Social and Cultural Studies
Synopsis:
In the last decade, the relationship between settler Canadians and Indigenous Peoples has been highlighted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Idle No More movement, the Wet'suwet'en struggle against pipeline development and other Indigenous-led struggles for Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization. Increasing numbers of Canadians are beginning to recognize how settler colonialism continues to shape relationships on these lands. With this recognition comes the question many settler Canadians are now asking, what can I do?
Living in Indigenous Sovereignty lifts up the wisdom of Indigenous scholars, activists and knowledge keepers who speak pointedly to what they are asking of non-Indigenous people. It also shares the experiences of thirteen white settler Canadians who are deeply engaged in solidarity work with Indigenous Peoples. Together, these stories offer inspiration and guidance for settler Canadians who wish to live honourably in relationship with Indigenous Peoples, laws and lands. If Canadians truly want to achieve this goal, Carlson and Rowe argue, they will pursue a reorientation of their lives toward "living in Indigenous sovereignty"-- living in an awareness that these are Indigenous lands, containing relationships, laws, protocols, stories, obligations and opportunities that have been understood and practised by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial.
Collectively, these stories will help settler Canadians understand what transformations we must undertake if we are to fundamentally shift our current relations and find a new way forward, together.
Reviews
“A powerful decolonial reflection and call to action for settler peoples to learn how to work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples in ways that are decolonizing not recolonizing. Guided by teachings from Indigenous elders, scholars, and activists about the importance of creating relationships with kindness, humility, mutual respect and reciprocity, non-Indigenous readers can find inspiration in the life stories of settlers who speak frankly about their ongoing struggles to do this work in a good way.” — Paulette Regan, author of Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada and Senior Researcher/Lead Writer of “Reconciliation,” Volume 6 of the TRC Final Report
“This is the most comprehensive book on anti-colonial practice focused on non-indigenous peoples. It draws on leading scholars and advocates from across the country and incorporates a breadth of concepts that create a solid and encompassing foundation for creating change. By incorporating these ideas, perspectives, experiences and practices, non-Indigenous and Indigenous people will be well prepared for our work and parallel journey ahead.” — Michael Anthony Hart, Vice Provost (Indigenous Engagement), Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, author of Seeking Mino-Pimatisiwin and Wicihitowin
Educator Information
Tables of Contents
Foreword By Aimée Craft, Leona Star and Dawnis Kennedy
Acknowledgments
Introductions
Settler Colonialism and Resistance
Introducing the Narratives
Monique Woroniak
Murray Angus
Steve Heinrichs
Franklin Jones
Orienting Toward Indigenous Sovereignty
Joy Eidse
Adam Barker
Susanne McCrea
Kathi Avery Kinew
Rick Wallace
What Indigenous Peoples Have Asked of Us
John Doe
Silvia Straka
Dave Bleakney
Victoria Freeman
Honourings
Conclusions
Afterword
References
Index
Additional Information
264 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
In this unprecedented collection of botanical information, over 140 plants are categorized within their broad botanical groupings: algae and seaweeds, lichens, fungi and mushrooms, mosses and liverworts, ferns and fern-allies, coniferous trees, deciduous trees, shrubs and vines, and herbaceous flowering plants. Each entry is illustrated with a colour photo and includes the plant’s common, scientific and Hul′q′umi′num′ names; a short description; where to find it; and cultural knowledge related to the plant. Additional notes encompass plant use, safety and conservation; the linguistic writing system used for Hul′q′umi′num′ plant names; as well as miscellaneous notes from interviews with Luschiim.
This volume is an important addition to the bookshelves of botanists, and will fascinate anyone with an interest in plants of the West Coast and their traditional uses by Coast Salish peoples.
This resource is in English with additional notes that encompass the linguistic writing system used for Hul′q′umi′num′ plant names.
288 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
Five hundred years. A vast geography. And an unfinished project to remake the world to match the desires of settler colonizers. How have settlers used violence and narrative to transform Turtle Island into what is currently called North America? What does that say about our social systems, and what happens next?
Deploying analytical tools from diverse disciplines, and drawing on sources ranging from archives to pop culture and personal experience, Making and Breaking Settler Space addresses pressing questions left by the complex and obscured process of colonization. Adam Barker articulates a dynamic analytical model to explain how settler spaces have developed and continue to evolve. He traces the trajectory of settler colonialism, drawing out details of its operation from the imperial colonization of Turtle Island in the 1500s to contemporary contexts that include problematic activist practices by would-be settler allies.
Making and Breaking Settler Space proposes an innovative, unified spatial theory of settler colonization in Canada and the United States. In the process, it uncovers systemic weaknesses that can inform the decolonization efforts of resurgent Indigenous nations and settler activists alike, and argues for relationships founded on solidarity and shared acknowledgment that the settler project is a failed one.
This thought-provoking work will be of great use not only to scholars and students of settler colonialism but also to activists and political commentators concerned with Indigenous people’s future beyond the settler colonial society.
Reviews
“Making and Breaking Settler Space offers a comprehensive analysis of the colonial spatialities inherent to the settler state. It is an innovative interpretation of the affective dimensions of settler colonialism, from its obsessive drive for ownership, control, and transcendence to the possibilities that come from failing to meet these expectations.”— Soren Larsen, University of Missouri
Educator Information
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Cores and Peripheries: From Imperial Contact to Settler Colonial Claims
2 Spatialities of Settlement: Remaking Landscapes and Identities
3 Remaking People and Places: States, Suburbs, and Forms of Settlement
4 Revolutionary Aspirations? Social Movements and Settler Colonial Complicity
5 The Efficacy of Failure: Advancing Struggles in Support of Indigenous Resurgence
6 Affinity and Alliance: Breaking the Boundaries of Settler Colonial Space
Notes; References; Index
Additional Information
312 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 2 photographs, 7 diagrams, 1 map | Hardcover
Synopsis:
First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, activists, educators and writers, youth and elders come together to envision Indigenous futures in Canada and around the world.
Discussing everything from language renewal to sci-fi, this collection is a powerful and important expression of imagination rooted in social critique, cultural experience, traditional knowledge, activism and the multifaceted experiences of Indigenous people on Turtle Island.
In Me Tomorrow:
Darrel J. McLeod, Cree author from Treaty-8 territory in Northern Alberta, blends the four elements of the Indigenous cosmovision with the four directions of the medicine wheel to create a prayer for the power, strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples.
Autumn Peltier, Anishinaabe water-rights activist, tells the origin story of her present and future career in advocacy—and how the nine months she spent in her mother’s womb formed her first water teaching. When the water breaks, like snow melting in the spring, new life comes.
Lee Maracle, acclaimed Stó:lō Nation author and educator, reflects on cultural revival—imagining a future a century from now in which Indigenous people are more united than ever before.
Other essayists include Cyndy and Makwa Baskin, Norma Dunning, Shalan Joudry, Shelley Knott-Fife, Tracie Léost, Stephanie Peltier, Romeo Saganash, Drew Hayden Taylor and Raymond Yakeleya.
For readers who want to imagine the future, and to cultivate a better one, Me Tomorrow is a journey through the visions generously offered by a diverse group of Indigenous thinkers.
Additional Information
224 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback
Synopsis:
Frank Surprenant is a Cree Elder from the Sucker Creek Band on Lesser Slave Lake in Alberta, Canada. He is a Pipe Carrier and Sweat Lodge Keeper. For more than 30 years Frank has been involved in Medicine Wheel Gatherings across Canada and his Teachings have been listened to by countless people. He decided it was time to set these Teachings down in writing and make them more widely accessible.
Medicine Wheel Teachings is an easy-to-follow guide explaining what a Medicine Wheel is and how it is relevant to our lives today. Frank’s vision for this book is that it will be an invaluable tool to understand the connectedness with all things – human, animal, mineral, plant, insect, and more.
The book explains the Medicine Wheel layer by layer. Each layer is illustrated with a diagram. These diagrams build up a complete Medicine Wheel. Each part explains how to find your place on the Medicine Wheel and what you can learn from it – beginning from a starting point of something as simple as your date of birth. The final section gives ideas on making a personal Medicine Wheel.
This book will act as a spark and ignite a further pursuit of Medicine Wheel Teachings and Indigenous Knowledge. Moving forward with healing, understanding and reconciliation.
Additional Information
75 Pages
Synopsis:
“Our identity, our sense of belonging, our understanding of being human, is all connected to our relationship with the land. And our relationship with these lands span millennia. Our grandfathers and grandmothers that came before us walked these same ridges, valleys, and trails. They fished the same lakes, streams, and rivers. They cherished memories carried in the pungent smell of the fall tundra, in wafts of spruce, cottonwood, and willow smoke. They ventured throughout these lands until their final rest. Our ancestors are literally part of this land. We are part of this land.” –Evon Peter
The North is changing at an unprecedented rate as industrial development and the climate crisis disrupt not only the environment but also long-standing relationships to the land and traditional means of livelihood. Memory and Landscape: Indigenous Responses to a Changing North explores the ways in which Indigenous peoples in the Arctic have adapted to challenging circumstances, including past cultural and environmental changes. In this beautifully illustrated volume, contributors document how Indigenous communities in Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and Siberia are seeking ways to maintain and strengthen their cultural identity while also embracing forces of disruption.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors bring together oral history and scholarly research from disciplines such as linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory. With an emphasis on Indigenous place names, this volume illuminates how the land—and the memories that are inextricably tied to it—continue to define Indigenous identity. The perspectives presented here also serve to underscore the value of Indigenous knowledge and its essential place in future studies of the Arctic.
