Browse Books for Teens

The history and ecology of the Skeena River region in the Pacific Northwest is characterized by a complex landscape of interwoven phenomena, driven by biophysical and cultural changes over millennia. Combining archaeological, botanical, and historical research, together with first-hand accounts provided by Gitselasu knowledge holders, this book critically assesses and debunks settler colonial narratives of a wild and untouched landscape in northwestern British Columbia. By focusing on people-plant interactions and landscape changes through time, Silm Da’axk offers insights into the diverse and bustling territories of Gitselasu Ts’msyen. Augmenting these discussions is a vividly illustrated guide to the plants that grow in the region.

From the middle Skeena River to the coast, along creek beds and into alpine meadows, Gitselasu continue to thrive, representing one of the oldest and longest enduring Ts’msyen Nations. Tapping into historical knowledge of the laws (adawx) surrounding plant use and territory ownership, this book highlights the intricate relationships that exist among people, places, and plants.

Educator Information
Gitselasu Knowledge Holders include the many teachers and Elders who contributed to this book, including Wilfred Bennett, Amy Bevan, Mel Bevan, Geneva Mason, Alfie McDames, Isabelle McKee, CJ Nabess, Pat Squires, and countless others. This collaboration was guided by the Kitselas Lands and Resource Department, stewards of Gitselasu lands and waters.

Subjects: Archaeology, Canadian History, Indigenous History, Geography and Landscape, Indigenous Studies.

Additional Information
376 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 80 colour illustrations | Paperback 

"Never let anything or anyone stop you from following where your Spirit says it belongs. . ."

Spirit exists in everything on Mother Earth. If we are open to it, Spirit may guide us through even the darkest of moments.

In this genre-defying blend of poetry and story, Ojibway and Mohawk Elder Dawn Smoke shares all that lives within her heart, mind, and soul. As a young girl confronted with the anger and pain of being scooped from her birth family, Dawn bravely discovers her truth and a path towards healing. She is unwavering in her honesty, a protector of Mother Earth, and a fierce advocate against the oppression of Indigenous people.

Reclaiming what was taken is not an easy feat, yet in doing so, Dawn illuminates the Spirit all around us. This striking memoir, told in spoken word, speaks to the devastating realities of colonization and radiates with the resilience found within culture and community.

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback 

From the instant New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed comes a daring new mystery about a foster teen claiming her heritage on her own terms.

Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state”. But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.

Five years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend”, a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her.

They also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has – had – a sister, and more siblings; a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.

But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance of normal she has had, and now the secrets she’s hiding will swallow her whole and take away the future she always dreamed of.

From the internationally-acclaimed and bestselling author Angeline Boulley comes an explosive story about seeking vindication from a past that won't let you go.

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 14 to 18.

Angeline Boulley's award-winning canon of books puts compelling characters and fast-paced action at the center of narratives rich in historical context. Read Firekeeper's Daughter; Warrior Girl Unearthed; and Sisters of the Wind in any order; but like the world itself; there are echoes within each for the other stories.

Pick this up if you love:
- quiet girls with dark pasts
- explosive opening scenes
- wolves in sheeps’ clothing

Additional Information
352 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Hardcover 

Part coming-of-age novel, part searing examination of a community finding itself, Small Ceremonies is a tantalizing and heartbreaking debut.

“I fear for our friendship, for the day it will end, wondering when that day will be . . .”

Tomahawk Shields (a.k.a. Tommy) and Clinton Whiteway are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future rife with possibility and greatness. The two friends play for their high school’s poor-performing hockey team, the Tigers, who learn at the start of the new season that the league wants them out. Their annual goal is now more important than ever: to win their first game in years and break the curse.

As we follow these two Indigenous boys over the course of a year, we are given a panoptic view of Tommy and Clinton’s Winnipeg, where a university student with grand ambitions chooses to bottle her anger when confronted with numerous micro- (and not so micro-) aggressions; an ex-convict must choose between protecting or exploiting his younger brother as he’s dragged deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly; a lonely rink attendant is haunted by the memory of a past lover and contemplates rekindling this old flame; and an aspiring journalist does everything she can to uncover why the league is threatening to remove the Tigers. These are a sampling of the chorus of voices that depicts a community filled with individuals searching for purpose, leading them all to one fateful and tragic night.

