Book recommendations for National Truth & Reconciliation Day (and every day)
(The following is provided by Jennifer Lucking, Executive Director, as a reflection leading up to National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30.)
As someone who loves to read, I’m choosing to spend time this weekend in honour of the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation to dive into a book that has been on my “to read” list. Written by the late Harold R. Johnson, member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation, The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions For a New Era, this book is a reflection “on the role of storytelling in every aspect of human life, from personal identity to history and the social contracts that structure our societies, and illustrates how we can direct its potential to re-create and reform not only our own lives, but the life we share” (from the book cover).
While days like the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation provide reminders to learn more, reading and learning about Indigenous experiences should not be limited to significant days of recognition. Intentional efforts to listen to and amplify marginalized voices should be ongoing throughout the year. I try to practice looking back at books I’ve been reading and asking myself “Whose voices and experiences have I prioritized? Whose voices and experiences am I missing?”
If you’re looking to read more books this weekend or throughout the year that help you live into truth and reconciliation, here are some I’ve really appreciated that you might want to add to your own “to read” list.
A Mind Spread out on the Ground
by Alicia Elliot | 240 pages / 6 hr 36 min audiobook
Synopsis: In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrifcation, writing and representation, and in the process makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long battle with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft Dinner to how systemic oppression is directly linked to health problems in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott provides a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future.
My reflection: This is a brilliant collection of essays exploring Indigenous justice, colonialism, racism, and sexism. I especially appreciated it because it was written by someone local to me and I got a lot out of the references she made of nearby landmarks.
Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing
by Suzanne Methot | 368 pages / 14 hr audiobook
Synopsis: Five hundred years of colonization have taken an incalculable toll on the Indigenous peoples of the substance use disorders and shockingly high rates of depression, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions brought on by genocide and colonial control. With passionate logic and chillingly clear prose, author and educator Suzanne Methot uses history, human development, and her own and others’ stories to trace the roots of Indigenous cultural dislocation and community breakdown in an original and provocative examination of the long-term effects of colonization. But all is not lost. Methot also shows how we can come back from this with Indigenous ways of knowing lighting the way.
My reflection: Though it has a focus on trauma specific to Indigenous experiences, it is one of the best books I’ve read to understand complex trauma and the effects of trauma more broadly. Though not necessarily overly graphic or explicit about traumatic events, it was a challenging read. I listened to the audiobook but promptly bought a paper copy to be able to reference in the future, especially since there are a few charts and pictures.
Peace and good order: The case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
by Harold R. Johnson | 160 pages / 3 hr 11 min audiobook
Synopsis: In this direct, concise, and essential volume, Harold R. Johnson examines the justice system's failures to deliver "peace and good order" to Indigenous people. He explores the part that he understands himself to have played in that mismanagement, drawing on insights he has gained from the experience; insights into the roots and immediate effects of how the justice system has failed Indigenous people, in all the communities in which they live; and insights into the struggle for peace and good order for Indigenous people now.
My reflection: I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a compelling, short book about mass incarceration of Indigenous peoples in Canada. It is concise and clear which makes it a super accessible. As a legal professional, Johnson reflects on being an Indigenous person working in a broken system. (You might recognize the name of the author from the book I mentioned above, The Power of Story.)
The Marrow Thieves
by Cherie Dimaline | 234 pages / (audiobook being released November 2023)
Synopsis: In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."
My reflection: This remains one of my all-time favourite books (please don’t ask me to pick just one favourite book!), and I have re-read it multiple times (and plan to again when the audiobook is released). Dimaline’s writing and prose is beautiful. (If you are ever in the vicinity of me reading this, you will hear me exclaim aloud every few pages “I love this book…”) It can be found in the Young Adult section, but the plot can be heavy and emotionally challenging making it a worthwhile read for adults as well. Fans of dystopian and apocalyptic novels will enjoy this, and it provides an intriguing perspective of how Indigenous peoples are exploited and harmed. If you enjoy it, there is a sequel, but this can be a standalone read as well.
