Books

In this ground-breaking book, Crystal Gail Fraser draws on Gwitch’in concepts of individual and collective fortitude to illuminate student experiences in northern residential schools. Led by survivor testimony, Fraser shows how both students and their parents played a role in changing the system to protect and empower their communities.

Grounded in Indigenous methodologies, this collection offers a community-engaged analysis of the only cereal grain native to Turtle Island, weaving together the voices of scholars, chefs, harvesters, engineers, poets, and artists to share the plant’s many lessons about the living relationships between all forms of creation.

Enos Montour’s Brown Tom’s Schooldays tells the story of a young boy’s life at residential school. Drawn from Montour’s first-hand experiences at Mount Elgin Indian Residential School between 1910 and 1915, the book is an accomplished literary text and uncommon chronicle of federal Indian schooling in the early twentieth century.

The Canadian Shields brings together fifty short writings by Carol Shields, including more than two dozen previously unpublished short stories and essays. Invaluable to scholars and admirers of Shields’s work, the writings presented to the public here for the first time vividly illuminate the chapters of Shields’s writing life.

In telling the story of what small-town women did for fun while navigating social hierarchies, nurturing ties of kinship and friendship, and advancing community development, Pursuing Play adds a new dimension to Canadian histories of gender, leisure, and popular culture.

Beading fosters traditional methods of teaching and learning and enables intergenerational transmissions of pattern and skill. These conversations, interviews, essays, and full-colour reproductions of artwork from expert and emerging artists, academics, and curators from the prairies invite us all into the beading circle.

In 1971, Canada became the first nation in the world to officially declare its bilingual and multicultural policies. This incisive collection examines what has changed over the past fifty years, highlighting the lived experiences of minoritized Canadians and offering insights into the critical work that lies ahead.

Once described as Louis Riel’s alter ego, Manitoba Premier John Norquay skirmished with John A. Macdonald and endured racist taunts while championing the interests of the Prairie West. This biography of an Indigenous political leader sheds welcome light on a neglected historical figure and a tumultuous time for Canada and Manitoba.

Looking beyond the patriarchy to document and celebrate the scholarship of Métis women, Around the Kitchen Table brings together writing by new and established scholars, artists, storytellers, and community leaders that reflects the diversity of research created by Métis women as it is lived, conceptualized, and re-imagined.

Mixing recipes, maps, archival records, biographies, and full-colour photographs with fascinating stories, mmm... Manitoba showcases the province’s diverse foodways and industries from on board the Manitoba Food History Truck.

This first-of-its-kind collection shares stories not only of entrepreneurial excellence and persistence but of savvy leadership, innovation, and reciprocity, providing hope to Indigenous business leaders, youth, and elected officials working on the front lines to improve economic conditions and achieve “a good life” for their communities.

This award-winning book names the ways in which Canada’s education system has supported ideologies of white supremacy—ideologies so deeply embedded that they still linger in school texts and programming today. School of Racism bridges English- and French-Canadian histories to deliver a better understanding of Canada’s identity.

The Art of Ectoplasm reflects on the history and legacy of T.G. and Lillian Hamilton's extraordinary collection of paranormal photographs, which have inspired and perplexed academics, historians, and artists since their creation a century ago, and offers a compelling look at a chapter in social history not entirely unlike our own.

Plundering the North provides fresh insight into Canada’s colonial project, laying bare the processes behind the chronic food insecurity experienced by northern Indigenous communities by charting the social, economic, and political changes that have taken place in northern Ontario since the 1950s.

Stored in the Bones enriches discussions of treaty rights, land claims, and environmental policy. Presenting an international framework that may be used to advance community interests in dealings with governments, the study offers a pathway for Indigenous peoples to document intangible cultural heritage.

Letters with Smokie captures an epistolic exchange between Dan Goodley and Rod Michalko, or rather, Rod Michalko's late guide dog, Smokie. A lively exploration of human-animal relationships and disability as disruption, disturbance, and art, the book offers a refreshing re-evaluation of cultural misunderstandings of disability.

Laughing Back at Empire is a groundbreaking examination of The Asianadian, one of Canada’s first anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic magazines. Wong’s work amplifies Asian Canadian voices that speak, shout, and laugh together at empire’s self-congratulatory and exclusionary narratives.

Icelandic Heritage in North America offers an in-depth examination of Icelandic immigrant identity, linguistic evolution, and legacy.