Dene

This gorgeous book offers an incomparable glimpse into the experiences and history of more than one hundred First Nations and Métis elders from Canada’s North —“the last generation born on the land.” These stunning graphite pencil portraits are rendered with love, respect, and painstaking detail, along with gripping intimate profiles assembled from oral accounts and anecdotes. Their poignant facial features, lines, and creases, weathered by the harsh outdoors and a lifetime of challenges, are like badges of their remarkable achievements, sustained resolve, inspired patience, and deep-set defiance to the hardships their people have endured for generations. The masterful realism of Kuehl’s work helps uncover the tales of these seasoned individuals—their many triumphs and trials revealing in turn a greater portrait of life in the communities of Northern Canada, a compelling homage, and an enduring historical legacy. The portraits capture images of Cree, Ojibway, Oji-Cree, Dene and Métis peoples.

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236 pages | 10.03" x 10.03"

A compilation of stories that meld both culture and bloodlines, Chilcotin Chronicles by Sage Birchwater is set in the wild and untamed country of central British Columbia’s Chilcotin Plateau. West of the Fraser River, this high country is contained by an arc of impenetrable mountain ranges that separates it from the Pacific Coast. The first inhabitants of this region were fiercely independent, molded by the land itself. Those who came later were drawn to this landscape with its mysterious aura of freedom, where time stood still and where a person could find solace in the wilderness and never be found.

Birchwater reaches back to first European contact in British Columbia when the indigenous population spoke forty of Canada’s fifty-four languages and seventy of Canada’s one hundred dialects. The land known today as the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast was already an entity when Alexander Mackenzie arrived in 1793. Bonds of friendship, mutual support and family ties had long been established between the Dakelh, Tsilhqot’in and Nuxalk, giving cohesiveness to the region. Chilcotin Chronicles is about the men and women caught in the interface of cultures and the changing landscape. Indigenous inhabitants and white newcomers brought together by the fur brigades, then later by the gold rush, forged a path together, uncharted and unpredictable. Birchwater discovers that their stories, seemingly disconnected, are intrinsically linked together to create a human ecosystem with very deep roots. The lives of these early inhabitants give substance to the landscape. They give meaning to the people who live there today.

As a window into the magic and medicine of the Northwest Territories, Richard Van Camp's fourth short story collection is hilarious and heartbreaking. A teenaged boy confesses to a vicious assault on a cross-dressing classmate; Lance tells the sensual story of becoming much closer to his wife's dear friend Juanita; while a reluctant giant catches up with gangsters Torchy and Sfen in a story with shades of supernatural and earthly menace.

Night Moves continues to explore the incredible lives of indigenous characters introduced in The Lesser Blessed, Angel Wing Splash Pattern, The Moon of Letting Go, and Godless but Loyal to Heaven. If this is your first time to Fort Simmer and Fort Smith, welcome. If it's another visit - come on in: we've left the lights on for you.

Bern Will Brown, noted northern author, artist, photographer, and respected community leader living in Colville Lake, Northwest Territories, provides new insights and perspectives on the Sahtu Dene, the people referred to as the "Hareskin" in Alexander Mackenzie's 1793 journal. Having lived among them for over sixty years and as a speaker of their dialect, Brown is well positioned to provide an adventure in history and culture rooted in the Hareskin traditional way of life.

End-of-Earth People, his latest contribution and a valuable record of the North, is a portrait of a people Brown has come to know in ways that anthropologists and ethnologists can only envy.

In Richard Van Camp's fictionalized north anything can happen and yet each story is rooted in a vivid contemporary reality. The stories offer a potent mix of tropes from science fiction, horror, Western and Aboriginal traditions. The title story pits Torchy against Smith Squad, fighting for love and family in a bloody, cathartic, and ultimately hopeful narrative. Van Camp's characters repeatedly confront the bleakness of sexual assault, substance addiction and violence with the joy and humour of inspired storytelling.

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200 pages | 6.00" x 8.50"

Traditional North American Native peoples' cuisine has existed for centuries, but its central tenet of respecting nature and its bounty have never been as timely as they are now. Andrew George, of the Wet'suwet'en Nation in Canada, is a well-respected aboriginal chef and instructor who has spent the last twenty-five years promoting the traditions of First Nations food. In A Feast for All Seasons, written with Robert Gairns, he has compiled aboriginal recipes that feature ingredients from the land, sea, and sky, elements of an enduring cuisine that illustrate respect for the environment and its creatures, and acknowledgment of the spiritual power that food can have in our lives.

