Leisure Reading: Indigenous History Month

2024-2025 Winner First Nation Communities READ Award
Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series (2025)
https://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/canadian-writers/

A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences
On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve--a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture--is nothing but supportive; and they've moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an imposter. She isn't connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she's the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
Then, as if all that wasn't enough, strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can't explain, all while her neighbors' passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn's survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it's too late.
Told in Alice's raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching exploration of inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable—and surreal—climax. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Book #3 The Indian Lake Trilogy

The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror literature.
It's been four years since Jade Daniels last set foot in Proofrock, Idaho. Since then, her reputation, and everything around Indian Lake, has changed dramatically. There's a lot of unfinished business in her hometown, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there's one aspect of the savage history of Proofrock, Idaho, no one's got the mettle to confront--no one except a final girl, making her last stand, this time for everything.
New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma and stolen hope. It's the story of the American west written in blood. And it's the story of one girl who doesn't know how to give up. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

2024 CBC Canada Reads Finalist

In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey that forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.
When Mackenzie wakes up with a crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.
Night after night, Mackenzie's dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina's untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too--a murder of crows stalks her around the city; she emerges, retching water, from a nightmare of drowning; and she gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina--Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.
Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still grappling with the same grief she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams and make them more dangerous. What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina's death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was within her all along? John's visceral writing takes us from dreams to waking nightmare and asks us to find the universal in the personal, uncovering shame, doubt, and denial as she tracks a family's attempts to come to grips with loss. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

When matriarchs begin to disappear, there is a choice to either step into the places they left behind, or to craft a new space.
Helen Knott’s debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins, wowed reviewers, award juries, and readers alike with its profoundly honest and moving account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and survival. Now, in her highly anticipated second book, Knott returns with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy.
Having lost both her mom and grandmother in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of the women who raised her, but of the woman she thought she was.
Woven into the pages are themes of mourning, sobriety through loss, and generational dreaming. Becoming a Matriarch is charted with poetic insights, sass, humour, and heart, taking the reader over the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa territory in Northeastern British Columbia, along the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, and straight to the heart of what matriarchy truly means. This is a journey through pain, on the way to becoming. (Publisher)

A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains unsolved for nearly fifty years
July 1962. A Mi’kmaw family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is frustratingly overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.
A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time. (Book Cover, Inside Flap)

Under the shadow of gray clouds, three children venture into the woods, where they spot the corpse of an old man. Suddenly a wild figure emerges, with long fingernails and tangled hair. It is the hattakfullih nipi foni, the bone picker, who comes to tear off rotting flesh with his fingernails. Only the older Choctaws will speak of him.
The gruesome bone picker is just one of many creatures, scary and mysterious, who lurk behind every page of this spine-tingling collection of Native fiction, written by award-winning Choctaw author Devon A. Mihesuah. Choctaw lore features a large pantheon of deities. These entities created the first people, taught them how to hunt, and warned them of impending danger. Their stories are not meant simply to entertain: each entity has a purpose in its behavior and a lesson to share--to those who take heed. (Back Cover)

Halfling Saga, Book 1

This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice.
It begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveied is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits.
This is an American Indian revenge story, captured in the vivid voices of the time, by one of the new masters of literary horror, Stephen Graham Jones. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards honour the sovereignty of Indigenous creative voices and nurture the work of emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada.
Through generous support from hundreds of Canadians and organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, and the Pamela Dillon and Family Gift Fund, the awards have ushered in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVAs recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also promote the works of unpublished writers, helping to launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.
This anthology gathers together a selection of the finalists over the past five years, highlighting some of the most pathbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and Indigenous languages. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Jordan Abel (Nisga’a) and Carleigh Baker (Métis), and scholar Madeleine Reddon (Métis), this anthology is a celebration of Indigenous storytelling that both introduces readers to emerging luminaries and returns them to treasured favourites. (Back Cover)

