From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall: Stories of Canada by Whit Fraser
How fortunate we are to have a Canadian like Whit who experiences such adventures and dares to tell about them.
Indigenous
Reframing Healing: Indigenous Voices for the Future
Two recent collections, You Were Made for This World: Celebrated Indigenous Voices Speak to Young People and A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices, offer something rare in conversations about Indigenous experiences: a shift away from narratives that confine us to trauma, and toward stories that illuminate healing, agency, and responsibility to one another.
The Return of the Nish by Tyson Stewart
In Tyson Stewart’s debut novel, themes of broken family ties, reconnection, and ethical dilemmas are explored within an Anishinaabe family in northern Ontario.
A Steady Brightness of Being, edited by Sara Sinclair and Stephanie Sinclair
A Steady Brightness of Being is a moving collection of letters by celebrated Indigenous Voices from across Turtle Island (North America) with titles like “Dear Relative,” “Letter to Clouds,” and “Dreaming, Listening, Belonging.”
Throwback: Island by Douglas Walbourne-Gough
This is a particularly raw collection of poetry, I felt, the blank verse tumbling across the page in a cry to be read and felt.
Horses by Jake Skeets
Here, Skeet’s invasion of white space picks up where Eyes Bottle Dark left off and begins with the haunting image of a herd of 191 free-roaming horses found dead, thigh and neck-deep at a stock pond on the Navajo Nation, evaporated through extreme drought caused by “decades-long aggression by the United States and the changing climate”.
Echo Maker by James Raffan
Echo Maker is the portrait of a memorable personality, an insight into his unusual family life and his career in the outdoors, and, almost as a bonus, a detailed account of adventure expeditions based on traditional Aboriginal routes and techniques.
On Wholeness: Anishinaabe Pathways to Embodiment and Collective Liberation by Quill Christie-Peters
It is, for a lack of a better term, a living explanation, one which comes to the reader in images and feelings, delivered with a logic that is not static but flowing. For me, it was an exhausting but beautiful reading experience, intense and unforgettable.
Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds by Patty Krawec
There is so much to learn here, so many starting points for dialogue, so many opportunities to clear space and grow.
21 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government: A Conversation About Dismantling the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
[…] learn about what Indigenous self-government can be, even after hundreds of years of colonialism in North America and the necessary healing and repair that needs to be done.
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #49
Featuring Halina St. James, Giles Blunt, John Brady McDonald, and A. Jamali Rad
REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence by Jaime Black-Morsette
The REDress project documents the comprehensive use of art installation to bear witness to the rippling pain of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people.
Beast by Richard Van Camp
Amazing storytelling from a First Nations perspective of the Dogrib and the Chipewyan peoples, with the Crane family in the middle of a treaty that makes for such a creative and fascinating plot.
Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding Our Future Through the Wampum Covenant by Daniel Coleman
Those relationships are described in two treaties, represented in wampum belts and oral stories: the Two Row Wampum and the Covenant Chain. Those treaties, and much else, are the subject of this important, even necessary book.