The 120 recipes include delectable, make-at home dishes such as Salmon and Fiddlehead Stirfry, Stuffed Wild Duck, Barbecued Oysters, Pan-fried Rabbit with Wild Cranberry Glaze, Clam Fritters, and Wild Blueberry Cookies. The book also features recipes with exotic ingredients that provide a fascinating glimpse into the history of Native cuisine: Moose Chili, Boiled Porcupine, Smoked Beaver Meat, and Braised Bear.

This unique cookbook pays homage to an enduring food culture--grounded in tradition and the power of nature--that transcends the test of time.

Reviews
"A lovely cookbook ... A great gift for anyone interested in Canadian food history, First Nations or locavore diets."— Calgary Herald

"I loved that some of the recipes were simple, like the three-ingredient Baked Sweet Potato with Roasted Hazelnuts, a great accompaniment to wild game like the simple Roast Venison ... A Feast for All Seasons gives a glimpse into the purpose of the feast that brings people together." — St'at'imc Runner

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152 pages | 8.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

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

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The short stories celebrate healing through modern day rituals that honour ancestry. Powerful voices are spoken, a violent aboriginal gangster has an astonishing spiritual experience, a single mother is protected, and a group of young men pay tribute to a friend. Stories are set in the NWT, Vancouver, and rural BC.

Chiwid was a Tsilhqot'in woman, said to have shamanistic powers, who spent most of her adult life "living out" in the hills and forests around Williams Lake, BC. Chiwid is the story of this remarkable woman told in the vibrant voices of Chilcotin oldtimers, both native and non-native.

Reviews
"Chiwid was a Chilcotin woman who lived outside, self-sufficiently for most of her life and moving camps with the seasons. Chiwid is a collection of oral histories about the woman, her family and what life was like in the Chilcotin area of British Columbia in the early to mid-1900s." - The Association of Book Publishers of BC. BC Books for BC Schools. 2009-2010.

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128 pages | 8.00" x 9.00" 

Authenticity Note: This book's author is not Indigenous; however, the book has the Authentic Indigenous Text label because it contains stories collected by the author from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. It is up to readers to determine if this book will work as an authentic text for their purposes.

James Nathan and Jake Noland have been best friends for their entire lives. Like most residents in their small northern Gwich’in community, they like to get drunk, get high and sleep around. It helps them forget the past—a horrific past full of painful memories. At times just one bullet to the temple away from a self-inflicted death, James and Jake fumble through life, tormented and haunted by the demons of their residential school abuse.

The decision by one man to publicly disclose his abuse causes upheaval within the community and forces other victims to consider their options: either share their secret and begin healing, or maintain their silence and suffer alone. Raw and gripping, Porcupines and China Dolls is impossible to put down.

Educator Information
Resource for English First Peoples 11-12.

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312 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Marie Clements’s play sears a dramatic swath through the reactionary identity politics of race, gender and class, using the penetrating yellow-white light, the false sun of uranium and radium, derived from a coal black rock known as pitchblende, as a metaphor for the invisible, malignant evils everywhere poisoning our relationship to the earth and to each other.

Burning Vision unmasks both the great lies of the imperialist power-elite (telling the miners they are digging for a substance to “cure cancer” while secretly using it to build the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki); and the seemingly small rationalizations and accommodations people of all cultures construct to make their personal circumstances yield the greatest benefit to themselves for the least amount of effort or change on their part. It is also a scathing attack on the “public apology” as yet another mask, as a manipulative device, which always seeks to conceal the maintenance and furtherance of the self-interest of its wearer.

Clements’s powerful visual sets and soundscapes contain curtains of flames which at times assume the bodies of a chorus passing its remote judgment, devoid of both pity and fear, on the action: a merciless indictment of the cross-cultural, buried worm of avarice and self-interest hidden within the terrorism of the push to “go with the times,” to accept the iconography of a reality defined, contextualized and illuminated by others.

Marie Clements writes, or, perhaps more accurately, composes, with an urbane, incisive and sophisticated intellect deeply rooted in the particulars of her place, time and history.

Cast of five women and 12 men.