Companion novel to: The Break & The Strangers

The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle—everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected—and let them share. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure. Others went in angry and left a different kind of angry. Learned how the blame belonged on the system, the history, the colonizer, the big things that were harder to change than one bad person.
The day that Cedar Sage Stranger has been both dreading and longing for has finally come: her sister Phoenix is getting out of prison.
The effect of Phoenix’s release cascades through the community. M, the young girl whom she assaulted, is triggered by the news. Her mother, Paulina, is worried and her cousin is angry—all feel the threat of Phoenix’s release. When Phoenix is seen lingering outside the school to catch a glimpse of her son, Sparrow, the police get a call to file a report—but the next thing they know, she has disappeared.
Amid accusations and plots for revenge, past grievances become a poor guide in a moment of danger, and the clumsy armature of law enforcement is no match for the community. Cedar and her and Phoenix’s mother, Elsie, continue down different paths of healing, while everyone in their lives form a circle around the chaos, the calm within the storm, and the beauty in the darkness.(Publisher)

Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series (2024)
https://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/canadian-writers/

A collection of intersecting stories about Indigenous love and loneliness from one of contemporary literature’s most boundless minds.
Across the prairies and Canada’s west coast, on reserves and university campuses, at literary festivals and existential crossroads, the characters in Coexistence are searching for connection. They’re learning to live with and understand one another, to see beauty and terror side by side, and to accept that the past, present, and future can inhabit a single moment.
An aging mother confides in her son about an intimate friendship from her distant girlhood. A middling poet is haunted by the cliché his life has become. A chorus of anonymous gay men dispense unvarnished truths about their sex lives. A man freshly released from prison finds that life on the outside has sinister strictures of its own. A PhD student dog-sits for his parents at what was once a lodging for nuns operating a residential school—a house where the spectre of Catholicism comes to feel eerily literal.
Bearing the compression, crystalline sentences, and emotional potency that have characterized his earlier books, Coexistence is a testament to Belcourt’s mastery of and playfulness in any literary form. A vital addition to an already rich catalogue, this is a must-read collection and the work of an author at the height of his powers. (Publisher)

The Cold came.
And something new to the city--unseen and hungry--was delighted.
Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that's ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that's passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there's Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book.
What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone—or something—is hunting them all.
Taking tropes from the murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror genres, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh. (Back Cover)

The long-awaited, profoundly moving new novel from award-winning author Mona Susan Power, spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the nineteenth century to the present day.
From the midcentury metropolis of Chicago to the windswept lands of the Dakhota people to the brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the tale of three extraordinary women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried.
Sissy, born 1961: Sissy's relationship with her beautiful and volatile mother is difficult--even dangerous--but her life is also filled with lovely things, including a new Christmas present: a doll called Ethel. Ethel whispers advice and kindness in Sissy's ear, and in one especially terrifying moment, maybe even saves Sissy's life.
Lillian, born 1925: Raised on her tribes reservation in a time of terrible change, Lillian clings to her sister, Blanche and her doll, Mae. When the sisters are forced to attend an Indian boarding school far from their home, Blanche refuses to be cowed by the school's abusive nuns. But when tragedy strikes the sisters, Mae finds her way to defend the girls.
Cora, born 1888: Born just after the genocidal "Indian Wars," Cora still isn't afraid of the white men who take her away to be "civilized." When teachers burn her beloved buckskin doll, Winona, Cora discovers that the spirit of Winona may not be entirely lost.
A modern masterpiece, A Council of Dolls is gorgeous, quietly devastating, and ultimately hopeful. With stunning prose, Mona Susan Power weaves a spell of love and healing that comes alive on the page. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

The Endsong, Book 1

Sascha Stronach's queer, Māori-inspired fantasy debut follows a thief turned cop who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from a devastating attack.
The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. After a devastating war and a biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than constable Jyn Yat-Hok.
Recently demoted on the force due to "lifestyle choices" after being caught at a gay club, Yat is barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.
Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak. (Back Cover)

Book #2 The Indian Lake Trilogy

December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings, in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones.
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.
Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.
Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over. (Publisher)

2024 Winner Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction

From the acclaimed, boundary-breaking author of NISHGA comes a hypnotic and mystifying exploration of land and legacy.
Reimagining James Fenimore Cooper’s nineteenth-century text The Last of the Mohicans from the contemporary perspective of an urban Nisga’a person whose relationship to land and traditional knowledge was severed by colonial violence, Jordan Abel explores what it means to be Indigenous without access to familial territory and complicates popular understandings about Indigenous storytelling. Engaging the land through fiction and metaphor, the successive chapters of Empty Spaces move toward an eerie, looping, and atmospheric rendering of place that evolves despite the violent and reckless histories of North America. The result is a bold and profound new vision of history that decenters human perception and forgoes Westernized ways of seeing.
Jordan Abel’s extraordinary debut work of fiction grows out of his groundbreaking visual compositions in NISHGA, which integrated descriptions of the landscape from Cooper’s settler classic into his father's traditional Nisga'a artwork. In Empty Spaces, Abel reinscribes those words on the page itself, subjecting them to bold rewritings and inviting us to come to a crucial understanding: that the land knows everything that can and will happen, even as our world lurches toward uncertainty. (Publisher)