Contributions by Vinnie Baron, Hugh Brody, Kenneth Buck, Anna Bunce, Donald Butler, Michael A. Chenlov, Aron L. Crowell, Peter C. Dawson, Martha Dowsley, Robert Drozda, Gary Holton, Colleen Hughes, Peter Jacobs, Emily Kearney-Williams, Igor Krupnik, Apayo Moore, Murielle Nagy, Mark Nuttall, Evon Peter, Louann Rank, William E. Simeone, Felix St-Aubin, and Will Stolz.
Additional Information
448 pages | 8.00" x 10.00" | 172 Colour Illustrations | Paperback
Authenticity Note: This work contains contributions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors. It is up to readers to determine if this is an authentic work for their purposes.
Synopsis:
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"
Synopsis:
The writing and relations between Syilx women and settler women, largely of European descent, who came to inhabit the British Columbia southern interior from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
Educator Information
Okanagan Women’s Voices features the writing and stories of seven women: Susan Moir Allison (1845-1937), Josephine Shuttleworth (1866-1950), Eliza Jane Swalwell (1868-1944), Marie Houghton Brent (1870-1968), Hester Emily White (1877-1963), Mourning Dove (1886-1936) and Isabel Christie MacNaughton (1915-2003).
Additional Information
6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
Outdoor School features recent works of contemporary environmental art and writing by more than twenty-five Canadian and Indigenous artists who propose radical new ways of thinking and being outdoors together.
For more than a decade, the Outdoor School project has provided a framework for interdisciplinary artists to come together and share projects that reimagine ways of relating with the landscape.
The experiential and community-based art projects described in Outdoor School present an alternative to scientific, commercial and colonial conceptions of land and nature in the face of climate change and mass extinction. These art practices include activities like mushroom foraging, water witching, trespassing, pumpkin-boat sailing, cloud identifying, ravine running, honey extracting, spell conjuring, rabbit hunting, coyote walking and more. The project calls attention to creative, counter-cultural works that are focused on education, community and place, and blur the boundaries between art and life, nature and culture.
Featuring interviews, essays and over 150 photographs, Outdoor School is an important contribution to discussions of contemporary art and ecology, foregrounding work that is marginal and ephemeral by nature.
Artists featured in Outdoor School include Alana Bartol, Diane Borsato, Bill Burns, Carolina Caycedo, Sameer Farooq, FASTWÜRMS, Ayumi Goto, Maggie Groat, Gabrielle Hill, Peter Morin, Public Studio, Helen Reed, Genevieve Robertson, Jamie Ross, Aislinn Thomas, Vibrant Matter, Jay White, Tania Willard, Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson and D'Arcy Wilson.
Educator Information
Additional Information
192 pages | 8.00" x 10.00" | colour photographs
Authenticity Note: This work has received the Authentic Indigenous Text label because of the Indigenous contributions to this work. Non-Indigenous contributors are also featured, and the editors are not Indigenous. It is up to readers to determine if this resource is authentic for their purposes.
Synopsis:
The exhaustive, definitive history and stories of the Cega‘ K´i na Nakoda Oyáté (Carry The Kettle Nakoda First Nation), told by the people themselves.
Born out of a meticulous, well-researched historical and current traditional land-use study led by Cega̔ K´iɳna Nakoda Oyáté (Carry the Kettle Nakoda First Nation), Owóknage is the first book to tell the definitive, comprehensive story of the Nakoda people (formerly known as the Assiniboine), in their own words. From pre-contact to current-day life, from thriving on the Great Plains to forced removal from their traditional, sacred lands in the Cypress Hills via a Canadian “Trail of Tears” starvation march to where they now currently reside south of Sintaluta, Saskatchewan, this is their story of resilience and resurgence.
Educator Information
Based on a comprehensive traditional and current land-use study and history of the Carry The Kettle First Nation, combining oral history from Nation Elders and historical/anthropological research.
The destruction of the bison on the Canadian plains, disease, and Canada’s various damaging colonial policies brought profound changes and hardships to the Nakoda; this book chronicles the changes they faced and illustrates their endurance throughout history.
Most of the victims of the Cypress Hill Massacre were ancestors of the Carry The Kettle Nakoda First Nation, and many were forced out of their traditional lands on a Canadian Trail of Tears in 1882–83.
Additional Information
412 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
A trailblazing anthropologist and an indigenous Amazonian healer explore the convergence of science and shamanism
“The dose makes the poison,” says an old adage, reminding us that all substances have the potential to heal or to harm, depending on their use. This is especially true of tobacco. Although Western medicine treats it as a harmful addictive drug, tobacco is considered medicinal by indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest. In its unadulterated form, it holds a central place in their repertoire of traditional medicines. Along with the hallucinogen ayahuasca, tobacco forms a part of treatments designed to heal the body, stimulate the mind, and inspire the soul with visions. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby first learned of the shamanic uses of ayahuasca and tobacco while conducting fieldwork in the Amazon region decades ago. After witnessing the transformative power of these mind-altering plants, Narby embarked on a quest to understand their effects on human consciousness. His search led him to contact Rafael Chanchari Pizuri, a traditional healer from the Peruvian Amazon. In Plant Teachers, Narby and Pizuri hold a cross-cultural dialogue that explores the similarities between ayahuasca and tobacco, the role of these plants in indigenous cultures, and the hidden truths they reveal about nature. Juxtaposing two distinct worldviews, Plant Teachers invites readers on a wide-ranging journey through anthropology, botany, and biochemistry, while raising tantalizing questions about the relationship between science and other ways of knowing.
Additional Information
144 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Hardcover
Synopsis:
For many thousands of years the lands and waters of Haida Gwaii have been home to the Haida. Plants of Haida Gwaii, written with the cooperation and collaboration of Haida knowledge holders and botanical experts, is a detailed and insightful record of the traditional uses of over 150 species of native plants. Moreover, it explains the systems of knowledge and understanding that enabled the Haida to use the resources of their islands sustainably from one generation to the next over millennia.
The Haida names of these plants indicate their importance, as do the many narratives featuring them. From the ts’uu—massive western red-cedars—of the forests which provide wood used for canoes, house posts, poles and boxes, and bark carefully harvested for weaving mats, baskets and hats, to the ngaal—tough, resilient fronds of giant kelp—used to harvest herring eggs, the botanical species used by the Haida are found from the ocean to the mountain tops, and are as important today as ever before. With over 250 photographs and illustrations, this book is both beautiful and informative.
Additional Information
272 pages | 7.50" x 9.25"
Authenticity Note: As there are contributions from Haida knowledge holders, this work has been labelled as containing authentic Indigenous text. It is up to readers to determine if this work is authentic for their purposes.
Synopsis:
This book deals with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, an extremely painful topic—one that we struggled at times to write or think about, and it raises some painful memories and feelings, not only for us but particularly those whose stories and reflections are within it.
The book includes essays and reflections by both men and women, because it seeks to help bring balance to our collective, equally important and unique, roles and responsibilities. It hopes to incorporate Indigenous knowledge principles about relationships and love in the hope that we can begin to emulate and live our lives in balance. In this circle, we begin in the eastern direction with respect—seeing someone from all sides, and having ‘1,000 cups of tea’ with them; moving into time in the south where we must physically, mentally and spiritually sit and spend time with someone; then to empathy or feeling in the west where our connection to a person is strong enough so we hurt when they are hurting; then finally, into the gift of movement, where caring behaviour in the northern direction drives us to actually do something about it.
Reviews
"It is uncanny how all these writers’ contributions came together in one book. It gives such a comprehensive observation of historical and current systems that create these vulnerabilities. I have to admit, I felt anger rise up in me at all these injustices. This is an important work for anyone in Canada, and will be especially useful to policymakers. Well done! You have just changed the world." - Lorraine Rekmans
"This book is a highly recommended read for persons desiring to hear truth, and to work toward genuine and responsive reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples." - Barbara Waterfall, PhD
Educator Information
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1. Colonization, ‘Truth,’ and ‘Reconciliation’ for Indigenous Women and Girls?
By: Kelly M. Bugler, John G. Hansen, & Michael Hankard
2. Taking Me Home: The Life of Mere Hiki
By: Taima Moeke-Pickering
3. Traveling the Spirit Road: Anna Mae Pictou Aquash
By Cynthia Landrum
4. How Are Indigenous Women’s Experiences of Policing and Homelessness Linked to MMIWG?
By: Carol Kauppi & Rebecca Schiff
5. Indigenous Responses to Gendered and Colonial Violence: A View from Baawaating
By: Vivian Jiménez-Estrada &Eva Dabutch
6. Walking the Sweetgrass Road Together
By: Michael Hankard
7. Rites of Passage: Building Strength and Resilience
By: Joey-Lynn Wabie
8. Colonial Exceptionalism and the MMIWG Genocide: Bringing Words of the Silent to the Ears of the Deaf
By: Nawel Hamidi
9. Shinning the Light Into Dark Places: Going Beyond Statistics and Literature Reviews and into the Humanity of MMIWG
By: Sharon L. Acoose, & John E. Charlton
About the Authors
Table 1. Aboriginal Offender Statistics
Graphic 1. Mere Hiki
Additional Information
Pages: 150 | Size: 6” x 9” | Paperback
Synopsis:
Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separate the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States.
Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation “from sea to shining sea.” This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States.
Despite this rich and important history of political and material struggle, little has been written about bordertowns. Red Nation Rising marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to bordertowns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control. This book is a manual for navigating the extreme violence that Native people experience in reservation bordertowns and a manifesto for indigenous liberation that builds on long traditions of Native resistance to bordertown violence.
Reviews
“The authors of this brilliant exposition on bordertown violence are no ordinary academics, although academia would benefit from having more faculty scholars such as these. They are also master organizers, a part of a network of indigenous and other community organizers in Indian Country fueling the process of decolonization of Native lands and communities. Bordertown violence is as old as US colonization of the continent itself, and it persists today in the towns and cities that border Native reservations and communities all over US-claimed territory and is replicated in even more distant cities that have large Native populations, many of whom are homeless. This may be the most important organizing manual ever produced by a social movement in the United States.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
“The borders racking our world are in constant motion and, like the explosive grinding of tectonic plates, the violence of this movement and resistance to it emerges most sharply at the edges. This essential volume brings together militant intellectuals to provide an accessible introduction to the violent encirclement of indigenous communities, and to provide crucial concept-weapons to deepen ongoing collective resistance.” —George Ciccariello-Maher, author of Decolonizing Dialectics
“A remarkable body of work that effectively weaves long overdue native scholarship and historical analysis of settler colonialism with direct and timely frontline reports on the continuing bordertown wars and conflicts in occupied native territories. Offers a comprehensive framework for advancing present and future indigenous resistance and liberation struggles.”—John Redhouse (Diné)
Additional Information
176 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
Returning to Ceremony is the follow-up to Chantal Fiola’s award-winning Rekindling the Sacred Fire and continues her ground-breaking examination of Métis spirituality, debunking stereotypes such as “all Métis people are Catholic,” and “Métis people do not go to ceremonies.” Fiola finds that, among the Métis, spirituality exists on a continuum of Indigenous and Christian traditions, and that Métis spirituality includes ceremonies. For some Métis, it is a historical continuation of the relationships their ancestral communities have had with ceremonies since time immemorial, and for others, it is a homecoming—a return to ceremony after some time away.
Fiola employs a Métis-specific and community-centred methodology to gather evidence from archives, priests’ correspondence, oral history, storytelling, and literature. With assistance from six Métis community researchers, Fiola listened to stories and experiences shared by thirty-two Métis from six Manitoba Métis communities that are at the heart of this book. They offer insight into their families’ relationships with land, community, culture, and religion, including factors that inhibit or nurture connection to ceremonies such as sweat lodge, Sundance, and the Midewiwin. Valuable profiles emerge for six historic Red River Métis communities (Duck Bay, Camperville, St Laurent, St François-Xavier, Ste Anne, and Lorette), providing a clearer understanding of identity, culture, and spirituality that uphold Métis Nation sovereignty.
Reviews
"Grounded in the communities of her home territory, Chantal Fiola brings critical insider knowledge, insight and analysis to the topic of Metis spirituality. The combination of historical background with contemporary voice offers an understanding of the Metis spirit that will nurture the nation and enlighten the broader public." — Kim Anderson
“Returning to Ceremony is a courageous book given the tensions surrounding religious affiliation in the Metis community. It is a challenging topic that has been dealt with sensitively, with balance and candour."— Blair Stonechild
Ch 1: Métis Spirituality: Confronting Stereotypes
Ch 2: Searching for Our Stories in Oral History
Ch 3: Combing the Written Record for Our Stories
Ch 4: A Métis-Centred Study and Approach
Ch 5: Six Red River Métis Communities
Ch 6: Meeting the Participants
Ch 7: Métis Family Relationships with Land, Language, and Identity
Ch 8: Métis Family Relationships with Culture and Religion
Ch 9: Exploring Self-Identification
Ch 10: Spirituality, Types of Ceremonies, and Disconnection Factors
Ch 11: Connection Factors, Impacts upon Identity, and Others’ Reactions
Ch 12: Métis Spirituality Today
Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Index, Bibliography | Paperback