21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussion on generations of Indigenous Peoples.
7 Generations Series
7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga includes the four graphic novels: Stone, Scars, Ends/Begins, and The Pact.
7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga is an epic 4-part graphic novel. Illustrated in vivid colour, the story follows one Aboriginal family over three centuries and seven generations. 7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga includes the four graphic novels: Stone, Scars, Ends/Begins, and The Pact.
A Girl Called Echo by Katherena Vermette
In this graphic novel series Echo Desjardins, a 13 year-old Métis girl, is struggling with her feelings of loneliness while attending a new school and living with a new family. Then an ordinary day in Mr. Bee’s history class turns extraordinary and Echo’s life will never be the same. During Mr. Bee’s lecture, Echo finds herself transported to another time and place–a bison hunt on the Saskatchewan prairie and back again to the present. In the following weeks, Echo slips back and forth in time. She visits a Métis camp, travels the old fur trade routes, and experiences the perilous and bygone era of the Pemmican wars.
A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY By Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt”s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. From there, it expands to encompass the big and broken world around him, in all its complexity and contradictions: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it, first loves and first loves lost, sexual exploration and intimacy, and the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve.
A Knock on the Door by TRC
A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada is edited & abridged for ease of use by the general public and secondary school students. This 296-page book consists of the TRC text of What We Have Learned: Principles of Truth and Reconciliation as well as shorter versions from TRC executive summary (Introduction, Reconciliation & Legacy chapters). This volume contains the 94 Calls to Action. It also includes a foreword by Phil Fontaine and an afterword by Aimee Craft, director of research, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. The book includes a map of residential schools in Canada, notes, and bibliography. It does not have an index.
ALL OUR RELATIONS: FINDING THE PATH FORWARD by Tanya Talaga
In this vital and incisive work, bestselling and award-winning author Tanya Talaga explores the alarming rise of youth suicide in Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond.
ALL THE WAY: MY LIFE ON ICE By Jordin Tootoo
It seemed as though nothing could stop Jordin Tootoo on the ice. The captain, a fan favourite, a star in international competition, Tootoo was always a leader. And when he was drafted by Nashville in 2001 and made the Predators out of camp in 2003, he became a leader in another way–as the first player of Inuk descent to suit up in the NHL.
An Introductory Guide To Understanding Indigenous Rights
This is the story of how a unique set of collective rights made it into Canada’s constitution. Indigenous and treaty rights are the basis of Canada itself. They are integral to its collective history, culture and laws. And the nation as we know it could not exist without them.
As Long as the Rivers Flow by James Bartleman
From the accomplished memoirist and former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario comes a first novel of incredible heart and spirit for every Canadian. The novel follows one girl, Martha, from the Cat Lake First Nation in Northern Ontario who is “stolen” from her family at the age of six and flown far away to residential school. She doesn’t speak English but is punished for speaking her native language; most terrifying and bewildering, she is also “fed” to the school’s attendant priest with an attraction to little girls.
Avenue of Champions
Daniel is a young Métis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peoples to the land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement.
Beautiful Scars by Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson was raised in the rough-and-tumble world of Hamilton—Steeltown— in the company of World War II vets, factory workers, fall-guy wrestlers and the deeply guarded secrets kept by his parents, Bunny and George. For decades Tom carved out a life for himself in shadows. He built an international music career and became a father, he battled demons and addiction, and he waited, hoping for the lies to cease and the truth to emerge. It would. And when it did, it would sweep up the St. Lawrence River to the Mohawk reserves of Quebec, on to the heights of the Manhattan skyline.
Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities by Paul Seesequasis
This an exceptional collection of photos that includes Indigenous photographers showing a reality of integrity, strength, resourcefulness, hard work, family and play.