Young Readers Edition

From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young readers alike.
Ranging from “Why is there such a fuss about nonnative people wearing Indian costumes for Halloween?” to “Why is it called a ‘traditional Indian fry bread taco’?“ to “What’s it like for natives who don’t look native?” to “Why are Indians so often imagined rather than understood?”, and beyond, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask (Young Readers Edition) does exactly what its title says for young readers, in a style consistently thoughtful, personal, and engaging.
Updated and expanded to include:
* Dozens of New Questions and New Sections—including a social activism section that explores the Dakota Access Pipeline, racism, identity, politics, and more!
* Over 50 new Photos
* Adapted text for broad appeal (Publisher)

What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you feel like you should already know the answers—or do you worry that your questions may be offensive? For more than a decade, Anton Treuer's clear, candid, and informative book has answered questions for tens of thousands of readers. This revised edition revisits old questions from a new perspective and expands on topics that have become increasingly relevant in the twenty-first century.
With frank, funny, and sometimes personal prose, this book cuts through myths, guilt, and anger and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action. (Back Cover)

52 Ways to Reconcile is an accessible, friendly guide for non-Indigenous people eager to learn, or Indigenous people eager to do more in our collective effort towards reconciliation, as people, and as a country. As much as non-Indigenous people want to walk the path of reconciliation, they often aren’t quite sure what to do, and they’re afraid of making mistakes. This book is the answer and the long overdue guide.
The idea of this book is simple: 52 small acts of reconciliation to consider, one per week, for an entire year. They’re all doable, and they’re all meaningful. All 52 steps take readers in the right direction, towards a healthier relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and a time when we are past trauma. By following these steps, we can live in stronger and healthier communities equally, and respectfully, together. (Publisher)

Nyla has an affinity to fire. A neglected teen in a small northern town—trying to escape a mother battling her own terrors—she is kicked out and struggles through life on the streets. Desperate for love, Nyla accidentally sets fire to her ex’s building and is then incarcerated for arson. Through community-led diversion, Nyla finds herself on a reserve as their firekeeper. But when climate change–induced wildfires threaten her new home, she knows intimately how to fight back.
The fourth book from acclaimed writer Katłıà brings a Northern Indigenous perspective to the destructive effects of ongoing colonialism. Displaying Katłıà’s enthralling storytelling style, Firekeeper is a coming-of-age tale that addresses intergenerational trauma by reclaiming culture, belonging and identity.
Join Nyla on her healing journey through the fire to sacred waters. (Publisher)

After inadvertently starting rumors of a haunted cemetery, a teen befriends a ghost in this brand-new young adult novel exploring grief and belonging by the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of The Marrow Thieves series.
Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium all her life, close to her mother’s grave. With her sixteenth birthday only days away, Winifred has settled into a lazy summer schedule, lugging her obese Chihuahua around the grounds in a squeaky red wagon to visit the neglected gravesides and nursing a serious crush on her best friend, Jack.
Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours has started a rumor that Winterson Cemetery might be haunted. It’s welcome news since the crematorium is on the verge of closure and her father’s job being outsourced. Now that the ghost tours have started, Winifred just might be able to save her father’s job and the only home she’s ever known, not to mention being able to stay close to where her mother is buried. All she has to do is get help from her con-artist cousin to keep up the rouse and somehow manage to stop her father from believing his wife has returned from the grave. But when Phil, an actual ghost of a teen girl who lived and died in the ravine next to the cemetery, starts showing up, Winifred begins to question everything she believes about life, love and death. Especially love. (Publisher)