Reviews
“Clements covers a lot of ground, but she knows her territory and travels it deftly… Clements dips her pen in numerous cross-cultural references, from cherry trees to caribou to Hank Williams, and writes with a magical irreverence that highlights this tragic saga. Her rich poetic style evokes parallels between Japanese and native myths – not unlike Yeats’ Noh Plays where Celtic and Japanese myths meld – finding connection through ancient truths and the power of the soil, except in this case the soil is literally explosive.”– Quill & Quire

"I remember reading this play in my undergrad and being shocked and impressed at how much theatre could do and be. This was a far cry from the kitchen sink dramas I had already (naively) decided formed the bulk of contemporary Canadian theatre. Far from the confines of the kitchen, Burning Vision travels across the globe and through time, offering a complex portrait of interconnectedness, shared trauma, and shared responsibility for healing. Fifteen years after it premiered in Vancouver and the subject matter is still, sadly, “of the moment” as we wrestle with climate change and isolationist politics. Requiring a diverse cast to fill parts such as the Dene Seer and Tokyo Rose, and requiring a flexible space so it can be staged in the round, there is no doubt that this play can be challenging. But it is challenging in the best sense of the term, in that it is full of possibilities and invites creative minds in to tackle the important challenges of our day. - Lisa, from PledgeProject

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128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

People of the Tahltan First Nations of northern BC have had generations of practice in preparing salmon. Tahltans have lived along the Stikine River, a salmon-bearing river, forever. A Tahltan Cookbook Vol. 2: More Than 88 Ways to Prepare Salmon and other favourite recipes includes authentic, traditional salmon dishes as well as modern, adapted ones. We invite you to share in our celebration of salmon.

This book is more than just a cookbook. Included in this book are profiles of contributors, stories, and photos.

Educator Information
B.C. Science Supplementary Resource Gr.4- Life Science 

This volume contains over 88 salmon recipes while sharing Indigenous culture in relation to the history of salmon and its importance to First Nations people.

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112 pages | 6.00" x 8.75"

The heart of the traditional legal order of the Lake Babine Nation of north-central British Columbia is the grand ceremonial feast known as the balhats, or potlatch. Misunderstood and widely condemned as a wasteful display of pride, the balhats ceremonies were outlawed by the Canadian government in the late nineteenth century. Throughout the years that followed, the Lake Babine Nation struggled to adapt their laws to a changing society while maintaining their cultural identity.

Although the widespread feasting and exchange practices of the balhats have attracted continuous academic and political interest since the nineteenth century, little consideration has been given to understanding the legal practices embedded within the ceremonies. Cis dideen kat, the only book ever written about the Lake Babine Nation, describes the customary legal practices that constitute "the way."

Authors Jo-Anne Fiske and Betty Patrick use historical and contemporary data to create a background against which the changing relations between the Lake Babine Nation and the Canadian state are displayed and defined, leading to the current era of treaty negotiations and Aboriginal self-government.

Through interviews with community chiefs and elders, oral histories, focus groups, and archival research, Fiske and Patrick have documented and defined a traditional legal system still very much misunderstood. Their findings include material not previously published, making this book essential reading for those involved in treaty negotiations as well as for those with an interest in Aboriginal and state relations generally.

Cis dideen kat was shortlisted for the 2001-2002 Harold Adams Innis Prize.

For over 1500 years, the Sayisi Dene, ‘The Dene from the East’, led an independent life, following the caribou herds and having little contact with white society. In 1956, an arbitrary government decision to relocate them catapulted the Sayisi Dene into the 20th century. It replaced their traditional nomadic life of hunting and fishing with a slum settlement on the outskirts of Churchill, Manitoba. Inadequately housed, without jobs, unfamiliar with the language or the culture, their independence and self-determination deteriorated into a tragic cycle of discrimination, poverty, alcoholism and violent death.

By the early 1970s, the band realized they had to take their future into their own hands again. After searching for a suitable location, they set up a new community at Tadoule Lake, 250 miles north of Churchill. Today they run their own health, education and community programs. But the scars of the relocation will take years to heal, and Tadoule Lake is grappling with the problems of a people whose ties to the land, and to one another, have been tragically severed.

In Night Spirits, the survivors, including those who were children at the time of the move, as well as the few remaining elders, recount their stories. They offer a stark and brutally honest account of the near-destruction of the Sayisi Dene, and their struggle to reclaim their lives. It is a dark story, told in hope.