Search Results: Returned 14 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 14
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By Knott, Helen2023., Alfred .A. Knopf Canada Call No: NEW IND Bio K72b Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: 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, with her highly anticipated second book, Knott exceeds the highest of expectations with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy. Having lost both her mom and grandma 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 them, but let go of who she thought she was. Woven into the pages are themes that touch on mourning, staying sober through loss, and generational dreaming. Charted with poetic insights, a sprinkle of sass, humour, and heart, crossing the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa Territory in Northeastern British Columbia and the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, this is a journey through pain on the way to becoming.
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-- Augie Merasty2015., Adult, University of Regina Press Call No: IND 371.82 M552e Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Now a retired fisherman and trapper, Merasty was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run schools, where they were subjected to a policy of 'aggressive assimiliation.' As Merasty recounts, these schools did more than attempt to mold children in the ways of white society. They were taught to be ashamed of their native heritage and, as he experienced, often suffered physical and sexual abuse. Even as he looks back on this painful part of his childhood, Merasty's generous and authentic voice shines through."--From publisher.
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-- Life in and after residential school2023., Purich Books Call No: NEW IND Bio G347f Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: My name is Sam George. In spite of everything that happened to me, by the grace of the Creator, I have lived to be an Elder.' The crimes carried out at St. Paul's Indian Residential School in North Vancouver scarred untold numbers of Indigenous children and families across generations. Sam George was one of these children. This candid account follows Sam from his idyllic childhood growing up on the Eslhá7an (Mission) reserve to St. Paul's, where he weathered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. He spent much of his life navigating the effects of this trauma - prison, addiction, and challenging relationships - until he found the strength to face his past. Now an Elder and educator with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, this is Sam's harrowing story, in his own words. An ember of Sam's spirit always burned within him, and even in the darkest of places he retained his humour and dignity. The Fire Still Burns is an unflinching look at the horrors of a childhood in the Indian Residential School system and the long-term effects on survivors. It illustrates the healing power of one's culture and the resilience that allows an individual to rebuild a life and a future.
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2015., Adult, Great Plains Publications Call No: IND Bio F593f Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "This is a story about the fur trade and First Nations, and the development of northern Canada, seen and experienced not only through Leonard Flett's eyes, but also through the eyes of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.The lives of indigenous people in remote areas of northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the 1960s and 1970s are examined in detail. Flett's successful career with both the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company provides an insight into the dying days of the fur trade and the rise of a new retail business tailored to First Nations."--From publisher.
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2018., General, Doubleday Canada Call No: IND Bio M217h Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryView an interview with Terese Mailhot on YouTube. Summary Note: "Guileless and refreshingly honest, Terese Mailhot's debut memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation. A powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father - an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist - who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world. Terese Mailhot graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with an MFA in fiction and is the Saturday Editor at The Rumpus and a columnist for Indian Country Today"--Provided by publisher.
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By Maracle, Lee1996., General, Press Gang Publishers Call No: IND 305.89 M298i Edition: Revised 2nd ed. Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A revised edition of Lee Maracle's visionary book which links teaching of her First Nations heritage with feminism. "I Am Woman represents my personal struggle with womanhood, culture, traditional spiritual beliefs and political sovereignty, written during a time when that struggle was not over. My original intention was to empower Native women to take to heart their own personal struggle for Native feminist being. The changes made in this second edition of the text do not alter my original intention. It remains my attempt to present a Native woman's sociological perspective on the impacts of colonialism on us, as women, and on my self personally."--From the author.
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c2016., Adult, Caitlin Press Call No: 305.4092 R757s Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Josephine Caplin (Jo) was born into a world marred by maternal abandonment, alcoholism and traumatic epileptic seizures. In grade three, she was apprehended by child services and separated from her protective brother and her early caregivers, her father and uncle, who were kind men with drinking problems. Placed into many alienating and lonely foster homes, Jo would not see her family again until she was fourteen. Throughout her life Jo fought symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, abuse by sadistic men and the collective horror of generations of ancestors forced into residential schools, causing many to believe Jo was destined to repeat a hopeless cycle. Yet she did not surrender to others' despairing expectations: against all odds, Jo fought to create her own cycle full of hope and growth. Born of a Métis-Canadian background, author Janet Romain tells the story of her heroic friend and explores the tragic aftermath of Canada's residential schools and the effects of colonization. Jo is a courageous woman who determined her own fate and reclaimed her life.
