Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada
Non-Fiction
Delgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace…
Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, she answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.
BUY THIS BOOKWinner: Manitoba Book Awards, Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Award
Finalist: Manitoba Book Awards, Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher; Québec Writers’ Federation, Concordia University First Book Prize; Québec Writers’ Federation, Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction
Buffalo is the New Buffalo
Fiction: Short Stories
Powerful stories of “Métis futurism” that envision a world without violence, capitalism, or colonization. AVAILABLE IN THE U.S ON JUNE 7th.
“Education is the new buffalo” is a metaphor widely used among Indigenous peoples in Canada to signify the importance of education to their survival and ability to support themselves, as once Plains nations supported themselves as buffalo peoples. The premise is that many of the pre-Contact ways of living are forever gone, so adaptation is necessary. But Chelsea Vowel asks, “Instead of accepting that the buffalo, and our ancestral ways, will never come back, what if we simply ensure that they do?”
Inspired by classic and contemporary speculative fiction, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo explores science fiction tropes through a Métis lens: a Two-Spirit rougarou (shapeshifter) in the nineteenth century tries to solve a murder in her community and joins the nehiyaw-pwat (Iron Confederacy) in order to successfully stop Canadian colonial expansion into the West. A Métis man is gored by a radioactive bison, gaining super strength, but losing the ability to be remembered by anyone not related to him by blood. Nanites babble to babies in Cree, virtual reality teaches transformation, foxes take human form and wreak havoc on hearts, buffalo roam free, and beings grapple with the thorny problem of healing from colonialism.
Indigenous futurisms seek to discover the impact of colonization, remove its psychological baggage, and recover ancestral traditions. These eight short stories of “Métis futurism” explore Indigenous existence and resistance through the specific lens of being Métis. Expansive and eye-opening, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo rewrites our shared history in provocative and exciting ways.
BUY THIS BOOKReviews:
Interviews:
This Place: 150 Years Retold
Graphic Novel Chapter: “kitaskînaw 2350”
Winner of the Cybils Awards 2019 Young Adult Graphic Novel award, the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year!
Explore the last 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in this graphic novel anthology.
In Chelsea’s chapter “kitaskînaw 2350”, readers follow wâpanacâhkos, a young Métis girl who is sent from a decolonized future back to the 21st century.
Writers: Richard Van Camp, Chelsea Vowel, David Alexander Robertson, Jennifer Storm, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Brandon Mitchell, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Katherena Vermette, and Sonny Assu
Artists: Tara Audibert, Kyle Charles, Natasha Donovan, GMB Chomichuk, Scott B. Henderson, and Andrew Lodwick
Colour Artists: Scott A. Ford and Donovan Yaciuk
BUY THIS BOOKRefuse: CanLit in Ruins
Essays: Poem “No Appeal”
Refuse: CanLit in Ruins provides a critical and historical context to help readers understand conversations happening about CanLit presently. One of its goals is to foreground the perspectives of those who have been changing the conversation about what CanLit is and what it could be. Topics such as literary celebrity, white power, appropriation, class, rape culture, and the ongoing impact of settler colonialism are addressed by a diverse gathering of writers from across Canada. This volume works to avoid a single metanarrative response to these issues, but rather brings together a cacophonous and ruinous multitude of voices.
Chelsea has a poem in this collection titled, “No Appeal”, the title of which can be read in multiple ways: a direct response to the decision not to appeal the Gerald Stanley verdict in the killing of Colton Boushie, and also as an Indigenous perspective of CanLit as an extractive and tokenizing industry.
Contributions by: Zoe Todd, Keith Maillard, Jane Eaton Hamilton, kim goldberg, Tanis MacDonald, Gwen Benaway, Lucia Lorenzi, Alicia Elliott, Sonnet l’Abbé, Marie Carrière, Kai Cheng Thom, Dorothy Ellen Palmer, Natalee Caple & Nikki Reimer, Lorraine York, Chelsea Vowel, Laura Moss, Phoebe Wang, A.H. Reaume, Jennifer Andrews, Kristen Darch & Fazeela Jiwa, Erika Thorkelson and Joshua Whitehead.
BUY THIS BOOK