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Indigenous Litspace Lists

Browse the books in the All Lit Up Indigenous Litspace by category.

Browse by Category

All Books in this Collection

  • Mother Time

    Mother Time

    By: Joanne Arnott
    $15.95

    After reading this collection, you will never look at mothers – at the playground, at the elementary school, or across the kitchen table – in quite the same way again. Beginning with a poem of pregnancy, written by her twenty-five year old self, Joanne Arnott leads us through a span of twenty years of inward- and outward-facing struggles, centred firmly in the ongoing work of becoming a mother.

    Living on the thresholds between races – the poet is a prairie-born Métis – and between the generations, Arnott articulates the challenges of mothering in heart, body, and mind. Her work involves sometimes abstract, sometimes visceral long and short poems, song and chant. Through visiting and revisiting pregnancy, childbirth, lullabies, and multi-generational rage, the poetry moves from the desperation of survival through to a tender place of clarity. The sexual, the spiritual, and the sociological weave together here to shock, cajole, and ultimately to transform our picture of the inner life of the mother.

  • Moving Upstream

    Moving Upstream

    By: Mary Barnes
    $24.95

    Drawing on her Ojibwa roots and storytelling, Barnes shares stories that take the heart on the path to the past, nostalgic though it may be, wherein lies discovery, memories, and rhythms that ease the soul. Touching, tender but never overwrought, Barnes’ poetry brings wonder to the spirit of nature and provides a sense of connection to the things most often overlooked.

  • My Conversations With Canadians

    My Conversations With Canadians

    By: Lee Maracle
    $20.00

    Shortlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Award
    Shortlisted for the First Nation Communities READ 2018-2019 Award

    On her first book tour at the age of 26, Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn’t possibly answer at that moment. As time passed, she was asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, prejudice, and reconciliation, to name a few, are the heart of My Conversations With Canadians.

    In personal essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide answers to these questions. Rather, she thinks through each one, drawing on a multitude of experiences as a First Nations leader, a woman, a mother, and a grandmother. My Conversations With Canadians presents a tour de force exploration into Maracle’s own history and a reimagining of the future of our nation.

  • My Indian

    My Indian

    By: Mi’sel Joe, Sheila O’Neill
    $16.95

    ***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***

    In 1822, William Epps Cormack sought the expertise of a guide who could lead him across Newfoundland in search of the last remaining Beothuk camps on the island. In his journals, Cormack refers to his guide only as “My Indian.”

    Now, almost two hundred years later, Mi’sel Joe and Sheila O’Neill reclaim the story of Sylvester Joe, the Mi’kmaw guide engaged by Cormack. In a remarkable feat of historical fiction, My Indian follows Sylvester Joe from his birth (in what is now known as Miawpukek First Nation) and early life in his community to his journey across the island with Cormack. But will Sylvester Joe lead Cormack to the Beothuk, or will he protect the Beothuk and lead his colonial explorer away?

    In rewriting the narrative of Cormack’s journey from the perspective of his Mi’kmaw guide, My Indian reclaims Sylvester Joe’s identity.

  • My Life in a Kwagu’l Big House

    My Life in a Kwagu’l Big House

    By: Diane Jacobson
    $18.95

    Honey Jacobson considered herself lucky to live in the last semi-traditional big house of the Kwagu’? people: a four-storey house filled with a loving extended family of cousins, uncles, aunts and the patriarch and matriarch of the household, Grandpa Moses and Granny Axu. While new smaller houses were spreading throughout her community, Honey really knew only her relatives inside that Big House.

    In the 1960s, Western culture captured the fancy of Honey’s community and family, and its spell inevitably changed a Kwagu’? family. This is Honey’s story.

  • My Privilege, My Responsibility

    My Privilege, My Responsibility

    By: Sheila North
    $24.95

    Finalist, Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
    Finalist, Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
    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.

