National Network for Equitable Library Service

This is the first generously illustrated biography of the Mohawk poet-performer E. Pauline Johnson-Tekahionwake. The author has created an exciting volume of anecdotes, letters and poetry, and illustrated it with period photographs and new illustrations by the Six Nations artist, Raymond R. Skye. While the story of Pauline Johnson has been told before, it has never been given the intimacy that this book provides. Tracing her ancestry, moving on to explore her extraordinary stage career, and finally shedding light on Pauline Johnson’s last years in Vancouver, Sheila M.F.

In 1842 at York Factory, the English-born missionary James Evans built a lightweight tin canoe that glittered and shone in the sunlight. Wherever he went, Native peoples called the canoe his "Shining Island" or "His Island of Light."Travels in the Shining Island chronicles important events in the life of the extraordinary Methodist missionary, James Evans (1801-1846). It was Evans who created a written alphabet in native languages that remains in use to the present time.

On April 23, 1990, after a five-week journey from Hudson Bay to the Hudson River, the Odeyak landed at the Battery for Earth Day. Half-Cree, half-Inuit, the 24-foot freighter canoe, plowing across the Manhattan seascape, was a strange small vessel build in the dark Arctic winter to carry a message from two First Nations of the northern wilderness to a reclaiming of Times Square for Mother Earth. Along with the Crees’ and the Inuit’s hopes and fears for their children and for the future of their river, the Odeyak carried a simple request.

The story of Uvajuq (oo-va-yook) is rooted in a time when people and animals lived in such harmony and unity that they could speak to each other. For Inuit, as for people whose traditions include the story of the Garden of Eden, this idyllic existence came to an abrupt end a long time ago.

Over the past two decades, the question of who owns the land of Temagami and how the land should be used has caused a debate of unparalleled intensity.For the native people, it is their lands under attack. For environmentalists from all parts of Ontario, it is a case of ecological preservation of a unique but fast-disappearing wilderness.

It is from the land that the Native peoples of Canada draw their strength.If the people of Quebec claim a right to sovereignty, Inuit of Quebec argue their right of self-determination empowers them with the choice to remain part of Quebec, of Canada or to secede on their own.The James Bay Cree consider Hydro Quebec’s "mad plans to engineer and dam the vast ecosystem" where they have lived for centuries an affront to their own right to control their land.The Labrador Innu are struggling with both the federal and provincial governments to protect their traditional hunting territorie

At the midpoint of the twentieth century, the First Nations people of Ontario's underdeveloped hinterland lived primarily from the land. They congregated in summer in defined communities but in early autumn dispersed to winter camps to hunt, fish, and trap. Increasingly, however, they found they had to adapt to a different way of life, one closer to the Canadian mainstream. While lifestyles and expectations were clearly changing, the native people's desire to maintain their rich and distinctive cultural traditions remained strong.

Daylight in the Swamp is the bush memoirs of Selwyn Dewdney, a noted Canadian artist and recorder of native rock art. His two great loves, art and the Canadian north, come together in this book. His respect for native culture and art is reflected in his own work, his insight into native rock art, and his passion for canoeing and the northern experience.The third theme of the book is history spanning the period from 1910 through to the 1970s during which the old north largely vanished.

This book provides a glimpse of Aboriginal women in Northern Ontario and it reflects primarily the impact of the European churches and systems on Aboriginal peoples’ way of life. The words of the Aboriginal women are gentle, but these words convey the displacement of their way of life in the most powerful way. The power of this book is not only in the stories and history that are told, but also in how all women in Northern Ontario share a respectful life together in a way that I have not witnessed or felt anywhere else.

Winner of the 1995 Ontario Historical Society Joseph Brant Award for the best book on native studies Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations contains seventeen essays on aspects of the history of the First Nations living within the present-day boundaries of Ontario. This volume reviews the experience of both the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples in Southern Ontario, as well as the Algonquians in Northern Ontario. The first section describes the climate and landforms of Ontario thousands of years ago.