Curve Lake First Nation

Hoping to snag their perfect home in a red-hot housing market, an African Canadian man, a Chinese Canadian man, and a Jewish/Indigenous lesbian couple show up to an open house run by a white settler real estate agent. Each potential buyer feels most deserving of the prize. When a police incident outside traps them together in the house, debate erupts over which of their cultures has faced the most discrimination and exclusion. Passions run high and opinions clash. With wry humour, Open House deftly navigates current conversations about oppression, colonization, and middle-class aspirations.

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5.82" x 8.26" | Paperback 

Offering readers a unique history of an Indian Day School and a profile of Anishinaabe resilience.

The atrocities of the residential school system in Canada are amply documented. Less well-known is the history of day schools, which some two hundred thousand Indigenous youth attended.

The Curve Lake Indian Day School operated for over ninety years, from 1899 to 1978. Implementing Indigenous community research practices, Jackson Pind, alongside the Chief and Council of Curve Lake First Nation, conducted a search of the federal archive on operations at the school. Students by Day presents the findings, revealing that the government failed in its fiduciary duty to protect students. Harmful and discriminatory policies forced children to abandon their language and culture and left them subject to many types of abuse. To supplement this documentation, Pind also interviewed survivors of the school, who shared their often difficult testimony. He situates Curve Lake’s development and operations within the wider context of Canadian assimilation policies, noting the lasting impacts on Anishinaabe identity and culture.

Not only recovering the archive, written and oral, but building on files repatriated to the community, Students by Day is a story of Indigenous resilience, activism, and hope in the face of educational injustice.

Reviews
“An incredible achievement. Students by Day is innovative and collaborative, pushing Indigenous historical research forward in ways that will offer real, tangible improvements to communities and individuals.” - Lianne C. Leddy, author of Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake

“Students by Day is an intricate uncovering of day schools’ history, navigating archives and life stories. It sets a gold standard for community-centred research, reminding us of the centrality of love to culture, people, and politics.” - Niigaan Sinclair, author of Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre

“With care, clarity, and accountability, Jackson Pind’s book listens to Curve Lake First Nation and honours survivors’ experiences. Students by Day is not only powerful history; it’s a model for community-based research that serves Indigenous resurgence.” - Crystal Gail Fraser, author of By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Figures vii
Foreword: Day Schools xi
Drew Hayden Taylor
Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction to Place: Growing Up in Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg Territory 3

2 Researching Indian Day Schools in Canada 15

3 The New England Company and the Creation of the Indian Day School 30

4 Mismanagement and Mistrust: The Methodist Missionary School in Curve Lake 45

5 A Legacy of Neglect: The United Church of Canada’s Indian Day School 86

6 Beyond the Classroom: Educational Philosophies and Opportunities 122

7 Experiencing Indian Day School: Education and Integration 150

8 A Class in Resistance: Curve Lake First Nation’s Fight for Education 173

Afterword 197
Jack Hoggarth

Appendix: Letter of Support from Curve Lake First Nation 201
Notes 203
Index 255

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256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 9 photos, 5 drawings | Hardcover 

A tragic plane crash that leaves two women stranded and fighting for their lives kicks off this sweeping and hilarious novel from award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor that blends thriller, murder mystery, and horror with humour and spectacle.

Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that's ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that's passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there's Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book.

What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone—or something—is hunting them all.

Taking tropes from the murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror genres, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding and propulsive narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh.

Reviews
"Cold is an absolutely enthralling novel from a legendary writer and storyteller. Drew Hayden Taylor is a master of genuinely capturing contemporary Indigenous realities in fiction, making the vibrant characters in this exceptional story relatable and real. Cold is creepy and funny, smart and lively, and overall a strikingly dynamic book that will keep readers on edge from start to finish."—Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves

"The myth of the Wendigo has shaped narratives from Pet Semetary to Shadow Country to The Hunger—but never in my reading has it been so cleverly and relevantly employed as it is in Drew Hayden Taylor's serpentine and haunting new novel, Cold." —Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and Little Heaven

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368 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

In this deeply engaging oral history, Doug Williams, Anishinaabe elder, teacher and mentor to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, recounts the history of the Michi Saagiig Nisnaabeg, tracing through personal and historical events, and presenting what manifests as a crucial historical document that confronts entrenched institutional narratives of the history of the region. Edited collaboratively with Simpson, the book uniquely retells pivotal historical events that have been conventionally unchallenged in dominant historical narratives, while presenting a fascinating personal perspective in the singular voice of Williams, whose rare body of knowledge spans back to the 1700s. With this wealth of knowledge, wit and storytelling prowess, Williams recounts key moments of his personal history, connecting them to the larger history of the Anishinaabeg and other Indigenous communities.