Ferociously piercing the heart of an Indigenous city, Kyle Edwards's sparkling debut is a heartbreaking yet humour-flecked portrayal of navigating identity and place, trauma and recovery, and growing up in a land that doesn't love you.

Reviews
“The geographical and familial landscape of the ironically named Whiteway clan yields a subtle and fascinating portrait of growing up Native in Manitoba. The understatement underscores the intensity and contradictions of outgrowing your home and self. This is a truly fine novel.”—Percival Everett, author of James

“Small Ceremonies dropped my jaw with the glittering precision of its detail, and the life-affirming humanity of its characters. Kyle Edwards knows this world of frozen hockey rinks and fishing shacks just as intimately as he knows the warm and broken hearts of this Winnipeg community that he writes about. I haven’t been this excited about a debut in years.”—Michael Christie, author of Greenwood

"Small Ceremonies flattens the grass for us all. A power play of wit, grit, and generational spirit, phenom Kyle Edwards has you rooting for the Tigers when few will. With its scars, scores, and hard-won triumphs, this polyphony of neechies carries us through overtime into glory. A dignified, accomplished, and suave figure-eight of a novel."—Cody Caetano, author of Half-Bads in White Regalia

"In this compelling, multi-voiced first novel, Kyle Edwards carries us north to the landscape of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and into the geography of youth itself. This book—bracing, kaleidoscopic—made me relive those gritty, tender, fragile years before you are fully grown, when you still believe you can do both—stay rooted and fly free."—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia and Colored Television

"Such a chorus of compelling voices here! I would find myself growing attached to one character only to find the next equally engaging. Edwards is, at once, bracingly honest about and deeply tender towards everyone in this novel. A stunning debut."—Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade

Additional Information
368 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Hardcover 

Something for the Dark centres Indigenous knowledge to probe the limits of what we know, confront the unknown, and reckon with our place in the world.

Randy Lundy’s newest collection of poetry—the final in a trilogy that began with Blackbird Song and continued with Field Notes for the Self—turns the poem to our relationships with the land, animals, and people, showing how our failures to see and live by the personhood of all other beings in the world, human and non-, leads inevitably to heartbreak.

As Lundy’s poems accumulate like snow on cedar, his recounting of experiences that transcend language invites the reader to bend their understanding and notice what was once unseen—how a red-winged blackbird clings to a swaying reed, how mist rises after rainfall, how dogs keen and howl, how fingers taste bitter after lighting sage, how hunger smarts, how liquor burns, and how the pain survivors carry is not merely their own.

Reviews
“Such longing! ‘These days I wrestle no angels. I wrestle / with words. And no one is saved.’ writes Randy Lundy. In Something for the Dark, he presents tâpwêwina—truths drawn from the hand dealt and the life lived. ‘Nothing is hidden,’ he suggests, if we take the time to observe from a distance and wait in silence.” — Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.51" x 8.50" | Paperback

Spirit Rider is an enchanting mystery for young readers, blending friendship, Indigenous storytelling, and the supernatural. In this third book in the Lillian Mystery series, Lillian and her friends once again find themselves at the crossroads of spirits and secrets. When a mysterious boy on a bicycle appears outside Lillian’s window, his mischievous antics hide a deeper, more haunting purpose. With her gift of communicating with spirits, and the support of her friends Chloe and Grace, as well as her wise Kokum and Auntie, Lillian embarks on a journey to uncover the truth. Can they unravel the mystery of the Spirit Rider? Or will this spirit’s secrets lead them somewhere they never expected?

