Indigenous Science

Story is told by a narrator who is a psychologist in Indian country. What appears to be a consultation with a patient ends up being a meeting with his teacher, Tarrence. Tarrence proceeds to take the narrator into a dreamtime journey that melts the worldview held by the storyteller. The dream leads the narrator to a place in which the energy generated by ancient dreamers must be balanced. The lack of balance brought on by the power dreamers and their ceremony resulted in the atomic bomb.

Postcolonialism explores the political, social, and cultural effects of decolonization, continuing the anti-colonial deconstruction of Western dominance. This Very Short Introduction discusses both the history and key debates of postcolonialism, and considers its importance as a means of changing the way we think about the world. Robert J. C. Young examines the key strategies that postcolonial thought has developed to engage with the impact of sometimes centuries of Western political and cultural domination.

Born and raised in a tarpaper shack, Grand Chief Ron Derrickson went on to become one of the most successful Indigenous businessmen in Canada. As a political leader, he served as chief of the Westbank First Nation for a dozen years and was made a grand chief by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. Along the way, he has been the target of a full Royal Commission and an assassination attempt by a hitman hired by local Whites. As chief, he increased his community's revenues by 3,500 percent and led his people into a war in the forest over logging rights.

This carefully researched exploration of Native American culture investigates the complex, often misunderstood histories of hundreds of indigenous peoples. Author James Wilson has drawn from ethnographic and archaeological studies, historical texts, and the rich written and oral traditions of Native Americans to complete this important work.

Using a traditional Yakama tale as a motif, "Coyote’s Swing" combines the author’s firsthand experiences as a consulting psychologist with rare history and sociocultural critique, revealing how the U.S. mental health system reframes Native American reactions to oppression and marginalization into "mental disorders" and "mental illness," and how the Indian Health Service’s contemporary practices echo historical injustices.

When Danielle Geller’s mother dies of alcohol withdrawal during an attempt to get sober, Geller returns to Florida and finds her mother’s life packed into eight suitcases. Most were filled with clothes, except for the last one, which contained diaries, photos, and letters, a few undeveloped disposable cameras, dried sage, jewelry, and the bandana her mother wore on days she skipped a hair wash. Geller, an archivist and a writer, uses these pieces of her mother’s life to try and understand her mother’s relationship to home, and their shared need to leave it.

Richard Wagamese, one of Canada’s most celebrated Indigenous authors and storytellers, was a writer of breathtaking honesty and inspiration. Always striving to be a better, stronger person, Wagamese shared his journey through writing, encouraging others to do the same. Following the success of Embers, this new collection of Wagamese’s nonfiction works, curated by editor Drew Hayden Taylor, brings together more of the prolific author’s short writings - many for the first time in print - and celebrates his ability to inspire.

In 1870, a 26-year-old Paiute, Sarah Winnemucca, wrote to an army officer requesting that Paiutes be given a chance to settle and farm their ancestral land. The eloquence of her letter was such that it made its way into Harper’s Weekly. Ten years later, as her people languished in confinement as a result of the Bannock War, she convinced Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to grant the requests in her letter and free the Paiutes as well.

In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations—even to Cow Tom himself.

A grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter take us on a remarkable journey in which the cycles of life—childhood, adolescence, marriage, birthing and child rearing—are presented against the contrasting experiences of three successive generations. Their memories and reflections give us poignant insight into the history of the people of the new territory of Nunavut.

Long before it came to be known as Duluth, the land at the western tip of Lake Superior was known to the Ojibwe as Onigamiising, "the place of the small portage." There the Ojibwe lived in keeping with the seasons, moving among different camps for hunting and fishing, for cultivating and gathering, for harvesting wild rice and maple sugar. In Onigamiising Linda LeGarde Grover accompanies us through this cycle of the seasons, one year in a lifelong journey on the path to Mino Bimaadiziwin, the living of a good life.

The tragedy of our Indian policies demands reexamination immediately - not only because they make the lives of millions of American citizens harder and more dangerous - but also because they represent a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with modern liberalism. They are the result of decades of politicians and bureaucrats showering a victimized people with money and cultural sensitivity instead of what they truly need-the education, the legal protections, and the autonomy to improve their own situation.

Best-selling author Richard Wagamese again invites listeners to accompany him on his travels. This time his focus is on stories: how they shape us, how they empower us, and how they change our lives. Ancient and contemporary, cultural and spiritual, funny and sad, the tales are grouped according to the four essential principles Ojibway traditional teachers sought to impart: humility, trust, introspection, and wisdom.

In this riveting new book, John Laband, pre-eminent historian of the Zulu Kingdom, tackles some of the questions that swirl around the assassination in 1828 of King Shaka, the celebrated founder of the Zulu Kingdom and war leader of legendary brilliance. In his search for answers, Laband turns to the Zulu voice heard through recorded oral testimony and praise-poems, and to the written accounts and reminiscences of the Port Natal trader-hunters and the despatches of Cape officials.

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother. A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At 19, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories and his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala.

Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. Valley of the Birdtail is about how two communities became separate and unequal—and what it means for the rest of us.

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

The Raven is as much a paradoxical creature as he is important in the myths of many native cultures. The central character of these stories, the Raven is considered the benevolent creator, filling the world with beauty and harmony, the master mind behind all that is good and looked upon with warm admiration. On the other hand, he is often viewed as a malevolent conniving, scheming trickster with self-gratification as his only goal.

Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds.