Indigenous Feminism

The third edition of the iconic collection Making Space for Indigenous Feminism features feminist, queer and two-spirit voices from across generations and locations.

Feminism has much to offer Indigenous women, and all Indigenous Peoples, in their struggles against oppression. Indigenous feminists in the first edition fought for feminism to be considered a valid and essential intellectual and activist position. The second edition animated Indigenous feminisms through real-world applications. This third edition, curated by award-wining scholar Gina Starblanket, reflects and celebrates Indigenous feminism’s intergenerational longevity through the changing landscape of anti-colonial struggle and theory. Diverse contributors examine Indigenous feminism’s ongoing relevance to contemporary contexts and debates, including queer and two-spirit approaches to decolonization, gendered and sexualized violence, storytelling and narrative, digital and land-based presence, Black and Indigenous relationalities and more. This book bridges generations of powerful Indigenous feminist thinking to demonstrate the movement’s cruciality for today.

Reviews
“This collection is all feast, no fluff. It covers foundational elements of Indigenous feminism with depth and breadth and engages issues of national and international importance with considerable insight. Due to its readability and smart use of theory, this book is eminently teachable. I haven't highlighted this much in a long time.”— Margaret Robinson, Canada Research Chair in Reconciliation, Gender, and Identity

“This volume offers a view of the development and expansion of Indigenous feminisms as theory and praxis, reaffirming the validity of our respective Indigenous epistemologies to guide us into the future.”— Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné), University of New Mexico

“Multiplying are the calls for transformative healing issued by Indigenous feminism which is, at its core, about Indigenous sovereignty, solidarity, and liberatory justice for all. The diverse and incisive essays in Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (3rd ed) expose ongoing cis-heteropatriarchal settler colonialism, anti-Indigenous racism, and the erasure of gender and sexual diversity (including by Indigenous people ourselves), and their impacts upon minds, bodies, lived experiences, and relationships. Resistance and hope abound in the re-centring of (queer) Indigenous feminist futurisms: world-building that honours the self-determination of Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and trans folks, and promotes wellbeing for all of Creation.”— Chantal Fiola, author and associate professor, University of Manitoba

“This third edition continues to fulfill the promise of the title to make space for feminist interventions in Canadian Indigenous studies. Each author is committed to relational ethics and transformative praxis in addressing the most pressing issues that create epistemic and material injustices. From the heart rendering an intimate state-of-the-field assessment from pillars in the field, the politics of gender, policy, and violence manifested in Canada currently, to its latter chapters that open up new spaces by continuing to press for just Indigenous futures, of which decentering binaries of gender and sexuality is necessary, we see the importance of Indigenous feminist theorizing and praxis. Confronting gendered violence, heterosexism, disciplinary regimes, and colonialism with honesty and truth telling, Making Space generously offers us new paths to materialize a decolonial world.”— Mishuana Goeman, author of Mark My Words and Settler Aesthetics: Visualizing the Spectacle of Originary Moments in The New World

“Making Space for Indigenous Feminism provides us with powerful voices emerging from and incorporating past, present, and future. Each chapter continues to make space for the power of Indigenous feminisms, as women, femme, Queer, LGBTQS+ and Mad think together in a powerful analysis of our now. This latest edition of a classic, newly edited by Gina Starblanket, includes Elders and youth and brings us back to why Indigenous feminisms are the embodied, lived and felt knowledges that will inform our struggles going forward.”— Dian Million, University of Washington, American IndianStudies

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Extending Our Accounts of Indigenous Feminism—Joyce Green and Gina Starblanket

Section I: Home | Identity | Legacies
- Always Coming Home: Indigenous Identity, Indigenous Feminism, Scholarship and Life—Joyce Green
- Why Am I a Feminist?—Emma LaRocque
- Settler Colonialism in Canada: Making “Indian” Women Disappear—Mary Eberts, Shelagh Day, Sharon McIvor

Section II: Institutions | Representation | Resistance
- Red Ticket Women: Revisiting the Political Contributions of the Indian Rights for Indian Women’s Movement—Gina Starblanket
- Perpetual State of Violence: An Indigenous Feminist Anti-Oppression Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls—Robyn Bourgeois
- Gender Reveals that Matter: Cis-Heteropatriarchy, Settler Colonialism, and Child Welfare—Megan Scribe

