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Nothing Will Be Different: A Memoir
By Tara McGowan-Ross. 2021
A neurotic party girl's coming-of-age memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die. Tara has it pretty good:…
a nice job, a writing career, a forgiving boyfriend. She should be happy. Yet Tara can’t stay sober. She’s terrible at monogamy. Even her psychiatrist grows sick of her and stops returning her calls. She spends most of her time putting out social fires, barely pulling things off, and feeling sick and tired.Then, in the autumn following her twenty-seventh birthday, an abnormal lump discovered in her left breast serves as the catalyst for a journey of rigorous self-questioning. Waiting on a diagnosis, she begins an intellectual assessment of her life, desperate to justify a short existence full of dumb choices. Armed with her philosophy degree and angry determination, she attacks each issue in her life as the days creep by and winds up writing a searingly honest memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die.A RARE MACHINES BOOKThe extraordinary story of the Powhatan chief who waged a lifelong struggle to drive European settlers from his homelandIn the…
mid-sixteenth century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian child and took him back to Spain and subsequently to Mexico. The boy converted to Catholicism and after nearly a decade was able to return to his land with a group of Jesuits to establish a mission. Shortly after arriving, he organized a war party that killed them.In the years that followed, Opechancanough (as the English called him), helped establish the most powerful chiefdom in the mid-Atlantic region. When English settlers founded Virginia in 1607, he fought tirelessly to drive them away, leading to a series of wars that spanned the next forty years—the first Anglo-Indian wars in America— and came close to destroying the colony.A Brave and Cunning Prince is the first book to chronicle the life of this remarkable chief, exploring his early experiences of European society and his long struggle to save his people from conquest.The award-winning Indigenous author of Monkey Beach shares tales from her family, her life, and her culture.In March 2010 the…
Canadian Literature Centre hosted award-winning novelist and storyteller Eden Robinson at the 4th annual Henry Kreisel Lecture. Robinson shared an intimate look into the intricacies of family, culture, and place through her talk, “The Sasquatch at Home.” Robinson’s disarming honesty and wry irony shine through her depictions of her and her mother’s trip to Graceland, the Potlatch where she and her sister received their Indian names, how her parents first met in Bella Bella (Waglisla, British Columbia) and a wilderness outing where she and her father try to get a look at b’gwus, the Sasquatch. Readers of memoir; Indigenous literatures, histories and cultures; and fans of Robinson’s delightful, poignant, sometimes quirky tales will love The Sasquatch at Home.“[Robinson] strikes sweetly at the commonality of people rather than narrowing in on cultural differences. The entire book is fast, colloquial, and engaging; concise enough to be read in one sitting, yet retaining the weightiness of a larger work. Its brevity makes it an ideal re-read and the second reading proves just as entertaining. The funny parts remain funny, the rendering of landscapes evocative and intimate, and the general themes stay relevant. Through rich and often comic dialogue and her painterly descriptions of the northwest landscape, Eden Robinson presents a glimpse into her community with the delicious, whispered quality of a well-told, yet well-protected, family story.” —Cara-Lyn Morgan, The Malahat Review, Winter 2011“Offers the reader a taste of her skill as a storyteller. The book is a tiny gem. . . . This brilliant little jewel, under fifty pages, offers readers a quick, but intense opportunity to experience the work of a rising Canadian writer. Like her novel, Monkey Beach, the accessibility of The Sasquatch at Home suggests its appropriateness for use in undergraduate courses. Above all, it is an essential acquisition for anyone with an interest in Pacific Northwest or Native Canadian studies, but it is also a find for those who just like a good story.” —Amy J. Ransom, American Review of Canadian StudiesThe Way of Abundance and Joy: The Shamanic Teachings of don Alberto Taxo
By Shirley Blancke. 2014
• Shows how to relate to and receive help from the elements, reconnect with nature to access abundance and joy,…
