Indigenous Book Club & Discover Indigenous Authors

The thrilling follow-up to the bestselling, award-winning novel The Marrow Thieves, about a dystopian world where the Indigenous people of North America are being hunted for their bone marrow and ability to dream.
Years ago, when plagues and natural disasters killed millions of people, much of the world stopped dreaming. Without dreams, people are haunted, sick, mad, unable to rebuild. The government soon finds that the Indigenous people of North America have retained their dreams, an ability rumored to be housed in the very marrow of their bones. Soon, residential schools pop up—or are re-opened—across the land to bring in the dreamers and harvest their dreams.
This engrossing, action-packed, deftly-drawn novel expands on the world of Cherie Dimaline’s award-winning The Marrow Thieves, and it will haunt readers long after they’ve turned the final page.

Mary Siisip Geniusz has spent more than thirty years working with, living with, and using the Anishinaabe teachings, recipes, and botanical information she shares in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask. Geniusz gained much of the knowledge she writes about from her years as an oshkaabewis, a traditionally trained apprentice, and as friend to the late Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan and a scholar, teacher, and practitioner in the field of native ethnobotany. Keewaydinoquay published little in her lifetime, yet Geniusz has carried on her legacy by making this body of knowledge accessible to a broader audience. Geniusz teaches the ways she was taught--through stories. Sharing the traditional stories she learned at Keewaydinoquay's side as well as stories from other American Indian traditions and her own experiences, Geniusz brings the plants to life with narratives that explain their uses, meaning, and history. Stories such as "Naanabozho and the Squeaky-Voice Plant" place the plants in cultural context and illustrate the belief in plants as cognizant beings. Covering a wide range of plants, from conifers to cattails to medicinal uses of yarrow, mullein, and dandelion, she explains how we can work with those beings to create food, simple medicines, and practical botanical tools. Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask makes this botanical information useful to native and nonnative healers and educators and places it in the context of the Anishinaabe culture that developed the knowledge and practice.

In each episode of this five-season podcast, Métis hosts Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel, both from Alberta, unwind with a bottle of wine and review a sci-fi movie or episode featuring Indigenous peoples, tropes and themes, taking a decolonial point of view.

Indigenous Voices Award winner Cole Pauls returns with a robust collection of stories that celebrate the cultural practices and experiences of Dene and Arctic peoples. Gathering Pauls's comics from magazines, comic festivals and zine making workshops, these comics are his most personal work yet. You'll learn stories about the author's family, racism and identity, Yukon history, winter activities, Southern Tutchone language lessons and cultural practices. Have you ever wanted to learn how to Knuckle Hop? or to acknowledge and respect the Indigenous land you're on? Or how to be an ally to Indigenous people? Well, gather around and hear this Kwandur! (Story!)

"This Haida manga intriguingly blends graphic storytelling with a fine art sensibility... Yahgulanaas communicates via an arresting series of images evoking the traditional visual arts of the Haida people." --Publisher's Weekly The brilliant follow-up to War of Blink and RED: A Haida Manga -- another stunningly inventive retelling of an ancient Haida tale.

2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner--Children's folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee. All cultures have tales of the trickster--a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.

This critique of the art world will have you crying with laughter. In Wendy's Revenge, Scott's titular heroine returns with a fresh set of awkward misadventures and messy nights out. When the book opens, aspiring artist Wendy has decided to move to the west coast to clear her head. She plans on getting some quality time with her collaborator and friend Winona, only to find Winona packing up to leave, having decided to move back in with her mom on the rez. All alone, Wendy endeavours to foster community in Vancouver's bleak art scene. When her hope and optimism are all used up, she packs her bags for an artist residency in Japan. Wendy then gallery hops and parties around the globe until she stumbles upon the opportunity to unite with former foe Paloma. Together they enact revenge on VVURST, the German publication that once tore her performance art to shreds. Young artists struggle with mental health issues, they get wasted and hook up with men with gross piercings, and they're afflicted with an insatiable longing for a stable identity--stability they themselves undermine. Scott's deceptively simple, inky character drawings evoke millennial culture with such Jungian accuracy that you can't help but stare and giggle in equal measure. Praised by The New Yorker, Guardian, Globe and Mail, and with an appearance in the Best American Comics anthology, it's clear why Walter Scott's Wendy comics have taken critics by storm.

