★ From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way

Jesse Thistle has lived a hard life. A descendent of Saskatchewan’s Michif “road allowance” people (who lived on small strips of land between homesteads that were unused by the Crown), his parents were not able ... Read More »

July 29, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Reviews

Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case

By Kent Roach

Settler or Indigenous, it’s impossible to approach Kent Roach’s Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case without baggage. As an Indigenous person, this might include still-fresh traumas – including the injury ... Read More »

February 25, 2019 | Filed under: Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

★ Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

By Daniel Heath Justice

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve no doubt encountered ongoing public conversations about Indigenous writing and storytelling. What is it? Whom should we read? And perhaps the most contentious debate: who gets to ... Read More »

May 3, 2018 | Filed under: Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

★ Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic

By Kenn Harper

On March 15, 1920, Robert Janes was shot and killed on Baffin Island. The man who killed him was Nuqallaq, an Inuk. Neither Nuqallaq nor the witnesses to the killing ever denied these basic facts. ... Read More »

November 15, 2017 | Filed under: History, Native Peoples

★ Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations

By Richard Wagamese

The theme of healing is present in two recent non-fiction books by indigenous authors. But each author approaches the process of healing, and the question of what needs to be healed in the first place, ... Read More »

January 30, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples

Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours)

By Harold R. Johnson

January 24, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration

By Kim Anderson (ed.); Robert Alexander Innes (ed.)

Many activists, writers, and communities are addressing the nexus of race, sexuality, and gender, and the ways these things combine to form a person’s identity. Indigenous Men and Masculinities accomplishes this by discussing aboriginal masculinity ... Read More »

November 17, 2015 | Filed under: Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

★ The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet

By Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Reflecting on a girlhood spent in the Arctic town of Kuujjuaq, Sheila Watt-Cloutier describes herself as “a cautious child who didn’t like taking big risks.” That characterization may seem surprising coming from an Inuk woman ... Read More »

June 22, 2015 | Filed under: Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs, Science, Technology & Environment

Nationhood Interrupted: Revitalizing nêhiyaw Legal Systems

By Sylvia McAdam

Books by indigenous writers serve a special function in Canada. Not only do they preserve stories from within their originating communities, they help to disseminate ideas and opinions to the larger Canadian populace, thereby aiding ... Read More »

June 3, 2015 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Native Peoples