Indigenous Reads

"An essential contribution to internet activism and a must read for Indigenous educators, A Digital Bundle frames digital technology as an important tool for self-determination and idea sharing, ultimately contributing to Indigenous resurgence and nation building."

Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle.

The collection pays particular attention to the significance of storytelling in Indigenous knowledge frameworks and extends into other ways of knowing in works where scholars have embraced narrative and story as a part of their research approach

Author Pamela Palmater argues that the Indian Act’s registration provisions will lead to the extinguishment of First Nations as legal and constitutional entities.

For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system.  Although the intent was to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different.

These stories of love, loss, rage, and resilience match virtuosic style with clever with to turn stereotypes on their head and reveal the traditions and grace of our First Peoples.

In this urgent and incisive work, bestselling and award-winning author Tanya Talaga explores the alarming rise of youth suicide in Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond.

An examination of international, Indigenous, and Canadian constitutional law relating to the implementation of UNDRIP in Canada by leading Indigenous scholars and policy leaders.

Scott Rutherford explores with rigour and sensitivity the Indigenous political protest and social struggle that took place in Northwestern Ontario and Treaty 3 territory from 1965-1974.

Changing Tides is for everyone concerned with the irrevocable changes we have unleashed upon our planet and how we might steer towards a more benign Anthropocene.

A funeral brings a boy to his northern Indigenous community. Memory, fiction, and fantasy collide in this funny, visionary and moving story.

"we are narrators narratives voices interlocutors of our own knowings
we can determine for ourselves what our educational needs are
before the coming of churches residential schools prisons
before we knew how we knew we knew"

Like a long conversation between friends, Creating Space reveals the challenges and misgivings, the burning questions, the successes and failures that have shaped the life of this extraordinary woman and the history of Aboriginal education in Canada.

In Ensouling Our Schools, author Jennifer Katz weaves together methods of creating schools that engender mental, spiritual, and emotional health while developing intellectual thought and critical analysis.

With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.

Aboriginal Canadians tell their own stories, about their own people, in their own voice, from their own perspective.

Canadians are encouraged to build upon the momentum already gained in the reconciliation process or risk hard-won progress being lost.

Growth of the First Metis Nation and the Role of the Aboriginal Women in the Fur Trade contains 16 lessons at the grade 10 level.

A penetrating, deeply moving account of the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and a searing indictment of the society that failed them.

Indianthusiasm refers to the European fascination with, and fantasies about, Indigenous peoples of North America, and has its roots in nineteenth-century German colonial imagination.

In Indigenous Education, leading scholars in contemporary Indigenous education from North America, New Zealand, and Hawaii disentangle aspects of colonialism from education to advance alternative philosophies of instruction.

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussions on generations of Indigenous Peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer.

This important companion book to the best-selling 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act offers practical tools that will help you respectfully avoid missteps in your business interactions and personal relationships with Indigenous Peoples.

A gripping account of the unsolved death of an Indigenous teenager, and the detective determined to find her killer, set against the backdrop of a troubled city.

This addresses urban struggles involving Anishinaabek, Cree, Creek, Dakota, Flathead, Lakota, and Métis peoples showcasing how Indigenous people resist ongoing processes of colonial dispossession.

This book is a balance of the most gruesome elements of assimilation: church-run schools, the child welfare system, survivors of sexual abuse, and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome counter-balanced against heroic stories of children who survived, fought back, and found their way home.

In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

In Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Regan, a former residential-schools-claims manager, argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization.

Palmater addresses a range of Indigenous issues — empty political promises, ongoing racism, sexualized genocide, government lawlessness, and the lie that is reconciliation — and makes the complex political and legal implications accessible to the public.

This provocative volume challenges readers to critically consider and rethink their assumptions about Indigenous literature, history, and politics while never forgetting the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the power of story to effect personal and social change.

Exploring a variety of topics—including health, politics, education, art, literature, media, and film—Aboriginal Canada Revisited draws a portrait of the current political and cultural position of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.

Inconvenient Skin challenges how reconciliation has become a contested buzzword filled with promises and good intentions but rarely with any meaningful follow-through. While Canada's history is filled with darkness, these poems aim to unpack that history to clean the wounds so the nation can finally heal.

Inspired in part by the life of Francis Pegahmagabow, the great Indian sniper of World War I, Three Day Road is a compelling and viscerally powerful exploration of what war does to us and how we might heal from it.

Shattering stereotypes, We Are Born with the Songs Inside Us gathers the thoughts and hopes of young native people living in twenty-first century Canada. Each has a compelling, meaningful story that deserves to be told, understood and, above all, celebrated.

The Medicine Wheel offers holistic and relational ways of understanding the self, the family, the community, the natural and spiritual world. It is designed as an education resource, and embodies First Peoples Principles of Learning.

One Drum welcomes readers to unite in ceremony to heal themselves and bring harmony to their lives and communities.

This story tells about of a 16-year-old named Jared who is known in his community for making the best weed cookies and for having a scary mom is told. Jared takes care of his struggling family the best he can and shrugs off the fact that the ravens are talking to him.

In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden. But what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.

Turtle Island Reads (TIR) puts a spotlight on Indigenous writing by connecting authors and their writing with high school students.

A powerful, raw and eloquent memoir about the abuse former First Nations chief Edmund Metatawabin endured in residential school in the 1960s, the resulting trauma, and the spirit he rediscovered within himself and his community through traditional spirituality and knowledge. Foreword by Joseph Boyden.

The recipes and traditions found in this book reflect the culture and the knowledge of the Medicine Wheel, featuring 26 edible and medicinal plants that you can gather in nature.

In this book, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and Aboriginal leaders describe the Coast Salish, Aboriginal peoples living in western British Columbia and Washington State.

In A Bounded Land, Cole Harris seeks answers to a sweeping question: How was society reorganized – for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike – when Europeans resettled this distinctive land?

"offers effective strategies to eliminate welfare dependency and help eradicate poverty among indigenous populations."

Burning in this Midnight Dream is the latest collection of poems by Louise Bernice Halfe. Many were written in response to the grim tide of emotions, memories, dreams and nightmares that arose in her as the Truth and Reconciliation process unfolded.

Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements.

"based on interviews with members of the Similkameen Indian Band and local school district personnel... describes the factors that have led to the graduation of 93% of high school students from the Similkameen Indian Bands in the past 50 years, while the average graduation rate for Native Indian students in Canada and the United States remains less than 50%."

Working to recognize past actors that have been underrepresented in mainstream histories, Barman’s focus is BC on “the cusp of contact.” The essays in this collection include fascinating, though largely forgotten, life stories of the frontier—that space between contact and settlement, where, for a brief moment, anything seemed possible.

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.  

One of the first books published to deal with the phenomenon of residential schools in Canada, Resistance and Renewal is a disturbing collection of Native perspectives on the Kamloops Indian Residential School(KIRS) in the British Columbia interior. Interviews with thirteen Natives, all former residents of KIRS, form the nucleus of the book, a frank depiction of school life, and a telling account of the system's oppressive environment which sought to stifle Native culture.

Arranged thematically, Wisdom of the Elders contains sacred stories and traditions on the interrelationships between humans and the environment as well as perspectives from modern science, which more often than not validate the sacred, ancient Wisdom of the Elders.

Indigenous Math research and resources