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Daughter of Family G: a memoir of cancer genes, love and fate /
By Ami McKay. 2019
The story of Ami McKay's connection to a genetic disorder called Lynch syndrome begins over seventy years before she was…
born and long before scientists discovered DNA. In 1895 her great-great aunt, Pauline Gross, a seamstress in Ann Arbor, Michigan, confided to a pathology professor at the local university that she expected to die young, like so many others in her family. Rather than dismiss her fears, the pathologist chose to enlist Pauline in the careful tracking of those in her family tree who had died of cancer. Pauline's premonition proved true--she died at 46--but because of her efforts, her family (who the pathologist dubbed 'Family G') would become the longest and most detailed cancer genealogy ever studied in the world. A century after Pauline's confession, researchers would identify the genetic mutation responsible for the family's woes. Now known as Lynch syndrome, the genetic condition predisposes its carriers to several types of cancer, including colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and pancreatic. In 2001, as a young mother with two sons and a keen interest in survival, Ami McKay was among the first to be tested for Lynch syndrome. She had a feeling she'd test positive: her mother's side of the family was riddled with early deaths and her own mother was being treated for the disease. When the test proved her fears true, she began living in "an unsettling state between wellness and cancer," and she's been there ever since. 2019.From the ashes: my story of being Métis, homeless, and finding my way
By Jesse Thistle. 2019
Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers,…
cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the ghost of Jesse's drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. One day, he finally realized he would die unless he turned his life around. 2019.In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience (The Regina Collection #11)
By Helen Knott. 2019
A nationally bestselling book on the struggle of addiction and the power of Indigenous resilience. Helen Knott, a highly accomplished…
Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption. With gripping moments of withdrawal, times of spiritual awareness, and historical insights going back to the signing of Treaty 8 by her great-great grandfather, Chief Bigfoot, her journey exposes the legacy of colonialism, while reclaiming her spirit. "In My Own Moccasins never flinches. The story goes dark, and then darker. We live in an era where Indigenous women routinely go missing, our youth are killed and disposed of like trash, and the road to justice doesn’t seem to run through the rez. Knott’s journey is familiar, filled with the fallout of residential school, racial injustice, alcoholism, drugs, and despair. But she skillfully draws us along and opens up her life, her family, and her communities to show us a way forward. It’s the best kind of memoir: clear-eyed, generous, and glorious….Bear witness to the emergence of one of the most powerful voices of her generation." —Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster and Monkey Beach (from the foreword) “Helen Knott speaks truth to the experience of Indigenous women living through the violence of colonized spaces and she does so with grace, beauty and a ferocity that makes me feel so proud.” —Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of This Accident of Being Lost “Helen writes beautifully and painfully, about her own life and the lives of many of our sisters. A strong, gentle voice removing the colonial blanket and exposing truth.” —Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed “An incredible debut that documents how trauma and addiction can be turned into healing and love. I am in awe of Helen Knott and her courage. I am a fan for life. Wow.” —Richard Van Camp, author of The Lesser Blessed “Heartfelt, heartbreaking, triumphant and raw, In My Own Moccasins is a must-read for anyone who's ever felt lost in their life… Actually, it's a must-read for anyone who appreciates stories of struggle, redemption and healing. Knott’s writing is confident, clear, powerful and inspiring.” —Jowita Bydlowska, author of Guy: A Novel and Drunk Mom “Powerful, filled with emotion.” —Carol Daniels, author of Bearskin Diary and Hiraeth "A beautiful rendering of how recovery for our peoples is inevitably about reconnecting with Indigenous identities, lands, cultural and healing practices." —Kim Anderson, author of Reconstructing Native WomenhoodStories from the Magic Canoe of Wa’xaid
By Cecil Paul. 2019
A remarkable and profound collection of reflections by one of North America’s most important Indigenous leaders. My name is Wa’xaid,…
given to me by my people. ‘Wa’ is ‘the river’, ‘Xaid’ is ‘good’ – good river. Sometimes the river is not good. I am a Xenaksiala, I am from the Killer Whale Clan. I would like to walk with you in Xenaksiala lands. Where I will take you is the place of my birth. They call it the Kitlope. It is called Xesdu’wäxw (Huschduwaschdu) for ‘blue, milky, glacial water’. Our destination is what I would like to talk about, and a boat – I call it my magic canoe. It is a magical canoe because there is room for everyone who wants to come into it to paddle together. The currents against it are very strong but I believe we can reach that destination and this is the reason for our survival. —Cecil Paul Who better to tell the narrative of our times about the restoration of land and culture than Wa’xaid (the good river), or Cecil Paul, a Xenaksiala elder who pursued both in his ancestral home, the Kitlope — now the largest protected unlogged temperate rainforest left on the planet. Paul’s cultural teachings are more relevant today than ever in the face of environmental threats, climate change and social unrest, while his personal stories of loss from residential schools, industrialization and theft of cultural property (the world-renowned Gps’golox pole) put a human face to the survivors of this particular brand of genocide. Told in Cecil Paul’s singular, vernacular voice, Stories from the Magic Canoe spans a lifetime of experience, suffering and survival. This beautifully produced volume is in Cecil’s own words, as told to Briony Penn and other friends, and has been meticulously transcribed. Along with Penn’s forthcoming biography of Cecil Paul, Following the Good River (Fall 2019), Stories from the Magic Canoe provides a valuable documented history of a generation that continues to deal with the impacts of brutal colonization and environmental change at the hands of politicians, industrialists and those who willingly ignore the power of ancestral lands and traditional knowledge.From Bear Rock Mountain: The Life and Times of a Dene Residential School Survivor
