en-US Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:59:29 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 212421053 With humour, warmth and heartbreaking honesty, award-winning author David A. Robertson explores the struggles and small victories of living with chronic anxiety and depression, and shares his hard-earned wisdom in the hope of making other people’s mental health journeys a little less lonely

From the outside, David A. Robertson looks as if he has it all together—a loving family, a successful career as an author, and a platform to promote Indigenous perspectives, cultures and concerns. But what we see on the outside rarely reveals what is happening inside. Robertson lives with “little monsters��: chronic, debilitating health anxiety and panic attacks accompanied, at times, by depression. During the worst periods, he finds getting out of bed to walk down the hall an insurmountable task. During the better times, he wrestles with the compulsion to scan his body for that sure sign of a dire health crisis.

In All the Little Monsters, Robertson reveals what it’s like to live inside his mind and his body and describes the toll his mental health challenges have taken on him and his family, and how he has learned to put one foot in front of the other as well as to get back up when he stumbles. He also writes about the tools that have helped him carry on, including community, therapy, medication and the simple question he asks himself on repeat: what if everything will be okay?

In candidly sharing his personal story and showing that he can be well even if he can’t be “cured,�� Robertson hopes to help others on their own mental health journeys.]]> 272 David Alexander Robertson 1443472409 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs So good!! 4.25 2025
author: David Alexander Robertson
name: Tina
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
So good!!
]]> 197510738 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.]]> 199 Billy-Ray Belcourt 0735242046 Tina 5
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!]]> 4.48 2024
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Tina
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: 2024-books, canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
My most anticipated book of 2024 was COEXISTENCE by Billy-Ray Belcourt since I loved A Minor Chorus so much I read it five times. I was so lucky to receive this galley from my friend Cameron and I just read it for the second time because it’s so moving. This is one of my fave books! I’m in awe of how beautiful this writing is where each sentence is tender. I loved the themes of family, motherhood, love, grief, men in love and Queer Cree joy. I loved all ten stories and this book made me cry more than once. I love the poetic use of language and how each story is emotional in its own way. I’m a proud member of the BRB fan club as commemorated by this bracelet that I made.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!
]]> 58262411 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 British Columbia's 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 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.]]> 288 Brian Thomas Isaac 1990071031 Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs .
ALL THE QUIET PLACES by Brian Thomas Isaac is an amazing debut! It’s about Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy and his coming of age story. Eddie, 6 years old in 1956, lives on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve with his mother, Grace, and little brother, Lewis, and grows up dealing with grief, the return of his father and the affects of colonialism.
.
I loved the setting of this book as it’s so close to home. The narrative voice of Eddie felt very raw and to the point. I loved the full arc of his story from when he was a little boy to his teens. So much happens in his life that is really heartbreaking and makes this quite an emotional read. I was hoping for the best for Eddie and his family throughout the whole book. This is a novel that makes me curious to learn which parts are drawn from the author’s own experiences and which parts are purely fiction. Brian Thomas Isaac was born in 1950 on the Okanagan Indian Reserve so his writing of that time and place felt extremely real. At the end of this book I felt like I couldn’t take much more sadness but I really recommend this book!
.
Thank you to Touchwood for my gifted review copy!]]> 3.84 2021
author: Brian Thomas Isaac
name: Tina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/09
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
You know I love Canadian Literature so I was really excited to read this own voices novel that was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads this year!
.
ALL THE QUIET PLACES by Brian Thomas Isaac is an amazing debut! It’s about Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy and his coming of age story. Eddie, 6 years old in 1956, lives on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve with his mother, Grace, and little brother, Lewis, and grows up dealing with grief, the return of his father and the affects of colonialism.
.
I loved the setting of this book as it’s so close to home. The narrative voice of Eddie felt very raw and to the point. I loved the full arc of his story from when he was a little boy to his teens. So much happens in his life that is really heartbreaking and makes this quite an emotional read. I was hoping for the best for Eddie and his family throughout the whole book. This is a novel that makes me curious to learn which parts are drawn from the author’s own experiences and which parts are purely fiction. Brian Thomas Isaac was born in 1950 on the Okanagan Indian Reserve so his writing of that time and place felt extremely real. At the end of this book I felt like I couldn’t take much more sadness but I really recommend this book!
.
Thank you to Touchwood for my gifted review copy!
]]> 61312088 You're the clump of blackened spruce
that lights my gasoline-soaked heart

It's just impossible you won't be back
to quench yourself in my creme-soda
ancestral spirit

Irreverent and transcendent, lyrical and slang, Heating the Outdoors is an endlessly surprising new work from award-winning poet Marie-Andrée Gill.

In these micropoems, writing and love are acts of decolonial resilience. Rooted in Nitassinan, the territory and ancestral home of the Ilnu Nation, they echo the Ilnu oral tradition in her interrogation and reclamation of the language, land, and interpersonal intimacies distorted by imperialism. They navigate Gill's interior landscape—of heartbreak, humor, and, ultimately, unrelenting light—amidst the boreal geography.

Heating the Outdoors describes the yearnings for love, the domestic monotony of post-breakup malaise, and the awkward meeting of exes. As the lines between interior and exterior begin to blur, Gill's poems, here translated by Kristen Renee Miller, become a record of the daily rituals and ancient landscapes that inform her identity not only as a lover, then ex, but also as an Ilnu and Quebecoise woman.]]> 98 Marie-Andree Gill 1771668156 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Bookhug Press for my advance review copy!]]> 3.84 2019
author: Marie-Andree Gill
name: Tina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/05
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I loved HEATING THE OUTDOORS by Marie-Andrée Gill translated from the French by Kristen Renee Miller! I was so enamoured with this poetry that I read it in one sitting and then I read it right away for a second time. I loved the cohesion throughout the book. These poems feature intense longing and the interaction with nature was very evocative. It’s an overall wonderful poetry book! I appreciated the note at the end with the definitions of Ilnu-aimun words. I would love to read more from this author!

Thank you to Bookhug Press for my advance review copy!
]]> 41150694 160 Richard Van Camp 1771622164 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs Loved these stories!! 4.05 2019
author: Richard Van Camp
name: Tina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/03
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Loved these stories!!
]]> 61422008 184 Norma Dunning 1771623403 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs .
I never knew that this system was used in Canada. I found this book to be well researched and shows how this dehumanizing system still has lasting impact. I really liked the inclusion of interviews with Inuit elders who shared their personal experiences with the disc system. This is an important book that taught me about Canadian history. I’m really excited to read Dunning’s fiction now! I have her short story collection Tainna on my unread shelf.
.
Thank you to Douglas & McIntyre and ZG Stories for my gifted review copy!]]> 3.97 2022
author: Norma Dunning
name: Tina
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/15
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
KINAUVIT?: What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for Her Grandmother by Dr. Norma Dunning was very informative! In 2001, Dunning applied to the Nunavut Beneficiary System and was asked the question “what was your disc number?�� even though the then-called Eskimo Identification Tag System has been retired for decades.
.
I never knew that this system was used in Canada. I found this book to be well researched and shows how this dehumanizing system still has lasting impact. I really liked the inclusion of interviews with Inuit elders who shared their personal experiences with the disc system. This is an important book that taught me about Canadian history. I’m really excited to read Dunning’s fiction now! I have her short story collection Tainna on my unread shelf.
.
Thank you to Douglas & McIntyre and ZG Stories for my gifted review copy!
]]> 122004920 224 Michel Jean 1487010907 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to House of Anansi for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.33 2019
author: Michel Jean
name: Tina
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I loved KUKUM by Michel Jean translated from the French by Susan Ouriou! This novel is about Michel Jean’s great-grandmother, Almanda Fortier, who marries an Innu man and chronicles her life over the years. It was interesting to follow her journey from beginning as an outsider in the Innu community and learning their lifestyle of hunting, canoeing and speaking Innu-aimun. I loved how she was forthright in her decisions and had strong family values. Over the years she experiences many hardships such as losing a child and colonial oppression. I found the end quite emotional. I loved the inclusion of pictures and how this heartfelt book is a lasting monument to Michel Jean’s family.

Thank you to House of Anansi for my gifted review copy!
]]> 800780
In this Critical Edition, editor Cheryl Suzack has chosen ten critical essays to accompany one of the best-known texts by Canadian Aboriginal author Beatrice Culloden/Mosionier.]]> 343 Beatrice Culleton 1894110439 Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs .
Thank you to ZG Reads and Highwater Press for my gifted review copy of the new 40th anniversary edition!]]> 4.08 1983
author: Beatrice Culleton
name: Tina
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I’ve read so many amazing Indigenous books this year including now IN SEARCH OF APRIL RAINTREE by Beatrice Mosionier. This novel was originally published in 1983 and follows the lives of two Métis sisters, April and Cheryl, in the 1960s who are taken from their home and put into two different foster homes. Their lives take different paths and there is sadness, tragedy, love and perseverance. I appreciated the content warning at the beginning as there were some very hard parts to read that were very emotional. I enjoyed the straight forward writing and the audiobook narrator Michaela Washburn was really great. I loved the moments when April was very self aware and Cheryl was so smart. This is an important book that is still very relevant to today. The author’s note at the end was very touching. This is a novel that will stay with me.
.
Thank you to ZG Reads and Highwater Press for my gifted review copy of the new 40th anniversary edition!
]]> 60877589
Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

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 the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.]]> 400 Cherie Dimaline 0063054892 Tina 3 indigenous-book-recs Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my gifted review copy!]]> 3.75 2023
author: Cherie Dimaline
name: Tina
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/15
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Full review soon!
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my gifted review copy!
]]> 37514017
"You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel.

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez," and his former life, to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The next seven days are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages--and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.

Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.]]> 224 Joshua Whitehead Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs 3.94 2018
author: Joshua Whitehead
name: Tina
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Audiobook was excellent!! Narrated by the author
]]> 44049371 In this stunning essay-collection-cum-prose-poem-cycle, Belcourt meditates on the difficulty and necessity of finding joy as a queer NDN in a country that denies that joy all too often. Out of the 'ruins of the museum of political depression' springs a 'tomorrow free of the rhetorical trickery of colonizers everywhere.' Happiness, this beautiful book says, is the ultimate act of resistance. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine
The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.]]> 192 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1937512940 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs 4.22 2020
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Tina
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/02
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
SO GOOD!! Narration by the author was excellent!
]]> 60020816 96 Tawahum Bige 0889714169 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs .
Tawahum Bige is a Two Spirit Nonbinary, Łutselkʼe Dene, Plains Cree poet and spoken word artist from unceded Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-waututh Territory (Vancouver).
.
Love the stunning cover art by Kwantlen First Nation multi-talented mixed media artist Brandon Gabriel- Kwelexwecten.
.
Thank you to Nightwood Editions and Harbour Publishing for my gifted review copy!
.]]> 4.22
author: Tawahum Bige
name: Tina
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/03
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
CUT TO FORTRESS: Poems by Tawahum Bige is a five star read for me! I loved these poems! This extraordinary debut collection explores grief, relationships, intergenerational trauma and colonialism. I enjoyed how several different forms were used. I loved the honesty of discussing Indigenous diaspora and family conflicts. I also loved all the references to spaces we’ve both occupied such as downtown Vancouver and Nanaimo and Commercial-Broadway SkyTrain stations. Reading these poems made me reflect on how our upbringing shapes us and how we connect to the land. I really enjoyed every single poem and my faves are Toy Soldiers, He Builds Himself a Computer, Dragging Dusk and Tawahum. I’m so glad to have read this book and so eager to read more from Tawahum in the future!
.
Tawahum Bige is a Two Spirit Nonbinary, Łutselkʼe Dene, Plains Cree poet and spoken word artist from unceded Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-waututh Territory (Vancouver).
.
Love the stunning cover art by Kwantlen First Nation multi-talented mixed media artist Brandon Gabriel- Kwelexwecten.
.
Thank you to Nightwood Editions and Harbour Publishing for my gifted review copy!
.
]]> 58796684
Whitemud Walking is about the land Matthew Weigel was born on and the institutions that occupy that land. It is about the interrelatedness of his own story with that of the colonial history of Canada, which considers the numbered treaties of the North-West to be historical and completed events. But they are eternal agreements that entail complex reciprocity and obligations. The state and archival institutions work together to sequester documents and knowledge in ways that resonate violently in people’s lives, including the dispossession and extinguishment of Indigenous title to land.

Using photos, documents, and recordings that are about or involve his ancestors, but are kept in archives, Weigel examines the consequences of this erasure and sequestration. Memories cling to documents and sometimes this palimpsest can be read, other times the margins must be centered to gain a fuller picture. Whitemud Walking is a genre-bending work of visual and lyric poetry, non-fiction prose, photography, and digital art and design.]]> 144 Matthew James Weigel 155245441X Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.42 2022
author: Matthew James Weigel
name: Tina
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/24
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
So so good! Loved these poems!

Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!
]]> 45015172 192 Richard Wagamese 1771622296 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs 4.52
author: Richard Wagamese
name: Tina
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
So glad I got to read this! Listened to the audiobook and it was really great!
]]> 23317767
Now a retired fisherman and trapper, the author 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 assimilation.��

As Augie 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.

But, even as he looks back on this painful part of his childhood, Merasty’s sense of humour and warm voice shine through.]]> 105 Joseph Auguste Merasty 0889773688 Tina 0 indigenous-book-recs 3.98 2017
author: Joseph Auguste Merasty
name: Tina
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:

]]> 61359237 Shapeshifters, Délani Valin explores the cost of finding the perfect mask. Through a lens of urban Métis experience and neurodivergence, Valin takes on a series of personas as an act of empathy as resistance. Some personas are capitalist mascots like the Starbucks siren, Barbie and the Michelin Man, who confide the hopes and frustrations that lay hidden behind their relentless public enthusiasm. Others include psychiatric diagnoses like hypochondria, autism and depression, and unlikely archetypes such as a woman who becomes a land mass by ending the quest to shrink herself. In more confessional poems, the pressure to find relief from otherness often leads to magical thinking: portals, flight, telepathy and incantations all become metaphors for survival. Shapeshifters maps ways in which an individual can attempt to fit into a world that is inhospitable to them, and makes a case to shift the shape of that world.]]> 96 Delani Valin 0889714282 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.62 2022
author: Delani Valin
name: Tina
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/14
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Shapeshifters is full of fun references like Starbucks, Barbie and the Michelin Man and that’s only in the first three poems! This debut delves into the surreal, Vancouver life, and panic attacks. I loved this book and the cool cover by angyen.design and my fave poems are The Shapeshifter, No Buffalos, and Magic Lessons. If you’re in Vancouver she will be reading at Massy Arts Society on January 8 for A Métis Poet’s Kitchen Party.

Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!
]]> 61359240 The Big Melt is a debut poetry collection rooted in nehiyaw thought and urban millennial life events. It examines what it means to repair kinship, contend with fraught history, go home and contemplate prairie ndn utopia in the era of late capitalism and climate change. Part memoir, part research project, this collection draws on Riddle's experience working in Indigenous governance and her affection for confessional poetry in crafting feminist works that are firmly rooted in place. This book refuses a linear understanding of time in its focus on women in the author's family, some who have passed and others who are yet to come. The Big Melt is about inheriting a Treaty relationship just as much as it is about breakups, demonstrating that governance is just as much about our interpersonal relationships as it is law and policy. How does one live one's life in a way that honours inherited responsibilities, a deep love for humour and a commitment to always learning about the tension between a culture that deeply values collectivity and the autonomy of the individual? Perhaps we find these answers in the examination of ourselves, the lands we are from and the relationships we hold.]]> 112 Emily Riddle 0889714363 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.59 2023
author: Emily Riddle
name: Tina
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/22
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Stunning!!! The Big Melt by Emily Riddle is full of fun references like tinder, twitter, Miley Cyrus and Vancouver. This debut collection explores her relationship with the land and ancestral ties. I loved all the poems and my faves are Audacious, Next Time When It’s-30°C Outside, I Hope You Have Someone With Thick Thighs to Cuddle and They:, and kikway itwe “joy��. I loved her virtual reading at the Real Vancouver writers�� series event.

Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!
]]> 61359238 and they fill the room The Punishment is the latest addition to the oeuvre of prolific Kwantlen writer Joseph Dandurand, whose stunning previous collection, The East Side of It All , was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. In The Punishment , Joseph Dandurand's now-familiar storyteller's voice wrangles trauma, grief, forgiveness and love. His poems illustrate the poet's solitary existence. With scenes of residential school, the psych ward, the streets and the river, Dandurand reveals an arduous one poet's need to both understand his life and find ways to escape it. Through poetry, he shares with us all his lovers. He shares the streets. He shares what he the great eagles and small birds; his culture and teachings; the East Side; self-pity; the deception of love; the deception of hate; sasquatches; spirits; and his people, the Kwantlen. At root, The Punishment is about survival. Dandurand's poems will show you disease. They'll show you cedar. They'll show you music. They'll show you shadows. They'll show you forgiveness, and they'll show you punishment.]]> 144 Joseph Dandurand 0889714320 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!]]> 3.82
author: Joseph Dandurand
name: Tina
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
The Punishment by Joseph Dandurand is a very emotional book that shares his trauma, grief and forgiveness. These poems reflect on residential school, love, loss and poetry itself. I enjoyed the whole book and my fave poems are The Punishment, We Came from the Sky, Fish Stories, and The Writing Life. I definitely want to read his first book The East Side of It All which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. His reading from that book at the Word Vancouver Poetry in Transit event was great.

Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!
]]> 60782874 A moving and deeply personal excavation of Indigenous beauty and passion in a suffering world

The novel Jonny Appleseed established Joshua Whitehead as one of the most exciting and important new literary voices on Turtle Island, winning both a Lambda Literary Award and Canada Reads 2021. In Making Love with the Land, his first nonfiction book, Whitehead explores the relationships between body, language, and land through creative essay, memoir, and confession.

In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Deeply rooted within, he reaches across the anguish to create a new form of storytelling he calls “biostory”—beyond genre, and entirely sovereign. Through this narrative perspective, Making Love with the Land recasts mental health struggles and our complex emotional landscapes from a nefarious parasite on his (and our) well-being to kin, even a relation, no matter what difficulties they present to us. Whitehead ruminates on loss and pain without shame or ridicule but rather highlights waypoints for personal transformation. Written in the aftermath of heartbreak, before and during the pandemic, Making Love with the Land illuminates this present moment in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are rediscovering old ways and creating new ones about connection with and responsibility toward each other and the land.

Intellectually audacious and emotionally compelling, Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly—even joyfully—maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial.]]> 232 Joshua Whitehead 1517914477 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs 4.07 2022
author: Joshua Whitehead
name: Tina
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/30
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:

]]> 39082248
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.]]> 213 Waubgeshig Rice 1770414002 Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs Very excited for the sequel!! 3.83 2018
author: Waubgeshig Rice
name: Tina
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/03
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Very excited for the sequel!!
]]> 34381499 The Faerie Queene, Joshua Whitehead unravels the coded "I" to trace the formation of a colonized self and reclaim representations of Indigenous texts.

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit member of the Peguis First Nation.]]> 120 Joshua Whitehead 1772011878 Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs So good!! 4.30 2017
author: Joshua Whitehead
name: Tina
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
So good!!
]]> 43352082 112 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1487005776 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs LOVED!! 4.45 2019
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Tina
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/21
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
LOVED!!
]]> 62621953 A tender, eclectic reflection from an Indigenous author on his life, work, and queer identity.

Evolving from a conversation between author Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and traveling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. Indigiqueerness is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres.]]> 95 Joshua Whitehead 177199391X Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs Thank you to ZG Stories and AU Press for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.26 2023
author: Joshua Whitehead
name: Tina
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/02
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Great format! Loved it! Full review soon!
Thank you to ZG Stories and AU Press for my gifted review copy!
]]> 64995213 An unflinching reimagining of Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing for young adults

