Literary Studies

For readers of Tommy Orange's There There and Terese Marie Mailhot's Heart Berries, Probably Ruby is an audacious, brave and beautiful book about an adopted woman's search for her Indigenous identity.

Relinquished as an infant, Ruby is placed in a foster home and finally adopted by Alice and Mel, a less-than-desirable couple who can't afford to complain too loudly about Ruby's Indigenous roots. But when her new parents' marriage falls apart, Ruby finds herself vulnerable and in compromising situations that lead her to search, in the unlikeliest of places, for her Indigenous identity.

Unabashedly self-destructing on alcohol, drugs and bad relationships, Ruby grapples with the meaning of the legacy left to her. In a series of expanding narratives, Ruby and the people connected to her tell their stories and help flesh out Ruby's history. Seeking understanding of how we come to know who we are, Probably Ruby explores how we find and invent ourselves in ways as peculiar and varied as the experiences of Indigenous adoptees themselves. Ruby's voice, her devastating honesty and tremendous laugh, will not soon be forgotten.

Probably Ruby is a perfectly crafted novel, with effortless, nearly imperceptible shifts in time and perspective, exquisitely chosen detail, natural dialogue and emotional control that results in breathtaking levels of tension and points of revelation.

Reviews
"Lisa Bird-Wilson holds all her characters with such compassion, even when they go spectacularly off-course, they remain sympathetic in this wildly electric novel. Each fragment builds a provocative mosaic, refusing easy redemption, embracing Ruby's complex, volatile emotional landscape with masterstrokes of observation and insight." —Eden Robinson, author of the Trickster Trilogy

"Brilliant. . . . Lisa is an extraordinary stylist, and this novel explores Indigenous women's lives in a way that is empowering and that doesn't follow the usual tropes of trauma and victimization. I think of her as a Michif Alice Munro." —Warren Cariou

"Soft as it is hard, Probably Ruby reminds us how displacement comes to be commonplace in the lives of some. Never before have I seen a writer represent the constellation of people impacted by this kind of fractured kinship with such righteous critique that is at once restrained and nuanced. Each member of Ruby's web of people is shaped with care, empathy, and grace—even the most unforgivable ones. Simply put, Probably Ruby is one of the very best things I’ve ever read about adoption, race, and want." —Jenny Heijun Wills, author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

Additional Information
272 pages | 5.18" x 8.00" | Paperback

An Indigenous artist blends the aesthetics of punk rock with the traditional spiritual practices of the women in her lineage in this bold, contemporary journey to reclaim her heritage and unleash her power and voice while searching for a permanent home.

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has always longed for a sense of home. When she was a child, her family moved around frequently, often staying in barely habitable church attics and trailers, dangerous places for young Sasha.

With little more to guide her than a passion for the thriving punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and a desire to live up to the responsibility of being the namesake of her beloved great-grandmother—a linguist who helped preserve her Indigenous language of Lushootseed—Sasha throws herself headlong into the world, determined to build a better future for herself and her people.

Set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk, Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to find our true selves while fighting for our right to claim a place of our own.

Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal.

Awards

• Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award 

Reviews
"Red Paint is a miraculous book. Sasha LaPointe walks us through the sites of her evisceration while rebuilding a home within her body using sturdy materials: rose quartz, cedar bark, red clay, and the words of her ancestors. With each potent sentence, she shows us what access to power looks like. She shows us how to become whole.” —Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

"As luminous as the morning sun over the fir forests, Red Paint is a story of where strength takes us. Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe goes looking to the past to help heal from terrible traumas, finding inspiration in her ancestors, the Salish people. This is a book destined to be a classic. Read it." —Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder

Additional Information
240 pages | 5.31" x 8.29" | Hardcover

A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.

When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here.
 
Rehearsals for Living is a captivating and visionary work—part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and reiterating the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment, Maynard and Simpson create something new: an urgent demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up other ways of ordering earthly life.