By Antoine Bear Mountain. 2019
In this poetic, poignant memoir, Dene artist and social activist Antoine Mountain paints an unforgettable picture of his journey from…
residential school to art school—and his path to healing.In 1949, Antoine Mountain was born on the land near Radelie Koe, Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories. At the tender age of seven, he was stolen away from his home and sent to a residential school—run by the Roman Catholic Church in collusion with the Government of Canada—three hundred kilometres away. Over the next twelve years, the three residential schools Mountain was forced to attend systematically worked to erase his language and culture, the very roots of his identity.While reconnecting to that which had been taken from him, he had a disturbing and painful revelation of the bitter depths of colonialism and its legacy of cultural genocide. Canada has its own holocaust, Mountain argues.As a celebrated artist and social activist today, Mountain shares this moving, personal story of healing and the reclamation of his Dene identity.Canadarm and Collaboration: How Canada’s Astronauts and Space Robots Explore New Worlds
By Elizabeth Howell. 2020
With interviews from Chris Hadfield and Marc Garneau, the tale of Canada’s involvement in international space exploration from the 1960s…
to the present day Canada is a small but mighty power in space exploration. After providing the Canadarm robotic arm for the space shuttle in 1981, Canada received an invitation to start an astronaut program — a program that quickly let its people accumulate skill and prestige. Canadian astronauts have since commanded the International Space Station, flown as co-pilots on spacecraft, and even held senior roles within NASA. This book traces how Canada grew from small beginnings into a major player in international space policy. You will hear about Canada’s space program from the words of its astronauts, from Canadian celebrity Chris Hadfield to Liberal cabinet minister Marc Garneau to Governor General Julie Payette. You will experience the excitement and challenges of reporting on a rocket launch in Kazakhstan, as Canada sent its latest astronaut to space in preparation for possible moon missions in the 2020s. And you will learn from the people who work behind the scenes on Canadian space technology and space policy about why we are doing this — and what we plan to do next.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe: Four Weeks that Shaped a Pandemic
By Lynn Henry, Dr Bonnie Henry. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the BC doctor who has become a household name for leading the response to the pandemic, a personal…
account of the first weeks of COVID, for readers of Sam Nutt's Damned Nations and James Maskalyk's Life on the Ground Floor.Dr. Bonnie Henry has been called "one of the most effective public health figures in the world" by The New York Times. She has been called "a calming voice in a sea of coronavirus madness," and "our hero" in national newspapers. But in the waning days of 2019, when the first rumours of a strange respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China began to trickle into her office in British Columbia, these accolades lay in a barely imaginable future.Only weeks later, the whole world would look back on the previous year with the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for the distant past. With a staggering suddenness, our livelihoods, our closest relationships, our habits and our homes had all been transformed.In a moment when half-truths threatened to drown out the truth, when recklessness all too often exposed those around us to very real danger, and when it was difficult to tell paranoia from healthy respect for an invisible threat, Dr. Henry's transparency, humility, and humanity became a beacon for millions of Canadians. And her trademark enjoinder to be kind, be calm, and be safe became words for us all to live by.Coincidentally, Dr. Henry's sister, Lynn, arrived in BC for a long-planned visit on March 12, just as the virus revealed itself as a pandemic. For the four ensuing weeks, Lynn had rare insight into the whirlwind of Bonnie's daily life, with its moments of agony and gravity as well as its occasional episodes of levity and grace. Both a global story and a family story, Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe combines Lynn's observations and knowledge of Bonnie's personal and professional background with Bonnie's recollections of how and why decisions were made, to tell in a vivid way the dramatic tale of the four weeks that changed all our lives.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe is about communication, leadership, and public trust; about the balance between politics and policy; and, at heart, about what and who we value, as individuals and a society.The authors' advance from the publisher has been donated to charities with a focus on alleviating communities hit particularly hard by the pandemic: True North Aid with its Covid-19 response in Northern Indigenous communities, and First Book Canada, with its focus on reading and literacy for underserved, marginalized youth.A History of My Brief Body