Braiding Histories by Susan D. Dion
This book proposes a new pedagogy for addressing Indigenous subject material, shifting the focus from an essentializing or “othering” exploration of the attributes of Indigenous peoples to a focus on historical experiences that inform our understanding of contemporary relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: INDIGENOUS WISDOM, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND THE TEACHINGS OF PLANTS by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Named a Best Essay Collection of the Decade” by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools by Theodore Fontaine
Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools, A Memoir is a first-person account of the residential school experience by Theodore Fontaine from the Sagkeeng First Nation. Removed from his family and home community at the age of seven, Fontaine writes about the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community during his time at residential school. He attended Fort Alexander Indian Residential School, run by the Oblates for twelve years. After leaving the school the young man was confused, angry and conflicted.
Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel
The debut collection of short stories from Métis writer Chelsea Vowel is a gut renovation of the science-fiction genre that liberates dystopian and post-apocalyptic ideas from tired tropes to explore radical possibilities for Indigenous resilience.
Canada’s First Nations and Cultural Genocide by Robert Z. Cohen, Published by Rosen Publishing
This insightful resource provides a history of Canada and outlines the development of attitudes that resulted in the residential education system, as well as a glimpse into the experiences of children who were forced to attend residential schools administered by various religious organizations.
Caste: THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENTS By Isabel Wilkerson
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
COTTAGERS AND INDIANS By Drew Hayden Taylor
Cottagers and Indians explores the politics and issues surrounding a real-life event still occurring in the Kawartha Lakes region of Central Ontario. An Indigenous man, Arthur Copper, has taken it upon himself to repopulate the nearby lakes with wild rice, known amongst the Anishnawbe as Manoomin, much to the disapproval of the local non-Indigenous cottagers, Maureen Poole in particular.
Dear Canada: These Are My Words: The Residential Diary Of Violet Peesheens By Ruby Slipperjack
Violet Pesheens is struggling to adjust to her new life at Residential School. She misses her Grandma; she has run-ins with Cree girls; at her “white” school, everyone just stares; and everything she brought has been taken from her, including her name—she is now just a number. But worst of all, she has a fear. A fear of forgetting the things she treasures most: her Anishnabe language; the names of those she knew before; and her traditional customs. A fear of forgetting who she was.
EMPIRE OF WILD by Cherie Dimaline
Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year–ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument.
From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up.
HEART BERRIES: A MEMOIR By Terese Marie Mailhot
Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman”s coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma.
Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline
The thrilling follow-up to the bestselling, award-winning novel The Marrow Thieves, about a dystopian world where the Indigenous people of North America are being hunted for their bone marrow and ability to dream.
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
With compassion and insight, author Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. For Saul, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he’s sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displacement. Indian Horse unfolds against the bleak loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibway man.
Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada – an English and French educational resource created by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, published by Canadian Geographic, and funded by the Government of Canada
In this atlas, you will find outstanding reference maps of Indigenous Canada, as well as a section devoted to Truth and Reconciliation, including detailed pages on many aspects of the topic with contemporary and historical photography, maps and more.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel
In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada.
Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowel
Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories – Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.
In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott
Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption. With gripping moments of withdrawal, times of spiritual awareness, and historical insights going back to the signing of Treaty 8 by her great-great grandfather, Chief Bigfoot, her journey exposes the legacy of colonialism, while reclaiming her spirit.
Memory Keeper by Dawn Hill
Memory Keeper is a collection of stories which offers anecdotes and stories, from the author’s life, living on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. These stories helped her to circumnavigate constructively the residual pain and dysfunction that is the legacy of the Residential School System. As a Registered Social Worker and Community Health Worker, Dawn Cheryl Hill does not leave the reader impacted by the shock and trauma of her stories, instead she offers a workbook companion with the published collection as a healing resource for her readers.
MONKEY BEACH By Eden Robinson
Tragedy strikes a Native community when the Hill family’s handsome seventeen-year-old son, Jimmy, mysteriously vanishes at sea. Left behind to cope during the search-and-rescue effort is his sister, Lisamarie, a wayward teenager with a dark secret.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
MOTORCYCLES & SWEETGRASS by Drew Hayden Taylor
A story of magic, family, a mysterious stranger . . . and a band of marauding raccoons. Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle – and turns Otter Lake completely upside down.