Section III: Land | Relationality | Love
- Towards an Anti-Colonial Feminist Care Ethic—Eva Jewell
- Our Movements Need some Love as Well: Indigenous Land Defense and Relationality—Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez
- Mana Wahine and Mothering at the Loʻi: A Two-Spirit/Queer Analysis—Hōkūlani K. Aikau

Section IV: Decoloniality | Movement | Futurities
- Decolonization is a Queer Desire: Poetics, Politics, Negativity—Billy-Ray Belcourt
- Mad Indigenous Womanhood and the Psycho-Politics of Settler Colonialism—Cara Peacock
- On Black and Indigenous Relationality: A Conversation—Gina Starblanket, Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- Decolonization is Also Metaphorical: Indigenous Feminist and Queer-Two-Spirit Storywork Matters—Kelly Aguirre

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

​Updated and expanded 2nd edition of the national best seller!

First Nations 101 provides a broad overview of the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people, traditional Indigenous communities, colonial interventions used in an attempt to assimilate Indigenous people into mainstream society, the impacts those interventions had on Indigenous families and communities, and how Indigenous people are working towards holistic health and wellness today.

This 2nd edition has over 75 chapters, including new ones on rematriation, water for life, governance ‘options’, Indigenous feminisms, decolonization, (mis)appropriation, Indigenous Knowledge, and how to become a great ally.

Educator Information
Author Lynda Gray’s accessible writing style makes First Nations 101 the perfect primer for all to read. She notes that although governments may encourage and fund reconciliation activities, true reconciliation can only happen through the ongoing commitment and consistent actions of individuals, groups, organizations, governments, and businesses.

$1 from each book sold will be donated to the Ts’msyen Revolution Fund which Lynda Gray and her children, Dr. Robin Gray and artist Phil Gray, started in 2022. The Fund will help support Ts’msyen language and culture revitalization in laxyuubm Ts’msyen (Ts’msyen territory).

Lynda Gray is member of the Ts’msyen Nation from Lax Kw’alaams on the Northwest Coast of B.C. The book’s cover art was created by her son Phil Gray and features a 'neełx (killerwhale) to represent the author and her children’s clan (Gisbutwada).

The 2nd edition has over 75 chapters, with 16 new ones including rematriation, what is reconciliation, traditional economies, water for life, Indigenous feminisms, (mis)appropriation, economic development, Indigenous Knowledge, how to become a great ally, and more.

Additional Information
336 Pages | Updated and expanded 2nd edition

In September 2015, Sheila North was declared the Grand Chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), the first woman elected to the position. Known as a “bridge builder”, North is a member of Bunibonibee Cree Nation. North’s work in advocacy journalism, communications, and economic development harnessed her passion for drawing focus to systemic racism faced by Indigenous women and girls. She is the creator of the widely used hashtag #MMIW. In her memoir, Sheila North shares the stories of the events that shaped her, and the violence that nearly stood in the way of her achieving her dreams. Through perseverance and resilience, she not only survived, she flourished.

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232 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

For 34 years, Lynn Gehl fought against the sex discrimination built into Canada’s Indian Act. This is the story of her challenges and eventual success.

A follow-up to Claiming Anishinaabe, Gehl v Canada is the story of Lynn Gehl’s lifelong journey of survival against the nation-state’s constant genocidal assault against her existence. While Canada set up its colonial powers—including the Supreme Court, House of Commons, Senate Chamber, and the Residences of the Prime Minister and Governor General—on her traditional Algonquin territory, usurping the riches and resources of the land, she was pushed to the margins, exiled to a life of poverty in Toronto’s inner-city.

With only beads in her pocket, Gehl spent her entire life fighting back, and now offers an insider analysis of Indian Act litigation, the narrow remedies the court imposes, and of obfuscating parliamentary discourse, as well as an important critique of the methodology of legal positivism. Drawing on social identity and Indigenous theories, the author presents Disenfranchised Spirit Theory, revealing insights into the identity struggles facing Indigenous Peoples to this day.

