In 1954, when Florence Kaefer was just nineteen, she accepted a job as a teacher at Norway House Indian Residential School of Manitoba. Not fully aware of the difficult conditions the students were enduring, Florence and her fellow teachers nurtured a school full of lonely and homesick young children.Edward was only five when he was brought to the school at Norway House and Florence remembered him as a shy and polite young boy. He left the school at sixteen and continued to face ch...

Inspired by history, Our Story is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories exploring seminal moments in Canadian history from Indigenous perspectives.Drawing on their skills as gifted storytellers, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it's like to participate in history. From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events.Our Story

BC Book Prize, Non-Fiction, Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Finalist)Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature: Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Third Prize winner)Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school.These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native c...

He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century. His victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat inflicted on the frontier Army. And the death of Crazy Horse in federal custody has remained a controversy for more than a century.The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the many sources of fear and misunderstanding that resulted in an official killing hard to distinguish from a crime. A rich cast of characters, whit...

The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII.His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn’t stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, a...

Francis Pegahmagabow was a remarkable aboriginal leader who served his nation in time of war and his people in time of peacefighting. In wartime he volunteered to be a warrior. In peacetime he had no option. His life reveals how uncaring Canada was about those to whom this land had always been home.A member of the Parry Island band (now Wasauksing First Nation) near Parry Sound, Ontario, Francis served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium and France for almost the entir...

Since its publication in 1932, Black Elk Speaks has moved countless readers to appreciate the American Indian world that it described. John Neihardt’s popular narrative addressed the youth and early adulthood of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious elder. Michael F. Steltenkamp now provides the first full interpretive biography of Black Elk, distilling in one volume what is known of this American Indian wisdom keeper whose life has helped guide others.Nicholas Black El...

Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer is a book by Thomas Bailey Marquis about the life of a Northern Cheyenne Indian, Wooden Leg, who fought in several historic battles between United States forces and the Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he faced the troops of George Armstrong Custer. The book is of great value to historians, not only for its eye-witness accounts of battles, but also for its detailed description of the way of life of 19th-century Plains...

As a young child of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, Black Elk had been given a mighty vision which would lead him on a personal journey that lasted his entire life. Although Black Elk's vision was a prophetic message telling the terrible future of his tribe, it also held positive aspects that must be reclaimed. It is through this reclamation that the guiding beacons given to him reveal an ancient pathway woven into the images of the West. By exploring Black Elk's eyewitness account of the crucial ev...

Includes:•Charles River Editors original biography of Chief Joseph•The autobiographical Chief Josephs Own Story“Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that is was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take another's wife or his property without paying for it.” Chief Josep...

*Includes pictures of important people and places in Crazy Horse's life.*Explains the Battle of the Little Bighorn and several Lakota oral legends, including the origins of Crazy Horse's name. *Includes a Table of Contents"Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind ...

"Gripping. . . . transforms Sitting Bull, the abstract, romanticized icon and symbol, into a flesh-and-blood person with a down-to-earth story." — The New York Times Book ReviewWinner, Spur Award for Best Western Nonfiction Historical BookA New York Times Notable BookReviled by the United States government as a troublemaker and a coward, revered by his people as a great warrior chief, Sitting Bull has long been one of the mos...