Truth Telling: Seven Conversations About Indigenous Life in Canada
by Michelle Good | 215 pages / 4 hr 19 min audiobook
Synopsis: Truth Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good’s personal experience and knowledge. From racism, broken treaties, and cultural pillaging, to the value of Indigenous lives and the importance of Indigenous literature, this collection reveals facts about Indigenous life in Canada that are both devastating and enlightening. Truth Telling also demonstrates the myths underlying Canadian history and the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin modern social institutions in Canada. Passionate and uncompromising, Michelle Good affirms that meaningful and substantive reconciliation hinges on recognition of Indigenous self-determination, the return of lands, and a just redistribution of the wealth that has been taken from those lands without regard for Indigenous peoples.
My reflection: You might recognize the author’s name from the popular book Five Little Indians (winner of 2022’s CBC Canada Read’s debates). This is another shorter book of essays and challenges non-Indigenous people to true truth and reconciliation. A favourite quote (from her essay on “The Rise and Resistance of Indigenous Literature”:
““Indigenous writers are doing what politicians can’t. They are reaching into the hearts and minds of non-Indigenous Canadians. This is not to say that our stories, our truths, are accepted wholeheartedly by all. To the contrary. Deep racism and hatred still haunt us in both subtle and overt ways. However, this fast-growing Indigenous literary canon serves as an invitation and an inspiration to non-Indigenous Canadians to second-guess what they think they know and to take responsibility for their own education.””
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City
by Tanya Talaga | 384 pages / 9 hr 7 min audiobook
Synopsis: In 1966, twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack froze to death on the railway tracks after running away from residential school. An inquest was called and four recommendations were made to prevent another tragedy. None of those recommendations were applied.
More than a quarter of a century later, from 2000 to 2011, seven Indigenous high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The seven were hundreds of miles away from their families, forced to leave home and live in a foreign and unwelcoming city. Five were found dead in the rivers surrounding Lake Superior, below a sacred Indigenous site. Using a sweeping narrative focusing on the lives of the students, award-winning investigative journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this small northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.
My reflection: A hard but important read highlighting the impact of colonialism on northern Indigenous youth today.
The following book suggestions are not written by Indigenous authors, but can be helpful in learning more about Indigenous experiences.
Roughneck
by Jeff Lemire | 272 pages
Synopsis: Roughneck an all-original graphic novel about a brother and sister who must come together after years apart to face the disturbing history that has cursed their family.
Derek Ouelette’s glory days are behind him. His hockey career ended a decade earlier in a violent incident on ice, and since then he’s been living off his reputation in the remote northern community where he grew up, drinking too much and fighting anyone who crosses him. But he never counts on his long-lost sister, Beth, showing up one day out of the blue, back in town and on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Looking to hide out for a while, the two siblings hunker down in a secluded hunting camp deep in the local woods. It is there that they attempt to find a way to reconnect with each other and the painful secrets of their past...even as Beth’s ex draws closer, threatening to pull both Derek and Beth back into a world of self-destruction that they are fighting tooth and nail to leave behind.
My reflection: I love how graphic novels can convey stories in differently compelling ways. It’s been a number of years since I’ve read this, but I do remember really enjoying this book as well as Secret Path which was written in collaboration with Gord Downie (and is accompanied by an incredibly powerful album).
Stolen Sisters: The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families and How Canada Has Failed Indigenous Women
by Emmanuelle Walter | 240 pages
Synopsis: In 2014, the nation was rocked by the brutal violence against young Aboriginal women Loretta Saunders, Tina Fontaine and Rinelle Harper. But tragically, they were not the only Aboriginal women to suffer that year. In fact, an official report revealed that since 1980, 1,200 Canadian Aboriginal women have been murdered or have gone missing. This alarming official figure reveals a national tragedy and the systemic failure of law enforcement and of all levels of government to address the issue.
Journalist Emmanuelle Walter spent two years investigating this crisis and has crafted a moving representative account of the disappearance of two young women, Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, teenagers from western Quebec, who have been missing since September 2008. Via personal testimonies, interviews, press clippings and official documents, Walter pieces together the disappearance and loss of these two young lives, revealing these young women to us through the voices of family members and witnesses. Stolen Sisters is a moving and deeply shocking work of investigative journalism that makes the claim that not only is Canada failing its First Nations communities, but that a feminicide is taking place.
My Reflection: Published in 2015, this was one of the first books I read about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Because of her journalistic background, Walter’s writing conveys the topic in clear and concise ways.