Mush-Hole: Memories of a Residential School by Maddie Harper
Maddie Harper explains her years attending the Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford. When she was seven years old Maddie was forced to attend the school until the age of fifteen. She writes with clarity and power as she describes her experiences.
My Name is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling
An honest, inside look at life in an Indian residential school in the 1950s, and how one indomitable young spirit survived it.
My Privilege, My Responsibility: A Memoir, by Sheila North
In September 2015, Sheila North was declared the Grand Chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), the first woman elected to the position. Known as a “bridge-builder,” North is a member of Bunibonibee Cree Nation. North’s work in advocacy journalism, communications, and economic development harnessed her passion for drawing focus to systemic racism faced by Indigenous women and girls. She is the creator of the widely used hashtag #MMIW. In her memoir, Sheila North shares the stories of the events that shaped her, and the violence that nearly stood in the way of her achieving her dreams. Through perseverance and resilience, she not only survived, she flourished.
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
No Time to Say Goodbye: Children’s Stories of the Kuper Island Residential School by Rita Morris, Sylvia Olsen and Ann Sam
No Time to Say Goodbye is a fictional account of five children sent to aboriginal boarding school, based on the recollections of a number of Tsartlip First Nations people. These unforgettable children are taken by government agents from Tsartlip Day School to live at Kuper Island Residential School.
ONE NATIVE LIFE by Richard Wagamese
When Garnet Raven was three years old, he was taken from his home on an Ojibway Indian reserve and placed in a series of foster homes. Having reached his mid-teens, he escapes at the first available opportunity, only to find himself cast adrift on the streets of the big city.
On Screen Protocols & Pathways: A Media Production Guide To Working With First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts & Stories (French & English)
While this resource was commissioned by imagineNATIVE to provide cultural principles, key findings from a national consultation process, and best practices for filmmakers, production companies, and funders when depicting Indigenous content on-screen, it is well worth the read for educators to better understand their own role in sharing Indigenous knowledge, stories and learning.
Residential Schools, With the Words and Images of Survivors, A National History by Larry Oskiniko Loyie, Constance Brissenden, Wayne K. Spear
Residential Schools, with the Words and Images of Survivors, A National History Honours the survivors, the former students, who attended residential schools. Designed for ther Young Adult reader this accessible, 112 page history offers a first-person perspective of the residential school system in Canada, as it shares the memories of more than 70 survivors from across Canada as well as 125 archival and contemporary images
Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga
In 1966, twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack froze to death on the railway tracks after running away from residential school. An inquest was called and four recommendations were made to prevent another tragedy. None of those recommendations were applied.
SPLIT TOOTH By Tanya Tagaq
Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them. A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents” love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us.
Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story by David Alexander Roberston
A school assignment to interview a residential-school survivor leads Daniel to Betsy, his friend’s grandmother, who tells him her story. Abandoned as a young child, Betsy was soon adopted into a loving family. A few short years later, at the age of 8, everything changed. Betsy was taken away to a residential school. There she was forced to endure abuse and indignity, but Betsy recalled the words her father spoke to her at Sugar Falls — words that gave her the resilience, strength, and determination to survive.
The Break by Katherena Vermette
When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house — she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.
In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim — police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed.
The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River by Susan M. Hill
If one seeks to understand Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) history, one must consider the history of Haudenosaunee land. For countless generations prior to European contact, land and territory informed Haudenosaunee thought and philosophy, and was a primary determinant of Haudenosaunee identity.
The Education of Augie Merasry by Joseph Auguste Merasty
A courageous and intimate memoir, The Education of Augie Merasty is the story of a child who faced the dark heart of humanity, let loose by the cruel policies of a bigoted nation.
