Reading list

I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism
Lee Maracle (Stó:lō)

Reading and then teaching Lee Maracle’s book I Am Woman in an introductory Women’s/Gender Studies course in the 1990s was transformational for me and students. Combining prose and poetry, it offers a powerful and personal commentary on the impacts of the “oppressive dirt” of colonialism, racism, and sexism on Indigenous women.   –  Annalee Lepp, Dean, Faculty of Humanities

Memory Serves
Lee Maracle (Stó:lō)

A written book isn’t really a substitute for hearing Lee Maracle speak, but the speeches and lectures collected in this book remind us of the power of language, stories, and memory. – Audrey Yap , Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy  

“Our memory serves to reflect on the path. The imagination exists to serve this memory. It compels us to move outside our hidden being (mind, heart, spirit) and engage the world. It inspires us to see beyond the wrinkles in the earth, the darkness of the sky, and see the sacred, the lovable, and the courage that earth and all her being share.”

As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg)

Nishnaabeg writer and artist Leanne Simpson locates cultural-political resurgence in grounded, everyday actions that uphold Indigenous knowledge and powerfully refuse settler colonial logics. The book reminds us of how radical the acts of daily living can be. It’s infused with warmth and humour and love, even as it lays out a blueprint for deep transformation. – Elizabeth Vibert, Associate Professor, Department of History

“[My children] expect that we will be there anyway, in spite of environmental destruction, despite the violence of surveillance culture, because they were born into a centuries-old legacy of resistance, persistence, and profound love that ties our struggle to other Indigenous peoples in the Americas and throughout the world.”

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative
Thomas King (Cherokee)

This book introduced me to Thomas King and First Nations culture when I emigrated to Canada.  It’s helped me teach  introductory literature classes ever since.  It contains some beautiful and insightful observations on storytelling.  – Joel Hawkes, Sessional Lecturer, Department of English

“The truth about stories is that that's all we are.”

Poetry of Nezahualcóyotl
Nezahualcóyotl (Alcohuan)

Poet, thinker, and ruler of the kingdom of Texcoco in Central Mexico, Nezahualcóyotl has become a national figure. He thrived a few decades before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in 1519. His poetry revolves around the fleetingness of life, the inevitability of death, the value of song, and carpe diem. Its Spanish versions still speak to us today. “At last my heart knows it:/ I hear a song, / I contemplate a flower... / May they never fade!” – Dr. Dan Russek, Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies

The Marrow Thieves
Cherie Dimaline (Métis)

This award-winning novel tells a hopeful and moving story is about an Indigenous teen’s journey, and it makes you think about the importance of family, community, and love. – Angie Chau, Assistant Professor

"How could anything be as bad as it was when this moment existed in the span of eternity? How could I fear when this girl would allow me this close? How could anything matter but this small miracle of having someone I could love?"

The Fourth World: An Indian Reality
Arthur Manuel (Secwepemc)

George Manuel insisted on Indigenous cultural survival, and he explains in this 1974 book how Indigenous nations and peoples could function in a nation-states world, and possibly even thrive there. His vision of the world, and especially of BC, confronts and challenges the discourses of reconciliation and dispossession, and raises a provocative shout of hope.

Note from Richard: "I grew up in a settler family not far from where Manuel lived, that I went to elementary school with some of his relations, but that I never met him or heard of this book until fully 25 years after my family moved there. Genuinely, it transformed my sense of BC and how to live here, as well my sense of how my four generations of settler ancestors and I had lived here." – Richard Pickard, Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of English

“The Fourth World has always been here in North America. Since the beginning of European domination its branches, one by one, have been denied the light of day. Its fruit has been withered and stunted. Yet the tree did not die. Our victory begins with the knowledge that we have survived.”