By Billy-Ray Belcourt. 2020
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHYFINALIST FOR THE BC AND YUKON BOOK PRIZE, FOR BOTH THE…
HUBERT EVANS NON-FICTION PRIZE AND JIM DEVA PRIZE FOR WRITING THAT PROVOKESNATIONAL BESTSELLERThe youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his own personal history to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. From there, it expands to encompass the big and broken world around him, in all its complexity and contradictions: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it, first loves and first loves lost, sexual exploration and intimacy, and the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance
By Jesse Wente. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Unreconciled is one hell of a good book. Jesse Wente’s narrative moves effortlessly from the personal to the…
historical to the contemporary. Very powerful, and a joy to read."—Thomas King, author of The Inconvenient Indian and SufferanceA prominent Indigenous voice uncovers the lies and myths that affect relations between white and Indigenous peoples and the power of narrative to emphasize truth over comfort.Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples. Jesse Wente remembers the exact moment he realized that he was a certain kind of Indian--a stereotypical cartoon Indian. He was playing softball as a child when the opposing team began to war-whoop when he was at bat. It was just one of many incidents that formed Wente's understanding of what it means to be a modern Indigenous person in a society still overwhelmingly colonial in its attitudes and institutions. As the child of an American father and an Anishinaabe mother, Wente grew up in Toronto with frequent visits to the reserve where his maternal relations lived. By exploring his family's history, including his grandmother's experience in residential school, and citing his own frequent incidents of racial profiling by police who'd stop him on the streets, Wente unpacks the discrepancies between his personal identity and how non-Indigenous people view him. Wente analyzes and gives voice to the differences between Hollywood portrayals of Indigenous peoples and lived culture. Through the lens of art, pop culture, and personal stories, and with disarming humour, he links his love of baseball and movies to such issues as cultural appropriation, Indigenous representation and identity, and Indigenous narrative sovereignty. Indeed, he argues that storytelling in all its forms is one of Indigenous peoples' best weapons in the fight to reclaim their rightful place.Wente explores and exposes the lies that Canada tells itself, unravels "the two founding nations" myth, and insists that the notion of "reconciliation" is not a realistic path forward. Peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can't be recovered through reconciliation--because no such relationship ever existed.The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend
By Adam Shoalts. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLERSpellbinding adventure from Canada's most beloved modern-day explorer.Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A…
century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres.In the early 1900s, this isolated little settlement was the scene of an extraordinary haunting by large creatures none could identify. Strange tracks were found in the woods. Unearthly cries were heard in the night. Sled dogs went missing. Children reported being stalked by a terrifying grinning animal. Families slept with cabin doors barred and axes and guns at their bedsides.Tales of things that "go bump in the night" are part of the folklore of the wilderness, told and retold around countless campfires down through the ages. Most are easily dismissed by skeptics. But what happened at Traverspine a hundred years ago was different. The eye-witness accounts were detailed, and those who reported them included no less than three medical doctors and a wildlife biologist.Something really did emerge from the wilderness to haunt the little settlement of Traverspine. Adam Shoalts, decorated modern-day explorer and an expert on wilderness folklore, picks up the trail from a century ago and sets off into the Labrador wild to investigate the tale. It is a spine-tingling adventure, straight from a land steeped in legends and lore, where Vikings wandered a thousand years ago and wolves and bears still roam free.In delving into the dark corners of Canada's wild, The Whisper on the Night Wind combines folklore, history, and adventure into a fascinating saga of exploration.Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence
By Nicola I. Campbell. 2021
Captivating and deeply moving, this story basket of memories tells one Indigenous woman’s journey of overcoming adversity and colonial trauma…
to find strength through creative works and traditional perspectives of healing, transformation, and resurgence.Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions
By Stephen Kimber, Jennifer Robertson. 2022
She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything,…
