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2020., HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Call No: IND Bio R649b Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: David A. Robertson, the son of a Cree father and a white, settler mother, grew up with virtually no knowledge or understanding of his family's Indigenous roots. His father, Dulas, or Don as he became known, had grown up on the trapline in the bush only to be transplanted permanently to a house on reserve in Manitoba, where he was not permitted to speak his language--Swampy Cree--and was forced to learn and speak only English while in day school, unless in secret in the forest with his friends. Robertson's mother, Beverly Eyers, grew up in a small town in Manitoba, a town with no Indigenous families, until Don came to town as a United Church minister and fell in love with her. Robertson's parents made the decision to raise their children, in his words, "separate from his Indigenous identity." He grew up without his father's teachings or knowledge of his life or experiences. All he had left was blood memory, the pieces of who he was engrained in the fabric of his DNA. Pieces that he has spent a lifetime putting together. Black Water is a family memoir of intergenerational trauma and healing, of connection, of story, of how David Robertson's father's life--growing up in Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba, then making the journey from Norway House to Winnipeg--informed the author's own life, and might even have saved it. Facing a story nearly erased by the designs of history, father and son journey together back to the trapline at Black Water, through the past to create a new future.
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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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2022., Adult, Penguin Canada Call No: IND Bio C128h Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano, who wrote his memoir under the mentorship of Lee Maracle, delivers an unforgettable memoir about a family that tries to learn from the mistakes of past generations. It unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity. Caetano is a writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. Originally from Orillia, ON, he now lives in Toronto, ON.
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-- Memoir of resilience.2019., Adult, University of Regina Press Call No: IND Bio K72i Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Regina collection.Summary Note: Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption. With gripping moments of withdrawal, times of spiritual awareness, and historical insights going back to the signing of Treaty 8 by her great-great grandfather, Chief Bigfoot, her journey exposes the legacy of colonialism, while reclaiming her spirit. Helen Knott is a Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw, and mixed Euro-descent woman living in Fort St. John, British Columbia. In 2016 Helen was one of sixteen global change makers featured by the Nobel Women's Initiative for being committed to end gender-based violence. Helen was selected as a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author. This is her first book. Eden Robinson is the award-winning author of Monkey Beach, Son of a Trickster, and other novels. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.
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1989., University of Oklahoma Press Call No: IND Bio J72i Edition: 1st printing, University of Oklahoma Press ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Autobiography of Basil Johnston, a native Ojibway, who was taken from his family at age 10 and placed in a residential school in northern Ontario.
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-- Standing up for our lands, our waters, and our people.2023., Adult, Allen Lane Call No: NEW IND 305.897 G342s Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: It Stops Here is the story of the spiritual, cultural, and political resurgence of a nation taking action to reclaim their lands, waters, law, and food systems in face of colonization. The book recounts the intergenerational struggle of the Tsleil-Waututh to overcome the harms of colonization and the powerful stance they have taken against the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline--a fossil fuel megaproject that would triple the capacity of tar sands bitumen piped to tidewater on their unceded territory and result in a sevenfold increase in oil tankers moving through their waters. .
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2010., Adult, Penguin Group (Canada) Call No: 971.05 B789l Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Extraordinary Canadians.
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2022., Adult, Alfred A. Knopf Canada Call No: NEW IND Bio W592m Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: 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? Here is an intellectually thrilling, emotionally captivating love song--a powerful revelation about the library of stories land and body hold together, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.
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By Batten, Jackc2002., Tundra Books of Northern New York Tundra Books of Northern New York Call No: IND Bio L849b Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryClick here to view Click here to view More...
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2021., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: IND Bio A139n Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: An autobiographical meditation on the complicated legacies that Canada's reservation school system has cast on his grandparents', his parents' and his own generation. Nishga is a personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence. As a Nisga'a writer, Jordan Abel often finds himself in a position where he is asked to explain his relationship to Nisga'a language, Nisga'a community, and Nisga'a cultural knowledge. However, as an intergenerational survivor of residential school--both of his grandparents attended the same residential school in Chilliwack, British Columbia--his relationship to his own Indigenous identity is complicated to say the least. This book explores those complications and is invested in understanding how the colonial violence originating at the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School impacted his grandparents' generation, then his father's generation, and ultimately his own. The project is rooted in a desire to illuminate the realities of intergenerational survivors of residential school, but sheds light on Indigenous experiences that may not seem to be immediately (or inherently) Indigenous.
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-- Northern wild flower.2018., Adult, Roseway Publishing Call No: NEW IND Bio L163n Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: This is the story of how a young northern girl picked herself up out of the rough and polished herself off like the diamond that she is in the land of the midnight sun. Northern Wildflower is the beautifully written and powerful memoir of Catherine Lafferty. With startling honesty and a distinct, occasionally humorous, voice, Lafferty tells her story of being a Dene woman growing up in a small northern Canadian mining town and her struggles with discrimination, poverty, addiction, love and loss. Focusing on the importance of family ties, education, spiritualism, cultural identity, health and happiness, the relentless pursuit of success and the courage to speak the truth, Lafferty's words bring cultural awareness and relativity to Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike, giving insight into the real issues many Indigenous women face.
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-- Raised somewhere else.2018., Adult, Roseway Publishing Call No: IND Bio C267o Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "During the 60s Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households. Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh--Raised Somewhere Else delves into the personal and provocative narrative of Colleen Cardinal's journey growing up in a non-Indigenous household as a 60s Scoop adoptee. Cardinal speaks frankly and intimately about instances of violence and abuse throughout her life, but this book is not a story of tragedy. It is a story of empowerment, reclamation and, ultimately, personal reconciliation. It is a form of Indigenous resistance through truth-telling, a story that informs the narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women, colonial violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system."--Provided by publisher.
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-- Astonishment :2021., Adult, Doubleday Canada Call No: IND Bio H635p Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Capricious, big-hearted, joyful: an epic memoir from one of Canada's most acclaimed Indigenous writers and performers Tomson Highway was born in a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the 11th of 12 children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family who traversed the tundra by dogsled and lived off the land. In Permanent Astonishment, one of the greatest writers of our time animates the magical world of his northern childhood, paying tribute to a way of life that few have experienced and fewer still have chronicled. Growing up in a land of ten thousand lakes and islands, Tomson Highway relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars; sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails; and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far north childhood. But five of Tomson's siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was 6, he and Rene were flown south by float plan to attend a residential school and begin the rest of their education. In 1990 Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: "Don't mourn me, be joyful." Infused with joy and outrageous humour, Permanent Astonishment offers insights, both hilarious and profound, into the Cree experience of culture, conquest and survival.
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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.
