colonial enterprise. A vital contribution to postcolonial literature, The Emma LaRocque Reader intertwines the personal and the political to explore what it means to be human, offering a powerful testament to Indigenous resistance, resilience, and vision.

This collection brings together the works of Métis scholar Emma LaRocque, offering a half-century of her poetry and prose, and shedding new light on Canada, colonialism, and Indigenous resistance.

Educator Information
Chapters
Foreword by Armand Ruffo
Preface by Elaine Coburn
Acknowledgments by Emma LaRocque
Acknowledgments of Permissions to Reprint
Introduction by Elaine Coburn
1975 A Personal Essay on Poverty (Excerpt from Defeathering the Indian)
1983 The Métis in English Canadian Literature
1988 On the Ethics of Publishing Historical Documents
1989 Racism Runs through Canadian Society
1990 Preface: Here Are Our Voices: Who Will Hear?
1990 Geese (poem)
1990 Nostalgia (poem)
1990 “Progress” (poem)
1990 The Red in Winter (poem)
1990 Incongruence (poem)
1990 Loneliness (poem)
1990 Beggar (poem)
1990 Tides, Towns, and Trains
1992 My Hometown, Northern Canada, South Africa (poem)
1993 Violence in Aboriginal Communities
1994 Long Way from Home (poem)
1996 The Colonization of a Native Woman Scholar
1996 When the Other Is Me: Native Writers Confronting Canadian Literature
2001 Native Identity and the Métis: Otehpayimsuak Peoples
2001 From the Land to the Classroom
2004 When the Wild West Is Me
2006 Sweeping (poem)
2006 Sources of Inspiration: The Birth of "For the Love of Words": Aboriginal Writers of Canada
2007 Métis and Feminist
2009 Reflections on Cultural Continuity through Aboriginal Women’s Writings
2010 Native Writers Reconstruct: Pushing Paradigms
2013 For the Love of Place – Not Just Any Place: Selected Métis Writings
2015 “Resist No Longer”: Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching
2016 Contemporary Métis Literature: Resistance, Roots, Innovation
2016 Colonialism Lived
2017 Powerlines (poem)
2022 Wehsakehcha, Comics, Shakespeare, and the Dictionary
2023 Afterword
Index

Additional Information
348 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 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