Kukum
Michel Jean (Innu)

Un livre touchant qui nous transporte dans l’univers des Innus depuis le début du 20ème siècle jusqu’à l’époque tragique où le colonialisme à outrance finit par détruire toute une culture en complète symbiose avec la nature. – Catherine Caws, Professor, Department of French

They Called Me Number One
Bev Sellars (Xat'sull)

In 2012, Bev Sellars, former chief of the Soda Creek Band (Secwepemc)  published her memoir. As one of the first memoirs by an Indigenous author, it was an incredibly important book.  Bev spent much of her youth in a Roman Catholic residential school near Williams Lake.  In her book she chronicles the debilitating impact of that experience. She also deals with the impact of the school on her mother and her grandmother.  It’s an uplifting story because, unlike so many residential school survivors, Bev dealt with it early on and part of dealing with it was to head back to school.  She did an undergraduate degree in Political Science and History at UVIC.  We met when she enrolled in my oral history course during this time.  We have stayed in touch ever since.  Bev carried on to a law degree at UBC.  She then returned to her home community where she served as Chief of her Band. She is now one of BC’s most dedicated environmental activists.  Her major campaign is the development of gold mines on her traditional territory. She covers all of this in the book.  I was honoured to be invited to write the Afterword.  Talonbooks is thrilled with the success of this book. It’s one of their all-time bestsellers. – Wendy Wickwire, Emeritus Associate Professor, Environmental Studies

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality
Bob Joseph (Gwawa'enuk)

Short conversational, and enlightening. I did not know any of these things, and everyone should. The act deliberately created a second class of citizens in Canada, and the damage it did has never been repaired. The book includes as an appendix the 94 Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. – Laurel Bowman, Associate Professor, Department of Greek and Roman Studies

A History of My Brief Body
Billy-Ray Belcourt (Cree)

A searing and stunning work of queer Indigenous auto-theory.  – Chase Joynt, Assistant Professor, Department of Gender Studies

“To love someone is firstly to confess: I'm prepared to be devastated by you.”

Indian School Days
Basil H. Johnston (Anishinaabe)

This book is one of the earliest memoirs of residential school, by the respected Anishnaabe ethnologist and teacher. He says in the introduction that he wrote it for his school friends, to memorialize their stories of cheeky resistance and fun as well as their moments of homesickness and suffering. The book itself is beautiful and heartfelt, but the story around it is even more affecting. It wasn’t until years later, when he was invited home to his reserve to help with negotiations for compensation, that he realized he wasn’t the only one who was sexually abused. He had included none of those details in the book, out of shame. This strong brilliant educated man. One of my students wrote, when we studied this book, it’s hard to listen to the lecture when the professor is crying. – Misao Dean, Professor, English Department

Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of the Settler States
Audra Simpson (Kahnawá:ke Mohawk)

Dr. Simpson’s notions of ethnographic refusal and nested sovereignty have shaped how I understand and articulate the persistence of Indigenous nationhood. Her work continues to serve as a model for research practices and of speaking truth to power.  – Patrick Lozar, Assistant Professor, Department of History

Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call
Arthur Manuel (Secwepemc) and Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson (Syilx)

Arthur Manuel’s Unsettling Canada is an insider’s history of colonialism, the struggle against it, and a roadmap to dismantling it. The book helps us to know ourselves, to understand our political inheritance, and our responsibilities. For everyone interested in decolonization, this book is a gift. – Georgia Sitara, Assistant Teaching Professor, Departments of History, Gender Studies and Social Justice Studies

“Europeans made their initial land claim on our Secwepemc lands in 1778 when Captain Cook sailed along the British Columbia coast, more than four hundred kilometres away from our territory. According to the tenets of the doctrine of discovery, all that Europeans had to do to expropriate the lands in a region was to sail past a river mouth and make a claim to all of the lands in its watershed. Our lands, given to us by our Creator and inhabited by us for thousands of years, were transformed into a British “possession,” not only without our consent and without our knowledge, but also without a single European setting foot on our territory.”