and the nightmare beganJennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bitcoin wizard who quickly amassed substantial wealth through his company, Quadriga. The couple travelled the world, first class all the way, while Cotten worked on his multitude of encrypted laptops. Then, while the couple was on their honeymoon in India, opening an orphanage in their name, Gerry fell ill and died in a matter of hours. Jennifer was consumed by grief and guilt, but that was only the beginning. It turned out that Gerry owed $250 million to Quadriga customers, and all the passwords to his encrypted virtual vaults, hidden on his many laptops, had died with him. Jennifer was left with more than one hundred thousand investors looking for their money, and questions, suspicions and accusations spiralling dangerously out of control. The Quadriga scandal touched off major investment and criminal investigations, not to mention Internet rumours circulating on dark message boards, including claims that Gerry had faked his own death and that his wife was the real mastermind behind a sophisticated sting operation. While Jennifer waited for a dead man’s switch e-mail that would probably never come, it became clear that Cotten had gambled away about $100 million of the funds entrusted to him for investment in his many schemes, leaving Robertson holding the bag. Bitcoin Widow is Catch Me If You Can meets a widow betrayed, a life of fairy-tale romance and private jets torched by duplicity, as Jennifer Robertson tries to reset her life in the wake of one of the biggest investment scandals of the digital age.Permanent Astonishment: A Memoir
By Tomson Highway. 2021
Capricious, big-hearted, joyful: an epic memoir from one of Canada’s most acclaimed Indigenous writers and performersTomson Highway was born in…
a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the eleventh of twelve children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family. Growing up in a land of ten thousand lakes and islands, Tomson relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars, sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails, and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far-north childhood. But five of Tomson's siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was six, he was flown south by float plane to attend a residential school. A year later Rene joined him to begin the rest of their education. In 1990 Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up in the Land of Snow and Sky is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: "Don't mourn me, be joyful." His memoir offers insights, both hilarious and profound, into the Cree experience of culture, conquest, and survival.My Privilege, My Responsibility: A Memoir
By Sheila North. 2022
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.Me Tomorrow: Indigenous Views on the Future
By Drew Hayden Taylor. 2021
First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, activists, educators and writers, youth and elders come together to envision Indigenous futures in…
Canada and around the world. Discussing everything from language renewal to sci-fi, this collection is a powerful and important expression of imagination rooted in social critique, cultural experience, traditional knowledge, activism and the multifaceted experiences of Indigenous people on Turtle Island. In Me Tomorrow… Darrel J. McLeod, Cree author from Treaty-8 territory in Northern Alberta, blends the four elements of the Indigenous cosmovision with the four directions of the medicine wheel to create a prayer for the power, strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples. Autumn Peltier, Anishinaabe water-rights activist, tells the origin story of her present and future career in advocacy—and how the nine months she spent in her mother’s womb formed her first water teaching. When the water breaks, like snow melting in the spring, new life comes. Lee Maracle, acclaimed Stó:lō Nation author and educator, reflects on cultural revival—imagining a future a century from now in which Indigenous people are more united than ever before. Other essayists include Cyndy and Makwa Baskin, Norma Dunning, Shalan Joudry, Shelley Knott-Fife, Tracie Léost, Stephanie Peltier, Romeo Saganash, Drew Hayden Taylor and Raymond Yakeleya. For readers who want to imagine the future, and to cultivate a better one, Me Tomorrow is a journey through the visions generously offered by a diverse group of Indigenous thinkers.Rehearsals for Living
By Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers…
and activists.When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here. Rehearsals for Living is a captivating and visionary work—part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and reiterating the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment, Maynard and Simpson create something new: an urgent demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up other ways of ordering earthly life.Running Down a Dream: A Memoir
By Candy Palmater. 2022
A powerful, often funny, always inspiring memoir from a beloved comedian, professional orator, actor, entertainer, gone all too soon.Candy Palmater…
loved to connect with people. She lived for the stage, her effervescent presence on television and radio ignited and inspired audiences, touching them with her warm, often spicy humour as well as her positive message about love and kindness. And she always believed that it is never too late to pursue our dreams and that we should never allow others to negatively influence our life’s desires.Candy described herself as a queer Mi’kmaw lawyer-turned-comic raised by bikers in rural New Brunswick and on the surface, she met with enormous success – on leaving government and the practice of law, she started a career as a stand-up comedian, which led to starring in five successful seasons of her own national TV show, hosting many radio shows and co-guest hosting CTV’s The Social, and landing a recurring role on a hot new sitcom in her fifties. But she is the first to tell you she made all kinds of mistakes and experienced all kinds of failure along the way. Running Down a Dream is Candy’s story, in her own words, of the highs, the lows, the moments of doubt, the turning points when she listened to her gut and tuned out all the people saying no. It’s also a tribute to her family and the love that always bolstered her, despite their own hard times. She shares her stories to inspire us to embrace our failures and to believe in ourselves. And most importantly, Running Down a Dream is a call to love ourselves for who we are.The world lost Candy in late 2021, and yet she left us with this gift -- a memoir and a message that will inspire us for years to come.All Roads Home: A Life On and Off the Ice
