Browse Books for Adults

Crafts and Skills of Native Americans is a fascinating, practical guide to the skills that have made Native Americans famous worldwide as artisans and craftsmen. Readers can replicate traditional Native American living by trying a hand at brain tanning, identifying animal tracks, or constructing a horse saddle. Readers can even make distinctive Native American beaded jewelry, a variety of moccasins, headdresses, and gourd rattles. Native American style is unique and popular, especially among young people, historians, and those with a special interest in the American West.

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240 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Canada is home to a vast diversity of plants that have helped nourish and heal our people for thousands of years. Find out about:

* First Nations uses of plant species
* Gathering and preparing wild plants for a variety of uses
* Historic European uses of plant species
* Plants for everything from clothing to shelter
* The fundamentals of survival – food and medicines
* Clear descriptions of the plants and where to find them
* Warnings about plant allergies, poisons and digestive upsets
* A special section identifying poisonous plants and species that are similar
* More than 530 colour photographs and 125 illustrations.

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448 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A collection of articles that examine many of the struggles that Aboriginal women have faced, and continue to face, in Canada. Sections include: Profiles of Aboriginal Women; Identity; Territory; Activism; Confronting Colonialism; the Canadian Legal System; and Indigenous Knowledges.

Photographs and poetry are also included.

There are few books on Aboriginal women in Canada; this anthology provides a valuable addition to the literature and fills a critical gap in the fields of Native Studies, Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies.

Throughout American history, people of combined African and Native American descent have often struggled for acceptance, not only from dominant cultures but also from their own communities. In this collection of twenty-seven groundbreaking essays, authors from across the Americas explore the complex personal histories and contemporary lives of people wth a dual heritage that has rarely received attention as part of the multicultural landscape.

Illustrated with seventy-five paintings, photographs, and drawings, the book brings to light an epic but little-known part of American history that speaks to present-day struggles for racial identity and understanding.

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256 pages | 7.00" x 9.75"

Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine—the first novel by bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich—is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.

Filled with humor, magic, injustice and betrayal, Erdrich blends family love and loyalty in a stunning work of dramatic fiction.

One of Canada's most evocative modern painters, Cree artist Dale Auger was a gifted interpreter of First Nations culture, using the cross-cultural medium of art to portray scenes from the everyday to the sacred and dissemble stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. Medicine Paint is a collection of Auger's best work, reproduced in glorious full colour and reflecting the evolution of the artist's distinctive style. Including a revealing look back at his life and professional development, the book is a stunning tribute to the master Aboriginal artist.

Auger uses bold, bright colours in his oil paintings to explore the intricate links between spirituality and the natural laws of the land. Birds, beasts and human forms are carried from the dreamworld onto canvas, their spirits channeled through his paintbrush and presented in brilliant yellows, mystic blues, vibrant reds and swirls of black. Infusing his subjects with energy, life and colour, Dale Auger masterfully presents scenes that are powerful, spiritual and inspiring. A bald eagle is majestic in flight against a bright blue sky. An elder makes a solemn offering to the Sky Being. Horses dance playfully in the frame for a sweat lodge. A warrior draws his bow and points it skyward.

In One Native Life, Wagamese looks back down the road he has travelled in reclaiming his identity and talks about the things he has learned as a human being, a man and an Ojibway in his fifty-two years. Whether he's writing about playing baseball, running away with the circus, attending a sacred bundle ceremony or meeting Pierre Trudeau, he tells these stories in a healing spirit. Through them, he celebrates the learning journey his life has been.

Free of rhetoric and anger despite the horrors he has faced, Wagamese’s prose resonates with a peace that has come from acceptance. Acceptance is an Aboriginal principle, and he has come to see that we are all neighbours here. One Native Life is his tribute to the people, the places and the events that have allowed him to stand in the sunshine and celebrate being alive.

Reviews
"One Native Life contains sixty-five stories that are divided into four books: Ahki (Earth), Ishskwaday (Fire),Nibi (Water), andIshpiming (Universe). From this diverse selection emerge accounts not only of disappointment and racial discrimination but also of the transformative power of love and caring." - Sean Carleton, The British Columbia Quarterly

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Suggested Grades: 9-12
ABPBC

Grades 10-12 BC English First Peoples Resource for units on First Peoples' Story and Place-Conscious Learning.

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272 pages | 5.63" x 8.75"

James Nathan and Jake Noland have been best friends for their entire lives. Like most residents in their small northern Gwich’in community, they like to get drunk, get high and sleep around. It helps them forget the past—a horrific past full of painful memories. At times just one bullet to the temple away from a self-inflicted death, James and Jake fumble through life, tormented and haunted by the demons of their residential school abuse.

The decision by one man to publicly disclose his abuse causes upheaval within the community and forces other victims to consider their options: either share their secret and begin healing, or maintain their silence and suffer alone. Raw and gripping, Porcupines and China Dolls is impossible to put down.

Educator Information
Resource for English First Peoples 11-12.

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312 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Strong Reader Tools Classroom Poster (2'x3')

Are you looking for a comprehension tool that works for everyone in the building? This poster has been designed to work for all, a great starting point for everyone to enter in at and then begin your journey together using the same language and strategies. It has been used in many schools, at ALL levels, with great success. 

Features Include:
- Student friendly text
- Student friendly font
- Categorized into before, during and after the read
- Sentence stem prompts to support learning
- Builds comprehension
- Can be used in a number of curricular areas
- Mini poster is ideal for student desks or binders, size 4 1/2" x 11"

Kids love it and they use it!