Reviews
“Congratulations . . . to Dr. Lynn Gehl for her successful challenge of the Indian Registrar’s refusal to allow her to be registered under the Indian Act. . . . Good win, Lynn!”—The Honourable Murray Sinclair

“With knowledge and experience from years of advocacy before Parliament as well as the courts, and the depth of perception typical of all her scholarly work, Dr. Gehl assesses what more is needed before the Indian Act system can be truly egalitarian. Her book is unique and inspiring.” —Mary Eberts, from the foreword

“[R]emarkable . . . a monument in Indigenous struggles with the colonial Crown.” —Veldon Coburn, Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies at University of Ottawa

“Gehl embodies essential Indigenous wisdom, bravery, and responsibility in her work to dismantle the systems of colonial oppression. Her work serves as a beacon in a network of pathways for our people to make their way home.” —Chief Wendy Jocko, Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation
 
“The legal decision in Gehl v Canada will have profound effects for the future, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of Indigenous mothers will be able to pass their status on to their children. This victory, the product of decades of struggle by Lynn Gehl, is chronicled here. Read it and learn!” —Bonita Lawrence, author of Fractured Homeland

Educator Information
This is the follow-up to Claiming Anishinaabe.

Centres Anishinaabe methods of personal truth over western academia.

Introduces readers to the paternity policy of the Indian Art, explaining how this policy was sexual discrimination and bloodless genocide. The paternity policy of the Indian Act required individuals claiming Status to demonstrate the lineage of both parents. Harmful to Indigenous mothers and children, and imposing a high evidentiary burden on Indigenous people claiming Status, it was overturned on April 20, 2017, in what is now known as the Gehl decision. 

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

Strong women dominate these reminiscences: the grandmother taught the girl whose mother refused to let her go to school, and the life-changing events they witnessed range from the ravages of the influenza epidemic of 1918–20 and murder committed in a jealous rage to the abduction of a young woman by underground spirits who on her release grant her healing powers.

A highly personal document, these memoirs are altogether exceptional in recounting the thoughts and feelings of a Cree woman as she copes with the challenges of reserve life but also, in a key chapter, with her loneliness while tending a relative’s children in a place far away from home – and, apparently just as debilitating, away from the company of other women. Her experiences and reactions throw fresh light on the lives lived by Plains Cree women on the Canadian prairies over much of the twentieth century.

The late Sarah Whitecalf (1919–1991) spoke Cree exclusively, spending most of her life at Nakiwacîhk / Sweetgrass Reserve on the North Saskatchewan River. This is where Leonard Bloomfield was told his Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree in 1925 and where a decade later David Mandelbaum apprenticed himself to Kâ-miyokîsihkwêw / Fineday, the step-grandfather in whose family Sarah Whitecalf grew up.

In presenting a Cree woman’s view of her world, the texts in this volume directly reflect the spoken word: Sarah Whitecalf’s memoirs are here printed in Cree exactly as she recorded them, with a close English translation on the facing page. They constitute an autobiography of great personal authority and rare authenticity.

Educator Information
Table of Contents
PART I Becoming a Cree woman

Ch. 1—êkosi nikî-pê-ay-itâcihonân / This has been our way of life

Ch. 2—êkosi nikî-tâs-ôy-ohpikihikawin / This is the way I was raised

Ch. 3—mêh-mêskoc nikî-pimohtahikawin / I was taken back and forth

Ch. 4—miton ê-kî-pê-na-nêhiyaw-ôhpikihikawiyân / I was truly raised as a Cree woman

PART II Being a Cree woman

Ch. 5—êwak ôm ê-kî-ay-itâcimisot awa nikâwiy / This is my mother’s own story

Ch. 6—iyikohk ê-kî-sôhkêpayik anima nipahtâkêwin / So horrible was that murder

Ch. 7—ê-nipahi-kâh-kaskêyihtamân / I was desperately lonesome

Ch. 8—pikw êkwa niya / Now I had to take charge

PART III The spiritual life

Ch. 9—ê-sîkâwîhcikêhk / Observing the mourning ritual

Ch. 10—manitow kâ-matwêhikêt / Where the spirits drum (I)

Ch. 11—manitow kâ-matwêhikêt / Where the spirits drum (II)

Ch. 12—manitow kâ-matwêhikêt / Where the spirits drum (III)

Additional Information
366 pages | 6.50" x 9.75"

Collective Care provides an ethnographic account of urban Indigenous life and caregiving practices in the face of Saskatchewan’s HIV epidemic. Based on a five-year study conducted in partnership with AIDS Saskatoon, the book focuses on the contrast between Indigenous values of collective kin-care and non-Indigenous models of intensive maternal care. It explores how women and men negotiate the forces of HIV to render motherhood a site of cultural meaning, personal and collective well-being, and, sometimes, individual and community despair. It also introduces readers to how HIV is Indigenized in western Canada and how all HIV-affected and -infected mothers must negotiate this cultural and racialized terrain.

Featuring in-depth narrative interviews, notes from participant observation in AIDS Saskatoon’s drop-in centre, and a photovoice component, this book offers an accessible account of an engaged anthropologist’s work with a community that is both vulnerable and resilient. Each chapter begins with an ethnographic vignette that introduces central concepts, including medical anthropology, syndemics, kinship, and Indigeneity, with the overall aim of humanizing those affected by HIV in western Canada and beyond.

Reviews
"By sharing perspectives that are often ignored, this work provides important insight not found elsewhere. The reliance on the words of Indigenous women is a wonderful example of the kind of allyship we have been calling for. Rather than speaking for the women, Pamela J. Downe has created a literary space where they can speak for themselves. The truth of their stories comes through in vibrant quotes about loving and raising children in a collective way." — Dawn Lavell-Harvard, Director of the First Peoples House of Learning, Trent University, and former President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada

"Collective Care icontributes to our understanding of Indigenous family life and the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS. Because the book focuses on family relationships and care in a context that is somewhat familiar to students, yet different from more frequently studied communities with HIV/AIDS. This book will be a useful tool for teaching." — William McKellin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia

Educator Information
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Beginning
Chapter 2: Family
Chapter 3: Motherhood
Chapter 4: Fatherhood
Chapter 5: Loss
Chapter 6: Love
Chapter 7: Closing
References

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

Indigenous Feminism: Colonial Complexities involves naming the ways that Indigenous women, with a focus on northern Saskatchewan, are caught up at every moment in ideas and beliefs about who we are; as much as we know differently, the power of these ideas continues to press on us in all kinds of large and subtle ways. The resistance to the power of these ideas and their impact on the lives of Indigenous women has a long history, but the racism continues. The book makes a contribution toward naming the power of racism and patriarchy within Indigenous communities.

Reviews
"McKay’s Indigenous Feminism: Colonial Complexities is a layered, methodical theoretical exploration of how the powerful forces and continually created discursive practises of colonialism, Christianity, the Indian Act and Indigenous knowledge systems influence single parent, northern Saskatchewan Indigenous women’s identities and relationships in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. The women’s visions of a better future anchor their decision-making as they swim against and through the overwhelming systemic legacy of oppressive forces running through their lives and that sometimes jeopardize their relationships." - Rita Bouvier, semi-retired Metis educator and poet

Additional Information
139 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Canada’s Indian Act is infamously sexist. Through many iterations of the legislation a woman’s status rights flowed from her husband, and even once it was amended to reinstate rights lost through marriage or widowhood, First Nations women could not necessarily pass status on to their descendants.

That injustice has rightly been subject to much scrutiny, but what has it meant for First Nations men? In an original complement to studies focused on the implications of the act for women, Martin J. Cannon challenges the decades-long assumption of case law and politics that the act has affected Indigenous people as either “women” or “Indians” – but not both. He argues that sexism and racialization must instead be understood as interlocking within the law. This double discrimination has been used to disrupt gender complementarity between Indigenous men and women, and to undercut the identities of Indigenous men through their female forebears.

By restorying historically patriarchal legislation and Indigenous masculinity, Men, Masculinity, and the Indian Act encourages Indigenous men to begin to articulate the complex ways in which their life’s journey is shaped by discrimination directed at Indigenous women. Only then can a transformative discussion about Indigenous nationhood, citizenship, and reconciliation take place.

Scholars and students of Indigenous studies and gender studies will find this book of interest, as will activists, legal practitioners, and others concerned with Indigenous rights, feminism, nationhood, identity, and the Indian Act.

Reviews"
We need Martin Cannon’s meticulous and critical work to help us reimagine Indigenous identity in Canada. This book will long be a go-to reference for understanding the intersections of sexism and racism brought on by the Indian Act, and for determining sovereign identity pathways forward." — Kim Anderson, author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood

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

A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to preserve her culture—with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Whereas.

Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Šá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservation’s children a free education. The catch: They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Šá begs her mother to let her go—and her mother, aware of the advantages that an education offers, reluctantly agrees.

But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Šá expected: The school is a strict one, her long hair is cut short, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, Zitkála-Šá adapts to her environment—excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. But the price of success is estrangement from her cultural roots—and is it one she is willing to pay?

Combining Zitkála-Šá’s childhood memories, her short stories, and her poetry, American Indian Stories is the origin story of an activist in the making, a remarkable woman whose extraordinary career deserves wider recognition.

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160 pages | 5.18" x 8.00"

Forbidden Fruit: Engaging an Indigenous Feminist Lens as an Neninaw Iskwew is a feminist based memoir acknowledging that people are measured, categorized, and placed in a hierarchal order that is deeply influenced by discourses predicated upon social processes.

Dr. McKay’s Indigenous feminism is about being aware that due to the colonial patriarchy that has seeped through Indigenous social and cultural systems, Indigenous women are positioned differently in economic, social and political structures. Marlene masterfully uses her own life experiences to assert that colonialism and Indigenous cultures obscure the role of women in a way that continues both their marginalization and the binary of the princess/squaw (p. 11).

Additional Information
98 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

A penetrating and deeply moving account of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and a searing indictment of the society that failed them.

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The highway is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis.

Journalist Jessica McDiarmid meticulously investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference has created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected. Through interviews with those closest to the victims--mothers and fathers, siblings and friends--McDiarmid provides an intimate, first-hand account of their loss and unflagging fight for justice. Examining the historically fraught social and cultural tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the region, McDiarmid links these cases to others across Canada--now estimated to number up to 4,000--contextualizing them within a broader examination of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in the country.

Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and testament to their families and communities' unwavering determination to find it.

Additional Information
352 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

This critical edition delivers a unique and comprehensive collection of the works of Ktunaxa-Secwepemc writer and educator Vera Manuel, daughter of prominent Indigenous leaders Marceline Paul and George Manuel. A vibrant force in the burgeoning Indigenous theatre scene, Vera was at the forefront of residential school writing and did groundbreaking work as a dramatherapist and healer. Long before mainstream Canada understood and discussed the impact and devastating legacy of Canada’s Indian residential schools, Vera Manuel wrote about it as part of her personal and community healing. She became a grassroots leader addressing the need to bring to light the stories of survivors, their journeys of healing, and the therapeutic value of writing and performing arts.

A collaboration by four Indigenous writers and scholars steeped in values of Indigenous ethics and editing practices, the volume features Manuel’s most famous play, "Strength of Indian Women"—first performed in 1992 and still one of the most important literary works to deal with the trauma of residential schools—along with an assemblage of plays, written between the late 1980s until Manuel’s untimely passing in 2010, that were performed but never before published. The volume also includes three previously unpublished short stories written in 1988, poetry written over three decades in a variety of venues, and a 1987 college essay that draws on family and community interviews on the effects of residential schools.

Reviews
“An invaluable contribution to our literature about residential school experiences and the effects of transgenerational trauma. With so many current projects focused on “reconciliation,” this republication of Vera Manuel’s works recalls the often forgotten side of the equation: the truth, unvarnished by politics or bureaucracy.”– Jesse Archibald-Barber, Associate Professor of Indigenous Literatures and Performance, First Nations University of Canada

“Layered with intergenerational wisdom, replete with lived experience, this collection deftly presents both the devastating legacy of residential schools and the complex systems of care that sustain Indigenous women and fuel Indigenous resurgence.”– Carleigh Baker, author of Bad Endings

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

Topics: Indigenous Studies, Literature, Performing Arts, Poetry.