connect with plants, animals, water, air, and fire • Explores don Alberto&’s upbringing in a family of yachaks, his initiation, and his personal work to fulfill the Andean prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor • Includes reflections and essays from several of don Alberto&’s students and others who have worked with him, including Itzhak Beery and John Perkins Recognized as a master yachak, don Alberto Taxo is a celebrated spiritual elder, shaman, and healer of the pre-Inca Atik (Kichwa) people from the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. He has been sharing ancient Andean shamanic wisdom and practices in the United States for more than 20 years--his personal quest to fulfill the Andean prophecy that the Eagle and the Condor will fly together in the same sky in harmony. Written with don Alberto&’s permission and as further fulfillment of the Eagle-Condor prophecy, this book shares don Alberto&’s teachings and his simple approaches for building a reciprocal relationship with nature, centered on Sumak Kausay, the way of joy and abundance. As a yachak, a shaman of the elements, don Alberto shows how to relate to and receive help from nature. When we are connected with nature on an emotional and spiritual level it creates joy that is deeply healing and can be accessed during life&’s difficulties. The book discusses traditional Ecuadorian shamanic beliefs and practices, including Andean Inca cosmology; how to connect with plants, animals, air, fire, and water in sacred springs, the ocean, or your shower; and Inca concepts like Pacha, the space-time era in which we live that is now transitioning to a new one of connection and love after 500 years. The book explores don Alberto&’s upbringing in a family of yachaks, his initiation, and his assumption of the role of shaman for his community. It also includes reflections and essays from don Alberto&’s students and others who have worked with him, including shamanic teachers Itzhak Beery and John Perkins, showing how he influenced their lives and awakened them to the path of Sumak Kausay, Abundant Life.Half-Bads in White Regalia: A Memoir
By Cody Caetano. 2022
A family tries to learn from the mistakes of past generations in this whirlwind memoir from a wholly original new…
voice.The Caetanos move into a doomed house in the highway village of Happyland before an inevitable divorce pulls Cody&’s parents in separate directions. His mom, Mindimooye, having discovered her Anishinaabe birth family and Sixties Scoop origin story, embarks on a series of fraught relationships and fresh starts. His dad, O Touro, a Portuguese immigrant and drifter, falls back into &“big do, little think&” behaviour, despite his best intentions. Left alone at the house in Happyland, Cody and his siblings must fend for themselves, even as the pipes burst and the lights go out. His protective big sister, Kris, finds inventive ways to put food on the table, and his stoic big brother, Julian, facilitates his regular escapes into the world of video games. As life yanks them from one temporary solution to the next, they steal moments of joy and resist buckling under &“baddie&” temptations aplenty. Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano delivers a fever dream coming-of-age garnished with a slang all his own. Half-Bads in White Regalia is an unforgettable debut that unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity.Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers #3)
By Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 2022
A 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.Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising
By Brandi Morin. 2022
A wildfire of a debut memoir by internationally recognized French/Cree/Iroquois journalist Brandi Morin set to transform the narrative around Indigenous…
Peoples. Brandi Morin is known for her clear-eyed and empathetic reporting on Indigenous oppression in North America. She is also a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis and uses her experience to tell the stories of those who did not survive the rampant violence. From her time as a foster kid and runaway who fell victim to predatory men and an oppressive system to her career as an internationally acclaimed journalist, Our Voice of Fire chronicles Morin’s journey to overcome enormous adversity and find her purpose, and her power, through journalism. This compelling, honest book is full of self-compassion and the purifying fire of a pursuit for justice.Making Love with the Land
By Joshua Whitehead. 2022
Much-anticipated non-fiction from the author of the Giller-longlisted, GG-shortlisted and Canada Reads-winning novel Jonny Appleseed.In the last few years, following the…
publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead brilliantly explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person "in the rupture" between identities. In sharp, surprising, unique pieces—a number of which have already won awards—Whitehead illuminates this particular moment, in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new (and old) ideas about "the land." He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped our ideas, our histories, our very bodies? Here is an intellectually thrilling, emotionally captivating love song—a powerful revelation about the library of stories land and body hold together, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.Heart Berries: A Memoir
By Terese Marie Mailhot. 2018
Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in…
British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world. A New York Times BestsellerPegahmagabow: Life-Long Warrior
By Adrian Hayes. 2009
Francis Pegahmagabow was a remarkable aboriginal leader who served his nation in time of war and his people in time…