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?

Style is not just the clothes on our backs--it is self-expression, representation, and transformation. As a fashion-obsessed Ojibwe teen, Christian Allaire rarely saw anyone that looked like him in the magazines or movies he looked to for inspiration. Now the Fashion and Style Writer for Vogue, he is working to change that--because clothes are never just clothes. Men's heels are a statement of pride in the face of LGTBQ+ discrimination, while ribbon shirts honor Indigenous ancestors and keep culture alive. Allaire takes the reader through boldly designed chapters to discuss additional topics like cosplay, make up, hijabs, and hair, probing the connections between fashion and history, culture, politics, and social justice.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A bold, provocative collection of essays exploring the historical and contemporary Indigenous experience in Canada. With authority and insight, Truth Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good's personal experience and knowledge. From racism, broken 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 demonstrates 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.

Mary Siisip Geniusz has spent more than thirty years working with, living with, and using the Anishinaabe teachings, recipes, and botanical information she shares in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask. Geniusz gained much of the knowledge she writes about from her years as an oshkaabewis, a traditionally trained apprentice, and as friend to the late Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan and a scholar, teacher, and practitioner in the field of native ethnobotany. Keewaydinoquay published little in her lifetime, yet Geniusz has carried on her legacy by making this body of knowledge accessible to a broader audience. Geniusz teaches the ways she was taught--through stories. Sharing the traditional stories she learned at Keewaydinoquay's side as well as stories from other American Indian traditions and her own experiences, Geniusz brings the plants to life with narratives that explain their uses, meaning, and history. Stories such as "Naanabozho and the Squeaky-Voice Plant" place the plants in cultural context and illustrate the belief in plants as cognizant beings. Covering a wide range of plants, from conifers to cattails to medicinal uses of yarrow, mullein, and dandelion, she explains how we can work with those beings to create food, simple medicines, and practical botanical tools. Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask makes this botanical information useful to native and nonnative healers and educators and places it in the context of the Anishinaabe culture that developed the knowledge and practice.

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 in this brilliantly original debut novel.

This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.

The thrilling follow-up to the bestselling, award-winning novel The Marrow Thieves, about a dystopian world where the Indigenous people of North America are being hunted for their bone marrow and ability to dream.
Years ago, when plagues and natural disasters killed millions of people, much of the world stopped dreaming. Without dreams, people are haunted, sick, mad, unable to rebuild. The government soon finds that the Indigenous people of North America have retained their dreams, an ability rumored to be housed in the very marrow of their bones. Soon, residential schools pop up—or are re-opened—across the land to bring in the dreamers and harvest their dreams.
This engrossing, action-packed, deftly-drawn novel expands on the world of Cherie Dimaline’s award-winning The Marrow Thieves, and it will haunt readers long after they’ve turned the final page.

"From the bestselling author of The Break comes a staggering intergenerational saga that explores how connected we are, even when we are no longer together—even when we’re forced apart. Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly. As Cedar floats between foster homes, and eventually goes to live with her estranged father, she grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and sister, Phoenix. From a youth detention centre, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she’ll never get to raise, and finds herself trying to—or wondering if she even should—forgive herself for all the harm she’s caused. Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the very idea of being reunited with her daughters and strives to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother, Margaret. These are the Strangers, each of them haunt ed in their own way by the death of Elsie’s youngest daughter, Sparrow, a sweet, boisterous 8-year-old who died suddenly of pneumonia, leaving the family reeling from the weight of her loss. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that dares them to succeed, but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, and a severe ignorance that surrounds them and confines their every move, they urge each other to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they will ever emerge on the other side. A breathtaking companion to her bestselling debut The Break, Vermette’s The Strangers brings readers into the crushing and dynamic world of the Stranger family, the shared grief in their past, and the light that beckons from the horizon. This is a searing exploration of race, class, intergenerational trauma, and matrilineal bonds that—despite everything—refuse to be broken."

Finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Winner of the 2022 Indigenous Voices Awards' Published Prose in English Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award Longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2022 Longlisted for First Nations Community Reads 2022 An Indigo Top 100 Book of 2021 An Indigo Top 10 Best Canadian Fiction Book of 2021 **** "What a welcome debut. Young Eddie Toma's passage through the truly ugly parts of this world is met, like an antidote, or perhaps a compensation, by his remarkable awareness of its beauty. This is a writer who understands youth, and how to tell a story." --Gil Adamson, winner of the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Ridgerunner Brian Isaac's powerful debut novel All the Quiet Places is the coming-of-age story of Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy, told through the young narrator's wide-eyed observations of the world around him. It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. The boys learn from Ray's funny and dark stories. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely. Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. Grace is determined to have him learn the ways of the white world by sending him to school in the small community of Falkland. On Eddie"s first day of school, as he crosses the reserve boundary at the Salmon River bridge, he leaves behind his world. Grace challenges the Indian Agent and writes futile letters to Ottawa to protest the sparse resources in their community. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship. In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure--he finds a job, and his long-time crush on his white neighbour Eva is finally reciprocated. But every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him. The cumulative effects of guilt, grief, and despair threaten everything Eddie has ever known or loved. All the Quiet Places is the story of what can happen when every adult in a person's life has been affected by colonialism; it tells of the acute separation from culture that can occur even at home in a loved familiar landscape. Its narrative power relies on the unguarded, unsentimental witness provided by Eddie.

Think Indigenous is a podcast that highlights its yearly conference keynotes: "Red Talk" presentations sharing best practices, innovation and delivery models of Indigenous education.

Kīwew is a five-part podcast in which Governor General award-winning author David A. Robertson dives into his family's history and mysteries as he discovers and connects with his Cree identity.

In each episode of this five-season podcast, Métis hosts Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel, both from Alberta, unwind with a bottle of wine and review a sci-fi movie or episode featuring Indigenous peoples, tropes and themes, taking a decolonial point of view.

From the hosts: Our podcast began as part of a graduate course called Decolonization, Settler Colonialism and Antiblackness taught by Eve Tuck at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at The University of Toronto.
The intention of the course, and the podcast, is to examine settler colonialism and antiblackness as entwined historical and contemporary social structures. The podcast appraises lived consequences for Indigenous peoples, Black peoples, European settlers, and other arrivals. It considers theories of decolonization and abolition within settler colonial contexts.
The podcast goes right to some of the most compelling discussions in Indigenous studies and in Black studies regarding the mutual implications of Indigeneity and Blackness on “selfsame” land (Tuck, Guess, & Sultan, 2014).
It is rare to have these conversations, so we must go slowly, go generously, go respectfully to the work.
The creation of our podcast was made possible through the mentoring of Chelsea Vowel, co-host of the podcast MÉTIS IN SPACE. Chelsea made us a mini-series of podcasts on podcasting, and helped us to think through directions the podcast might take.

Indigenous stories have been twisted by centuries of colonization. Host Kaniehti:io Horn brings us together to decolonize our minds– one word, one concept, one story at a time.

This animated documentary follows the journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. She witnesses moments in her family's history and strengthens her connection to her Metis, Cree and Anishnaabe ancestors.
This is a personal story told through the eyes of director and writer Amanda Strong. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies.
Four Faces of the Moon contains no English language, relying on sound, image and Indigenous voice to tell the story. This multi-layered approach to storytelling may leave you with more questions than answers: it is an invitation to look into your own understanding of history, legacy and the importance in knowing who you are and where you’re from.