A compelling collection of interviews with children aged nine to eighteen. They come from all over the continent, from Iqaluit to Texas, Haida Gwaai to North Carolina, and their stories run the gamut — some heartbreaking; many others full of pride and hope.
A young mother, one of the many missing indigenous women, watches over her small daughter as she grows up without her nimama, experiencing important milestones – her first day of school, first dance, first date, wedding, first child – from afar.
“Stories are wondrous things,” award-winning Canadian author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. “And they are dangerous.” Stories assert tremendous control over our lives, informing who we are and how we treat one another as friends, family and citizens. With keen perception and wit, king illustrates that stories are the key to, and the only hope for, human understanding, He compels us to listen well.
This story centers on a young Metis (mixed blood) boy growing up outside Fort Williams, a major Canadian fur trading post linking northern and central Canada to the North West Trading Company in Montreal. The boy longs to become one of the voyagers, or fur traders, who wear red sashes as they travel the rivers of northern and central Canada. The Red Sash provides readers an authentic picture of life at a fur trading post in the early 1800s.
A drop of fresh water must be retrieved in order for First Man to create a stream or lake in his parched homeland, and the members of his village are unable to do so, but, through an unexpected twist of fate, their doomed destiny may be saved.
Two hundred years after his death, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh is still considered one of the greatest leaders of North America’s First Peoples. This pictorial biography tells the story of his remarkable life, culminating in the events of the War of 1812.
Photographs and text describe non-verbal signals used by the Indians of the Great Plains, including more than 800 signs, smoke signals, picture writing and the language of feathers and body paint.
53 portraits of Native Americans in dance regalia, taken at the 1994 Sault St. Marie Pow-Wow
Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall takes us on a dreamlike voyage into nature at that secret moment when fall turns into winter. We find ourselves in a kind of paradise, which humans may be part of but which they have not despoiled. A Native father and son lead us through forests, down rivers, over lakes and ponds. Along the way we experience the primordial beauty of the physical world. This is nature as we all feel in our hearts it must once have been.
Tess has visited her grandmother many times without really being aware of the garden. But today they step outside the door and Tess learns that all of nature can be a garden. And if you take care of the plants that are growing, if you learn about them — understanding when they flower, when they give fruit, and when to leave them alone — you will always find something to nourish you. At the end of their day Tess is thankful to Mother Earth for having such a lovely garden, and she is thankful to have such a wise grandma.