  • nakamowin sa for the seasons

    nakamowin sa for the seasons

    By: Rita Bouvier
    $17.95

    Rita Bouvier’s third collection of poetry is a response to the highs and lows of life and represents an attempt at restoring order through embracing others, reconciling the traumas caused by the deep scars of history, and soaring beyond life’s awkward and painful moments in order to live joyfully. Inspired by the metaphor of a voyageur sustained by song on his journeys up and down the rivers of Northwest Saskatchewan, these “songs for the seasons” draw heavily on images from nature as well as the joys, heartaches and transgressions Bouvier has witnessed and experienced as a Métis woman. Using imagery strongly connected to the natural environment, Bouvier evokes earth’s regeneration through the seasons as inspiration for moving forward.

    Whether discussing the joys and trials of family life with poems such as “nigosis is sweet and sixteen” and “my grandmother’s hands”, offering her own take on history in “songs to sing” and “measured time”, or exploring Métis identity in “I have something important to say” and “Indigenous Man 2”, Bouvier captures the essence of a life that can be “joyful/one minute and then. agony”. Yet she always encourages the reader to become “caught in the movement and beauty/of life – dance, breathe, listen” and, of course, sing.

  • Night Became Years

    Night Became Years

    By: Jason Stefanik
    $19.95

    Night Became Years is poetry in the sauntering tradition of the flâneur. Stefanik loafers his way over sacred geography and explores his own mixed heritage through the lexicon of Elizabethan canting language. Comparing the terminology of fifteenth-­century English beggar vernacular with a contemporary Canadian inner­-city worldview, the poems in Night Became Years unfold as separate entities while at the same time forming a larger narrative on the possibilities of poetry today and the nature of mixed­-blood identity.

  • Nutaui’s Cap

    Nutaui’s Cap

    By: Bob Bartel
    $22.95

    A moving story of protest and determination, Nutau’s Cap tells of a young Innu girl, Nanas. The low-level flying of NATO supersonic jets disrupts her family’s traditional way of life, and endangers both them and the wildlife they depend upon, so Nanas’ father and the other members of the Sheshatshiu community decide to protest by occupying the military’s runways. Nanas is proud and eager to join in the social action, but then her father is arrested. Nanas has little to comfort her except his well-worn ball cap, and the promise of the land itself that the resilience, wisdom, and strength of the Innu people will one day triumph.

    This true account of one small moment in the years-long struggle of the Innu people against NATO and the Canadian government brings to light the on-going fight for Innu rights on their own unceded land. Author Bob Bartel, an activist and volunteer, participated in the efforts to stop those NATO practice flights; he learned Nanas’s story from her aunt and has Nanas’s permission to tell the story. Bartel writes with care, simplicity, and deep awareness; he portrays with both power and subtlety the struggle as seen from a child’s perspective.

    Illustrations by acclaimed Innu artist Mary Ann Penashue capture the gentle relationship between Nanas and her father, and highlight the beauty and dignity of her people’s culture. Her blending of traditional imagery with modern technique offers a visually rich and compelling accompaniment to Bartel’s text.

    Nutau’s Cap has been translated into two dialects of Innu-aimun, both of which appear alongside the English. Some Innu-aimun words are also integrated into the English text; a glossary is provided. A map of the locations and a historical afterword, offering further context, are included as well.

    This book is a co-publication with Mamu Tshishkutamashutau Innu Education.

  • Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else)

    Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else)

    By: Colleen Cardinal
    $20.00

    During the 60s Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households.

    Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh delves into the personal and provocative narrative of Colleen Cardinal’s journey growing up in a non- Indigenous household as a 60s Scoop adoptee. Cardinal speaks frankly and intimately about instances of violence and abuse throughout her life, but this book is not a story of tragedy. It is a story of empowerment, reclamation and, ultimately, personal reconciliation. It is a form of Indigenous resistance through truth-telling, a story that informs the narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women, colonial violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system.