Reviews
"[Lillian stories are] from the spirit and are messages for all of our First Nations relatives that it is now time to rise up and take this responsibility back to being natural helpers, and to nurture our children who are struggling.”— Robin Decontie, MSW, Director, Kitigan Zibi Health and Social Services

"Spirit Rider was captivating. I was excited to read the more adventures of Lillian. The caregivers were very kind understanding and patient with Lillian. The book is a perfect example of the seven grandfather teachings; love honesty respect bravery humility wisdom and truth. My emotions as the reader was crying and laughing. Thinking of how the spirit rider was feeling through his young life and Lillians jokes she loved sharing even if they didn’t really want to hear. As a retired Aboriginal Indigenous social service worker it was heart warming and I embraced the book whole heartedly of our First Nation children who perhaps have the same story, With Kindness to the Author Miigwech for allowing me to read this it was an honour."- Stephanie Sandy, Nimki Beneshiinh Kwe . Nookmis of Chippewas of Rama First Nation

"Lynda Partridge books have a way of drawing you in. I couldn't put it down. Her latest book Spirit Rider has you from the first page. Her characters and character development are amazing and so relateable to both young and old, indigenous and non indigenous. Her ability to reach the reader both spiritually and culturally is so strong it's almost tangible. Her best to date." —Sandra Herkimer, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Elder

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 8 to 13.

This book is part of the Indigenous Spirit of Nature series.

This book is also the third book in the Lillian Mystery series. 

Additional Information
194 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 6 Black and White Illustrations | Paperback 

An ambitious, world-envisioning work of Indigenous futurism.

Since 2015—through a proliferation of forms including sculpture, regalia, film, photography, poetry, painting, and installation—acclaimed multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger has been weaving together strands of a new myth. Collectively referred to as Future Ancestral Technologies, this sprawling series of interrelated works seeks to reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population.

Part graphic novel, part art book, SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide offers readers a view beneath, beyond, and between the lines of Luger's ever-expanding artistic universe. In this ecstatically hybrid work, Luger transforms a 1970s military survival guide through poetic redaction, speculative fiction, and iterative line drawing—deftly surfacing and disrupting the colonial subconscious that haunts this vexed source text. An epic and timely meditation on planetary life in the midst of transformation, SURVIVA boldly presents an earth-based, demilitarized futuredream that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge as critical to humanity’s survival

SURVIVA is the first title from Aora Books, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring transformational thought and culture that transcends borders, disciplines, and traditions. Rooted in an ethos of polyvocality and planetary consciousness, Aora publishes works that forge bold connections across time, place, ideas, and beings often seen as separate.

Reviews
"SURVIVA offers Indigenous wisdom for a shared future built on ancestral knowledge in radical relation. This is a survival guide like none other." —Candice Hopkins, curator of the Forge Project 

"SURVIVA boldly reimagines our conceptions of time and history, challenging our collective narratives and pushing us to rethink the art of survival through a lens of transformation."—Hank Willis Thomas, artist and cofounder of For Freedoms

"Cannupa Hanska Luger has created a wondrous book of survivance, a story to carry in pocket and study at every opportunity. At once a dystopia (earth is near destroyed) and a postcolonial fantasy (the colonizers abandon the planet for good), SURVIVA is a work of artistic brilliance that draws our attention to the simultaneity of ruins and futures. Rich with dreampower and evocation, these pages illustrate the mysteries of space-time, the dissolution of boundaries, and the relational universe described by Indigenous quantum mechanics. Read carefully, SURVIVA has the power to bend time itself, lifting us from past and present into futures innumerable."—Philip J. Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University and author of Playing Indian

Additional Information 
162 pages | 5.44" x 8.31" | original line drawings & ecopoetic fragments - reminiscent of 1970s diy photocopy culture | Paperback 

This updated Teacher Guide for Surviving the City is designed to accompany the Surviving the City series of graphic novels written by Tasha Spillett. This guide provides support for teachers to address sensitive topics in the classroom including racism; caregiver illness; the child welfare system; residential schools; and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People. With the release of the third volume of Surviving the City, this guide has been updated to include revisions to the original lessons, two brand-new lessons, as well as up-to-date curriculum correlation charts that match current curriculum outcomes and expectations in Ontario, British Columbia, and Manitoba.

