Heiltsuk (Bella Bella)

The Indigenous intercultural theology proposed in this groundbreaking work by Dr. Carmen Lansdowne seeks to reframe many of the (often unspoken) assumptions about the field of Christian mission. Dr. Lansdowne searches out answers to the question: If Indigenous hearts are broken by Christianity, what is it in Christian theology that is life giving at all? This book will be essential reading for lay and professional theologians and church leaders; it is also a key contribution to the field of Indigenous Studies, especially as a study of Indigenous-Christian encounter.

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256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback 

Imbued with passion, creativity and insight, Brandon Reid’s debut novel is a wonderfully creative coming-of-age story exploring indigeneity, masculinity and cultural tradition.

Twelve-year-old Derik Mormin travels with his father and a family friend to Bella Bella for his grandfather’s funeral. Along the way, he uncovers the traumatic history of his ancestors, considers his relationship to masculinity and explores the contrast between rural and urban lifestyles in hopes of reconciling the seemingly unreconcilable, the beauty of each the Indigenous and “Western” way of life—hence beautiful beautiful.

He travails a storm, meets long-lost relatives, discovers his ancestral homeland; he suffers through catching fish, gains and loses companions, learns to heal trauma. In Beautiful Beautiful we delve into the mind of a gifted boy who struggles to find his role and persona through elusive circumstance, and—

All right, that’s quite enough third-person pandering; you’re not fooling anyone. Redbird here, Derik’s babysitter, and narrator of this here story. Make sure to smash that like button. We’re here to bring light to an otherwise grave subject, friends. It’s only natural to laugh while crying. I bring story to life. One minute I’m a songbird singing from a bough, the next, I’m rapture. I connect you to the realm of spirit… Well, as best I can, given your mundane allocation.

Follow us through primordial visions, dance with a cannibal (don’t worry, they’re friendly once tamed) and discover what it takes to be united. Together, we’ll have fun. Together, we are one. So tuck in, and believe what you’ll believe, for who knows what yesterday brings. Amen and all my relations, all my relations and amen.

Reviews
“Beautiful Beautiful is a fitting title for Brandon Reid's novel, for it describes the work itself—it's simply beautiful. Reid manages to capture hypnotic traditional storytelling in written form—by stretching, manipulating and breaking traditional rules and conventions of the English language. Reid draws us into the tormentous but stunning world of a boy who, while young in years, is an ancient soul. Through brilliant description, mind-blowing shifting of perspective and a brilliant use of the boy's internal voice, we join the daily toils of a Heiltsuk family as they struggle to live off the capricious bounty of the Pacific Ocean. Like Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise, Beautiful Beautiful stakes out new ground in the literary scene.”— Darrel J. McLeod, author of A Season in Chezgh’un

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336 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing—held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.

Housty’s poems are textural—blossoms, feathers, stubborn blots of snow—and reading them is a sensory offering that invites the reader’s whole body to be transported in the experience. Their writing converses with mountains, animals and all our kin beyond the human realm as they sit beside their ancestors’ bones and move throughout the geography of their homeland. Housty’s exploration of history and futurity, ceremony and sexuality, grieving and thriving invites us to look both inward and outward to redefine our sense of community.

Through these poems we can explore living and loving as a practice, and placemaking as an essential part of exploring our humanity and relationality.

Awards

• 2024 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award winner
• 2024 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award winner

Reviews
"When the mountains of your territory are your ancestors, you paint the landscapes as Jess Housty does in this evocative, powerful collection of poetry: in the language of ceremony as taut as the inner surface of a mussel shell when the meat is stripped away. Their hyperlocality is precise medicine, an expansive, generous meditation on the mutual care of mountains, the forgiving veins of rivers, all the liminal territories and beings soaked in the verdant magic of the Pacific Northwest Coast." — Eden Robinson

"I return to read and then stop to wonder, return to read and still wonder: How is this so true? Let these words love you. They’ll sing." — Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

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132 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

— Je m'appelle Jared.
— Trickster. Tu sens encore la foudre.

Jared, 16 ans, a un solide problème d'alcool, une blonde non binaire vraiment politisée et la mère la plus terrifiante de la planète. Il a aussi le don de se mettre dans le trouble, entre son trafic de biscuits au pot, ses fréquents blackouts et sa grande gueule. Et ça, c'est sans compter les loutres cannibales, les hommes-gorilles, les lucioles philosophes et les soupçons de sa grand-mère, convaincue qu'il n'est pas un être humain, mais le fils de Wee'git, l'esprit qui tourmente sa famille depuis des générations.

Bestseller finaliste au prix Giller, Le fils du Trickster dose savamment l'apparition d'un fantastique issu de mythes autochtones ancestraux, nous faisant douter de la santé mentale de ses personnages, mais jamais de leur vérité.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Trickster Trilogy.

Translated from English by Marie Frankland. 

Note: This novel contains mature subject matter, such as drug use and depictions of sex and violence.

This book is available in English: Son of a Trickster

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416 Pages 

Knowledge Within: Treasures of the Northwest Coast looks into seventeen of the numerous sites in the Pacific Northwest region with major collections of Northwest Coast material culture, bringing attention to a wide range of approaches to caring for and exhibiting such treasures. Each chapter is written by one or more people who work or worked in the organization they write about. Each chapter takes a different approach to the invitation to reflect upon their institution: some narrate a history of the institution, some focus on particular pieces in the collection, and some consider the significance of the work currently being done for the present and future. They do more than fill in the gaps and background of an already existing discussion. They show that these are places and moments in a much longer story, still ongoing, with many characters - individuals, institutions, communities, artworks, treasures - on different, although often parallel or intersecting, journeys.