of peace. In wartime he volunteered to be a warrior. In peacetime he had no option. His life reveals how uncaring Canada was about those to whom this land had always been home. A member of the Parry Island band (now Wasauksing First Nation) near Parry Sound, Ontario, Francis served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium and France for almost the entire duration of the First World War, primarily as a scout and sniper. Through the horrific battles and inhumane conditions of trench warfare, his actions earned him three decorations for bravery — the most ever received by a Canadian aboriginal soldier. More recently, they inspired the central fictional character in Joseph Boyden’s highly acclaimed novel Three Day Road. Physically and emotionally scarred by his wartime ordeals, Francis returned to Parry Island to try to rebuild his life. He had been treated as an equal in the army, but quickly discovered things hadn’t changed back in Canada. As a status Indian his life was regulated by the infamous Indian Act and by local Indian agents who seemed bent on thwarting his every effort to improve his lot. So, Francis became a warrior once more — this time in the even longer battle to achieve the right of aboriginal Canadians to control their own destiny. In compiling this account of Francis Pegahmagabow’s remarkable life, Adrian Hayes conducted extensive research in newspapers, archives, and military records, and spoke with members of Pegahmagabow’s family and others who remembered the plight and the perseverance of this warrior.Louis Riel: Firebrand
By Sharon Stewart. 2007
Louis Riel devoted his life to the Metis cause. A fiery activist, he struggled against injustice as he saw it.…
He was a pioneer in the field of Aboriginal rights and land claims but was branded an outlaw in his own time. In 1885, he was executed for treason. In 1992, the House of Commons declared Riel a founder of Manitoba. November 16 is now designated Louis Riel Day in Canada.Molly Brant: Mohawk Loyalist and Diplomat
By Peggy Dymond Leavey. 2015
Molly Brant, a Mohawk girl born into poverty in 1736, became the consort of Sir William Johnson, one of the…
wealthiest white men in 18th-century America. Suspected of being a spy for the British during the American Revolution, Molly was forced to flee with her children or face imprisonment. Because of her ability to influence the Mohawks, her assistance was needed at Fort Niagara, and she found refuge there. A respected Mohawk matron, Molly became a vital link between her people and the Canadian Indian Department. Like her brother Joseph, she worked hard to keep five of the Six Nations on the side of the British throughout the war, believing the empty promises that all would be restored to them once the conflict ended. Although she was seen as fractious and demanding at times, her remarkable stamina and courage gained the respect of the highest levels of Canadian government.Canadian Cultural Heritage Bundle: Louis Riel / Harriet Tubman / Simon Girty
By Rosemary Sadlier, Edward Butts, Sharon Stewart. 2013
Presenting three titles in the Quest Biography series that profiles prominent figures in Canada’s history. In these three books we…
explore the cultural heritage that is at the roots of Canada’s present-day multicultural society. In the lives of abolitionist Underground Railway hero Harriet Tubman; Metis revolutionary Louis Riel; and frontiersman Simon Girty, who adopted and respected Native culture long before the vast majority of white people, we discover that the struggle for inclusion and human rights has existed since the dawn of Canada’s modern history. Includes Harriet Tubman Louis Riel Simon GirtyYakuglas' Legacy: The Art and Times of Charlie James
By Ronald W Hawker. 2016
Charlie James (1867–1937) was a premier carver and painter from the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation of British Columbia. Also known by…
his ceremonial name Yakuglas, he was hawker a prolific artist and activist during a period of severe oppression for First Nations people in Canada. Yakuglas’ Legacy examines the life of Charlie James. During the early part of his career James created works primarily for ritual use within Kwakwaka'wakw society. However, in the 1920s, his art found a broader audience as he produced more miniatures and paintings. Through a balanced reading of the historical period and James’ artistic production, Ronald W. Hawker argues that James’ shift to contemporary art forms allowed the artist to make a critical statement about the vitality of Kwakwaka'wakw culture. Yakuglas’ Legacy, aided by the inclusion of 123 colour illustrations, is at once a beautiful and poignant book about the impact of the Canadian project on Aboriginal people and their artistic response.Sequoyah's Gift: A Portrait of the Cherokee Leader
By Janet Klausner, Duane King. 1993
On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree--becoming the first Native American doctor in U.S. history. She…
earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Indian woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads. Her patients often were desperately poor and desperately sick--tuberculosis, small pox, measles, influenza--families scattered miles apart, whose last hope was a young woman who spoke their language and knew their customs.This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice, then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people--physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually. A Warrior of the People is the moving biography of Susan La Flesche's inspirational life, and it will finally shine a light on her numerous accomplishments. The author will donate all royalties from this book to a college scholarship fund he has established for Native American high school graduates.Xwelíqwiya: The Life of a Stó:lō Matriarch