Five generations of Métis women argue, dance, struggle, laugh, love, and tell the stories that will sing their family, and perhaps the land itself, into healing.
Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means.
Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her firstborn and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother.
Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the afterlife.
Great-grandmother Genevieve is determined to conquer her addiction to alcohol before she dies and receives unexpected help from the sister she lost but has never been without.
And Mamé, in the afterlife, knows that all these stories began with her; she must find a way to loose herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.
A Grandmother Begins the Story sings like a cooked Métis jig, filled with funny, wise, confused, struggling characters, including a motherless bison calf who matures into an angry adult despite all the teachings from the grandmothers of her herd. It heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.
On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another. (Back Cover)

Halloween is coming up, and Hughie Wolfe is volunteering at a new rural attraction: Harvest House. He’s excited about working on a fun, spooky project . . . until he learns that an actor playing the vengeful spirit of an “Indian maiden”--a ghost inspired by local legend--will be the star of the show.
Local legend aside, unusual things have been happening late at night at the crossroads by Harvest House. Young women--particularly Indigenous women--are being followed by a creepy man; dogs are fretful and on edge; and wild animals are behaving strangely. When the big sister of Hughie's best pal reports a disturbing encounter, Hughie and his friends decide to investigate, determined to find out if rumors of a looming supernatural threat are true.
As Moon rises on All Hallow’s Eve, will they be able to protect themselves and their community by solving the mystery of the haunting at the crossroads? (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Halfling Saga, Book 4

The thrilling final installment of BookTok sensation Melissa Blair's highly acclaimed romantasy series.
"Your land is not the one you take; it is the one you die for."
Keera has tried to keep her final promise to Brenna, the partner she was forced to kill to save a kingdom--but that promise has led to the most difficult struggles of her life. She's been at war with her worst self while battling King Damien for the freedom of the Halflings, and she's lost too many along the way. But when she finally unleashes the Fae magic that's been hidden away for hundreds of years, the conflict seems to be turning in the Halflings' favor.
Meanwhile, Keera's discovery of her
lover's staggering secret and the kidnapping of one of her closest allies threatens to tip her back into darkness, but she has no time to rest. Opening the kingdom's magical seals has transformed Keera in ways even the wisest Fae elders could not have anticipated, and the return of an evil thought long vanquished throws their rescue plans into chaos. And with the kingdom's Halfling population now posing a risk to the crown, the land is plunged into violence as the king begins a new blood purge. Keera and her allies must gather an army to meet Damien's forces in a final confrontation of epic--and tragic--proportions.
This stunning conclusion will leave readers breathless as Keera fights for her land, her people, and the promise of a better world. (Back Cover)

Lamesa, Texas, July 1989.
It's the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They're not in the marching band, they're not in the FFA--they don't really count. Amber's the only native student in town, and Tolly's only on the radar due to his father's recent death.
This is all about to change.
Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.
This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself--from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.
The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything's turned around for Tolly, for Amber--for all of Lamesa, Texas.
Be happy you weren't there.
Be happy you're only reading about it.
(Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

A man lunges in front of a car. An elderly woman silently drowns herself. A corpse sits up in its coffin and speaks. On this reservation, not all is what it seems, in this new spine-chilling mythological horror from the author of Sisters of the Lost Nation.
All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on--just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her--things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend's apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down.
But the facts about Roddy's death just don't add up, and Noemi isn't the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands.
After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy's true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers...but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Beneath many major North American cities rests a deep foundation of Indigenous history that has been colonized, paved over, and, too often, silenced. Few of its current inhabitants know that Toronto has seen twelve thousand years of uninterrupted Indigenous presence and nationhood in this region, along with a vibrant culture and history that thrives to this day.
With contributions by Indigenous Elders, scholars, journalists, artists, and historians, this unique anthology explores the poles of cultural continuity and settler colonialism that have come to define Toronto as a significant cultural hub and intersection that was also known as a Meeting Place long before European settlers arrived. (Publisher)

Evolving from a conversation between Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This volume is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres. (Publisher)

