Salish

The pelt of a dog named “Mutton” languished in a drawer at the Smithsonian for 150 years until it was discovered, almost accidentally, by an amateur archivist. This book tells Mutton's story and explores what it can teach us about Coast Salish Woolly Dogs and their cultural significance.

Until now, there has been very little written about the enigmatic Coast Salish Woolly Dog, or sqʷəmey̓ in the Hul'q'umi'num language. According to Indigenous Oral Histories of the Pacific Northwest, this small dog was bred for thousands of years for its woolly fibres, which were woven into traditional blankets, robes and regalia. Although the dogs were carefully protected by Coast Salish peoples, by the 1900s, the Woolly Dog had become so rare it is now considered extinct.

Co-authored with weavers, Knowledge Keepers, and Elders, The Teachings of Mutton interweaves perspectives from Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō, Suquamish, Cowichan, Katzie, Snuneymuxw, and Skokomish cultures with narratives of science, post-contact history, and the lasting and devastating impacts of colonization. Binding it all together is Mutton's story—a tale of research, reawakening, and resurgence.

Reviews
“What a compelling story, reflecting a way of life, practical knowledge, artistry and change in the Pacific Northwest! Mutton, the domesticated woolly dog, represents so much more than a museum collection or a source of weaving material. Generations of breeding, learning and sharing, caring and trading are mirrored in the discovery of his pelt in a drawer at the Smithsonian. Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa and her respected Salishan co-authors and Knowledge Keepers have brought Mutton into the present, and in doing so, have given us a new and unique perspective on the complex history of this region and on the meaning of Truth and Reconciliation. The book is clearly and thoughtfully written, and supplemented with excellent illustrations. It is a ‘must read’ for anyone wishing to know more about weaving arts, dog breeds, Indigenous cultures and/or history in northwestern North America.” — Nancy J. Turner, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Victoria

“Conscientious and accessible, The Teachings of Mutton weaves a charming and informative history, walking through the discovery of his pelt in a museum drawer to the modern science that reveals the shape of this dog’s life. Highlighting and correcting generations of non-Indigenous misinterpretation, the intertwined histories provided by Salish knowledge keepers reveal the nuanced Indigenous sciences of dog husbandry, spinning, weaving, and the cultural significance of Woolly Dogs while telling a lively story.” — Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, PhD, curator of Northwest Native art and director of the Bill Holm Center for

Additional Information
264 pages | 8.00" x 10.00"

In The Raven Calls, we meet Raven, a young girl deeply connected to her roots and the natural beauty of Vashon Island. Raven's journey is intertwined with the ancient wisdom of a cedar tree, which becomes her guide, sharing stories and teachings that connect her—and young readers—to the land, its creatures, and her people's history.

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 8 to 14.

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

The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager — a boy who is not a “legal” Indian because he was never claimed by his father — who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He resurfaces in the form of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, inhabits the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Big Horn, and then rides with an Indian tracker in the 19th Century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own contemporary body, he is mightily transformed by all he’s seen. This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant — making us laugh while breaking our hearts. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous, wholly contemporary yet steeped in American history, Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and again, groundbreaking Alexie.

Additional Information
208 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

“In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe’s rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby’s cry.”

Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.

Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive”: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper.

Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves.

Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance—the Indigenous woman’s story that hasn’t been told.

Reviews
“[In The Lost Journals of Sacajewea] the suffering—and bold, ingenious agency—of women held as captives by both Native and Euro-Americans is rendered with special vividness [. . .] The narration is rich in realistic detail but animated by a dreamlike intensity [. . .] Throughout the text, Sacajewea memorably enacts what Gerald Vizenor dubs survivance, the negotiation of existential challenges with a spirited, oppositional inventiveness. A profoundly moving imagining of the impressions and contributions of a major historical figure."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Earling adds a much-needed Native woman’s perspective to Sacajewea’s story, bringing a note of resilience to her unflinching account of the white men’s violence and depredation: 'Women do not become their Enemy captors. We survive them.' This is a beautiful reclamation."—Publishers Weekly

[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea] offers new perspective on what is known, and debated, about the life of Sacajewea, including her age, her marriage to a French fur-trader (Toussaint Charbonneau), and her experience as the only woman traveling on the 1804-1806 Corp of Discovery expedition with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In poetic prose, Earling interweaves factual accounts of Sacajewea’s life with a first-person narrative deeply rooted in the physicality of landscape and brutality of the times”—Jessica Gigot, Seattle Times

“[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is] an impressionistic, poetic account, one that vividly renders external hardships and internal thoughts, giving equal weight to each. [. . .] it delivers a uniquely thorough perspective on the mind of a particular young woman, both ordinary and extraordinary. In this way, we come to understand Sacajewea more deeply—certainly more than we understand the men of famous names like Lewis and Clark. lt’s a book to enjoy like a river: you give yourself over to it and follow where it takes you.”—Greer Macallister, Chicago Review of Books

Additional Information
264 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Sherman Alexie’s celebrated first collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, established its author as one of America’s most important and provocative voices. The basis for the award-winning movie Smoke Signals, it remains one of his best loved and widely praised books twenty years after its initial publication.

Vividly weaving memory, fantasy, and stark reality to paint a portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian reservation, this book introduces some of Alexie’s most beloved characters, including Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the storyteller who no one seems to listen to, and his compatriot, Victor, the sports hero who turned into a recovering alcoholic. Now with an updated introduction from Alexie, these twenty-four tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet they are filled with passion and affection, myth and charm. Against a backdrop of addiction, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between men and women, Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, and, most poetically, modern Indians and the traditions of the past.

Educator Information
Resource for English First Peoples 10-12.  

Short stories.

