Browse Books for Adults

A shocking exposé of the dark history and legacy of segregated Indigenous health care in Canada.

After the publication of his critically acclaimed 2011 book Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer’s Search for Justice and Healing in Africa, author Gary Geddes turned the investigative lens on his own country, embarking on a long and difficult journey across Canada to interview Indigenous elders willing to share their experiences of segregated health care, including their treatment in the "Indian hospitals" that existed from coast to coast for over half a century.

The memories recounted by these survivors—from gratuitous drug and surgical experiments to electroshock treatments intended to destroy the memory of sexual abuse—are truly harrowing, and will surely shatter any lingering illusions about the virtues or good intentions of our colonial past. Yet, this is more than just the painful history of a once-so-called vanishing people (a people who have resisted vanishing despite the best efforts of those in charge); it is a testament to survival, perseverance, and the power of memory to keep history alive and promote the idea of a more open and just future.

Released to coincide with the Year of Reconciliation (2017), Medicine Unbundled is an important and timely contribution to our national narrative.

Métis and the Medicine Line is a sprawling, ambitious look at how national borders and notions of race were created and manipulated to unlock access to indigenous lands. It is also an intimate story of individuals and families, brought vividly to life by history writing at its best.

It begins with the emergence of the Plains Métis and ends with the fracturing of their communities as the Canada-U.S. border was enforced. It also explores the borderland world of the Northern Plains, where an astonishing diversity of people met and mingled: Blackfoot, Cree, Gros Ventre, Lakota, Dakota, Nez Perce, Assiniboine, Anishinaabes, Métis, Europeans, Canadians, Americans, soldiers, police, settlers, farmers, hunters, traders, bureaucrats.

In examining the battles that emerged over who belonged on what side of the border, Hogue disputes Canada's peaceful settlement story of the Prairie West and challenges familiar bromides about the "world's longest undefended border."

“We are all visitors to this land, our land has so much to offer, our land is overflowing with the medicines our bodies need, but we are only passing through. With respect, our purpose is to watch, to learn, to grow, to love, to teach. Then we will return home.” – Caroline Sanoffsky

Muskgege is a written record of traditional knowledge, passed down through the generations. It features descriptions and illustrations of 36 wild plants that can be used to make medicines. It is a beautiful and compelling reminder of the important role nature plays in First Nations culture.

Educator Information
Grades 6 and under.

Hearkening back to her first book tour at the age of 26 (for the autobiographical novel Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel), and touching down upon a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life, Lee Maracle's My Conversations with Canadians presents a tour de force exploration into the writer's own history and a re-imagining of the future of our nation.

In this latest addition to BookThug's Essays Series (edited by poet Julie Joosten), Maracle's writing works to engage readers in thinking about the threads that keep Canadians tied together as a nation--and also, at times, threaten to pull us apart--so that the sense of sovereignty and nationhood that she feels may be understood and even embraced by Canadians.

The second edition of Natural Curiosity supports a stronger basic awareness of Indigenous perspectives and their importance to environmental education. The driving motivation for a second edition was the burning need, in the wake of strong and unequivocal recommendations by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to situate Indigenous perspectives into the heart of Canadian educational settings and curricula, most notably in connection with environmental issues.

The Indigenous lens in this edition represents a cross-cultural encounter supporting what can become an ongoing dialogue and evolution of practice in environmental inquiry. Some important questions are raised that challenge us to think in very different ways about things as fundamental as the meaning of knowledge.

New in the Second Edition: Revision of the four branches of environmental inquiry (Lorraine Chiarotto), by Julie Comay; Indigenous lenses on each of the branches by Doug Anderson; 16 new educator stories.

Reviews
"Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition is an excellent resource for educators seeking to act as co-inquirers with their students and share the learning spirit while fostering relationship with our natural kin and relations. With a newly expanded lens on Indigenous perspectives and worldviews, this resource encourages teachers with philosophies, rationales, tools and activities to help them grow ecological and social justice citizens. A timely resource and highly recommended." -- Jean-Paul Restoule

"In Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition, Western ways of relating to nature intermingle with Indigenous ways. The book respects the integrity of both coexisting cultural perspectives. By understanding both, readers and their students will gain greater curiosity and deeper insights to make sense of the world around them or to solve problems." -Dr Glen S Aikenhead