Georgian Bay, 1901. When a terrible accident leaves her orphaned at fifteen, Mary Craven is sent to the wilderness of the Georgian Bay to live with an uncle she's never met.
At first, the impassive, calculating girl believes this new manor will be just like the one she left in Toronto: cold, isolating, and anything but cheerful, where employees are treated as staff and never like family. But as she slowly allows her heart to open like the first blooms of spring, Mary comes to find that this strange place and its strange people—most of whom are Indigenous—may be where she can finally call home.
Then one night, Mary discovers Olive, her cousin who has been hidden away in an attic room for years due to a "nervous condition." The girls become fast friends, and Mary wonders why this big-hearted girl is being kept out of sight and fed medicine that only makes her feel sicker. When Olive's domineering stepmother returns to the manor, it soon becomes clear that something sinister is going on.
With the help of a charming, vivacious Metis girl named Sophie, Mary begins looking for a way to free Olive. And some of the answers may lie within the walls of a hidden, overgrown, and long-forgotten garden the girls stumble upon while wandering the wilds... (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

With gorgeous imagery, visual artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast.
Yahgulanaas uses a blend of traditional and modern art, eschewing the traditional boxes of comic books for the flowing shapes of North Pacific iconography. The panels are filled with colourful and expressive watercolour paintings. The panels of each page, if removed and assembled into one whole image, form a large image reminiscent of a woven robe.
The story follows several historical figures, including Johan Adrian Jacobsen (JAJ), who comes to the Haida village of Masset to collect specimens for a German museum, through a time span that includes first contact, the devastation of the smallpox epidemic, and the mass resettlement of disenfranchised peoples, both Indigenous and European. (Publisher)

A novel based on the life of Michel Jean’s great-grandmother, this Quebec bestseller delivers an intimate and elegiac glimpse into an Innu community at a time of seismic change.
On the banks of the river in her tiny Quebec village, Almanda Fortier's chance encounter with Thomas Siméon, a young Innu hunter, completely changes her life. The two fall in love and marry, and, thrilled by the wide-open horizons Thomas describes to her, Almanda embraces a nomadic life with his family. Paddling from Lac Pekuakami up the Riviere Peribonka to the Siméons' winter hunting grounds, she learns their language and how to hunt, and forms a deep bond with her father-in-law.
So begins Michel Jean's recounting of his great-grandmother's life--one that is devastatingly altered over the course of a century. When progress arrives on the shores of Lac Pekuakami, logging operations destroy the ancient forests and cut off access to the family's traditional hunting grounds, forcing them to move onto a reservation. Their children are stolen away to attend residential schools, while the new railway barges through their land. Through it all, Almanda draws strength from the land and Innu tradition to continue nurturing--and fighting for--her family.
At once heartbreaking and joyous, Kukum is an empathetic portrait of Innu resilience in the face of the horrors of colonization. (Back Cover)

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.
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.
Essays by: Autumn Peltier, Clarence Louie, Dr. Cyndy Baskin & Minadoo Makwa Baskin, Darrel J. McLeod, Drew Hayden Taylor, Lee Maracle, Dr. Norma Dunning, Raymond Yakeleya, Romeo Saganash, shalan joudry, Shelley Knott Fife, Tae:howęhs aka Amos Key Jr., Tracie Léost (Publisher)

In the Red River Valley of North Dakota, several lives revolve around a wedding fraught with desire, jealousy, and uncertainty. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed goth who can't read her own future but will settle for fulfilling his. Her best friend, Hugo, a gentle, red-haired, homeschooled giant, also loves Kismet and is determined to steal her away and build a life together. Kismet's mother, Crystal, drives a truck for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes in to the darkness of late-night radio, experiences visions of guardian angels, and worries about what's to come, for her daughter and herself.
The Mighty Red is Louise Erdrich at her consummate best. A novel of tender humor, disquietude, yearning, community, and family, it is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. Human time, deep time, Red River time, and geological time are explored alongside the impact of crises in our own time--climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the economic meltdown of 2008.
As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist
Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series (2024)
https://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/canadian-writers/

An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he’s meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become—and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music. (Publisher)

Twelve years after the lights go out . . .
An epic journey to a forgotten homeland
The hotly anticipated sequel to the bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow.
In the years since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy, Evan Whitesky has led his community in remote northern Canada off the rez and into the bush, where they’ve been rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions, isolated from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in a world after everything, Evan’s people are stronger than ever. But resources around their new settlement are drying up, and elders warn that they cannot stay indefinitely.
Evan and his teenaged daughter, Nangohns, are chosen to lead a scouting party on a months-long trip down to their traditional home on the shores of Lake Huron—to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life—and what danger—still exists in the lands to the south.
Waubgeshig Rice’s exhilarating return to the world first explored in Moon of the Crusted Snow is a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth. (Publisher)

