September 30, 2022
A Theory of Crows by David A. Robertson – Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen year old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Following a devastating loss, Matthew and Holly head out onto the land in search of a long-lost cabin on the family trapline, miles from the Cree community they once called home. But each of them is searching for something more than a place. When things go wrong during the journey, they find they have only each other to turn to for support. What happens to father and daughter on the land will test them, and eventually heal them, in ways they never thought possible.
New Non-Fiction
Making Love With the Land by Joshua Whitehead – Making Love with the Land is a startling, challenging, uncompromising look at what it means to live as an Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In these ten unique, heart-piercing nonfiction pieces, award-winning writer Joshua Whitehead illuminates the complex moment we’re living through now, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new and old ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped ideas, histories, words, and our bodies? Intellectually thrilling and emotionally captivating, this book is a love song for the world – and for the library of stories to be found where body meets land, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.
Valley of the Birdtail by Andrew Stobo Sniderman & Douglas Sanderson – 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 Rossburn, once settled by Ukrainian immigrants who fled poverty and persecution, family income is near the national average and more than a third of adults have graduated from university. In Waywayseecappo, the average family lives below the national poverty line and less than a third of adults have graduated from high school, with many haunted by their time in residential schools. This book follows multiple generations of two families, one white and one Indigenous, and weaves their lives into the larger story of Canada. It is a story of villains and heroes, irony and idealism, racism and reconciliation. Valley of the Birdtail has the ambition to change the way we think about our past and show a path to a better future.