Featuring ‘Ksan Historical Village and Museum, Museum of Northern British Columbia, Sealaska Heritage Institute, Haida Gwaii Museum, U’mista Cultural Centre, Museum at Campbell River, Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Royal BC Museum, Vancouver Airport Authority / YVR Art Foundation, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Stó:lō Resource Centre, Museum of Vancouver, Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, and Audain Art Museum.

“Every generation shapes history according to its own particular needs. The current shaping of social relations between First Nations people in Canada and the settler population is embedded in the essays in this collection. It is about regional museums and their holdings of Northwest Coast First Nations cultural treasures, but it is also about much more. The inquisitive reader has much of value to discover here.”—Ḥaa’yuups

Additional Information
192 pages | 10.00" x 12.00" | Hardcover

Roy Henry Vickers is known around the world for his unique artistic style marked by clean lines, vivid colours and natural themes drawn from the rugged beauty of the west coast of British Columbia. Influenced by his Tsimshian, Haida, Heiltsuk and British heritage, Vickers unites the stylized forms of his aboriginal ancestry with the realism of European art, creating vibrant images that speak to a universal spirit. His limited edition prints can be found in homes, museums and galleries around the world and have been presented to royalty.

Storyteller collects a decade of prints and paintings by Roy Henry Vickers into one stunning volume, including 118 previously unpublished works, making this a much-anticipated addition to the libraries of admirers of Pacific Northwest art. A note from the artist accompanies each image, inviting the reader to a deeper understanding of both art and artist.

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240 pages | 10.00" x 12.00"

In March 2010 the Canadian Literature Centre hosted award-winning novelist and storyteller Eden Robinson at the 4th annual Henry Kreisel Lecture. Robinson shared an intimate look into the intricacies of family, culture, and place through her talk, "The Sasquatch at Home." Robinson's disarming honesty and wry irony shine through her depictions of her and her mother's trip to Graceland, the potlatch where she and her sister received their Indian names, how her parents first met in Bella Bella (Waglisla, British Columbia) and a wilderness outing where she and her father try to get a look at b'gwus, the Sasquatch. Readers of memoir, Canadian literature, Aboriginal history and culture, and fans of Robinson's delightful, poignant, sometimes quirky tales will love The Sasquatch at Home.

Reviews
"[Eden Robinson's] lecture reprises the Sasquatch theme from her novel, Monkey Beach. It is less a lecture than an extended poem – a love song to a place and people, a celebration of survival of places, names, and humans.... The work is filled with alternate narratives. Just when we are eagerly following a line of story or thought, out come Trickster-ish turns and teases.... Robinson seductively draws outsiders in, then sharply clarifies the limits of the welcome.... Eden Robinson brings her own literary ethics to the discussion [of the limits of cross-cultural sharing]. Her consciousness and conscientiousness permeate her fiction as well as the Sasquatch lecture. It is fitting that Paula Simons calls her 'one of Canada’s most provocative and talented writers' and also 'a moral and cultural force'." -Valerie Alia, Cantext, February 2012

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64 pages | 14.00" x 23.00"

Perdue parmi les ombres froides des côtes de Colombie britannique, Kitamaat est la principale localité de la réserve indienne des Haislas. C'est dans ce village du bout du monde, là où la terre glisse à la rencontre de l'océan Pacifique, qu'est ancré le roman d'Eden Robinson. Ce récit envoûtant est celui d'un drame qui plane et menace une famille et une communauté : un jeune homme, parti pêcher en mer, est porté disparu après une violente tempête. Au coeur de l'attente et de l'incertitude, Lisamarie, sa soeur aînée, est bien décidée à découvrir la vérité. Comme autant de présences invisibles, fantômes et esprits issus de traditions ancestrales vont accompagner sa quête et se frayer un chemin dans sa vie.

À la lisière du rêve et de la réalité, Les Esprits de l'océan, salué par toute la critique anglo-saxonne, est une véritable immersion dans l'univers baroque et puissant d'un écrivain de grand talent. Eden Robinson, une des nouvelles voix de la littérature canadienne, nous rappelle ainsi que les lieux autant que les personnes ont des histoires à raconter.

Educator Information
This book is available in English: Monkey Beach

Additional Information
368 Pages

From a writer whom the New York Times dubbed Canada’s “Generation X laureate” comes a quartet of haunting, unforgettable tales of young people stuck in the inescapable prison of family

A New York Times Notable Book and winner of Britain’s prestigious Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, Traplines is the book that introduced the world to Canadian author Eden Robinson. In three stories and a novella, Robinson explodes the idea of family as a nurturing safe haven through a progression of domestic horrors experienced by her young, often helpless protagonists. With her mesmerizing, dark skill, the author ushers us into these worlds of violence and abuse, where family loyalty sometimes means turning a blind eye to murder, and survival itself can be viewed as an act of betrayal.
 
In the title story, for a teenager named Will growing up on a Native reserve in northwestern Canada, guilt, race, and blind fidelity are the shackles chaining him to the everyday cruelty and abuse he is forced to endure. In “Dogs in Winter,” a girl recalls life with her serial-killer mother and fears for her own future. A young teen and the sadistic, psychopathic cousin who comes to live with him engage in a cat-and-mouse game that soon escalates out of control in “Contact Sports,” while in the final story, “Queen of the North,” a young Native girl deals in her own way with sexual molestation at the hands of a pedophile uncle.
 
Each of these tales is vivid, intense, and disturbing, and Robinson renders them unforgettable with her deft flair for storytelling and a surprising touch of humor.

Educator Information
Recommended Grades: 10-11.

Additional Information
208 pages | 5.32" x 8.03"