Blue Marrow
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe (Nehiyaw/Cree)

Speaking with the grandmothers, this nêhiyaw poet’s book makes plain the harms of colonialism while also celebrating the strength of those ancestors and their living kin. – Iain Higgins, Professor, Department of English

“The prairie is full of bones. The bones stand and sing and I feel the weight of them as they guide my fingers on this page. / See the blood.”

The First New Chronicle and Good Government
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (Quechua), translated by David Frye

A scathing indictment of Spanish colonialism, but also an extraordinarily rich compendium of information about the Inka empire and the colonial Andes.  – Matthew Koch, Sessional Lecturer, Department of History

“they say that the Indians are barbarians and that they are not Christians.  Things are just the opposite of what the avaricious Spaniards of this kingdom say" (p. 297)”

Jonny Appleseed
Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree)

This is a beautiful, raw and intimate story told by a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer “glitter princess.” It is both brutal and tender. It offers insight into poverty, sexism, racism and homophobia, alongside love, sexuality, kinship and courage. I laughed and I cried. I was stunned and I was shaken.   – Alexandra D’Arcy, Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Humanities

“Who the hell gonna love me now, Kokum? Whose gonna suck the pain from my skin, teach me to love it into humility? Who, Kokum, who?”

Tracks
Louise Erdrich (Chippewa)

Erdrich’s 1988 novel braids together history and fiction, devastation and hope, revenge and responsibility to tell the story of an Anishinabe* community in the early 1900s. *spelling from the novel – Corinne Bancroft, Assistant Professor, Department of English

“There were so many tales, so many possibilities, so many lies. The waters were so muddy I thought I’d give them another stir”

El Zarco
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (Nahua)

Altamirano was a key figure in my upbringing. His nationalism was Indigenist and cosmopolitan, anticlerical yet respectful of traditions, open to modernity but socially engaged.  – Beatriz de Alba-Koch, Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Latin American Studies

The Indigenous hero of his novel El Zarco describes himself and his people thus: “We have been poor, very poor [. . .] my forefathers in their wild mountains, in their most humble cabins knew, however, to maintain their character free of any stain of humiliation or abjection. They have preferred to die instead of degrading themselves, and that not because of vanity nor to retain a heritage of honour, but because such is our nature. Pride amongst us is part of our being.” My translation from El Zarco. (México: Porrúa, 1962), 52.

Samay pisccok pponccopi muschcoypa / Espíritu de pájaro en pozos del ensueño (Bird Spirit in Wells of Reverie)
Wiñay Mallki (Yanakuna Mitmak)

According to Mapuche author Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpan, the Runa Shimi (Kichwa) and Spanish poetry of Wiñay Mallki of the Yanakuna Mitmak Nation of southern Colombia stands “a orillas de la oralidad de su gente” (“on the shores of his people’s orality”). Engaging with Wiñay’s poetry, I realized that reciprocity is at the heart of the act of reading/listening: you receive words and respectfully give of yourself. – Pablo Restrepo Gautier, Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies

“Saramanta takiy nuqapi yakuri samay / Taki punchau ñaupakhina taki / k’ullu sonccohima muyu ima nima huañushca / suttuyhinamicjuchiy pucuycuna.” | “De maíz son mis versos / y de agua mi esencia. / Canto hoy como antes cantaron / como terca semilla que se niega a la muerte, / así como gota que alimenta la fuente.” | “Of corn are my verses / and of water my essence. / I sing like they sang before / like a stubborn seed that refuses death, / just like a drop that feeds the fount.”  Listen to another of Wiñay’s poems in his voice.

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (film)
Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki)

My choice is a film, not a book, but it is freely available. This 1993 documentary about the 1990 Oka Crisis shattered my youthful impression of Canada as an essentially benign nation. It is a singular representation of Indigenous People’s courage and ingenuity in the face of government violence and duplicity. – Andrew Murray, Assistant Teaching Professor, ENGL & ATWP

“It is us who can best take care of us.”