Rating: 9.1/10. Who are the Native Americans, and how did they get here? This book explores the prehistory of Native Americans through archeological and genetic evidence (and occasionally with linguistic evidence and oral histories as well). The question of the origin of the natives was first explored through the investigation of burial mounds by Jefferson…
Category: Indigenous
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
Rating: 8.3/10. A history of the Aztec people, compiled using recently-available sources in the Nahuatl language that tell the story from their own perspective. The word “Aztec” was never used by their own people, instead they called themselves either the “Mexica” when referring to the political entity (centered in Tenochtitlan), or the “Nahuas” when referring…
Northwest Coast Indian Art by Bill Holm
Rating: 7.7/10. Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form by Bill Holm An analysis of the formline style of art by the Pacific Northwest Indians including the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian tribes. The ancient art was forgotten until its revival relatively recently, when people studied old works to deduce the patterns so that new…
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
Rating: 7.4/10. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph A fairly short book (main text is 100 pages) recommended by my manager, about Canadian-Indigenous relations while focusing on the Indian Act. Indigenous topics have been popular in the news recently…
The Language of the Inuit by Louis-Jacques Dorais
Rating: 7.8/10. Academic book describing various aspects of the Inuit languages, spoken by about 110k aboriginals in Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland. The Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, whose homeland is around the Bering Strait. The Aleut (Unangax) language is the most divergent, followed by several Yupik languages in Siberia and…
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Rating: 7.0/10. [WARNING: SPOILERS!] A short post-apocalyptic novel set in an Ojibwe reservation in Northern Ontario, far from any big towns. The book starts with the power going out and the supply trucks no longer arrive. Only a few people know how to hunt and trap for food, the rest must subsist on a cache…
A Story as Sharp as a Knife by Robert Bringhurst
Rating: 7.3/10. A collection of Haida mythology, interspersed with analysis of them, and commentary of how the myths were collected. The Haida are a first nations group living in the Haida Gwaii islands of British Colombia, and in 1900, linguist John Swanton from Harvard was sent to study their culture. He ended up seeking their…
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
Rating: 8.5/10. First novel by Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat singer. She tells the story of an Inuit girl in the 1970s, growing up in Nunavut in the high arctic. At first, she is a girl, and various problems like bullying, drugs, sexual assault on young girls are common. She matures and learns to fight…
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Rating: 8.4/10. This book is about the life of an Ojibway Indian, living in northern Ontario and growing up in the 60s. When he was young, they sent him to a residential school where he was badly treated and not allowed to speak his own language. He found hockey and got really good at it,…