Additional Information
416 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 13 b&w photographs | bibliography

Indigenous women continue to be overrepresented in Canadian prisons; research demonstrates how their over-incarceration and often extensive experiences of victimization are interconnected with and through ongoing processes of colonization. Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women explores how judges navigate these issues in sentencing by examining related discourses in selected judgments from a review of 175 decisions.

The feminist theory of the victimization-criminalization continuum informs Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick’s work. She examines its overlap with the Gladue analysis, foregrounding decisions that effectively integrate gendered understandings of Indigenous women’s victimization histories, and problematizing those with less contextualized reasoning. Ultimately, she contends that judicial use of the victimization-criminalization continuum deepens the Gladue analysis and augments its capacity to further its objectives of alternatives to incarceration.

Kaiser-Derrick discusses how judicial discourses about victimization intersect with those about rehabilitation and treatment, and suggests associated problems, particularly where prison is characterized as a place of healing. Finally, she shows how recent incursions into judicial discretion, through legislative changes to the conditional sentencing regime that restrict the availability of alternatives to incarceration, are particularly concerning for Indigenous women in the system.

Reviews
“Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick’s work is an important read in light of the needs of truth and reconciliation. Her exploration of judicial discourses in the sentencing of Indigenous women reveal the multiple systemic failures of Canada’s justice system. What judge’s say and write is important because it reflects and refracts the inequalities and injustices that are embedded in our collective social order. Their words are demonstrative of the dire need for dramatic changes in Canada’s justice system. The book is a must read for all persons concerned with justice, criminal law and human rights.” — Richard Jochelson

Additional Information
414 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | bibliography | index

A gripping account of the unsolved death of an Indigenous teenager, and the detective determined to find her killer, set against the backdrop of a troubled city.

On August 17, 2014, the body of fifteen-year-old runaway Tina Fontaine was found in Winnipeg's Red River. It was wrapped in material and weighted down with rocks. Red River Girl is a gripping account of that murder investigation and the unusual police detective who pursued the killer with every legal means at his disposal. The book, like the movie Spotlight, chronicles the behind-the-scenes stages of a lengthy and meticulously planned investigation. It reveals characters and social tensions that bring vivid life to a story that made national headlines.

Award-winning BBC reporter and documentary maker Joanna Jolly delves into the troubled life of Tina Fontaine, the half-Ojibway, half-Cree murder victim, starting with her childhood on the Sagkeeng First Nation Reserve. Tina's journey to the capital city is a harrowing one, culminating in drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and death.

Aware of the reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Jolly has chronicled Tina Fontaine's life as a reminder that she was more than a statistic. Raised by her father, and then by her great-aunt, Tina was a good student. But the violent death of her father hit Tina hard. She ran away, was found and put into the care of Child and Family Services, which she also sought to escape from. That choice left her in danger.

Red River Girl focuses not on the grisly event itself, but on the efforts to seek justice. In December 2015, the police charged Raymond Cormier, a drifter, with second-degree murder. Jolly's book will cover the trial, which resulted in an acquittal. The verdict caused dismay across the country.

The book is not only a true crime story, but a portrait of a community where Indigenous women are disproportionately more likely to be hurt or killed. Jolly asks questions about how Indigenous women, sex workers, community leaders, and activists are fighting back to protect themselves and change perceptions. Most importantly, the book will chronicle whether Tina's family will find justice.

Reviews
“Tina Fontaine brought international attention to the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks. This retelling of her life and the investigation into her death is a breathtaking account of the fight to find justice for Tina.” —Wab Kinew, Leader of the Manitoba NDP and author of The Reason You Walk

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Zaagi'idiwin: Silent, Unquestionable Act of Love, creates an intersection where viewers meet to understand and explore the essence of relationships, the meaning of connection/disconnection, and the pain of loss. Through the making and documentation of jingle dresses, Marshall explores the deeply personal stories that have shaped her perception of the complexities of her family history in the context of Canadian history. The social inequities, resistance, and sorrow communicated in this body of work serve as a springboard to examine the act of compassion and forgiveness, which ultimately helps to move forward to a new and more affirmative place of being.

Additional Information
28 pages | 5.25" x 10.50"