This teacher guide is designed to be a no-prep resource for educators suitable for stand-alone lessons or as a complete unit plan. The lessons in this teacher guide:

• support teachers with clear and concise instructions using the Activate, Acquire, Apply, and Assess (AAAA) format
• guide students in exploring, researching, and sharing the essential themes of the graphic novels
• are infused with Indigenous pedagogical practices

The Teacher Guide for Surviving the City is best suited for use with students in grades 7–12 taking English Language Arts; First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Studies; Global Issues; and similar subjects.

Educator Information
The student books for this work can be found here: Surviving the City Series.

Additional Information
91 pages | 8.50" x 11.00" | Paperback

In this philosophical exploration, Mi’kmaq Elder George Paul shares his traditional knowledge with those on a quest to better understand themselves and the world around them. Practiced and maintained by North American Indigenous tribes since time immemorial, this search for spirituality is informed by traditional knowledge, oral tradition and the use of symbols relating to our environment and to our universe. From the ceremonial to the sacred, George Paul meditates on the Indigenous legends, stories and designs of his ancient ancestors that offer new prospects to a modern population all across Turtle Island who are hungry to look inward.

With creation stories, buffalo sage and tapping into our spirit guides, Sacred Thought: Mi’kmaq Meditations for our Times is a book for those who are looking for balance and peace of mind in the chaos and confusion that govern the world today.

Reviews
“Elder George Paul, has dedicated more than four decades of his life to supporting the revitalization of our nation’s culture. In many ways, his tireless efforts have led a resurgence in our culture’s beautiful tapestry of language, spirit, and tradition — a colourful Mi'kmaw tapestry made all the more powerful when celebrated through the performance arts — and in particular, as we come together as a community to join in traditional song and dance.” - Julie Pellissier-Lush, Atlantic Books

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.00" x 7.40" | Paperback

Centuries have passed since the forces of nature won the war against humanity. Sentient animals now rule a healing world, and as the stain of mankind continues to dwindle, a young wolf called Silversong is determined to rise in the hierarchy of his pack. Strong at manipulating wind and air, all he needs is a way to prove himself to his Chief.

Before he can get the respect he deserves, however, Silversong's aspirations are cut short by the Heretic and his outcast wolves. Against all odds, the Heretic and his band of exiles escape their imprisonment far to the west and wreak havoc on Silversong's pack. The exiles pose a threat unlike any other, and their enigmatic leader won't stop his brutal conquest until all wolfkind submits to him.

Silversong can't let a monstrous wolf like the Heretic roam free. With the wind at his back, he pursues the leader of the exiles into forests of shadow and into ancient places better left forgotten. But the further he strays from home, the more he comes to realize that maybe his enemies aren't so evil after all. Maybe there's a reason for the destruction they seek... and maybe there's a far greater danger lying in wait.

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 11 to 13 by publisher.

This is the first book in the Wolf in the Sun series.

Additional Information
243 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

The Sky Woman has returned to bring down the patriarchy!

This book is about a poet who may or may not be going crazy, who is just trying to survive in Winnipeg, where Indigenous people, especially women, are being disappeared. She is talking to a crow who may or may not be a trickster, and who brings a very important message: Sky Woman has returned, and she is ready to take down the patriarchy.

This is poetry, prose and dialogue about the rise and return of the matriarch. It’s a call to resistance, a manifesto to the female self.

Cree poet and broadcaster Rosanna Deerchild is an important voice for our time. Her poems – angry, funny, sad – demand a new world for Indigenous women.

Awards

• 2025 Indigenous Voices Awards - Poetry in English Award

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

Shane works with her mother and their ghost dogs, tracking down missing persons even when their families can’t afford to pay. Their own family was displaced from their traditional home years ago following a devastating flood – and the loss of Shane’s father and her grandparents. They don’t think they’ll ever get their home back.