Additional Information
284 pages | 8.40" x 10.90" | 2nd Edition

Author Michel Hellman meets with his editor Luc Bossé and casually promises to write a sequel to his best-selling book Mile End. But the Montréal neighborhood, with its trendy cafés and gluten-free bakeries, doesn't seem half as inspiring as it used to be. Part memoir and part documentary, Nunavik follows Hellman on a trek through Northern Quebec as he travels to Kuujjuaq, Puvirnituk, Kangiqsujuaq and Kangirsurk, meeting members of the First Nations, activists, hunters and drug dealers along the way. An honest and often funny account of this trip, Nunavik truly feels personal, with the author acknowledging (and challenging) his own prejudices. While the North has had a profound influence on our collective identity as Canadians, it remains an idea - myth rather than reality. Empirical rather than theoretical, Nunavik reflects on the way our relationship to the North has shaped our own cultural landscape.

Reviews
"An insightful, self-reflexive memoir of the author's journey to small Inuit communities in Nunavik, the northern part of the province of Quebec. Hellman shares his thoughts and perceptions of the North while never losing sight of his own racial privilege." - Jarrah, Goodreads.com

Educator Information
Graphic Novel | Non-Fiction

Additional Information
156 pages | 6.25" x 8.25" | Black and white images

Nature based classrooms are powerful programs that seamlessly merge early childhood and environmental education to develop a lifelong connection with the natural world. This book is for preschool and primary educators who are thinking about adding a nature component to their current program and for those who have started to take their students outside and are looking for more information to run a successful and safe outdoor program. This user-friendly book provides guidance on how to organize, manage and resource a nature early learning program.

Indigenous scholars have been gathering, speaking, and writing about Indigenous knowledge for decades. These knowledges are grounded in ancient traditions and very old pedagogies that have been woven with the tangled strings and chipped beads of colonial relations.

Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education is an exploration into some of the shared cross-cultural themes that inform and shape Indigenous thought and Indigenous educational philosophy. These philosophies generate tensions, challenges, and contradictions that can become very tangled and messy when considered within the context of current educational systems that reinforce colonial power relations. Sandra D. Styres shows how Indigenous thought can inform decolonizing approaches in education as well as the possibilities for truly transformative teaching practices. This book offers new pathways for remembering, conceptualizing and understanding these ancient knowledges and philosophies within a twenty-first century educational context.

Additional Information
248 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" 

Power through Testimony documents how survivors are remembering and reframing our understanding of residential schools in the wake of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a forum for survivors, families, and communities to share their memories and stories with the Canadian public. The commission closed and reported in 2015, and this timely volume reveals what happened on the ground.

Drawing on field research during the commission and in local communities, the contributors reveal how survivors are unsettling colonial narratives about residential schools and how the churches and former school staff are receiving or resisting the “new” residential school story. Part 1 details how residential schools have been understood and represented by various groups and individuals over time and how survivors’ testimonies at the commission are changing those representations. Part 2 examines whether the stories of abuse and trauma now circulating are overpowering less sensational stories, preventing other voices and memories from surfacing in local communities. Part 3 explores how the churches and former school staff have received this new testimony and what their response means for future relations with Aboriginal peoples across the country.

Power through Testimony shows that by bringing to light new stories about residential schools and by encouraging the denunciation of other historical wrongs, the TRC was more than a symbolic act. Ultimately, however, the contributors question the power of the TRC to unsettle dominant colonial narratives about residential schools and transform the relationship between Indigenous people and Canadian society.

As one of the first books published on Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Power through Testimony will be of interest to students and scholars of Aboriginal studies, anthropology, and colonial studies and all Canadians interested in transitional justice and human rights.

Educator Information
Contributors: Janice Cindy Gaudet, Cheryl Gaver, Robyn Green, Jula Hughes, Lawrence Martin/Wapistan, Charles R. Menzies, Arie Molena, Ronald Niezen, Simone Poliandri, and Eric Taylor Woods

Additional Information
252 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Do you feel exhausted after guided reading? Are you working tirelessly while your students aren't even breaking a sweat? Do you ever wonder if other teachers feel the same way you do about guided reading — that it's not working the way it should?

This thoughtful resource has everything you need to prevent guided reading from going astray in your classroom. The authors draw on 50 years of collective experience to present clarifications, adaptations, and supports that have helped them work their own trick parts as they guide readers. The book's 6 chapters each clarify a misunderstanding about a key area of the guided reading process. With 27 strategies, you're sure to find the help you need to work through your own challenges as you guide groups of readers.

Educator Information
Grade Range: K-5

Additional Information
130 pages | 7.00" x 9.20"

In 1970, twenty-two-year-old Thom Henley left Michigan and drifted around the northwest coast, getting by on odd jobs and advice from even odder characters. He rode the rails, built a squatter shack on a beach, came to be known as "Huckleberry" and embarked on adventures along the West Coast and abroad that, just like his Mark Twain namesake, situated him in all the right and wrong places at all the right and wrong times. Eventually, a hippie named Stormy directed him to Haida Gwaii where, upon arrival, a Haida Elder affirmed to the perplexed Huckleberry that she had been expecting him. From that point onward, Henley's life unfolded as if destiny were at work--perhaps with a little help from Raven, the legendary trickster.

While kayaking the remote area around South Moresby Island, Henley was struck by the clear-cut logging and desecration of ancient Haida village sites. Henley collaborated with the Haida for the next fourteen years to spearhead the largest environmental campaign in Canadian history and the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Park. Later, he became a co-founder of Rediscovery--a wilderness program for First Nations and non-aboriginal youth that would become a global model for reconciliation.

Henley's story is peppered with a cast of unlikely characters serendipitously drawn together, such as the time he hosted then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and entourage, including five-year-old Justin Trudeau, at his remote driftwood hippie hut (the visit was unanticipated and at the time the helicopter touched down, Henley and a friend were doing laundry). Over and over, Henley found himself at the epicentre of significant events that included a historic train caravan across Canada, an epic Haida canoe voyage, an indigenous rights campaign world tour for the Penan tribespeople of Borneo, as well as two global disasters--the 2004 South Asian tsunami and the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Beautifully recounted with passion, humour and humility, Raven Walks around the World is a moving and thoughtful account of a life lived in harmony with the land and community.

Educator Information
Recommended resource for grades 10-12 for these subject areas: Contemporary Indigenous Studies, English Studies, Environmental Science, Literary Studies, BC First Peoples

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Read, Listen, Tell brings together an extraordinary range of Indigenous stories from across Turtle Island (North America). From short fiction to as-told-to narratives, from illustrated stories to personal essays, these stories celebrate the strength of heritage and the liveliness of innovation. Ranging in tone from humorous to defiant to triumphant, the stories explore core concepts in Indigenous literary expression, such as the relations between land, language, and community, the variety of narrative forms, and the continuities between oral and written forms of expression. Rich in insight and bold in execution, the stories proclaim the diversity, vitality, and depth of Indigenous writing.

Building on two decades of scholarly work to centre Indigenous knowledges and perspectives, the book transforms literary method while respecting and honouring Indigenous histories and peoples of these lands. It includes stories by acclaimed writers like Thomas King, Sherman Alexie, Paula Gunn Allen, and Eden Robinson, a new generation of emergent writers, and writers and storytellers who have often been excluded from the canon, such as French- and Spanish-language Indigenous authors, Indigenous authors from Mexico, Chicana/o authors, Indigenous-language authors, works in translation, and "lost" or underappreciated texts.

In a place and time when Indigenous people often have to contend with representations that marginalize or devalue their intellectual and cultural heritage, this collection is a testament to Indigenous resilience and creativity. It shows that the ways in which we read, listen, and tell play key roles in how we establish relationships with one another, and how we might share knowledges across cultures, languages, and social spaces.

Reviews
Edited by experts in Indigenous literature and contextualised beautifully, historical writers like E. Pauline Johnson are placed alongside exciting genres like Indigenous Science Fiction — illustrating the vibrancy and innovation of Indigenous storytelling across time, space and politics. If you want a primer on Indigenous cultural expressions, this is for you. If you want deft, detailed stories in Indigenous written, oral and graphic traditions, these will expand your thinking. Read, Listen, Tell will make you laugh, dream and search for more. — Niigaanwewidam Sinclair

A unique compendium that is the direct result of outstanding and painstaking scholarship, Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island is an impressively informative, deftly organized, and exceptionally well presented volume that is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Indigenous Cultural Studies collections and supplemental reading lists. — Midwest Book Review

Read, Listen, Tell collects a brilliant and vast array of indigenous short fiction, bolstered by insightful critical essays that prioritize indigenous voices, culture, and methodologies. — Clarissa Goldsmith, Foreword Reviews, July 2017

Educator Information
• Connects Indigenous writing across colonial settler borders (of Canada, USA, and Mexico) at a time when those borders are hardening in light of security measures.
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission report highlights focus on education, prioritizing Indigenous knowledges, pedagogies, and perspectives—this book provides that.
• Provides curriculum material for new Indigenous content mandates in some provinces (Ontario, BC).
• Includes French-, Spanish-, and Indigenous-language.
• Indigenous authors (in translation).

