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Indigenous Litspace Lists
Browse the books in the All Lit Up Indigenous Litspace by category.
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Drama
Fiction
Great Reads by Indigenous Women
Books by Indigenous women.Kids and YA
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All Books in this Collection
Showing 101–120 of 154 results
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Rose’s Run
$19.95Rose 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. -
Running on the March Wind
$18.00This is the long-awaited debut collection by a widely-anthologized master poet. While it is intended foremost for an Aboriginal audience, the poetry’s scope and quality create an extraordinary opportunity for all readers to see through Aboriginal eyes. There are exquisite lyrical portrayals of the Saugeen region and other parts of Southern Ontario; biting commentary on the historic injustices to First Nations people; engaging magical realism and native mythology, featuring wily tricksters and giving form to dreams; touching treatments of the bonds between Elders and children; visions of suffering and violence laced with consoling beauty; celebration of the solace of trees and water and even the company of bears; lamentation, elegy, indignation, and affection and deep love for a region and those living there.
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Sacred Feminine
$24.00“To all the young girls in care and women in corrections, never give up hope. I was once where you are. Life gets better. Be blessed.”
— Jackie TraverseSacred Feminine is a colouring book by Anishinaabe artist Jackie Traverse.
The beautiful and intricate works of art within depict images of strength, resilience and empowerment. With each image, the artist explains the symbolism and meaning represented. The first of its kind, Sacred Feminine is intended to heal and educate readers and colourers of all ages.
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Sagkeeng Legends (Sagkeeng Aadizookaanag)
$14.95John C. Courchene was born in Sagkeeng First Nation in 1914, where he attended the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. Courchene’s time in the residential school was short; his brothers, “Joejay” and Louis, took John out school so he could help them cut wood in the bush. While this helped John make a lifetime commitment to hard work, it also resulted in John being “illiterate” in the European sense of the word. In the ways of the forest and his native language, Anishanabemowin, however, John was far from illiterate. Sagkeeng Legends is a testament to John’s cultural literacy and a monument in the face of eroding Indigenous language and culture caused by centuries of colonization.
Originally recorded by John’s wife, Josephine Courchene, in the early 1980s and reprinted here in both English and Anishanabemowin by Craig Fontaine, the stories in Sagkeeng Legends represent two pebbles where a mountain of knowledge once stood. Nonetheless, this book is an important act of preserving and reintroducing Indigenous language and culture to a new generation.
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SakKijâjuk
$45.00Winner, 2018 Canadian Museums Association Award of Outstanding Achievement in Education
Shortlisted, 2018 Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Best Atlantic Published Book Award
Nunatsiavut, the Inuit region of Canada that achieved self-government in 2005, produces art that is distinct within the world of Canadian and circumpolar Inuit art. The world’s most southerly population of Inuit, the coastal people of Nunatsiavut have always lived both above and below the tree line, and Inuit artists and craftspeople from Nunatsiavut have had access to a diverse range of Arctic and Subarctic flora and fauna, from which they have produced a stunningly diverse range of work.
Artists from the territory have traditionally used stone and woods for carving; fur, hide, and sealskin for wearable art; and saltwater seagrass for basketry, as well as wool, metal, cloth, beads, and paper. In recent decades, they have produced work in a variety of contemporary art media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and ceramics, while also working with traditional materials in new and unexpected ways.
SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut is the first major publication on the art of the Labrador Inuit. Designed to accompany a major touring exhibition organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of St. John’s, the book features more than 80 reproductions of work by 45 different artists, profiles of the featured artists, and a major essay on the art of Nunatsiavut by Heather Igloliorte.
SakKijâjuk — “to be visible” in the Nunatsiavut dialect of Inuktitut — provides an opportunity for readers, collectors, art historians, and art aficionados from the South and the North to come into intimate contact with the distinctive, innovative, and always breathtaking work of the contemporary Inuit artists and craftspeople of Nunatsiavut.
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Salmon Boy
$12.95In Salmon Boy: A Legend of the Sechelt People, a young boy is captured by a Chum salmon and brought to the country of the salmon people-a dry land beneath water where “the salmon people walked about the same as people do above the sea.” The boy lived with them for one year, and his captivity becomes a source of learning that will ensure the survival of his own people.After accompanying the salmon people on their run, the Sechelt boy hops out of the river and returns home to teach everything he has learned to his people who, from that time forward, treat the salmon properly and always have enough to eat. The salmon people, now respected by the humans, happily “give their rich flesh to feed the people of the land.”This beautiful story is accompanied by black and white illustrations of the boy and his adventures. Though written especially for children, Salmon Boy, with its simple message of responsibility and respect, will appeal to all ages.