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ISBN: 208309700069

Four chronically homeless people–Amelia One Sky, Timber, Double Dick and Digger–seek refuge in a warm movie theatre when a severe Arctic Front descends on the city. During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world, and once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favour of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck.

A found cigarette package (contents: some unsmoked cigarettes, three $20 bills, and a lottery ticket) changes the fortune of this struggling set. The ragged company discovers they have won $13.5 million, but none of them can claim the money for lack of proper identification. Enlisting the help of Granite, their lives, and fortunes, become forever changed.

Ragged Company is a journey into both the future and the past. Richard Wagamese deftly explores the nature of the comforts these friends find in their ideas of “home,” as he reconnects them to their histories.

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384 pages | 5.20" x 7.99"

"What the world needs today is a good dose of Indigenous realism," says Native American scholar Daniel Wildcat in this thoughtful, forward-looking treatise. The Native response to the environmental crisis facing our planet, Red Alert! seeks to debunk the modern myths that humankind is the center of creation and that it exerts control over the natural world.

Taking a hard look at the biggest problem that we face today-the damaging way we live on this earth-Wildcat draws upon ancient Native American wisdom and nature-centered beliefs to advocate a modern strategy to combat global warming. Inspiring and insightful, Red Alert! is a stirring call to action.

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128 pages | 5.10" x 8.10"

First Nations peoples believe the eagle flies with a female wing and a male wing, showing the importance of balance between the feminine and the masculine in all aspects of individual and community experiences. Centuries of colonization, however, have devalued the traditional roles of First Nations women, causing a great gender imbalance that limits the abilities of men, women, and their communities in achieving self-actualization.

Restoring the Balance brings to light the work First Nations women have performed, and continue to perform, in cultural continuity and community development. It illustrates the challenges and successes they have had in the areas of law, politics, education, community healing, language, and art, while suggesting significant options for sustained improvement of individual, family, and community well-being.

Written by fifteen Aboriginal scholars, activists, and community leaders, Restoring the Balance combines life histories and biographical accounts with historical and critical analyses grounded in traditional thought and approaches. It is a powerful and important book.

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384 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Seven Sacred Teachings is a message of traditional values and hope for the future. The Teachings are universal to most First Nation peoples. These Teachings are seen in school communities from coast to coast across North America. They are a link that ties all Native, Inuit and Métis communities together.

The seven teachings include: respect, humility, love, truth, honesty, wisdom and courage. The stories in the book provide an example of how each teaching came to be.

Educator Information
Seven Sacred Teachings has been produced in several languages. This edition is in English and Ojibwe.

This resource is also available in French: Les Sept enseignements sacrés

From the earliest settler policies to deal with the “Indian problem,” to contemporary government-run programs ostensibly designed to help Indigenous people, public policy has played a major role in creating the historical trauma that so greatly impacts the lives of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Taking Back Our Spirits traces the link between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on Indigenous people, and Indigenous literature’s ability to heal individuals and communities. Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as “medicine” to help cure the colonial contagion.

Poetic tales that unfold through the voice of ê-kwêskît, Turn-Around Woman--tales imbued with vital themes of Indigenous experience: culture, language, colonialism, residential schools and more. The poems of The Crooked Good are threaded throughout with names, phrases, and verses in Cree; its personal stories framed within the fireside tales of Rolling Head Woman, who is both nightmare and culture hero. Evocative, moving, and powerful poetry from a master poet.

Know my child, the mountains make your dreams. Keep decent and proper.
Serve your guest tea, scones, Never forget you’re Cree.

Reviews
“For those who might not know, you cannot be a student of Indigenous poetry without reading the words of Louise Halfe, and The Crooked Good is one of those books that needs to be near the top of your reading list. And for those, like myself, who have returned to this book many years after the first reading, what a gift and a blessing. Once again, after all these years. There are stories that are fossilized in their time and place, and then there are those stories that renew themselves and renew us, too, each time we return to them. Louise Halfe has given us one of those renewing stories. It is, too, a story about stories: how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, as individuals and cultures, can enrich our sense of self with the sacred, or how they can threaten to destroy and consume the good in us. Sometimes when the stories we tell ourselves have been colonised by others, we become meat in their gaping jaws. And then there is The Crooked Good, a song-story of violence and resilience, of lust and love, of the persistence of what’s ancient and the necessity of the ancient for our contemporary lives. Though the path we walk be a crooked one, always too, it is a good path to walk. Hay hay, Sky Dancer!”—Randy Lundy, author of Field Notes for the Self

“Cree mythoi animate Louise Halfe’s lustrous poetry. They are the existential materials of her works and worlds, and in their arrangements of consciousness, they assemble the present. All presents. In Halfe’s texts, one is compelled/pressed by these forms of apprehending. First, they structure the poetry and then they restructure the reader, the listener. Line after relentless line, thought after shattering thought, one encounters all that is lethal and all that is generative. The brilliant power of Halfe’s poetry is that it contains both the wound and its medicine—alive.”—Dionne Brand, poet, novelist, essayist.

“The best poetry makes the world larger, more vivid. It makes our crooked good hearts expand with understanding, compassion and vital lifeforce even while it tells us how it is, how it can be. This book enlarges. It expands our world. Energizes. More than good, in this brilliant and moving collection, Sky Dancer Louise B. Halfe makes the good larger.”—Gary Barwin, author of Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted

Educator Information
This brand new third edition (2021) has been beautifully redesigned and includes a new foreword by Kimberley Anderson, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships at the University of Guelph.

Louise Bernice Halfe was named Parliamentary Poet for Canada in February of 2021.

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155 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 3rd Edition