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15 Books for National Indigenous Peoples Day 2024
We celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day with 15 fantastic new and upcoming books by Indigenous authors.
All Books in this Collection
Showing all 15 results
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Building a Nest from the Bones of my People
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First Few Feet in a World of Wolves, The
$24.95The First Few Feet in a World of Wolves chronicles the fictionalization of the year the author spent teaching in Aupaluk (a remote Inuit community on the Ungava Coast of Nunavik). The second outlines, and explores, the history of oppression experienced by the more than five hundred Indigenous nations across northern Turtle Island at the hands of the Canadian government since the Royal Proclamation.
Told through the voice of Nomad, who finds himself very much at odds with the land itself. Nomad slowly learns how to reconnect with his fractured history as he embraces and is embraced by the Elders and his own students. Told is crisp, spare prose, this debut novel brings forward a powerful new indigenous voice to the literary landscape.
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Hold Your Tongue
$22.95Upon learning his great-uncle Alfred has suffered a stroke, Richard sets out for Ste. Anne, in southeastern Manitoba, to find his father and tell him the news. Waylaid by memories of his stalled romance, tales of run-ins with local Mennonites, his job working a honey wagon, and struck by visions of Métis history and secrets of his family’s past, Richard confronts his desires to leave town, even as he learns to embrace his heritage.
Evoking an oral storytelling epic that weaves together one family’s complex history, Hold Your Tongueasks what it means to be Métis and francophone. Recalling the work of Katherena Vermette and Joshua Whitehead, Matthew Tétreault’s debut novel shines with a poignant, but playful character-driven meditation on the struggles of holding onto “la langue,” and marks the emergence of an important new voice.
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Misty Lake
$16.95Misty Lake tells the story of a young Metis journalist from Winnipeg who travels to a Dene reserve in Northern Manitoba to conduct an interview with a former residential school student. What Mary imparts in her interview will change Patty’s life profoundly, allowing the journalist to make the connections to her own troubled life in the city. Patty knows that her Metis grandmother went to residential school when she was a girl. But Patty hasn’t understood until now that she’s inherited the traumatic legacy of residential school that was passed down to her mother from her grandmother. With this new understanding, Patty embarks on a healing journey. It will take her to the Dene fishing camp at Misty Lake, a place of healing, where, with Mary, she will learn that healing begins when you can talk about your life.
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Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise
“What’s happening to you is just that the visible and the invisible are finding each other through you. You are the passageway for our reconnection. You and your generation are the ones who will give our memory back to us…”
Monica, a young woman studying art history in Montreal, has lost touch with her Innu roots. When an exhibition unexpectedly articulates a deep, intergenerational wound, she begins to search for a stronger connection to her Indigeneity. A quickly found friendship with Katherine, an Indigenous woman whose life is filled with culture and community, underscores for Monica the possibilities of turning from assimilation and toxic masculinity to something much deeper—and more universal than she expects.
Travelling across the continent, from Eastern Canada to Vancouver to Mexico City, Monica connects with other Indigenous artists and thinkers, learning about the power of traditional ways and the struggles of other Nations. Throughout these journeys, physical and creative, she is guided by visions of giant birds and ancestors, who draw her back home to Pessamit. Reckonings with family and floods await, but amidst strange tides, she reconnects to her language, Innu-aimun, and her people.
A timely and riveting story of reclamation, matriarchies, and the healing ability of traditional teachings, Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise underscores how reconnecting to lineage and community can transform Indigenous futures.
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Nipugtug
$18.00Set in the community of Listuguj, Gespe’gewa’gi, Nipugtug follows the journey of A’le’s (Mi’gmaw for Alice), a young Mi’gmaw woman, snowshoeing through the forest. There, she meets animals, Wapus (Rabbit), Wowgwis (Fox), Tia’m (Moose), Ga’qaquj (Crow) and trees, Masgwi (Birch), Qasgusi (Cedar) who guide her through both challenging and nourishing emotions of learning her Mi’gmaw language. Grounded in her relationship with the territory, A’le’s navigates memories of her language that cling to realities within and beyond her life.