Book #1 The Indian Lake Trilogy

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph. (Publisher)

2023-2024 Winner First Nation Communities READ Award

Three kohkums, a man named Crow, two best friends, and a drug dealer . . . twelve-year-old Hunter may be getting out of Red Rock sooner than he hoped.
For Hunter Frank, the summer of ’79 begins with his mother returning home only to collect her welfare cheques for the last two months. When his older sister escapes their northern BC town and his brother goes to fight forest fires, Hunter is on his own.
It’s been a good summer for the young entrepreneur, but the cash in the purple Crown Royal bag hidden in his mattress still isn’t enough to fund his escape from his monstrous mother and the town of Red Rock. As the Labour Day weekend arrives, so does a new friend with old wisdom and a business opportunity that might be just what a boy at the crossroads needs.
Hunter's summer is a journey to understanding that some villains are also victims and, while reconciliation may not be possible, survival is. (Back Cover)

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night: it can cause evil spirits to appear--and even follow you home. These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples' survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon. (Back Cover)

2024 Giller Prize Shortlist

Métis cousins Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther have beef with their world. With the latest racist policy rolling out. With whatever new pipeline plowing through traditional territory. With the way a treaty (aka the army) forced the Papaschase Cree off their home on the prairie. And, on the other hand, with how Grey's friends think if they all just went back to the Rez or the settlement, life would be so much better--pretty, like an Instagram ad. Then there's the warming planet. And their future, which they seem to be screwing up quite well on their own. Being alive can't be all cribbage, Lucky Lager, and swiping the occassional catalytic converter.
One night, the cousins hatch a plan to capture a herd of bison from a nearby national park and release the animals in downtown Edmonton. They want to be seen, to be heard, and to disrupt the settler routines of the city, yet they have no idea what awaits them or what the fateful consequences of their actions will be. Balancing wit and sorrow with satire, social commentary, and whip-smart storytelling, Prairie Edge follows Ezzy and Grey's inspired misadventures as their zealous ideas about bringing about real change do indeed elicit change, just in unexpected and sometimes disastrous ways.
Conor Kerr imagines a web of Métis relationships strained by dislocation, poverty, violence, and cultural drift, but he also laces the ties that bind Ezzy and Grey--and forever bind the Métis to the land--to explore the radical possibility that a couple of inspired miscreants might actually have the power to make a difference. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states—from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)—to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country.
The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people—all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more.
A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America. (Publisher)

From the author of the nationally bestselling Strangers saga comes a heartrending story of two Michif sisters who must face past trauma when their mother is called out for false claims to Indigenous identity. (Back Cover)

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” (Publisher)

Halfling Saga, Book 2

The Endsong, Book 2

Sascha Stronach's Maori-inspired Endsong trilogy reopens on a city in flames, where a magic-wielding pirate crew uncovers an age-old fight among the gods that threatens their world.
The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire. Stranded in its harbor is the crew of the Kopek, the survivors of a bioterror attack in their home city of Hainak. They bear scars: their captain, Sibbi, has gone missing; Yat, their newest Weaver, is fighting for control of her own mind; and their weaving powers are in a badly weakened state.
To disable the technology that prevents the group from escaping, Sen and Kiada must plot their way through the ruins of the foreign capital, which is patrolled by a hostile militia, using wits alone. But to navigate through Radovan, Kiada will have to rely on her own history with the city--one she shares with a band of misfits dubbed Fort Tomorrow and their leader, Ari, a charismatic thief.
Ari may hold the key not only to saving Radovan from complete annihilation, but to the history of their world, which will come into play as the gods begin to unleash destruction on humanity and one another. (Back Cover)

The first treaty that was made was between the earth and the sky. It was an agreement to work together. We build all of our treaties on that original treaty.
On the banks of the river that have been Mishomis’s home his whole life, he teaches his granddaughter to listen—to hear both the sounds and the silences, and so to learn her place in Creation. Most importantly, he teaches her about treaties—the bonds of reciprocity and renewal that endure for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow.
Accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Luke Swinson and an author’s note at the end, Aimée Craft affirms the importance of understanding an Indigenous perspective on treaties in this evocative book that is essential for readers of all ages. (Publisher)