Written specifically for young adults, reluctant readers, and literacy learners, Killing the Wittigo explains the traumatic effects of colonization on Indigenous people and communities and how trauma alters an individual’s brain, body, and behavior. It explores how learned patterns of behavior �� the ways people adapt to trauma to survive �� are passed down within family systems, thereby affecting the functioning of entire communities. The book foregrounds Indigenous resilience through song lyrics and as-told-to stories by young people who have started their own journeys of decolonization, healing, and change. It also details the transformative work being done in urban and on-reserve communities through community-led projects and Indigenous-run institutions and community agencies. These stories offer concrete examples of the ways in which Indigenous peoples and communities are capable of healing in small and big ways �� and they challenge readers to consider what the dominant society must do to create systemic change. Full of bold graphics and illustration, Killing the Wittigo is a much-needed resource for Indigenous kids and the people who love them and work with them.]]> 160 Suzanne Methot 1770417249 Tina 0 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to ECW Press for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.36
author: Suzanne Methot
name: Tina
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/18
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
My last nonfiction read was KILLING THE WITTIGO: Indigenous Culture-Based Approaches to Waking Up, Taking Action, and Doing the Work of Healing by Suzanne Methot. I’m not the intended audience for this book but I still learned from it. This book is for young Indigenous people and those who work in the helping professions. I really appreciated the care that is evident with a disclaimer at the beginning along with a welcoming and flashback protocol for when you’re feeling overwhelmed. There are some hard topics that are prefaced with trigger warnings. I liked how the writing and layout appeals to younger readers with bold graphics, straightforward language and personal anecdotes from a couple young Indigenous people. I read this book quite slowly because of the heavy subject matter. There are additional resources at the end. I’m glad to have this book in my collection so that I can refer back to it. I would love to read some own voices reviews too.

Thank you to ECW Press for my gifted review copy!
]]> 60198143
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.]]> 215 Michelle Good 1443467812 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs Very important, a must read! 4.42 2023
author: Michelle Good
name: Tina
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Very important, a must read!
]]> 122825075 the development of my molars
the hunger the teeth grew
has been with me since childhood
I can’t escape the mouths of others]]> 96 Brandi Bird 1487011822 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs Amazing poems!! 4.69
author: Brandi Bird
name: Tina
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/11
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Amazing poems!!
]]> 86122690 112 Conor Kerr 0889714460 Tina 4 Great poems!! 4.38
author: Conor Kerr
name: Tina
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/12
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indie-2024, canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
Great poems!!
]]> 60836044
A beautiful and moving collection of poems and stories from the author of the #1 bestselling memoir From the Ashes .

Fans of Jesse Thistle’s extraordinary debut From the Ashes have already had the pleasure of reading his poetry, which is sprinkled throughout this bestselling memoir. In Scars and Stars , he digs deeper into the poetic form, which is especially close to his heart.
��
Charting his own history, the stories of people from his past, the burning intensity of new and unexpected love, the complex legacies of family and community, and the beauty of parenthood, this collection is a profound mediation that expands his engagement with the ideas and experiences that have shaped his body of work thus far.
��
Throughout the collection, prose pieces complement the poems, and to bring readers into Jesse’s life with greater intimacy than ever before. The result is an unforgettable furthering of his singular story, one that is sure to delight his many readers, but also serve as a perfect entry point for those new to the work of one of our most thrilling and honest writers.]]> 184 Jesse Thistle 0771003501 Tina 0 indigenous-book-recs 4.15 2022
author: Jesse Thistle
name: Tina
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:

]]> 152249852 320 Darrel J. McLeod 1771623624 Tina 4
Thank you to Douglas & McIntyre for my gifted review copy!]]> 3.48
author: Darrel J. McLeod
name: Tina
average rating: 3.48
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indie-2024, canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
I really enjoyed reading A SEASON IN CHEZGH’UN by Darrel J. McLeod! I was so excited to read this debut novel since I loved his memoir. I absolutely loved the setting in this novel! It’s set in a remote northern Dekelh community and Vancouver. The main character, James, goes to Granville Island so I took this book on my walk to Granville Island one day. I read this novel earlier this year and I loved how the seasons changed as I was reading. I really enjoyed the complexity of the characters and the strength and tenderness of the writing. I can’t wait to read more of McLeod’s fiction!

Thank you to Douglas & McIntyre for my gifted review copy!
]]> 195960466 From one of the country’s most celebrated new writers, a blistering collection of short fiction that is bracingly relevant, playfully irreverent, and absolutely unforgettable.

There’s a hole in the ozone layer. Are teenage girls to blame?��

Floods and wildfires, toxic culture, billionaires in outer space, or a purse-related disaster while on mushrooms—in today’s hellscape world, there’s no shortage of things to worry about. Last Woman, the new collection of short fiction by award-winning author Carleigh Baker, wants you to know that you’re not alone. In these 13 brilliant new stories, Baker and her perfectly-drawn characters are here for you—in fact, they’re just as worried and weirded-out as everyone else.
A woman’s dream of poetic solitude turns out to be a recipe for loneliness. A retiree is convinced that his silence is the only thing that will prevent a deadly sinkhole. An emerging academic wakes up and chooses institutional violence. A young woman finds sisterhood in a strange fertility ritual, and an enigmatic empath is on a cleanse. Baker’s characters are both wildly misguided and a product of the misguided times in which we live.��Through them we see our world askew and skewered—and, perhaps, we can begin to see it anew.