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North of Middle Island
$17.95Journey to the southernmost tip of the territories held by Canada. North of Middle Island opens with a collection of individual poems that
capture the spirit of the relatively isolated, sparsely populated community of
Pelee Island. The pieces explore contemporary Indigenous experience in the
natural and built environments of the island and surrounding waters. The book concludes with an epic, “rarely true” narrative of modern-day warriors, told in traditional Anglo-Saxon style—a new Lenape myth of how Deerwoman (Ahtuhxkwe) comes to Pelee Island. The events of this epic tale are loosely based on the infamous professional wrestler and actor Rowdy Roddy Piper’s time on the island and Wrestlemania XII, Piper’s notorious “Backlot Brawl” with fellow wrestler Goldust (Nkuli Punkw). Follow acclaimed Moravian of the Thames First Nation poet D.A. Lockhart on this lyrical, epic journey into the unique culture and landscapes that lie just North of Middle Island.
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Once the Smudge is Lit
$20.00Ceremony, community and connection – the poems of Once the Smudge is Lit carry the reader into deeply spiritual elements of Nishnaabe/Ojibwe culture. Co-written by Cole Forrest and Kelsey Borgford, the poetry of Once the Smudge is Lit highlights the Indigenous experience in post-colonial times through explorations of themes ranging from love to community. Bogford’s and Forrest’s verses seek to open a multidimensional window into the experience of being a contemporary Nishaabe. A profound sense of movement, connection, and continuity is emphasized by Tessa Pizzale’s beautifully evocative illustrations, which include a line of smudge smoke that flows from page to page.
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Secrets of Stone
$25.00Centuries 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.
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Suliewey
$16.95Award recognition for My Indian
***2022 ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS: APMA BEST ATLANTIC-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD – SHORTLIST***
***2022 BMO WINTERSET AWARD – LONGLIST***
***2022-2023 HACKMATACK AWARD: ENGLISH FICTION – SHORTLIST***
***2022 IPPY AWARDS: MULTICULTURAL FICTION: JUV/YA – SILVER***
Suliewey: The Sequel to My Indian continues the story of Mi’kmaw guide Sylvester Joe, whose traditional name is Suliewey, as he seeks out the last remaining Beothuk community.
In My Indian, Sylvester was hired by William Cormack in 1822 to guide him across Newfoundland in search of Beothuk encampments. In fact, he followed the advice of his Elders and guided Cormack away from the Beothuk.
In this sequel, having parted ways with Cormack at St. George’s Bay, Sylvester decides to go out on his own in search of the winter camp of the last of the remaining Beothuk.
Written as fiction by two Mi’kmaw authors, Suliewey: The Sequel to My Indian supports Mi’kmaw oral history of friendly relationships with the Beothuk.
The novel reclaims the settler narrative that the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq of Newfoundland were enemies and represents an existing kinship between the Mi’kmaq and the Beothuk.
Rich in oral history, the descriptions of traditional ceremonies and sacred medicines, the use of Mi’kmaw language, and the teachings of two-spirit place readers on the land and embed them in the strong relationships described throughout the book.
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The Glass Lodge
$34.99John Brady McDonald, MBSFA, a Nêhiyawak-Métis multidisciplinary artist and writer from Treaty Six Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada, is an award-winning author of multiple books who has presented at literary festivals around the world. Before all this, however, he was a young, urban Indigenous youth, struggling with addictions, the streets, and the pain and turmoil of intergenerational trauma as a residential school survivor and the child of residential school survivors.
These raw, lyrical poems are a glimpse of the birth of a poet, recklessly using language and words with abandon and without restraint. It is the poetry of an individual experimenting with the language, mixing the influences of Shakespeare and Jim Morrison with the teenage-Goth writing style of youth-the base metals from which a lifetime of words was forged.
Originally published by Kegedonce Press in 2004, The Glass Lodge was presented across Canada and the United States at esteemed festivals. Chosen for the First Nations Communities Read program, it was also nominated for the Anskohk Aboriginal Book of the Year in 2005.