With authority and insight, Truth Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good's personal experience and knowledge
From racism, broke treaties, and cultural pillaging to the value of Indigenous lives and the importance of Indigenous literature, this collection reveals facts about Indigenous life in Canada that are both devastating and enlightening. Truth Telling also explores the myths underlying Canadian history and the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin modern social institutions in Canada.
Passionate and uncompromising, Michelle Good affirms that meaningful and substantive reconciliation hinges on recognition of Indigenous self-determination, the return of lands, and a just redistribution of the wealth that has been taken from those lands without regard for Indigenous Peoples.
Truth Telling is essential reading for those looking to acknowledge the past and understand the way forward. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

2025 Canada Reads Finalist

From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community, Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social and economic legacies of colonialism.
As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual violence, and in her teen years became an alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby took her children and, fleeing an abusive marriage, moved to Thunder Bay. Despite the abuse, racism, and indifference she often found there, Chacaby marshalled the strength and supports to help herself and others.
Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety, trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor, raised her children and fostered many others, learned to live with visual impairment, and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay.
Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, and humour. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people. (Publisher)

A wildly imaginative and compulsively readable epic of adventure, history, Americana, feminism, and magic, by the supremely gifted author of Empire of Wild.
Métis millennial Lucky St. James is bored. She lives with her cantankerous grandmother, Stella, in a tiny Toronto apartment and has been waiting for something to happen--something different, something more. Then, one night, a strange and irresistible impulse seizes Lucky. She burrows into an old passageway and finds a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a long-nosed witch and the word SALEM.
Lucky has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches, who have anxiously awaited her discovery.
Enter VenCo, a front company fueled by dark money. VenCo's witches hide in plain sight wherever women gather: Tupperware parties, Mommy and Me classes, suburban book clubs. Since colonial times, they have anticipated the moment the seven spoons--scattered by the martyrs of Salem--will come together to ignite a new era, returning women to their rightful power. But as the spoon falls into place, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch hunter as old as witchcraft itself, has VenCo in his sights.
To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where a final reckoning will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning...or be forced underground forever. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Halfling Saga, Book 3

"It seems fate has dealt me the same hand again. I know how to play it."
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. Keera spends her days drinking and her nights avoiding the strange dreams that have haunted her since she returned from the capital.
Keera's family in Myrelinth won't let her go without a fight. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera's ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion...
A Vicious Games is the pivotal third installment in the Halfling Saga that will upend everything Keera thought she knew about her enemies . . . and her allies. (Back Cover)

The bestselling author of The Berry Pickers returns with Waiting for the Long Night Moon, new fiction that explores the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers to the forced removal of Indigenous children to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.
In this intimate collection, Amanda Peters, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal,
melds traditional storytelling with beautiful prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. A nervous child dances in her first Mawi'omi. And in the Indigenous Voices Award–winning title story, a man living alone in the woods is visited by a doe who conjures memories of his sister.
At times sad, at times disturbing, but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most important, there is power. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison-castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There--warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts--asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange's monumental gifts. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.
In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.
Sometimes, the truth shouldn't stay buried. (Publisher)

Judge, senator, and activist. Father, grandfather, and friend. This is Murray Sinclair’s story—and the story of a nation—in his own words, an oral history that forgoes the trappings of the traditionally written memoir to center Indigenous ways of knowledge and storytelling. As Canada moves forward into the future of Reconciliation, one of its greatest leaders guides us to ask the most important and difficult question we can ask of ourselves: Who are we?
For decades, Senator Sinclair has fearlessly educated Canadians about the painful truths of our history. He was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba, and only the second Indigenous judge in Canadian history. He was the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and remains one of the foremost voices on Reconciliation. And now, for the first time, he shares his full story—and his full vision for our nation—with readers across Canada and beyond.
Drawing on Senator Sinclair’s perspectives regarding Indigenous identity, human rights, and justice, Who We Are examines the roles of history, resistance, and resilience in the pursuit of finding a path forward, one that heals the damaged relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. In doing so, it reveals Senator Sinclair’s life in a new and direct way, exploring how all of these unique experiences have shaped him as an Anishinaabe man, father, and grandfather.
Structured around the four questions that have long shaped Senator Sinclair’s thinking and worldview—Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?—Who We Are takes readers into the story of his remarkable life as never before, while challenging them to embrace an inclusive vision for our shared future.
The book includes the What We Have Learned report, created by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). (Publisher)