Additional Information
410 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, David Gaertner, and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill

Since the 1980s successive Canadian institutions, including the federal government and Christian churches, have attempted to grapple with the malignant legacy of residential schooling, including official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award winning author J. R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.

Excerpt
From the Conclusion:
"Canadians cannot approach reconciliation thinking that fine words and amicable gestures are enough. First Nations want their claims settled and many are interested in concluding treaties. Until Canada moves effectively to meet their desires, the country lacks the measures of social justice for Native peoples that are precondition for progress towards reconciliation...The cause of reconciliation is not hopeless; there are encouraging signs of individual and local initiatives designed to bring about reconciliation on a small scale...If enough of these small actions develop and spread, they could create the popular support for large-scale state measures that will redress the hard, material wrongs that stand in the way of reconciliation. Should that blissful day ever come, Canada will be able to advance meaningfully towards the goal of reconciliation."

Reviews
Professor Jim Miller of the University of Saskatchewan pulls back the curtain on the historical blame game. Residential Schools and Reconciliation documents Ottawa’s handling of Aboriginal issues. This is not ancient history. It just happened."
— Holly Doan, Blacklock’s Reporter. Saturday, November 18, 2017

As colonial nations around the world seek pathways to post-conflict reconciliation, J.R. Miller’s timely work is an important reminder of both the potential obstacles and the healing possibilities of such initiatives.
— Leigh Anne Williams, Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018

Additional Information
368 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Floyd Twofeathers has always trusted his mom, a traditional healer, and his dad, hereditary chief of their band, to take care of the people on their reserve. But a lack of educational and career opportunities, medical support and counselling has left young people feeling that they have no future. As suicides pile up, Floyd finds that his friends and kids he knows are taking their own lives because they feel that they have no future — but his father refuses to listen to Floyd's attempts to find a realistic solution. When Floyd's father is overwhelmed by the situation and succumbs to alcohol and depression, it is up to Floyd to turn around his community's descent into crisis before it's too late.

Set in a situation of suicide contagion among young people in Aboriginal communities, this novel follows one teenager's determined efforts to help his friends and his community find solutions.

Reviews
"This was an incredibly moving book about the hardships Indigenous people and the increasing amount of suicides happening on reservations."— Amanda Wood,, NetGalley Reviewer, June 2017

"The voice she uses, that of a determined young man who refuses to accept the status quo is believable, direct and engaging."— Chris Benjamin,, Atlantic Books Today, June 2017

"A good opening into Native American reservations and their issues that the federal government needs to address."— Mai Khanh Nguyen,, Educator, NetGalley Reviewer, June 2017

"This is a look at life that few people who don't live it ever get to see. A raw, unapologetic look. It's brilliantly written and heartbreaking, knowing how hopeless these kids feel. "— Liliyana Shadowlyn, Reviewer, NetGalley, October 2017

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 8 to 12 for English Language Arts.

Strong language and discussion of suicide within this work may trigger some readers.

Additional Information
176 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Salish Blankets presents a new perspective on Salish weaving through technical and anthropological lenses. Worn as ceremonial robes, the blankets are complex objects said to preexist in the supernatural realm and made manifest in the natural world through ancestral guidance. The blankets are protective garments that at times of great life changes—birth, marriage, death—offer emotional strength and mental focus. A blanket can help establish the owner’s standing in the community and demonstrate a weaver’s technical expertise and artistic vision. The object, the maker, the wearer, and the community are bound and transformed through the creation and use of the blanket.

Drawing on first-person accounts of Salish community members, object analysis, and earlier ethnographic sources, the authors offer a wide-ranging material culture study of Coast Salish lifeways. Salish Blankets explores the design, color/pigmentation, meaning, materials, and process of weaving and examines its historical and cultural contexts.