Reviews
"This book gives us an alternative perspective on historical record that is both personal and collective. Doug Williams reminds us of the generations of Indigenous knowledge keepers and of a history that stretches back prior to European contact-including the disruption of contact. This book is his gift to the Michi Saagiig and to all Anishinaabek. It is also a gift to Canadians who want to help decolonize this country. - Armand Garnet Ruffo

"Storytelling is not just a gift. It's not just an art. It's also a responsibility: the weaving together of history, philosophy, culture and humour frequently highlighting a culture's perspective on the world. Doug Williams has been doing this as long as I can remember. He lives the culture, not just talks about it. The people and places he talks about in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg are more a part of our history then all the things going on in Ottawa." - Drew Hayden Taylor

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 9 to 12 for Creative Writing, English Language Arts, Media Studies, and Social Studies.

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168 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Cerulean Blue is a comedic play about a struggling blues band invited to participate in a benefit concert for a First Nation community in conflict with governmental authorities. Upon arriving, the band discovers the entire lineup of musical acts has cancelled and they’re left trapped behind barricades. Complicating the matter, there is conflict within the band and the sudden appearance of an old girlfriend makes the event even more perilous.

This play is an homage to fast-moving farces while also addressing Aboriginal issues. Cerulean Blue deals with relationships, perceptions, politics, and what to do when you discover you’ve been dating your first cousin. Add a few spoonfuls of original blues music, and you’ve got a fun-filled evening.

The play was written for a large ensemble cast, which makes it ideal for musical theatre departments in high schools and colleges – every student can play apart.

Cast of ten women and ten men.

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144 pages | 7.88" x 8.47" | Paperback

The Buz’Gem Blues is the third play in Drew Hayden Taylor’s ongoing zany, outrageous, often farcical examination of both Native and non-Native stereotypes in what is to become what he calls his “Blues Quartet.”

Marianne has talked her mother, Martha, into attending an Elders conference with her, where she is to be used as a resource person, even though Martha doesn’t believe she has anything to offer anyone. Held in a college setting, the keynote paper of the conference is a dissertation on “the courting, love, and sexual habits of contemporary First Nations people as perceived by Western Society,” delivered by none other than a “Professor Savage.” Just to keep the caricatures in balance, Savage’s nemesis throughout the action is a young Native man, replete with dark sunglasses and a Mountie coat, who goes by the name “The Warrior Who Never Sleeps.”

The Buz’Gem Blues is not a play about clichés with which we have become so familiar that we recognize them as stereotypes instantly, but rather about how our ritualized and institutionalized systems of maintaining and policing those clichés prevent us from recognizing our common humanity within each other.

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128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

In this collection of two plays about the process of children becoming adults, Drew Hayden Taylor works his delightfully comic and bitter-sweet magic on the denials, misunderstandings and preconceptions which persist between Native and Colonial culture in North America.

In “The Boy in the Treehouse,” Simon, the son of an Ojibway mother and a British father, climbs into his half-finished tree house on the vision-quest his books say is necessary forhim to reclaim his mother’s culture. “It’s a Native thing,” he informs his incredulous father (who tells him he’d never heard of such a thing from his wife): “Only boys do it. It’s part of becoming a man.” Of course, what with the threats of the police, the temptation of the barbeque next door, and the distractions of a persistent neighbourhood girl, Simon probably wouldn’t recognize a vision if he fell overit.

“Girl Who Loved Her Horses” is the Native name for the strange and quiet Danielle from the non-status community across the tracks, imbued with the mysterious power to draw the horse “every human being on the planet wanted but could never have.” She is and remains an enigma to the people of the reservation, but the power of her spirit remains strong. Years later, a huge image of her horse reappears, covering an entire side of a building in a blighted urban landscape of beggars and broken dreams. The eyes of her stallion, which once gleamed exhilaration and freedom, now glare with defiance and anger. Danielle has clearly been forced to grow up.

With these two plays, Taylor rediscovers an issue long forgotten in our “post-historical” age: the nature of, and the necessity for, these rites of passage in all cultures.

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160 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

The Baby Blues is Drew Hayden Taylor’s highly wrought farce of patrimony in a stifling, politically correct, post-colonial milieu of “fancy dancers” of every stripe on the powwow trail. In juxtaposing three generations of careless wandering hedonists, progenitors of a string of offspring from their six-night stands, with their erstwhile naïve women partners who are always left holding the bag, the “big questions” of heritage, family, cultural context and personal identity are ruthlessly stripped of their conventional meanings and become so much useless, embarrassing roadkill on the highway of life.

Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

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96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback