By Inez Cook

For decades, “scooping up” (forcibly taking) Indigenous children from their families for placement in foster homes or adoption, was commonplace in the 1950’s and 1960’s onward. This is the story of one of those 20,000 children who lost their name and connection to heritage.

By Chief Dr. Robert Joseph

Reconciliation belongs to everyone. In this profound book, Chief Robert Joseph, globally recognized peacebuilder, and Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk People, traces his journey from his childhood surviving residential school to his present-day role.  He is a leader who inspires individual hope, collective change, and global transformation.

By Elaine Alec

Indigenous Peoples have always carried the knowledge necessary to heal. When our people heal, our families heal, our communities heal, and our land will heal. You cannot have one without the other. These stories are teachings, prophecy and protocols shared throughout the years by elders, language speakers, medicine people and helpers. 

By Bev Sellars

Former Xatśūll Chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to “civilize” Indigenous children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only – not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.

By Eden Robinson

Tragedy strikes a Native community when the Hill family’s handsome seventeen-year-old son, Jimmy, mysteriously vanishes at sea. Left behind to cope during the search-and-rescue effort is his sister, Lisamarie, a wayward teenager with a dark secret. Infused with darkness and humour, Monkey Beach is a spellbinding voyage into the long, cool shadows of B.C.’s Coast Mountains, blending teen culture, Haisla lore, nature spirits and human tenderness into a multi-layered story of loss and redemption.

By John Ralston Saul

Saul calls on all of us to embrace and support the comeback of Indigenous peoples. He says this is the great issue of our time–the most important missing piece in the building of Canada. What is happening today between Indigenous and non-Indigenous is not about guilt or sympathy or failure or romanticization of the past. It is about citizens’’ rights. It is about rebuilding relationships that were central to the creation of Canada.

By Robin Wall Kimmerer

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.