Recommended Books:

Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada.  
-by Chelsea Vowel
20 pages

In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories—Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in
the larger community.

The Other Side of the River: From Church Pew to Sweat Lodge
-by Alf Dumont
272 pages

Alf Dumont walks between the two worlds of Indigenous and settler, traditional spirituality and
Christianity. He shares stories of building bridges between these worlds. Dumont challenges the church to re-examine the theology behind its past decision around residential schools, so that it might live out the words of its apologies. He challenges the country to re-examine its responsibilities and relationships with Indigenous people, through stories, humour, poetry, and insight.

They Called Me Number One
– by Bev Sellers
256 pages

In the first full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, B.C., Xat'sull chief,  Bev Sellars, tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. Sellars spent her childhood in a church-run residential school whose aim it was to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings, forced separation from family and culture, and discipline. She tells of hunger, forced labour, and physical beatings, often with a leather strap, and also of the demand for conformity in
a culturally alien institution where children were confined and denigrated.

Unreconciled: Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance
–by Jesse Wente
198 pages

Jesse Wente remembers the exact moment he realized that he was a certain kind of Indian--a stereotypical cartoon Indian. He was playing softball as a child when the opposing team began to war-whoop when he was at bat. It was just one of many incidents that formed Wente's understanding of what it means to be a modern Indigenous person in a society still overwhelmingly colonial in its attitudes and institutions.

Listening to Indigenous Voices
- by Jesuit Forum/Kairos
112 pages

Canada does not have an “Indigenous” problem. It has a colonization problem, says Associate Professor & Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental
Justice Deborah McGregor, an Anishinaabe from Whitefish River First Nation,
Birch Island, Ontario. Those of us who have benefited from colonization have a
responsibility to address the system that has enriched us by stealing the land
and lives of Indigenous Peoples. The first steps in this process are to listen
deeply to what Indigenous Peoples are saying to us, to open ourselves to be
transformed by their words, and to act based on what they are telling us to
address injustices. Created as 11 separate chapter-workshops, this book
incorporates many Indigenous voices.

Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future
–by Patty Krawec
240 pages
The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home." Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity?

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the teaching of Plants
– by Robin Wall Kimmerer
408 pages

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.

True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force For Change
– by Jodi Wilson-Raybould
352 pages

There is one question Canadians have asked Jody Wilson-Raybould more than any other: What can I do to help advance reconciliation? It is clear that people from all over the country want to take concrete and tangible action that will make real change. We just need to know how to get started. This book provides that next step. For Wilson-Raybould, what individuals and organizations need to do to advance true reconciliation is self-evident, accessible, and achievable. True
Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices—Learn, Understand,
and Act—that can be applied by individuals, communities, organizations, and
governments.

Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape
- by Candace Savage
224 pages

When Savage and her partner buy a house in the romantic little town of Eastend, she has no idea what awaits her. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the  the backroads of the Cypress Hills, the dinosaur skeletons at the T.Rex Discovery Centre, the fossils to be found in the dust-dry hills. She also revels in her encounters with the wild inhabitants of this mysterious land. But as Savage explores further, she uncovers a darker reality—a story of cruelty and survival set in the still-recent past—and finds that she must reassess the story she grew up with as the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of prairie homesteaders, a shocking new version of plains history and an unforgettable portrait of the windswept, shining country of the Cypress Hills, a holy place that helps us remember.
Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics Of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life
– by James Daschuk
386 pages

In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics—the politics of ethnocide—played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream." It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day. 

Valley of the Bird Tail: An Indian Reserve, A White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation
-By Andrew Stobo Sniderman, Douglas Sanderson
384 Pages

Valley of the Birdtail is about how two communities, divided by a beautiful valley,  became separate and unequal—and what it means for the rest of us. In Rossburn, once settled by Ukrainian immigrants who fled poverty and persecution, family income is near the national average and more than a third of adults have graduated from university. In Waywayseecappo, the average family lives below the national poverty line and less than a third of adults have graduated from high school, with many haunted by their time in residential schools. This book follows
multiple generations of two families, one white and one Indigenous, and weaves
their lives into the larger story of Canada. It is a story of villains and heroes, irony and idealism, racism and reconciliation. Valley of the Birdtail has the ambition to change the way we think about our past and show a path to a better future.