Reviews
“This book must be read for its future vocabularies, its political intimacies, its careful assemblage of the materials of our activisms, and its generous and fulsome thinking.”—Dionne Brand, poet, novelist, and essayist

“Using the age-old practice of letter writing and the land itself as a palimpsest, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson find common ground to challenge the moral legitimacy of the settler nation state, and reinscribe new ways of what it means to be beings who are human in the forensic landscapes of Canada. In Rehearsals for Living, two women, one Indigenous, the other Black and African-descended confront their shared yet different experiences of colonialism, provide new and subversive meanings to the colonial trope of being landed, the mechanism by which the land was (un)settled. Unflinchingly, and in long-overdue and profoundly-needed “reasonings” that reverberate with shared breath, Simpson and Maynard weave their ideas, thoughts and reflections and their deep caring for community and society through the network of issues that impact us today—the pandemic and the differentials in treatment for Black and Indigenous people, the role of BLM, abolition, the necessity of Nibi and homespace for the Nishnaabeg, the joys of living on the land, and parenting in the face of ecological and racial disasters are but a few of the challenges they grapple with. Rehearsals for Living is fundamental to understanding the interlocking, founding crimes of the Americas; necessary for remembering the many erased histories of the on-going struggle for justice, and altogether indispensable to those wanting to create possible solutions.”—M. NourbeSe Philip, author of Zong!

Additional Information
336 pages | 5.46" x 8.32" | Hardcover 

Resurgence is an inspiring collection of contemporary Indigenous poetry, art, and narratives that guides teachers in bridging existing K–12 curricula with Indigenous voices and pedagogies. Walk with us along the footbridge which seeks to:

• connect peoples and places
• link truth and reconciliation as ongoing processes
• symbolize the risk and urgency of this work for both Indigenous and settler educators
• engage tensions
• highlight the importance of balance, both of ideas and within ourselves

Through critical engagement with the texts, experienced educators Christine M’Lot and Katya Adamov Ferguson support readers in connecting with Indigenous narratives and perspectives, bringing Indigenous works in their classrooms, and creating more equitable and sustainable teaching practices.

In this resource, you will find

• diverse Indigenous voices, perspectives, and art forms from all across Turtle Island
• valuable concepts and methods that can be applied to the classroom and beyond
• practical action steps and resources for educators, parents, librarians, and administrators

Use this book as a springboard for your own learning journey or as a lively prompt for dialogue within your professional learning community.

Reviews
"Over the past several years, calls have come from across Canada for the inclusion of Indigenous worldviews and knowledge in all levels of education in the country. Enter...Resurgence." ––Windspeaker

Educator & Series Information
For use with K-12 curricula. 

Contributors include KC Adams, Charlene Bearhead, Wilson Bearhead, Lisa Boivin, Nicola Campbell, Sara Florence Davidson, David A. Robertson, and Christina Lavalley Ruddy, and more!

Subjects / Themes: Education; Professional Development; Social Science; Indigenous Studies; Language Arts Disciplines; Study Teaching

This book is part of The Footbridge Series. This series aims to bridge curricular outcomes with Indigenous-centered content and perspectives from across Turtle Island. Like a footbridge, this series is intended to provide a path between Indigenous worldviews and the classroom, engaging differences, including tensions, and highlighting the importance of balance, all while helping teachers integrate Indigenous perspectives into multiple disciplines within the K-12 education system. 

Table of Contents
Introduction

About This Book

About The Footbridge Series

Part 1: Resistance

Beyond Being Silenced by Sara Florence Davidson

• Connections

Poetry as Cultural Expression by Rita Bouvier

• Connections

T’seka Reflection by Lucy Hemphill

• Connections

Poetry by Louise Bernice Halfe

• Connections

Part 2: Resilience

Mental Health by David A. Robertson

• Connections

Writing as a Therapeutic Medium by Wanda John-Kehewin

• Connections

Birch Bark Technology by KC Adams

• Connections

Images and Health by Lisa Boivin

• Connections

Part 3: Restoring

Stories are Resurgence by Wilson Bearhead and Charlene Bearhead

• Connections

Why am I not on Star Trek? by Sonya Ballantyne

• Connections

Indigenous Spaces by Reanna Merasty

• Connections

Games as Resurgence by Elizabeth LaPensée

• Connections

Part 4: Reconnecting

Poems by Nicola I. Campbell

• Connections

Paths of Tradition by Russell Wallace

• Connections

Let the Children Play by Victoria McIntosh

• Connections

Ethnomathematics and Beading by Christina Ruddy

• Connections

The Contributors

Additional Resources

Index

Additional Information
224 pages | 7.00" x 10.00" | Paperback

A beautiful and moving collection of poems and stories from the author of the #1 bestselling memoir From the Ashes.