Carleigh Baker’s signature style is irreverent, but her heart is true—these stories delve into fear for the future, intergenerational misunderstandings, and the complexities of belonging with sharp wit and boundless empathy.��With equal parts compassion and critique, she brings her clear-eyed attention to bear on our world, and the results are hilarious, heartbreaking, and startling in their freshness.]]> 207 Carleigh Baker 077100415X Tina 5
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada via NetGalley for my ARC!]]> 3.85
author: Carleigh Baker
name: Tina
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
I loved these stories!! LAST WOMAN by Carleigh Baker is a stunning short story collection! I was so eager to read this since I love CanLit and short stories. Of course I loved the mentions of Vancouver and Granville and East Hastings. There’s this stand out line in the story Co-op “It’s hard to live in Vancouver.�� which is so true! I really enjoyed all 15 stories. There’s the Billionaires story which is told in 3 parts that’s really fun as it’s set in the future. Baker writes women extremely well as these stories featured such great, compelling female characters. This is one of my favourite collections this year!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada via NetGalley for my ARC!
]]> 195668137 The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism and challenges readers to consider what "Land Back" might really look like.


Meet Isidore “Ezzy�� Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.

For readers drawn to the electric storytelling of Morgan Talty and the taut register of Stephen Graham Jones, Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is at once a gripping, darkly funny caper and a raw reckoning with the wounds that persist across generations.]]> 224 Conor Kerr 0771003587 Tina 4
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada via NetGalley for my ARC!]]> 4.05 2024
author: Conor Kerr
name: Tina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
I was so eager to read Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr because I loved his other two books Avenue of Champions and Old Gods. This is a very sad novel! It’s about two friends, Ezzy and Grey, who capture bison from a national park and then set them loose in downtown Edmonton. I really enjoyed the dual POV and the Canadian setting. I also enjoyed the fast pace of the novel and Ezzy’s Aunt May as a grounding character. I’d be eager to read Kerr’s next book!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada via NetGalley for my ARC!
]]> 196839388
At a crucial and fragile moment in Canada's long history with Indigenous peoples, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance.��Based on years' worth of columns, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of colonialism, the Indian Act, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities.��Sinclair uses the story of Winnipeg to illuminate the reality of Indigenous life all over what is called Canada. This is a book that demands change and celebrates those fighting for it, that reminds us of what must be reconciled and holds accountable those who must do the work. It's a book that reminds us of the power that comes from loving a place, even as that place is violently taken away from you, and the magic of fighting your way back to it.]]> 224 Niigaan Sinclair 0771099185 Tina 5 Loved this book! 4.65 2024
author: Niigaan Sinclair
name: Tina
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
Loved this book!
]]> 123856308 A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: “Are you ready to be un-settled?�� Featuring stories by:

Norris Black �� Amber Blaeser-Wardzala �� Phoenix Boudreau �� Cherie Dimaline �� Carson Faust �� Kelli Jo Ford �� Kate Hart �� Shane Hawk �� Brandon Hobson �� Darcie Little Badger �� Conley Lyons �� Nick Medina �� Tiffany Morris �� Tommy Orange �� Mona Susan Power �� Marcie R. Rendon �� Waubgeshig Rice �� Rebecca Roanhorse �� Andrea L. Rogers �� Morgan Talty �� D.H. Trujillo �� Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. �� Richard Van Camp �� David Heska Wanbli Weiden �� Royce Young Wolf �� Mathilda Zeller

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night 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.]]> 352 Shane Hawk 103900380X Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs So good!! 3.98 2023
author: Shane Hawk
name: Tina
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
So good!!
]]> 219405157 Returning to a favourite Northwest Territories setting, Richard Van Camp brings his exuberant style to a captivating teen novel that blends the supernatural with 1980s-era nostalgia to reflect on friendship, tradition and forgiveness.

For as long as Lawson can remember, his life in a small Northwest Territories town has revolved around “the Treaty�� between the Dogrib and the Chipewyan, set down centuries ago to prevent the return of bloody warfare between the two peoples.

On the Dogrib side, Lawson and his family have done their best to keep the pact alive with the neighbouring Cranes, a family with ancestral ties to a revered Chipewyan war chief. But even as Lawson and his father dutifully tidy the Cranes�� property as an act of respect, their counterparts offer little more than scowls and derision in return, despite the fact that both families are responsible for protecting the treaty.

Worse still, it seems that one of the Cranes�� boys is doing all he can to revive the old Silver, fresh out of jail, has placed himself in the service of a cruel, ghoulish spirit bent on destroying the peace. Now it's up to Isaiah Valentine, a Cree Grass Dancer, Shari Burns, a Metis psychic, and Lawson Sauron, a Dogrib Yabati—or protector—to face what Silver Cranes has called back.

This latest feat of storytelling magic by celebrated author Richard Van Camp blends sharply observed realism and hair-raising horror as it plays out against a 1980s-era backdrop replete with Platinum Blonde songs and episodes of Degrassi Junior High. Unfolding in the fictional town of Fort Simmer—the setting of previous Van Camp stories��Beast delivers a gripping, spirited tale that pits the powers of tradition against the pull of a vengeful past.]]> Richard Van Camp 1771624159 Tina 5
Thank you to the publisher for my copy!]]> 4.15
author: Richard Van Camp
name: Tina
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indie-2024, canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
I loved reading BEAST by Richard Van Camp last month! This YA horror was the perfect October read! I was so excited to read this book since I loved his short story collection Moccasin Square Gardens and it was so lovely that Moccasin Square Gardens is mentioned in this book too. I loved the 1986 setting and all the fun music and movie references such as Mr. Roboto and The Outsiders. The grotesque description of the dead one was just the right amount of horror. I liked how the main character, seventeen year old Lawson, is dealing with so much as a teen; his crush, his grief of losing his mother, his connection to his Dogrib community in the Northwest Territories and upholding the treaty between his band and the Chipewyan. I loved this novel’s focus on storytelling, ancestry and friendships. And it’s so fun that Lawson’s playlists are included!