By Richard Daly, Rena Point Bolton. 2013
Xwelíqwiya is the life story of Rena Point Bolton, a Stó:lō matriarch, artist, and craftswoman. Proceeding by way of conversational…
vignettes, the beginning chapters recount Point Bolton's early years on the banks of the Fraser River during the Depression. While at the time the Stó:lō, or Xwélmexw, as they call themselves today, kept secret their ways of life to avoid persecution by the Canadian government, Point Bolton’s mother and grandmother schooled her in the skills needed for living from what the land provides, as well as in the craftwork and songs of her people, passing on a duty to keep these practices alive. Point Bolton was taken to a residential school for the next several years and would go on to marry and raise ten children, but her childhood training ultimately set the stage for her roles as a teacher and activist. Recognizing the urgent need to forge a sense of cultural continuity among the younger members of her community, Point Bolton visited many communities and worked with federal, provincial, and First Nations politicians to help break the intercultural silence by reviving knowledge of and interest in Aboriginal art. She did so with the deft and heartfelt use of both her voice and her hands. Over the course of many years, Daly collaborated with Point Bolton to pen her story. At once a memoir, an oral history, and an “insider” ethnography directed and presented by the subject herself, the result attests both to Daly’s relationship with the family and to Point Bolton’s desire to inspire others to use traditional knowledge and experience to build their own distinctive, successful, and creative lives.Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl
By Anahareo, Sophie Mccall. 2014
Anahareo (1906-1985) was a Mohawk writer, environmentalist, and activist. She was also the wife of Grey Owl, aka Archie Belaney,…
the internationally celebrated writer and speaker who claimed to be of Scottish and Apache descent, but whose true ancestry as a white Englishman only became known after his death. Devil in Deerskins is Anahareo’s autobiography up to and including her marriage to Grey Owl. In vivid prose she captures their extensive travels through the bush and their work towards environmental and wildlife protection. Here we see the daily life of an extraordinary Mohawk woman whose independence, intellect and moral conviction had direct influence on Grey Owl’s conversion from trapper to conservationist. Though first published in 1972, Devil in Deerskins’s observations on indigeneity, culture, and land speak directly to contemporary audiences. Devil in Deerskins is the first book in the First Voices, First Texts series. This new edition includes forewords by Anahareo’s daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell, an afterword by Sophie McCall, and reintroduces readers to a very important but largely forgotten text by one of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal writers.Satanta's Woman
By Cynthia Haseloff. 1998
Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill
By Deanne Stillman. 2017
The little known story of the unlikely friendship of two famous figures of the American West—Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting…
Bull—told through their time in Cody’s Wild West show in the 1880s.It was in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883 that William F. Cody—known across the land as Buffalo Bill—conceived of his Wild West show, an “equestrian extravaganza” featuring cowboys and Indians. The idea took off. For four months in 1885 the Lakota chief Sitting Bull appeared in the show. Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration. Blood Brothers flashes back to 1876, when the Lakota wiped out Custer’s 7th Cavalry unit at the Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull did not participate in the “last stand,” but was nearby—and blamed for killing Custer. The book also flashes forward to 1890, when Sitting Bull was assassinated. Hours before, Cody rushed to Sitting Bull’s cabin at Standing Rock, dispatched by the army to avert a disaster. Deanne Stillman unearths little told details about the two men and their tumultuous times. Their alliance was eased by none other than Annie Oakley. When Sitting Bull joined the Wild West, the event spawned one of the earliest advertising slogans: “Foes in ’76, Friends in ’85”—referring to the Little Big Horn. Cody paid his performers well, and he treated the Indians no differently from white performers. During this time, the Native American rights movement began to flourish. But with their way of life in tatters, the Lakota and others availed themselves of the chance to perform in the Wild West. When Cody died in 1917, a large contingent of Native Americans attended his public funeral. An iconic friendship tale like no other, Blood Brothers is truly a timeless story of people from different cultures who crossed barriers to engage each other as human beings. And it foretells today’s battle on the Great Plains.