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Sheilagh’s Brush
$22.95On the cusp of the Depression, Sheilagh Driscoll of isolated Rennie’s Bay nearly dies while giving birth prematurely to baby Leah. Sheilagh is attended by a traditional midwife, part Mi’kmaq, Mrs. Mary, as well as by Leah Clarke, a nurse-midwife from England. Baby Leah Mary survives but develops serious asthma, which requires treatment throughout her childhood. Traumatized by the birth, Sheilagh learns about age-old ways of preventing pregnancy. The result is an awakening that impacts on Sheila’s relationship with all the women around her, especially her younger sister Claire. Informed by the occasional newspapers and magazines that make their way to Rennie’s Bay via sea-going schooners, Claire’s worldview contrasts sharply with Sheilagh’s. In contrast to Sheilagh’s acceptance of life in Rennie’s Bay, Claire reacts against it. Claire stumbles into a sexual relationship but sees relations with David–or any man–as a trap and tries to avoid him. She is not entirely successful and finds herself pregnant. Like her sister, she turns to Mrs. Mary for help.
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Sila
$17.95In Inuit mythology, “sila” means air, climate, or breath. Bilodeau’s play of the same name examines the competing interests shaping the future of the Canadian Arctic and local Inuit population. Equal parts Inuit myth and contemporary Arctic policy, the play Sila features puppetry, spoken word poetry, and three different languages (English, French, and Inuktitut).
There is more afoot in the Arctic than one might think. On Baffin Island in the territory of Nunavut, eight characters – including a climatologist, an Inuit activist and her son, and two polar bears – find their values challenged as they grapple with a rapidly changing environment and world. Sila captures the fragility of life and the interconnectedness of lives, both human and animal, and reveals in gleaming tones that telling the stories of everyday challenges – especially raising children and maintaining family ties – is always more powerful than reciting facts
and figures.Our changing climate will have a significant impact on how we organize ourselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Arctic, where warming temperatures are displacing entire ecosystems. The Arctic Cycle – eight plays that examine the impact of climate change on the eight countries of the Arctic – poignantly addresses this issue. Sila is the first play of The Arctic Cycle. With its large-as-life polar bear puppets, the play is evocative and mesmerizing, beautifully blurring the boundaries between folklore and science.
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Size of a Fist
$12.95Living in a small working class town has never suited Addy, so after a summer working as a janitor at the local hospital, she is more than ready to move to the city. When the night before her move finally arrives, Addy’s bags are packed, she has visited all her favourite spots one last time, and she has even attempted to make amends with her single mother. Her rough-around-the-edges boyfriend Craig, however, wants to make their final night in town one to remember, so they head out to the cemetery with friends for one last party.
At the cemetery, Addy notices a boy named Jonas hovering in the bushes. The rest of her friends think he is eavesdropping, but Addy knows the younger teen is visiting his recently deceased mother’s grave. When a game of chicken escalates and Jonas is struck by the truck Addy and her friends are driving, guilt causes Addy to feel responsible for healing the boy’s injuries and his grief, and she vows to help him escape his violent home. As their lives become further intertwined, Addy realizes her connection to Jonas is more than platonic, and she must decide whether she wants to leave for the city with Craig or follow her heart down another path.
Size of a Fist is a dark, gritty novella about growing up in difficult circumstances where abuse and hopelessness are ever-present. The suggestion of violence hovers beneath the surface of every relationship in this harsh tale of self-preservation and personal discovery. Addy must navigate her entry into the cruel world of adulthood alone, discovering along the way the sacrifice involved in truly following her heart and taking responsibility for her actions. This gripping thriller exposes the hearts of its teenage dreamers as they attempt to outrun the law and their respective pasts.
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Spawn
$18.00Spawn is a braided collection of brief, untitled poems, a coming-of-age lyric set in the Mashteuiatsh Reserve on the shores of Lake Piekuakami (Saint-Jean) in Quebec. Undeniably political, Gill’s poems ask: How can one reclaim a narrative that has been confiscated and distorted by colonizers?
The poet’s young avatar reaches new levels on Nintendo, stays up too late online, wakes to her period on class photo day, and carves her lovers’ names into every surface imaginable. Encompassing twenty-first-century imperialism, coercive assimilation, and 90s-kid culture, the collection is threaded with the speaker’s desires, her searching: for fresh water to “take the edge off,” for a “habitable word,” for sex. For her “true north”—her voice and her identity.
Like the life cycle of the ouananiche that frames this collection, the speaker’s journey is cyclical; immersed in teenage moments of confusion and life on the reserve, she retraces her scars to let in what light she can, and perhaps in the end discover what to “make of herself”.