  • One Bead at a Time

    One Bead at a Time

    By: Beverly Little Thunder, Sharron Proulx-Turner
    $22.95

    One Bead at a Timeis the oral memoir of Beverly Little Thunder, a two-spirit Lakota Elder from Standing Rock, who has lived most of her life in service to Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in vast areas of both the United States and Canada. Transcribed and edited by two-spirit Métis writer Sharron Proulx-Turner, Little Thunder’s narrative is told verbatim, her melodious voice and keen sense of humour almost audible overtop of the text on the page. Early in her story, Little Thunder recounts a dream from her early adulthood, “I stared at these lily pads for the longest time and I decided that there was one part of the pond that had lots of lily pads and no frogs. I said, ‘I want to go there because there’s lots of lily pads but no frogs and I like creating community.’” And create community she does. Little Thunder established the first and today, the only all-women’s Sundance in the world, securing a land base in the Green Mountains of Vermont for future generations of Indigenous women’s ceremony. She was active in the A.I.M. movement and she continues to practice and promote political and spiritual awareness for Indigenous women around the world. A truly remarkable visionary.

  • page as bone – ink as blood

    page as bone – ink as blood

    By: Jónína Kirton
    $16.95

    Death, desire, and divination are the threads running through Jónína Kirton’s debut collection of poems and lyric prose. Delicate and dark, the pieces are like whispers in the night – a haunted, quiet telling of truths the mind has locked away but the body remembers. Loosely autobiographical, these are the weavings of a wagon-goddess who ventures into the double-world existence as a mixed-race woman. In her struggle for footing in this in-between space, she moves from the disco days of trance dance to contemplations in her dream kitchen as a mother and wife.

    With this collection, Kirton adds her voice to the call for the kind of fierce honesty referred to by Muriel Rukeyser when she asked, What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. Kirton tells her truth with gentleness and patience, splitting the world open one line at a time.

  • Pale as Real Ladies

    Pale as Real Ladies

    By: Joan Crate
    $14.00

    In powerful language that reflects the conflicts between the primitive and the sophisticated, Joan Crate redreams the passions which animated and tormented her famous predecessor. Part white, part Mohawk princess, Pauline Johnson /Tekahionwake would perform her poems first in buckskin, then, after the intermission, in silk.

  • Performing Indigeneity

    Performing Indigeneity

    $25.00

    This volume of newly commissioned essays about Indigenous performance is the first in which all of the contributors are Indigenous artists or academics. Scholars were invited to write essays on some aspect of Indigenous performance and artists were asked to contribute statements on whatever they felt was important to them as theatre creators. As with any good assembly of like-minded members, themes and observations emerged, dovetailing and echoing each other, touching on theatre training, cultural identity, Indigenous theatre history, and claiming space, among others. A companion to the existing two-volume anthology Staging Coyote’s Dream, the authors gathered here—identifying as Cree, Mohawk, Creek, Ntlakapamux, Stó:lo, and many other nations—open a conversation, inviting more voices to join in illuminating the history of Indigenous performance in Canada and blazing a trail forward. Contributors include Tara Beagan, Jill Carter, David Geary, Carol Greyeyes, Michael Greyeyes, Falen Johnson, Michelle La Flamme, Jani Lauzon, Andréa Ledding, Daniel David Moses, Marrie Mumford, Starr Muranko, Yvette Nolan, Michelle Olson, Dylan Robinson, June Scudeler, Jason Woodman Simmonds, and Drew Hayden Taylor.

  • pihta ēkwa wihta (Cree Edition)

    pihta ēkwa wihta (Cree Edition)

    By: Joseph Dandurand
    $16.95

    The poems in “pihta ēkwa wihta”reveal strong links to land, to family, and to the wisdom of elders. The author exposes the struggles that many Aboriginal people encounter while getting an education, dealing with family issues and abuse, learning to respect themselves and demanding respect from others, finding their place in the world, and recovering their rich history and culture. This book illustrates the resilience and strength of the Aboriginal people and the determination that they bring to their local communities across Canada.

  • Poems For a New World

    Poems For a New World

    By: Connie Fife
    $13.95

    Connie Fife is one of Canada’s warrior poets. Poems for a New World, her third book of poems, refuses to take prisoners. She writes of Oka and Gustafson Lake, of the police shooting of a Native mother and child, as well as the NATO genocide in Yugoslavia. Reflecting on her own life, she carves out a space for new forms of loving that will act as a transforming force for people of all colours so that they may breathe the air of freedom, the air of a world rich in biodiversity.

