Merle Massie & Rob Innes nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards!

Two Saskatoon-area UMP authors, Merle Massie and Rob Innes, have today been nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards.

Merle’s book, Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan, has been nominated for a Scholarly Writing Award.

She was raised on a ‘stumpranch’ near Paddockwood, north of Prince Albert, but now farms in Biggar, SK with her family. She recently completed her PhD in History at the University of Saskatchewan and specializes in local, rural, and environmental history.

Merle’s book is a prairie history about life at the edge of the forest and focuses on the land in and around Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

Rob’s book, Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation has been shortlisted for the Scholarly Writing Award and the Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award.

Rob’s first book has been called an entirely new way of viewing Aboriginal cultural identity on the northern plains. He’s the editor, with Kim Anderson, of collection Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration, due out in fall 2015.

Rob is based in Saskatoon and is a Plains Cree member of Cowessess First Nation. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.

The awards will be handed out on April 25 in Regina.