Fans of Jesse Thistle’s extraordinary debut From the Ashes have already had the pleasure of reading his poetry, which is sprinkled throughout this bestselling memoir. In Scars and Stars, he digs deeper into the poetic form, which is especially close to his heart.

Charting his own history, the stories of people from his past, the burning intensity of new and unexpected love, the complex legacies of family and community, and the beauty of parenthood, this collection is a profound mediation that expands his engagement with the ideas and experiences that have shaped his body of work thus far.

Throughout the collection, prose pieces complement the poems, and to bring readers into Jesse’s life with greater intimacy than ever before. The result is an unforgettable furthering of his singular story, one that is sure to delight his many readers, but also serve as a perfect entry point for those new to the work of one of our most thrilling and honest writers.

Additional Information
184 pages | 5.00" x 7.50" | Hardcover

Serpents and Other Spiritual Beings is the second book in a series by renowned Ojibwe storyteller Bomgiizhik Isaac Murdoch, following on The Trail of Nenaboozhoo and Other Creation Stories (2019). Serpents and Other Spiritual Beings is a collection of traditional Ojibwe/Anishinaabe stories transliterated directly from Murdoch's oral storytelling. Part history, legend, and mythology, these are stories of tradition, magic and transformation, morality and object lessons, involving powerful spirit-beings in serpent form. The stories appear in both English and Anishinaabemowin, with translations by Patricia BigGeorge. Murdoch's traditional-style Ojibwe artwork provides beautiful illustrations throughout.

Reviews
"'When the Thunderbirds and Serpents fight, they feed off each other, you know great medicine gets cast across the land. We get our life from that.' So writes storyteller Isaac Murdoch as he shares his Elders' stories about tunnels beneath the earth, rich laws, philosophies, teachings, power from up there, down there, and all around us, until we too hear the thunders as they bring us into the world of wahkotowin, all our relations. How privileged and blessed we are to be able to read the Ahtyokaywina of our people."--Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed

"Gather around, for here are oral stories transcribed so they retain the flavour of a narrative spoken aloud, and translated into Anishinaabemowin; perfect for language-learners. I love the way these stories infuse the spirit world into an every-day context, these are not dusty old legends, but a living way of seeing the world around us in the here and now."--Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler, author of Ghost Lake

Educator & Series Information
Dual-Language: English and Anishinaabemowin.

Anishinaabemowin translation by Patricia BigGeorge, who is an Anishinaabemowin speaker and translator.

This book is Vol. 2 in the Ojibwe History Series.

Additional Information
100 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 20 illustrations | Paperback 

In Shapeshifters, Délani Valin explores the cost of finding the perfect mask. Through a lens of urban Métis experience and neurodivergence, Valin takes on a series of personas as an act of empathy as resistance. Some personas are capitalist mascots like the Starbucks siren, Barbie and the Michelin Man, who confide the hopes and frustrations that lay hidden behind their relentless public enthusiasm. Others include psychiatric diagnoses like hypochondria, autism and depression, and unlikely archetypes such as a woman who becomes a land mass by ending the quest to shrink herself. In more confessional poems, the pressure to find relief from otherness often leads to magical thinking: portals, flight, telepathy and incantations all become metaphors for survival. Shapeshifters maps ways in which an individual can attempt to fit into a world that is inhospitable to them, and makes a case to shift the shape of that world.

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

Slow Scrape enacts a poetics of relation and action to counter the settler colonial violences of erasure, extraction, and dispossession. Drawing on documentary poetics, concrete-based installations, event scores, and other texts, the book cites memory, Cree and Alutiiq languages, and embodiment as modes of relational being and knowing. In the words of Layli Long Soldier, Slow Scrape presents “an expansive and undulating meditation on time, relations, origin, and colonization."

Includes an introduction by Layli Long Soldier as well as a dialogue between Lukin Linklater and editor for the first edition, Michael Nardone.

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

Standing in a River of Time merges poetry and lyrical memoir on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on a Métis family. Kirton does not shy away from hard realities, meeting them head on, but always treating them with respect and the love stemming from a lifetime of spiritual healing and decades of sobriety. This collection unravels painful memories and a mixed-blood woman’s journey towards wholeness. The Ancestors whisper to Kirton throughout, asking her to heal, to bring them home, so that within these stories of redemption and loss the dead walk with us, their presence felt as the story unfurls in unexpected ways. Kirton does not offer false hope, nor does she push us towards answers we are not yet ready for. Instead, she gestures towards the many healing modalities she has explored as she discovers that the path to reconciliation is not only a long and winding road, but also that it begins with those closest to us.