Thank you to the publisher for my copy!
]]> 60752187
From the #1 bestselling author of 'Indian' in the Cabinet , a groundbreaking and accessible roadmap to advancing true reconciliation across Canada.

There is one question Canadians have asked Jody Wilson-Raybould more than any 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.

The practices are based not only on the historical and con­temporary experience of Indigenous peoples in their relentless efforts to effect transformative change and decolonization, but also on the deep understanding and expertise about what has been effective in the past, what we are doing right, and wrong, today, and what our collective future requires. Fundamental to a shared way of thinking is an understand­ing of the Indigenous experience throughout the story of Canada. In a manner that reflects how work is done in the Big House, True Reconciliation features an “oral�� history of these lands, told through Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from our past and present.

The ultimate and attainable goal of True Reconciliation is to break down the silos we’ve created that prevent meaning­ful change, to be empowered to increasingly act as “inbe­tweeners,�� and to take full advantage of this moment in our history to positively transform the country into a place we can all be proud of.]]> 352 Jody Wilson-Raybould 0771004389 Tina 5
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada Audiobooks via NetGalley for my copy!]]> 4.29 2022
author: Jody Wilson-Raybould
name: Tina
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: canlit-2024, indigenous-book-recs
review:
True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change by Jody Wilson-Raybould has been on my tbr for a couple years now and I’m so glad I finally read it. This is essential reading! I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by the author. I liked the straight forward writing. This book delves into the history of the Indian Act and residential schools and the colonization of Canada. I liked the inclusion of a reading list and this line that “true reconciliation doesn’t happen once a year on a holiday��. I’m eager to read her new book too! I already got a copy!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada Audiobooks via NetGalley for my copy!
]]> 37006925 Governor General’s Award–winning Métis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette’s second collection, river woman, explores her relationship to nature �� its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place in human history.

Award-winning Métis poet and novelist Katherena Vermette’s second book of poetry, river woman, examines and celebrates love as decolonial action. Here love is defined as a force of reclamation and repair in times of trauma, and trauma is understood to exist within all times. The poems are grounded in what feels like an eternal present, documenting moments of clarity that lift the speaker (and reader) out of the illusion of linear experience. This is what we mean when we describe a work of art as being timeless.

Like the river they speak to, these poems return again and again to the same source in search of new ways to reconstruct what has been lost. Vermette suggests that it’s through language and the body �� particularly through language as it lives inside the body �� that a fragmented self might resurface as once again whole. This idea of breaking apart and coming back together is woven throughout the collection as the speaker contemplates the ongoing negotiation between the city, the land, and the water, and as she finds herself falling into trust with the ones she loves.

Vermette honours the river as a woman �� her destructive power and beauty, her endurance, and her stories. These poems sing from a place where “words / transcend ceremony / into everyday�� and “nothing / is inanimate.”]]> 112 Katherena Vermette 1487003463 Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs 4.23 2018
author: Katherena Vermette
name: Tina
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:

]]> 27276875 A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby’s extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby’s story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health 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 abuse by different adults, and by her teen years she was alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counselor; 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 her adopted city, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humor, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.]]> 256 Ma-Nee Chacaby 0887558127 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs 4.23 2016
author: Ma-Nee Chacaby
name: Tina
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:

]]> 55594534 seen, to tell you the worst things about herself in hopes that you’ll still like her by the end.]]> 96 Molly Cross-Blanchard 1770566724 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.42 2021
author: Molly Cross-Blanchard
name: Tina
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/22
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Loved these poems!
Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!
]]> 60024013 Waubgeshig Rice Tina 4 indigenous-book-recs very much enjoyed this!! 4.34 2023
author: Waubgeshig Rice
name: Tina
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
very much enjoyed this!!
]]> 59230846
Set in Edmonton, this story considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive—from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Based on Papaschase and Métis oral histories and lived experience, Conor Kerr’s debut novel will not soon be forgotten.