Now, here is that seminal work in a brand-new edition, re-edited and restored, illustrated with images of many of the original, handwritten poems, and with author’s notes providing frank, fascinating insight into what gave rise to each of these verses: the outpouring of language that marked the birth of a remarkable writer.
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The HBC Brigades
$24.95A lively recounting of the tough men and heroic but overworked packhorses who broke open B.C. to the big business of the 19th-century fur trade.
Facing a gruelling thousand-mile trail, the brigades of the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) pushed onward over mountains and through ferocious river crossings to reach the isolated fur-trading posts. But it wasn’t just the landscape the brigades faced, as First Nations people struggled with the desire to resist, or assist, the fur company’s attempts to build their brigade trails over the Aboriginal trails that led between Indigenous communities, which surrounded the trading posts. Nancy Marguerite Anderson reveals how the devastating Cayuse War of 1847 forced the HBC men over a newly-explored overland trail to Fort Langley. The journey was a disaster-in-waiting. -
There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow
$18.95Grocery-store clerk Beth has had a hell of a week. A hell of a life, actually, full of people squashing her soul. And after pushing back at life—stabbing a steak to her boss’s desk and lighting a magazine rack on fire, for instance—freshly unemployed Beth regroups at her mom’s suburban home. Just when Beth starts to think she’s to blame for systemic limits, the gift of a bird feeder sparks a relationship with a talking Crow who reconnects her with her true power.
This sly chamber piece from new voice Caleigh Crow turns post-capitalism ennui on its head with a righteous fury. It unearths the subtle (and not so subtle) ways we gaslight the marginalized, especially Indigenous women, people living with mental-health afflictions, and anyone struggling to make ends meet in low-income service jobs. There Is Violence captures the vivacity and humour of one truly remarkable woman not meant for this earth, and brings her to her own glorious transcendence.
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TOL, NEW? SEN T?E SO?: I KNOW THE ROAD
$28.00Academia remains an unwelcoming space for Indigenous scholars. What space it does cede to Indigenous knowledge is dictated and narrowly defined. As W?SÁNE? scholar Jack Horne
asserts, when negotiating space for alternative knowledges, the academic world remains jealous, competitive, and territorial; ?In response to the question of how I, a W?SÁNE? artist and scholar, use embodied W?SÁNE? knowledge in my artistic and academic work, this book advocates for a move away from standard social sciences theories, methodologies and paradigms while forcefully insisting on a W?SÁNE? paradigm.? To accomplish this constructive goal, Horne argues, ?requires a negotiation of embodied W?SÁNE? knowledge, performance studies theory, and western eurocentric social sciences paradigms.?Written through beautiful storytelling practices with this goal in mind, TOL, NEW? SEN T?E SO?: I KNOW THE ROAD is thus part-history, part- contemporary critique. Horne weaves personal and academic research, letters, and even fragments from his plays, to create a compelling challenge to outmoded academic structure, one that embraces and tools historically suppressed W?SÁNE? ways of knowing. Not only does Horne?s writing confront white supremacy and anti- Indigenous racism in academia, it offers material alternatives to status quo, white-centric pedagogy. With its focus on W?SÁNE? history and knowledge practices, this book offers a
praxis of Indigenous knowledge and performance study theory that manifests in a unique and
deeply valuable pedagogic project. -
Walking Together
$12.99This bestselling, innovative picture book introduces readers to the concept of Etuaptmumk—or Two-Eyed Seeing, the gift of multiple perspectives in the Mi’kmaw language—as we follow a group of young children connecting to nature as their teacher.
A poetic, joyful celebration of the Lands and Waters as spring unfolds: we watch for Robin’s return, listen for Frog’s croaking, and wonder at maple tree’s gift of sap. Grounded in Etuaptmumk, also known as Two-Eyed Seeing—which braids together the strengths of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing—and the Mi’kmaq concept of Netukulimk—meaning to protect Mother Earth for the ancestors, present, and future generations—Walking Together nurtures respectful, reciprocal, responsible relationships with the Land and Water, plant-life, animals and other-than-human beings for the benefit of all.