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

When Carol Rose GoldenEagle was a child, attending Easter church services, she recalls the annual ritual of the priest presenting plaques depicting the stages of Christ's persecution to his resurrection, referred to as the "stations of the cross". Using these early teachings as a springboard for critical reflections, poems look back, but more importantly, look forward to reclaiming the gifts given by Creator within Indigenous culture. GoldenEagle's searing new poetry collection examines the dark legacy of the residential school system, church and government doctrine, and the ongoing impacts on Indigenous peoples' lives across Turtle Island.

Reviews
"Written with power and grace, Stations of the Crossed tells the story of 'doors marked in blood' from the point-of-view of a Sixties Scoop survivor, honouring those who 'survive because they have learned how.' If this book makes you cry, let it. These poems of blood-memory and soul, heartbreaking police brutality, and misconducts of the system have strength, humility, and wisdom, and are urgent reading for anyone interested in reconciliation."—Yasuko Thanh, author, Mistakes To Run With

"Stations of the Crossed takes apart this county's long history of trying to extinguish Indigenous culture, and the legacy of colonialism. Carol Rose GoldenEagle's own experience as a child of the Sixties Scoop is direct and especially moving. She replaces the Old Testament justifications with her own memories and reflections on community, and the ethical teachings and ways of being in Indigenous culture. It's been said if we only have one story, that's the story we become. This is a book about finding that new path, and the kind of story we need now-a true one."-Bruce Rice, author of The Vivian Poems: The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier

Additional Information
100 pages | 6.00" x 7.50" | Paperback

The Big Melt is a debut poetry collection rooted in nehiyaw thought and urban millennial life events. It examines what it means to repair kinship, contend with fraught history, go home and contemplate prairie ndn utopia in the era of late capitalism and climate change. Part memoir, part research project, this collection draws on Riddle’s experience working in Indigenous governance and her affection for confessional poetry in crafting feminist works that are firmly rooted in place. This book refuses a linear understanding of time in its focus on women in the author’s family, some who have passed and others who are yet to come. The Big Melt is about inheriting a Treaty relationship just as much as it is about breakups, demonstrating that governance is just as much about our interpersonal relationships as it is law and policy. How does one live one’s life in a way that honours inherited responsibilities, a deep love for humour and a commitment to always learning about the tension between a culture that deeply values collectivity and the autonomy of the individual? Perhaps we find these answers in the examination of ourselves, the lands we are from and the relationships we hold.

Awards

• 2023 Indigenous Voices Awards Co-Winner for Published Poetry in English

Reviews
"Gentle, firm and funny, Emily Riddle uses The Big Melt to Aunty us all. This radically personal debut, like an iceberg or crater on the moon, reaches deep down into history—political, familial, environmental, romantical—to make sense of what it means to be an ndn on the prairies today who understands that the Oilers and West Edmonton Mall and miniskirts are sacred, and that this “bootlegging operation called Canada” can’t stop telling lies. There are truths here for us; the immense research behind the text feels like a lifetime labour of love, done out of necessity to reconcile loss and fashion some comfort in the face of colonial violence. What a gift it is for Riddle to show us, with clarity and wit, how fierce friendship and unshakeable matriarchs have helped her to connect with her ancestors, nehiyaw askiy, and herself." — Molly Cross-Blanchard, August 2022

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

“The Net” features a girl and her mother, known only as the mother and the daughter, who arrive at their secluded cabin on a frozen lake to find their fishing net has been attacked, a massive hole ripped through the middle. After the net has been mended and the night’s catch eaten, the daughter sits awake playing with a bit of leftover netting string. When she was a girl, her grandmother taught her to make string figures—just as her mother had taught her—a game played by Inuit for generations, but a game not to be taken lightly . . . as the daughter plays late into the night, and the mother sleeps, other monstrous forces are soon awakened from beneath the frozen lake.