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Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 1
$29.95An anthology of First Nations drama in English, Staging Coyote’s Dream is the first anthology of First Nations plays to be published in Canada. It brings together ten major plays by First Nations playwrights living in Canada and the United States. The collection will be required reading for specialists and students of Native Studies, Native theatre or literature, and will serve as an outstanding introduction to newcomers to the field.
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Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 2
$29.95This second volume of Staging Coyote’s Dream is an all-new anthology of First Nations drama in English that follows up on the success of the first volume. It brings together plays by some of the leading Native playwrights in North America, some of which have not been previously published. Like its predecessor it will be required reading for specialists and students of Native Studies, Native theatre or literature, and will serve as an outstanding introduction for newcomers to the field.
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Stations of the Crossed
$18.95When Carol Rose GoldenEagle was a child, attending Easter church services, she recalls the annual ritual of the priest presenting plaques depicting the stages of Christ’s persecution to his resurrection, referred to as the “stations of the cross”. Using these early teachings as a springboard for critical reflections, poems look back, but more importantly, look forward to reclaiming the gifts given by Creator within Indigenous culture. GoldenEagle’s searing new poetry collection examines the dark legacy of the residential school system, church and government doctrine, and the ongoing impacts on Indigenous peoples’ lives across Turtle Island.
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Still No Word
$16.95EGALE Canada Human Rights Trust OUT IN PRINT Literary Award Winner! Shannon Webb-Campbell’s Still No Word seeks the appearance of the self in others and the recognition of others within the self. Patient, searching, questioning, and at times heartbreaking—these poems reveal the deep past within the present tense and the interrelations that make our lives somehow both whole and unfinished. And though Webb-Campbell is political at times, this is not politics for the sake of politics: here, it’s a matter of the human heart. Ranging from reflective to angry, from sensual to humourous, her poetry inhabits that mercurial space between the public and the private, making Still No Word a remarkably accomplished debut collection.
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Stone Gift, The
$18.00Sixteen-year-old D.J. awakens from a coma with no memory of who he is or what happened to him. All he knows is that he was severely beaten and his face is disfigured. D.J.’s grandmother places an unearthly stone necklace around his neck and he begins to recover at a rapid pace. When D.J. has visions about a boy named Jeff and his friend Tim, he starts to piece together the events that landed him in the hospital. The Stone Gift is a tale about standing strong in the face of gang violence while embracing friendship, love, family, and even magic, in order to heal.
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Storying Violence
$15.00In August of 2016, Cree youth Colten Boushie was shot dead by Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley. Using colonial and socio-political narratives that underlie white rural settler life, the authors position the death of Boushie and trial of Stanley in relation to Indigenous histories and experiences in Saskatchewan. They point to the Stanley case as just one instance of Indigenous peoples? presence being seen as a threat to settler colonial security, then used to sanction the exclusion, violent treatment, and death of Indigenous peoples and communities.
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Surviving Canada
$35.00Surviving Canada: Indigenous Peoples Celebrate 150 Years of Betrayal is a collection of elegant, thoughtful, and powerful reflections about Indigenous Peoples’ complicated, and often frustrating, relationship with Canada, and how–even 150 years after Confederation–the fight for recognition of their treaty and Aboriginal rights continues.
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Talking to the Diaspora
$19.00In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, Lee Maracle has earned the reputation as one of Canada’s most ardent and celebrated writers. Talking to the Diaspora, Maracle’s second book of poetry, is at once personal and profound. From the revolutionary “Where Is that Odd Dandelion-Looking-Flower” to the tender poem “Salmon Dance,” from the biting “Language” to the elegiac “Boy in the Archives,” these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Lee Maracle is beloved and revered.
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Th’owxiya
$17.95When you take something from the earth you must always give something back.
From the Kwantlen First Nation village of Squa’lets comes the tale of Th’owxiya, an old and powerful spirit that inhabits a feast dish of tempting, beautiful foods from around the world. But even surrounded by this delicious food, Th’owxiya herself craves only the taste of children. When she catches a hungry mouse named Kw’at’el stealing a piece of cheese from her dish, she threatens to devour Kw’at’el’s whole family, unless he can bring Th’owxiya two child spirits. Ignorant but desperate, Kw’at’el sets out on an epic journey to fulfill the spirit’s demands. With the help of Sqeweqs, two Spa:th and Sasq’ets, Kw’at’el endeavours to find gifts that would appease Th’owxiya and save his family.
Similar to “Hansel and Gretel” and the northwest First Nations stories about the Wild Woman of the Woods, Th’owxiya—which integrates masks, song and dance—is a tale of understanding boundaries, being responsible for one’s actions, forgiving mistakes and finding the courage to stand up for what’s right.
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The Cast Stone
$19.95A dystopian novel in which a First Nations professor confronts and assesses the impact of the US annexation of Canada through an examination of personal values and First Nations social mores.