A retired fisherman and trapper who sometimes lived rough on the streets, Augie Merasty was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run schools, where they were subjected to a policy of aggressive assimilation.
THE MARROW THIEVES by Cherie Dimaline
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream.
THE NIGHT WANDERER: A GRAPHIC NOVEL by Drew Hayden Taylor
A mesmerizing blend of Gothic thriller and modern coming-of-age novel, The Night Wanderer is unlike any other vampire story.
THE OTHER SLAVERY: THE UNCOVERED STORY OF INDIAN ENSLAVEMENT IN AMERICA by Andres Resendez
The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that’s long overdue… In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Resendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject.
THERE THERE: A NOVEL by Tommy Orange
Here is a voice we have never heard–a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with stunning urgency and force.
THE RIGHT TO BE COLD: ONE WOMAN’S STORY OF PROTECTING HER CULTURE, THE ARCTIC AND THE WHOLE PLANET by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
The Arctic ice is receding each year, but just as irreplaceable is the culture, the wisdom that has allowed the Inuit to thrive in the Far North for so long. And it’s not just the Arctic. The whole world is changing in dangerous, unpredictable ways. Sheila Watt-Cloutier has devoted her life to protecting what is threatened and nurturing what has been wounded.
THE TAO OF RAVEN: AN ALASKA NATIVE MEMOIR by Ernestine Hayes
Using the story of Raven and the Box of Daylight (and relating it to Sun Tzu’s equally timeless Art of War) to deepen her narration and reflection, Hayes expresses an ongoing frustration and anger at the obstacles and prejudices still facing Alaska Natives in their own land, but also recounts her own story of attending and completing college in her fifties and becoming a professor and a writer.
The Trickster Trilogy by Eden Robinson
Jared is an Indigenous teen struggling to keep his dysfunctional family above water. When he starts seeing strange things – talking ravens, doppelgängers, skin monsters – his already chaotic life is turned upside down.
The Winter We Danced Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement Edited by The Kino-nda-niimi Collective
This is a vivid collection of writing, poetry, lyrics, art, and images from the many diverse voices that make up the past, present, and future of the Idle No More movement. Calling for pathways into healthy, just, equitable, and sustainable communities while drawing on a wide-ranging body of narratives, journalism, editorials, and creative pieces, this collection consolidates some of the most powerful, creative, and insightful moments from The Winter We Danced and gestures towards next steps in an on-going movement for justice and Indigenous self-determination.
This Place: 150 Years Retold
A 296-page graphic novel anthology just released in April 2019 by Highwater Press. A graphic anthology with a foreword by Alicia Elliott, that showcases 11 Indigenous writers, eight illustrators, and two colour artists.
It presents Canadian history over the last 150 years from multiple viewpoints, including Métis, Inuit, Dene, Cree, Anishinaabe, and Mi’kmaq.
Truth and Indignation: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools by Ronald Niezen
Truth and Indignation offers the first close and critical assessment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as it is unfolding. Niezen uses interviews with survivors and oblate priests and nuns, as well as testimonies, texts, and visual materials produced by the Commission to raise important questions: What makes Canada’s TRC different from others around the world? What kinds of narratives are emerging and what does that mean for reconciliation, transitional justice, and conceptions of traumatic memory? What happens to the ultimate goal of reconciliation when a large part of the testimony—that of nuns, priests, and government officials—is scarcely evident in the Commission’s proceedings?
UNRECONCILED: FAMILY, TRUTH, AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE BY JESSE WENTE
A prominent Indigenous voice uncovers the lies and myths that affect relations between white and Indigenous peoples and the power of narrative to emphasize truth over comfort.
Indigenous Education in Social Science – University of British Columbia
Through studying Indigenous histories and experiences within the Social Studies curriculum, students should “develop an understanding of the connections between the past, present, and future and the people, events, and trends that have shaped the development and evolution of societies, especially our own.