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c2007., General, M&S Call No: IND Bio B289r Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: This memoir 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. Behind the outrageous stories, larger-than life-characters, and descriptions of the mores of a small village in the heart of Ontario’s cottage country are flashes of insight from the perspective of a child that recall the great classic Who has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell. But why "a different Muskoka?" Because the boy was a half-breed kid. Visits to his mother’s reserve showed him that he was caught between two worlds. His mother’s fight with depression flowed from that dilemma. His father — the book’s main character — was a lovable, white, working class, happy-go-lucky guy who never had any money but who made the best home brew in the village — and his specialty was raisin wine. Like that raisin wine, this unusual book goes down easily and has a kick to it.
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-- Number One :2013., Adult, Talonbooks Call No: IND Bio S467t Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Xat'sull Chief Bev 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. In addition, beginning at the age of Five, Sellars was isolated for two years at Coqualeetza Indian Turberculosis Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia, nearly six hours' drive from home. The trauma of these experiences has reverberated throughout her life. The First full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, BC, Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. 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 for failure to be White and Roman Catholic. St. Joseph's mission is the site of the controversial and well-publicized sex-related offences of Bishop Hubert O'Connor, which took place during Sellars's student days, between 1962 and 1967, when O'Connor was the school principal. In this frank and poignant memoir, Sellars breaks her silence about the institution's lasting effects, and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Bev Sellars is chief of the Xat'sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia"--Provided by publisher.
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[2014]., Adult, Alfred A. Knopf Canada Call No: IND Bio M587u Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In the 1950s, 7-year-old Edmund Metatawabin was separated from his family and placed in one of Canada's worst residential schools. St. Anne's, in north<U+00AD>ern Ontario, is an institution now notorious for the range of punishments that staff and teachers inflicted on students. Even as Metatawabin built the trappings of a successful life--wife, kids, career--he was tormented by horrific memories. Fuelled by alcohol, the trauma from his past caught up with him, and his family and work lives imploded. In seeking healing, Metatawabin travelled to southern Alberta. There he learned from elders, par<U+00AD>ticipated in native cultural training workshops that emphasize the holistic approach to personhood at the heart of Cree culture, and finally faced his alcoholism and PTSD. Metatawabin has since worked tirelessly to expose the wrongdoings of St. Anne's, culminating in a recent court case demanding that the school records be released to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now Metatawabin's mission is to help the next generation of residential school survivors. His story is part of the indigenous resurgence that is happening across Canada and worldwide: after years of oppression, he and others are healing themselves by rediscovering their culture and sharing their knowledge. Coming full circle, Metatawabin's haunting and brave narrative offers profound lessons on the impor<U+00AD>tance of bearing witness, and the ability to become whole once again."--From publisher.
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2021., Adult, Baraka Books Call No: NEW IND Bio S719w Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: It is 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and looking for a summer job. He dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But to his dismay he is sent to an equipment depot somewhere between Val-d'Or and Chibougamau in Northern Quebec. His disappointment vanishes when he learns that the depot is located near a Cree community and that he will have two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, and his work will involve canoeing through the lakes and rivers of the region. On each encounter with the Crees, on each of the long trips across water or through the bush, Jean-Yves expects to see a new world but realizes he's meeting a different civilization, as different from his own as Chinese civilization. Yet he knows nothing about it. Nor does he understand the nature surrounding them as do his Cree guides, and friends. Jean-Yves Soucy wrote this story because Romeo Saganash, son of William, insisted: "You have to write that, Jean-Yves. About your relationship with my father and the others, how you saw the village. You got to see the end of an era." He unfortunately passed away before completing it. However, in his poignant Afterword, Romeo Saganash provides a finishing touch to this story of an unlikely meeting of two worlds.
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2016., Adult, Hamish Hamilton Call No: Fic Boy Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School. He realizes too late just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.
