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On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1 - 20 of 27 items
By Jessica Dee Humphreys, Michel Chikwanine. 2015
It's 1993, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is going through major political changes. Five-year-old Michel is playing with friends…
one day when, without warning, a group of rebel soldiers pulls up to the school grounds. Forced onto trucks, the frightened boys are taken to a camp in the hills. There they are thrust into a terrifying and violent world. Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2017 Red Maple Non-Fiction Award. 2015.By Paul A. W Wallace. 1993
The story of how one man united the five warring Iroquois nations - Mohawks, Senecas, Oneidas, Cayugas and Onandagas -…
into a single confederacy over 500 years ago. Deganawidah, The Peacemaker, became the greatest of all spiritual leaders of the Iroquois. His work is preserved in the Confederacy's traditional constitution, and had a major impact in shaping the American Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Some descriptions of violence. 1994.When residential schools opened in the 1830's, First Nations envisioned their children learning in nurturing environments, staffed with their own…
teachers, ministers and interpreters. Instead, students were taught by outsiders, regularly forced to renounce their cultures and languages, and some were subjected to abuse that left emotional scars for generations. Fourteen Aboriginal women who attended these schools reflect on their experiences, describing how they overcame tremendous obstacles to become strong and independent members of Aboriginal cultures. 2004.By Oskiniko Larry Loyie, Connie Brissenden. 2005
It is Larry Loyie's last summer before entering residential school, a time of learning and adventure. He cares for an…
abandoned baby owl, watches his grandmother make winter moccasins, helps the family prepare for a hunting and gathering trip. But soon, a truck comes to forcibly take Lawrence and his siblings away to their new school, which would try to erase their traditional language and culture. Grades 3-6. 2002.By J. R Miller. 1996
A comprehensive study of residential schools, the institutions where attendance by Native children was compulsory as recently as the 1960s.…
Former students have come forward in increasing numbers to describe the psychological and physical abuse they suffered in these schools, and many view the system as an experiment in cultural genocide. Miller explores all three players in the story: the government officials who authorized the schools, the missionaries who taught in them, and the students who attended them. Co-winner of the 1996 Saskatchewan Book Award for nonfiction. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 1996.By Douglas M George-Kanentiio. 2009
In their homelands in what is now New York state, the Iroquois have assumed a prominent role in public debate…
as residents of the region seek ways to resolve multi-billion dollar land claims. The initial dispute over territorial title has grown to encompass gambling, treaties, taxation, and what it means to claim Native sovereignty. Some descriptions of violence. 2009.By Drew Hayden Taylor. 1996
Half Ojibway and half Caucasian - and hoping to found a nation called Occasions, dubbing himself a Special Occasion for…
founding it - Drew Hayden Taylor presents his own take on Native affairs. Using humour to give a different perspective on contentious issues, he talks about Native life and culture, and relations with government and non-Natives. 1996.By M. G Vassanji. 2008
Author M. G. Vassanji was born in Africa, where his Indian grandparents had settled, and his relationship to India had…
been complex and contradictory. Vassanji describes his many visits to India, encompassing bustling cities, quiet landscapes, fantastic stories and fascinating characters, in this his part travelogue and description, part history and meditation, and above all a quest for a lost homeland. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction. Canada Reads 2012. 2008.By Joseph Epes Brown. 1991
L'auteur tente de définer la place des traditions indiennes par rapport aux grandes religions universelles, en s'appuyant sur des disciplines…
telles que l'anthropologie et l'histoire comparée des religions. Plus qu'une simple étude sur la spiritualité des Indiens, cet ouvrage nous introduit au coeur de celle-ci. 1991.By Melanie McGrath. 2006
1953. A young and inexperienced Irish-Canadian policeman, Ross Gibson, was asked by the Canadian government to draw up a list…
of Inuit who were to be experimentally resettled in the uninhabited polar Arctic and left to fend as best they could. Among them was Joseph Flaherty, the son of Robert Flaherty who had shot the film "Nanook of the North" 30 years earlier. 2006.By Susanne Reber, Rob Renaud. 2005
On a Saskatoon night in November 1990, seventeen-year-old Neil Stonechild disappeared, to be found dead in a field, his body…
frozen, three days later. The police investigation was cursory, but Neil's mother Stella refused to give up, as did witness Jason Roy, who had seen Neil, beaten and bleeding, in the back of a Saskatoon police cruiser the night he disappeared. It was only in January 2000, when two more men were found frozen to death, that the truth about Neil Stonechild's fate began to emerge. Some descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2005.By James Bartleman. 2007
Recalls the boyhood years of Ontario's future lieutenant-governor, living in a dilapidated old house complete with outdoor toilet and coal…
oil-lamp lighting. As a half-breed kid, he was caught between two worlds. His Native mother's fight with depression flowed from that dilemma, while his father, a white, working class, guy who never had any money, made the best home brew in the village - and his specialty was raisin wine. 2007.By Vivian Jeanette Kaplan. 2002
For a brief period between 1938 and 1941, roughly 20,000 Jews found refuge from the Nazis in the one place…
not requiring visas, police certificates or proofs of financial independence: Shanghai. In 1939, the author's family made a month-long, 7,000-mile journey to Shanghai, struggling with heat, disease, poverty, and fear. With the war's end came the shock of learning what became of family and friends left behind in Europe. Descriptions of violence. 2002.By Denise Chong. 1994
Chong traces her family's history from China to Canada. Her grandfather left his wife and emigrated to Canada, accompanied by…
the concubine he bought in 1924. In Canada, they stinted and sacrificed to support his family in China. Chong tells of her grandparents and parents, and the visits she made to China to try to unite the strands of her family's past. Winner of the 1995 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. 1994.By Charlotte Gray. 2002
An exploration of the many dimensions of Pauline Johnson's life. Complex and talented, she was a native rights advocate ahead…
of her time; a lyric poet who performed vaudevillian skits; a New Woman who wrote for The Mother's Magazine; and an incurable romantic who never married. 2002.By Warren Cariou. 2002
Cariou's memoir on growing up in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where he witnessed the discrimination, anger and fear directed at the…
town's Cree and Métis populations by the European settlers. While he has absorbed these prejudices as his own, he is forced to confront the politics of race as an adult. Then, he discovers secrets that his family had kept hidden for generations, secrets that would alter forever his sense of identity and belonging in Meadow Lake. Winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize of the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada Awards. 2002.By Mark Abley. 2003
An award-winning Canadian journalist documents the unprecedented extinction of the world's less-spoken languages. Drawing on his encounters with linguistic remnants…
from the arctic to aboriginal Australia, he illustrates threats to many endangered tongues. The report also speaks to the relationship between language and identity, and warns of globalization's consequences. 2003.Cairns, through the study of the historical record, discusses the desired relation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples to each other…
in Canada. He considers the differences between the assimilationist assumptions of the imperial era and the more recent attempts at nation-to-nation negotiations supported by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and contemplates whether either of these approaches can lead to an outcome that will satisfy both sides. 2000.By Ronald Wright. 1992
By Michael Ignatieff. 1987
Through the use of his grandparents' diaries, the author recreates his family history. The Ignatieffs, firmly entrenched in the Russian…
nobility, served in the tsarist government. In late 1917, the events of the Revolution overtook the family and they chose exile in the West. 1987 Governor General's Award winner. 1987.