    Revolutionary as they may be, these poems also care about language, about how language can become the food and joy of life. As she says, “I have prepared a bowl of ripened poems / with which to ease our hunger,” placed an “empty gourd” beside the bed of love which waits “to be filled by our stories carried / across the heartlands of distance we will have travelled.” These are poems of revolution, of love, of inspiration.

  • Price Paid

    Price Paid

    By: Bev Sellars
    $19.95

    Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival untangles truth from some of the myths about First Nations at the same time that it addresses misconceptions still widely believed today.
    The second book by award-winning author Bev Sellars, Price Paid is based on a popular presentation Sellars created for treaty-makers, politicians, policymakers, and educators when she discovered they did not know the historic reasons they were at the table negotiating First Nations rights.
    The book begins with glimpses of foods, medicines, and cultural practices North America’s indigenous peoples have contributed for worldwide benefit. It documents the dark period of regulation by racist laws during the twentieth century, and then discusses new emergence in the twenty-first century into a re-establishment of Indigenous land and resource rights. The result is a candidly told personal take on the history of a culture’s fight for their rights and survival. It is Canadian history told from a First Nations point of view.

    Awards and recognition for Bev Sellars’s They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
    − 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature
    − 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature (third prize)
    − Shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (B.C. Book Prizes)
    − More than 40 weeks on the B.C. bestsellers list

  • Rising with a Distant Dawn

    Rising with a Distant Dawn

    By: David Groulx
    $14.95

    Rising with a Distant Dawn is a powerful and moving poetry collection, which stretches across the boundaries of skin colour, language, and religion to give voice to the lives and experiences of ordinary Aboriginal Canadians. The book captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimately shares subtle insight and compassion. The poems embrace anguish, pride, and hope. They come from the woodlands and the plains, they speak of love, of war, and of the known and the mysterious, they strike with wisdom, joy, and sadness, bringing us closer than ever before to the heart of urban Aboriginal life. David Groulx proves, once again, that distinctive voice of Aboriginal Canadians must be heard.

  • Rose’s Run

    Rose’s Run

    By: Dawn Dumont
    $19.95

    Rose Okanese, a single mother with two kids, has been pushed into a corner by Rez citizens to claim some self-respect, and decides that the fastest way to do that would be for her to run the reserve’s annual marathon. Though Rose hasn’t run in twenty years, smokes and initially has little motivation, she announces her intention to run the race. One quality Rose doesn’t lack is spontaneity which sometimes clashes with her iron will and though she has initial regrets about opening her mouth, her life begins to dictate that she must follow through. But as fate will dictate, one rather huge unforeseen outcome of her decision is that she will have to do battle with an old inadvertently conjured demon that feeds off the strength of women. She is a truly mean old spirit who can invade other women and have them do her bidding and in no time has the Rez in an uproar. As Rose discovers, the old demon has been unintentionally called forth by Rose’s teen daughter, Sarah, which complicates Rose’s life just a little more. The spirit woman creates a reign of fear and havoc by appearing to people on the reserve and freaking them out, all of which leads to incidents of extreme humour and plot-twisting bemusement, liberally sprinkled with some jittery acts of valour. With a cast of unusual and unfamiliar characters, Dumont interweaves a tale of motherly love, friendship, lustful longing, wîhtikow lore, and Rez humour and keeps the hoopla going until the race is done.

    At the story’s vortex is Rose, a woman destined to face her fears and provide some rich laughter while doing so. Will she send the demon back to where it came from before the spirit claims her teen daughter? Will she get back together with her philandering, rock musician husband before her girls grow up? Will she sort out her best friend’s winter pregnancy? But more importantly, will she get this all done before her big, face-saving race with Dahlia Ingram, a woman whom God has designed for one purpose: to run long distances at high speeds with effortless grace.