In “Before Dawn” a young boy runs out onto the tundra to play with his new friend by his side, venturing far beyond his mother’s rule that he not stray past the inuksuk on the horizon. The boy’s friend beckons him farther and farther, and the farther they get from home, the more the friend seems to change . . . and shift . . . until he is no longer human at all. Horrified, the boy listens to the creature’s proposition: return home before dawn, or be lost forever to the other side . . .

Complemented by colour illustrations from illustrator Toma Feizo Gas, The Other Ones is a fresh take on modern horror by an exciting new Inuit voice.

Educator Information
Short stories.

Additional Information
50 pages | 6.75" x 8.75" | Hardcover

Award-winning Indigenous author Harold R. Johnson discusses the promise and potential of storytelling.

Approached by an ecumenical society representing many faiths, from Judeo-Christians to fellow members of First Nations, Harold R. Johnson agreed to host a group who wanted to hear him speak about the power of storytelling. This book is the outcome of that gathering. In The Power of Story, Johnson explains the role of storytelling in every aspect of human life, from personal identity to history and the social contracts that structure our societies, and illustrates how we can direct its potential to re-create and reform not only our own lives, but the life we share. Companionable, clear-eyed, and, above all, optimistic, Johnson’s message is both a dire warning and a direct invitation to each of us to imagine and create, together, the world we want to live in.

Reviews
"Recently in conversation with a friend I remarked that the whole world is a story. Harold Johnson fills that phrase with profound meaning in The Power of Story as he takes ancient figures and modernizes their storied wit and role in creating the worlds we perceive and the boundaries we need. Harold blessed us one last time with a profound conversation on the role of story in every aspect of our lives."—Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians

“The Power of Story begins where all great stories begin: around a fire. Harold Johnson gives us a seat at the fire to listen and take into ourselves some spellbinding, bracing, and provocative stories told with a view to healing and transforming. As Harold writes ‘It’s starting to get darker now, and a bright fire will help.’ The Power of Story is that bright fire. And it will help. His final book is a balm for our times.”—Shelagh Rogers

Additional Information
192 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

the tales are of loss and forgiveness
and they fill the room

The Punishment is the latest addition to the oeuvre of prolific Kwantlen writer Joseph Dandurand, whose stunning previous collection, The East Side of It All, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

In The Punishment, Joseph Dandurand's now-familiar storyteller's voice wrangles trauma, grief, forgiveness and love. His poems illustrate the poet's solitary existence. With scenes of residential school, the psych ward, the streets and the river, Dandurand reveals an arduous journey: one poet's need to both understand his life and find ways to escape it. Through poetry, he shares with us all his lovers. He shares the streets. He shares what he sees: the great eagles and small birds; his culture and teachings; the East Side; self-pity; the deception of love; the deception of hate; sasquatches; spirits; and his people, the Kwantlen.

At root, The Punishment is about survival. Dandurand's poems will show you disease. They'll show you cedar. They'll show you music. They'll show you shadows. They'll show you forgiveness, and they'll show you punishment.

Reviews
"Hands down, Joseph Dandurand is one of my all-time favourite writers ... Good Lord―what a voice!" — Richard Van Camp,

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

After a hunting trip one fall, a family in the far reaches of so-called Canada’s north return to nothing but an empty space where their home once stood. Finding themselves suddenly homeless, they have no choice but to assimilate into settler-colonial society in a mining town that has encroached on their freedom.

An intergenerational coming-of-age novel, This House Is Not a Home follows Kǫ̀, a Dene man who grew up entirely on the land before being taken to residential school. When he finally returns home, he struggles to connect with his family: his younger brother whom he has never met, his mother because he has lost his language, and an absent father whose disappearance he is too afraid to question.

The third book from acclaimed Dene, Cree and Metis writer Katłįà, This House Is Not a Home is a fictional story based on true events. Visceral and embodied, heartbreaking and spirited, this book presents a clear trajectory of how settlers dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their land — and how Indigenous communities, with dignity and resilience, continue to live and honour their culture, values, inherent knowledge systems, and Indigenous rights towards re-establishing sovereignty. Fierce and unflinching, this story is a call for land back.

Reviews
"Absolutely exquisite. Told with such love and gentle ferocity, I’m convinced This House Is Not A Home will never leave those who read it. I am in awe of what I’ve witnessed here. Mahsi cho, Katlia. Bravo! " — Richard Van Camp author of The Lesser Blessed and Moccasin Square Gardens

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