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.50" x 8.25"

“We need to learn and grow together, and if we are able to do this, we will create harmony,” counsels Tom Sampson, an elder of Tsartlip First Nation in British Columbia.

Dynamic and diverse, Coast Salish culture is bound together by shared values and relations that generate a resilient worldview. Jesintel—"to learn and grow together"—characterizes the spirit of this book, which brings the cultural teachings of nineteen elders to new generations.

Featuring interviews that share powerful experiences and stories, Jesintel illuminates the importance of ethical reciprocal relationships and the interconnectedness of places, land, water, and the spirit within all things. Elders offer their perspectives on language revitalization, Coast Salish family values and naming practices, salmon, sovereignty, canoe racing, and storytelling. They also share traumatic memories, including of their boarding school experiences and the epidemics that ravished their communities. Jesintel highlights the importance of maintaining relations and traditions in the face of ongoing struggles. Collaboration is at the heart of this work and informs how the editors and community came together to honor the boundless relations of Coast Salish people and their territories.

Elders Interviewed:
Tom Sampson (Tsartlip First Nation)
Virginia Cross (Muckleshoot Tribe)
Ernestine Gensaw (Lummi Nation)
Steve and Gwen Point (Stó:lō Nation)
Gene and Wendy Harry (Malahat Nation)
Claude Wilbur (Swinomish Tribe)
Richard Solomon (Lummi Nation)
Elaine Grinell (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe)
Arvid Charlie (Cowichan Nation)
Amy George (Tsleil-Waututh Nation)
Nancy Shippentower (Nisqually Tribe)
Nolan Charles (Musqueam Indian Band)
Andy de los Angeles (Snoqualmie Tribe)
Jewell James (Lummi Nation)
Kenny Moses Sr. Family (Tulalip Tribal Nation)
Ramona Morris (Lummi Nation)

Reviews
"A beautiful sharing of thriving Coast Salish communities. Indigenous elders, cultures, and languages have so much precious wisdom to share, and Jesintel celebrates these through storytelling and photos. It is a generous gift to anyone who wants to better understand the resilience of Indigenous communities."- Michelle M. Jacob (Yakama), author of The Auntie Way: Stories Celebrating Kindness, Fierceness, and Creativity

Educator Information
Nineteen elders from Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia offer a portrait of their perspectives on language, revitalization, and Coast Salish family values. Topics include naming practices, salmon, canoe journeys and storytelling.

Additional Information
224 pages | 9.00" x 10.00" | 144 colour illustrations | 1 map | 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 | 5.01" x 8.00" | Paperback

Andy has had a rough school year and is ready for summer vacation. But when Grandpa Rick tells him that he will be participating in a canoe journey instead of enjoying his usual summer activities, Andy feels he is being punished.

Join Andy as he experiences a Tribal Canoe Journey for the first time and learns what it’s like to belong to a canoe family. Follow along as Andy navigates physical and emotional challenges and finds an answer to the important question: “Who am I?”

Awards

• 2024-2025 Hackmatack Children's Choice Award Shortlisted 

Reviews
"In this graphic novel, Andy gains insight into his own heritage and identity when he joins a group of youth who are participating in a Tribal Canoe Journey. People from different communities paddle to a host Nation for cultural celebrations in this annual West Coast event. The paddlers must train and prepare for the journey, which takes several days through variable conditions. The experience is physically demanding, but Andy learns much about his people’s culture, and he gains a sense of belonging as part of a canoe family." - Canadian Teacher Magazine, Spring 2023 Issue

"This graphic novel highlights how First Peoples connect to their culture and honour their past. The first-hand perspectives of participants in the 2019 journey help showcase the human emotions and physical challenges it involves. Teachers across elementary and secondary levels can use this short graphic novel as a read-aloud in a classroom or literature circles to help students learn about tribal canoes. Students could also be invited to explore their own traditions and experiences, and the art in the book could inspire projects that are based on the illustrations in this story." - Focused Education Resources

"Andy's Tribal Canoe is a fantastic book to use for reading groups. We were able to have amazing discussions. I started with the question, "Who am I?" And had students write what they would like to say before we opened the book. Then as we went through the book we made connections to their local communities, elders, food, canoe journeys etc. We also had our school elder come in for a discussion.... We also talked about what we would do if we were the host place for the tribal canoe journey, what we would want them to know about our community and what food would we like to share. Students created their own canoe on paper with drawings to represent themselves and their communities. I love this book. It led to more than I ever expected, students loved the pictures and the story. I hope to read this with as many students as possible." - Holly Polischuk, Cayoosh Elementary School Educator

Educator Information
Recommended for grades 3 to 8.

Additional Information
72 Pages | 8" x 10" | Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-77174-600-7

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

Puget Sound is a magnificent and intricate estuary, the very core of life in Western Washington. Yet it’s also a place of broader significance: rivers rush from the Cascade and Olympic mountains and Canada’s coastal ranges through varied watersheds to feed the Sound, which forms the southern portion of a complex, international ecosystem known as the Salish Sea.

A rich, life-sustaining home shared by two countries, as well as 50-plus Native American Tribes and First Nations, the Salish Sea is also a huge economic engine, with outdoor recreation and commercial shellfish harvesting alone worth $10.2 billion. But this spectacular inland sea is suffering. Pollution and habitat loss, human population growth, ocean acidification, climate change, and toxins from wastewater and storm runoff present formidable challenges.

We Are Puget Sound amplifies the voices and ideas behind saving Puget Sound, and it will help engage and inspire citizens around the region to join together to preserve its ecosystem and the livelihoods that depend on it.

Additional Information
224 pages | 10.00" x 9.00" | 125 colour photographs