Prize(s): Short-listed Amazon Canada First Novel Award (2022), Short-listed ReLit Award (Novel) (2022), Winner ReLit Award (Novel) (2022)]]> 220 Conor Kerr 0889714185 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs .
I loved the Canadian setting and how Kerr’s lived experience shines through this story. There is delightful humour in this book as well as some truly sad moments as Daniel has to deal with systemic racism, violence, and surviving in colonial spaces. I especially loved how this novel is written in multiple perspectives so we learn not only about Daniel but also his brother and grandmother. This novel originated as short stories and totally appeals to my love of short fiction, CanLit and discovering new to me authors! So if you’re looking for your next book I highly recommend this one!
.
Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.20 2021
author: Conor Kerr
name: Tina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/19
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
AVENUE OF CHAMPIONS by Conor Kerr is a remarkable debut novel! I loved this book! It’s about Daniel, a young Métis man, as he navigates life in Edmonton, Alberta.
.
I loved the Canadian setting and how Kerr’s lived experience shines through this story. There is delightful humour in this book as well as some truly sad moments as Daniel has to deal with systemic racism, violence, and surviving in colonial spaces. I especially loved how this novel is written in multiple perspectives so we learn not only about Daniel but also his brother and grandmother. This novel originated as short stories and totally appeals to my love of short fiction, CanLit and discovering new to me authors! So if you’re looking for your next book I highly recommend this one!
.
Thank you to Nightwood Editions for my gifted review copy!
]]> 60478009 208 Jónína Kirton 177201379X Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs .
Thank you to Talonbooks for my gifted review copy!]]> 4.62 2022
author: Jónína Kirton
name: Tina
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/10
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I absolutely loved reading STANDING IN A RIVER OF TIME by Jónína Kirton and it made me cry several times! This book blends together poetry and memoir in a powerful and emotional way. I first encountered her writing in Good Mom on Paper and I loved her essay so I was really excited to read this book. I loved it!! I appreciated the note at the beginning that says to take care of yourself while reading this book. Some parts are intense dealing with trauma, loss, grief, addiction, and abuse. I loved how different forms are used in the poems and they flowed effortlessly with the prose. I have too many fave poems in this book to list but a couple are Umbilical and What to Do in an Emergency. I attended the final night of Royal City Lit Poetry in the Park and Jónína’s reading was amazing! It was such a fun evening of poetry. This book was my fave read of last month and one of my faves of this year. I would love to read her first book now too.
.
Thank you to Talonbooks for my gifted review copy!
]]> 75500819 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 impostor. 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 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.]]> 368 Alicia Elliott 0593473086 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!]]> 3.88 2023
author: Alicia Elliott
name: Tina
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I couldn’t put down AND THEN SHE FELL by Alicia Elliott! I loved this book and read it in two days! It’s about a young Indigenous woman, Alice, whose new life with her husband, Steve, and baby daughter, Dawn, away from her Mohawk community isn’t what she thought it would be. I loved the Toronto setting and the beginning when Alice is young mentions Jennifer Lopez, Nelly Furtado and a Razr phone. I loved all the pop culture and makeup references. I loved the storytelling in this book. I loved the chapter titles, including Alice’s writing of the Haudenosaunee creation story and that ending!! The ending made me cry. I felt like I went through so many emotions while reading this book from sadness, shock, joy, horror, amusement and awe. This is a spectacular debut novel and one of my fave books of 2023! During the audience Q&A at Word Vancouver we were asked for a book recommendation and this book was mine!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!
]]> 60881039 *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE*NATIONAL BESTSELLER An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes 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.]]> 192 Billy-Ray Belcourt 0735242003 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Reread this time on audio and crying AGAIN]]> 4.25 2022
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Tina
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
Crying

Reread this time on audio and crying AGAIN
]]> 60839741 In this gripping debut tinged with supernatural horror, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately 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 severed 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 every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and 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 steeped in the same grief that 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 already inside?]]> 259 Jessica Johns 0385548699 Tina 5 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for my advance review copy!]]> 3.91 2023
author: Jessica Johns
name: Tina
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/24
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
I was so excited to read BAD CREE by Jessica Johns since I loved her short story in After Realism and I loved this debut novel too!! Johns is a wonderful storyteller in short story and novel form. This book is about a young Cree woman, Mackenzie, whose dreams bring her back to her rural hometown in Alberta and memories of her sister. This book has so many things that I loved: Vancouver setting, touch of the supernatural, suspense, nonbinary representation, and a flawed main character who has to deal with grief and community connections. I couldn’t put this book down and I found it so evocative and thrilling. I just loved it!

Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for my advance review copy!
]]> 60198133
When a troubled father and his estranged teenage daughter head out onto the land in search of the family trapline, they find their way back to themselves, and to each other

Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Could it be her fault that he seems intent on throwing everything away, including their relationship?

Following a devastating tragedy, Matthew and Holly head out onto the land in search of a long-lost cabin on the family trapline, miles from the Cree community they once called home. But each of them is searching for something more than a place. Matthew hopes to reconnect with the father he has just lost; Holly goes with him because she knows the father she is afraid of losing won’t be able to walk away.

When things go wrong during the journey, they find they have only each other to turn to for support. What happens to father and daughter on the land will test them, and eventually heal them, in ways they never thought possible.]]> 305 David Alexander Robertson Tina 3 indigenous-book-recs
Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for my uncorrected proof!]]> 3.84 2022
author: David Alexander Robertson
name: Tina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/20
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: indigenous-book-recs
review:
THE THEORY OF CROWS by David A. Robertson is an engaging novel about family bonds, healing, loss and reconnecting with the land. Matthew and his teenage daughter, Holly, have to overcome tragedy and personal struggles so they decide to search for their family trapline. I really enjoyed learning about their Cree community, reading stories about their Moshom and the Canadian setting. Once I reached part two I couldn’t put this book down! I liked how this book deals with trauma but I would have appreciated an author’s note at the beginning. Right away within the first 40 pages it’s pretty intense. I liked how this book focused on the father daughter relationship and how the end tied it all together.

Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for my uncorrected proof!
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