Then Shane’s mother and a local boy go missing, after a strange interaction with a fairy ring. Shane, her brother, her friends, and her lone, surviving grandparent – who isn’t to be trusted – set off on the road to find them. But they may not be anywhere in this world – or this place in time.

Nevertheless, Shane is going to find them.

Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe launched her career and in the years since has become a beloved favorite. This prequel to Elatsoe, centered on Ellie’s grandmother, deepens and expands Darcie’s one-of-a-kind world and introduces us to another cast of characters that will wend their way around readers’ hearts.

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 12 to 18.

This book is part of the Elatsoe series.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Hardcover 

Rock art – etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves – appears as beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. What are these signs? The petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nlaka’pamux territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than a collection of ancient motifs.

Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art. Chris Arnett draws on extensive archival research and decades of work with Elders and other Nlaka’pamux community members, their oral histories and oral tradition, to document the variability and similarity of practices. Rock art was and is a form of communication between the spirit and physical worlds, a way to pass information to later generations, and a powerful protection against challenges to a people, land, and culture.

Nlaka’pamux have used such culturally prescribed means to forestall external threats to their lifeways from as early as the sixteenth century – when they were aware of incipient European encroachment – until well into the twentieth. As this important work attests, rock art remains a signature of resilience and resistance to colonization among Nlaka’pamux today.

As well as providing essential reading for scholars and students of archaeology, cultural and applied anthropology, Indigenous studies, and art history, Signs of the Time will also fascinate rock art specialists and amateur enthusiasts.

Reviews
"Signs of the Time is innovative and provocative, adding dramatically to the discussion of how Western science interacts with and accommodates Indigenous knowledge, concerns, and heritage." — David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief

"Signs of the Time is informative and accessible, giving equal voice to Indigenous knowledge keepers and academics in presenting the ideas in petroglyphs and pictographs. It is an excellent example of how Eurowestern academics can work alongside Indigenous knowledge experts to understand the Indigenous world. I highly recommend it." — Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams EdD; OC; OBC; Lil’watul; professor emerita, University of Victoria

Additional Information
256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 40 b&w photos 

For over twenty years, Nehiyawak-Metis artist and author John Brady McDonald’s day job has been working with youth. Over half of that time was spent as a Frontline Youth Outreach Worker on the streets of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. During that time, John would write down his thoughts and feelings on scraps of paper and in little black hardcover notebooks, chronicling the struggles and traumas of the youth he worked with and which he himself had also experienced. Never being quite the right fit for his other poetry books, John took these poems and hid them away for years, until now. Recently rediscovered in his archives, John has compiled them, using a 54-year-old typewriter, into a work which gives voice to the experiences and resilience of those youth, along with his own experiences, thoughts and recollections of a poet in the midst of a turbulent moment in time amongst the concrete and asphalt of the city.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
88 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town--beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer--that will take your breath away.

Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.

But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school's star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers' dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They'll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.

Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing.

Reviews
"In this striking, assured debut exhibiting a measured pace and delicate writing, Tison (Bribri) probes the ties of adolescent brotherhood and ways the effects of violence can stall self-directed growth... Remarkably compelling." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Tison’s writing is staggering... Structurally and substantively, this book is an elegiac triumph that puts the human heart in the reader’s hands." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

"A heartrending, contemporary debut novel about the repercussions of trauma and the healing power of family and art. ... Violence can be inherited but so can love and forgiveness. This vulnerable and magnetic tale of brotherhood belongs on every shelf." —School Library Journal, starred review

"The story itself is a quiet, soulful exploration of how young men process the often-stark realities they live in. The character notes are subtle and nuanced." —Booklist

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 14 to 18.

Like the boys in the story, author Ari Tison is also Bribri and has included her. culture's traditional lore in the manuscript. She has also included Ojibwe characters, as the story is set in Minnesota.

Keywords / Themes: Contemporary YA Novel, Violence, Brothers, Indigenous Costa Rican, Bribri, Ojibwe, Drama, Abuse, Family, Family Dysfunction, First Love, Doing the Right Thing.

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.37" x 8.25" | Hardcover