By Stephen Brunt, Bryan Trottier. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA poignant and inspiring memoir of the people and challenges that shaped the life and career of Canada's most…
decorated Indigenous athlete.Over the course of his incredible career, Bryan Trottier set a new standard of hockey excellence. A seven-time Stanley Cup champion (four with the New York Islanders, two with the Pittsburgh Penguins, and one as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche), Trottier won countless awards and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. In 2017, he was named one of the NHL's Top 100 Players of All Time.Trottier grew up in Val Marie, Saskatchewan, the son of a Cree/Chippewa/Metis father and an Irish-Canadian mother. All Roads Home offers a poignant, funny, wise, and inspiring look at his coming of age, both on and off the ice. It is a unique memoir in which Trottier shares stories about family, friends, teammates, and coaches, the lessons that he has learned from them, and the profound impact they have had in shaping the person he has become.Some of the incredible characters featured in the book include Trottier's father Buzz; legendary Islanders coach Al Arbour; teammates Clark Gillies and Mike Bossy; and the Penguins' Mario Lemieux, to name but a few. He'll also talk about the high school English teacher and guidance counsellor who helped him develop self-confidence and encouraged him as a writer: Governor General's Award–winning poet, Lorna Crozier.All Roads Home will also include a Foreword from bestselling author Jesse Thistle (From the Ashes) and two very special Afterwords: one from Trottier's daughter, Lindsy Ruthven, and the other from his life-long friend, beloved hockey great Dave "Tiger" Williams.True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change
By Jody Wilson-Raybould. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the #1 bestselling author of 'Indian' in the Cabinet, a groundbreaking and accessible roadmap to advancing true reconciliation…
across Canada.There is one question Canadians have asked Jody Wilson-Raybould more than any other: What can I do to help advance reconciliation? It is clear that people from all over the country want to take concrete and tangible action that will make real change. We just need to know how to get started. This book provides that next step. For Wilson-Raybould, what individuals and organizations need to do to advance true reconciliation is self-evident, accessible, and achievable. True Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices—Learn, Understand, and Act—that can be applied by individuals, communities, organizations, and governments. The practices are based not only on the historical and contemporary experience of Indigenous peoples in their relentless efforts to effect transformative change and decolonization, but also on the deep understanding and expertise about what has been effective in the past, what we are doing right, and wrong, today, and what our collective future requires. Fundamental to a shared way of thinking is an understanding of the Indigenous experience throughout the story of Canada. In a manner that reflects how work is done in the Big House, True Reconciliation features an “oral” history of these lands, told through Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from our past and present. The ultimate and attainable goal of True Reconciliation is to break down the silos we’ve created that prevent meaningful change, to be empowered to increasingly act as “inbetweeners,” and to take full advantage of this moment in our history to positively transform the country into a place we can all be proud of.Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls
By Angela Sterritt. 2023
Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written…
by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds. As a Gitxsan teenager navigating life on the streets, Angela Sterritt wrote in her journal to help her survive and find her place in the world. Now an acclaimed journalist, she writes for major news outlets to push for justice and to light a path for Indigenous women, girls, and survivors. In her brilliant debut, Sterritt shares her memoir alongside investigative reporting into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, showing how colonialism and racism led to a society where Sterritt struggled to survive as a young person, and where the lives of Indigenous women and girls are ignored and devalued. Growing up, Sterritt was steeped in the stories of her ancestors: grandparents who carried bentwood boxes of berries, hunted and trapped, and later fought for rights and title to that land. But as a vulnerable young woman, kicked out of the family home and living on the street, Sterritt inhabited places that, today, are infamous for being communities where women have gone missing or been murdered: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and, later on, Northern BC's Highway of Tears. Sterritt faced darkness: she experienced violence from partners and strangers and saw friends and community members die or go missing. But she navigated the street, group homes, and SROs to finally find her place in journalism and academic excellence at university, relying entirely on her own strength, resilience, and creativity along with the support of her ancestors and community to find her way. "She could have been me," Sterritt acknowledges today, and her empathy for victims, survivors, and families drives her present-day investigations into the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In the end, Sterritt steps into a place of power, demanding accountability from the media and the public, exposing racism, and showing that there is much work to do on the path towards understanding the truth. But most importantly, she proves that the strength and brilliance of Indigenous women is unbroken, and that together, they can build lives of joy and abundance.