First Nations Books

Here are some books that are valuable for anyone wanting to know more about First Nations and the history and process of colonization within a land. That land might be Newfoundland, Labrador, Canada as well as others around the world.

The peoples of such internal colonization is what George Manuel defined as “the Fourth World”. I’ve been thinking about that since hearing that Arthur Manuel died last week. He was a chief and political activist in British Columbia. He was also the son of George Manuel, author of The Fourth World.

I read The Fourth World at university soon after it came out. Wow, I thought then, and still do whenever I reread parts of it. I still have my original copy. It’s moved with me many times over many years.

Looking through my bookshelves, I saw other books that I consider indispensable for thinking about First Nations and Canada. Make a list then, I thought. I will keep adding to it as I think of more. I have put in links for purchase on Amazon. Libraries and used book stores are also a good bet, especially for the older books. (See too my Newfoundland Mi’kmaq Books.)

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The Books

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Prison of Grass: Canada from the native point of view, Howard Adams, General Publishing 1975 & 1989. “With the publication of this eloquent, passionate and scholarly work, no Canadian can ever again boast that this is a country free from the cancer of racism,” Pierre Berton.

 

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On Being Here to Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal rights in Canada, Michael Asch, U of Toronto 2014. The University of Victoria anthropologist looks at treaties between Indigenous and settler peoples to find “an ethical way for both communities to be here to stay.”

 

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Surviving as Indians: The challenge of self-government, Menno Boldt, U of Toronto 1993. Government-First Nations history and how self-government might work, written at a time when band self-government agreements were sought by the federal government.

 

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The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the Atlantic, Rachel Bryant, Wilfred Laurier U Press 2017. “Through readings of a wide range of northeastern texts… Bryant explores how colonized and Indigenous environments occupy the same given geographical coordinates even while existing in distinct epistemological worlds.”

 

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Half Breed, Maria Campbell, McClelland and Stewart 2019 (new ed.) An autobiography that tells you what it was like growing up Métis in Saskatchewan in the mid 20th century. It was a “wow” book when it was published in 1973, and still is.

 

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Agents of Repression: The FBI’s secret wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, South End Press (2nd Revised ed.) 2001. Noam Chomsky calls this 1988 book “a chilling account of the government attack against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party, placed in the context of the traditional use of the FBI for domestic political repression.”

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Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn, Evan S. Connell, North Point Press 1984. A novel and history of the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn. Facts and interpretation in lyrical writing that carries you along in the action. There is also a movie starring Gary Cole and Rosanna Arquette. I didn’t think a movie could do justice to the book, but it does.
 

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Stubborn Resistance: New Brunswick Maliseet and Mi’kmaq in defence of their lands, Brian Cuthbertson, Nimbus Publishing, 2015. A history of Maliseet and Mi’kmaq defence of their lands in New Brunswick, from 18th century treaties signed by the new colony to present day.

 

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Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-State: “Fourth-World” politics in Canada, Australia and Norway, Noel Dyck, ISER Memorial University of Nfld. 1985. “…theoretical overview and sufficient case material to develop an understanding of the political issues facing the peoples of the Fourth World.”

 

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What is the Indian ‘Problem’: Tutelege and Resistance in the Canadian Indian Administration, Noel Dyck, ISER Memorial U of Nfld. 1992. This study traces “the evolving nature of tutelage relations between Indians and government agents, missionaries and teachers.”

 

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Indigenous Peoples in the Twenty-First Century, James S. Frideres, Oxford U. Press 2019 3rd ed. “.…a crucial examination of the lasting legacy and modern impacts of colonialism…”

 

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From Oral to Written: A celebration of Indigenous literature in Canada, 1980-2010, Tomson Highway, Talonbooks 2017. Cree playwright, novelist and musician Tomson Highway said in interviews that he could count 19 books by indigenous writers in Canada written prior to 1980. This is his 448 page list of those written since.
 

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The Rez Sisters, Tomson Highway, Fifth House 1988. An award winning two-act play first performed in 1986. Valuable to read, see as well as perform.

 

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Grassy Narrows, George Hutchison and Dick Wallace, Van Nostrand Reinhold 1977. Hutchison and Wallace covered the Grassy Narrows, Ontario mercury poisoning story for the London Free Press. My mother bought me this book. The story and images were horrifying then, and still are all these years later.

 

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The Inconvenient Indian: A curious account of native people in North America, Thomas King, Anchor Canada 2013. Anything by Thomas King is worth reading. But this look at ‘being Indian’ – historically and in modern Canadian society – is especially valuable. Also available is 2017’s The Inconvenient Indian Illustrated.

 

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Distorted Descent: White claims to Indigenous identity, Darryl Leroux, U of Manitoba Press 2019. “…a social phenomenon that has taken off in the twenty-first century:… white, French-descendant people discovering an Indigenous ancestor born 300 to 375 years ago through genealogy and using that ancestor as the sole basis for an eventual shift into an “Indigenous” identity today.” (Amazon description)

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Unsettling Canada: A national wake-up call, Arthur Manuel, Between the Lines 2015. “…chronicles the modern struggle for Indigenous rights covering fifty years of struggle…”

 

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The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the land, rebuilding the economy, Arthur Manuel and Ronald Derrickson, Lorimer 2017. “…an illuminating vision of what Canada and Canadians need for true reconciliation.”

 

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The Fourth World, George Manuel and Michael Posluns, U of Minnesota P. 2019 (new ed.) Colonization within lands as well as the connections between “Fourth World” peoples. First published in 1974 by Collier Macmillan Canada.

 

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In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement, Peter Matthiessen, Penguin (revised ed.) 1992. Afterword by Martin Garbus, the lawyer who defended the author and publisher in a libel suit brought against them about this book by the FBI and South Dakota’s attempt to stop its publication.
 

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Truth and Conviction: Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw quest for justice, L. Jane McMillan, UBC Press 2018. “Jane McMillan – Marshall’s former partner, an acclaimed anthropologist, and an original defendant in the Supreme Court’s Marshall decision – tells the story of how Marshall’s life-long battle against injustice permeated Canadian legal consciousness and revitalized Indigenous law.”

 

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Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A history of Indian-White relations in Canada, J. R. Miller, U of Toronto Press 2018 4rd ed. I asked Dr. Gordon Inglis, of MUN’s Anthropology Dept, what would be good texts for an introductory indigenous issues course. This was one he recommended. He was right.
 

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Big Chief Elizabeth: How England’s adventurers gambled and won the New World, Giles Milton, Hodder and Stoughton 2000. Queen Elizabeth I’s 16th century adventurers in North America. The early colonies, and also Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his “discovery” of an already fairly crowded St. John’s harbour.

 

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Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII, Chester Nex and Judith Schiess Avilla, Berkley (reprint ed.) 2012. Navajo Marines in WWII created an unbreakable code for the US military by using their own language. This is the story, told by one of the veteran code talkers.

 

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We Were Not The Savages: Collision between European and Native American civilizations, Daniel N. Paul, Halifax: Fernwood 2006 (4th ed. 2022). A history of European-First Nations relations, from before contact to the late 20th century. The focus is on Atlantic Canada from the point of view of the Mi’kmaq.

 

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People of Terra Nullius, Boyce Richardson, Douglas & McIntyre 1993. “Terra Nullius, a land that is empty of people. This is a legal concept used by Europeans when they first arrived in North America.”

 

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Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, ethnicity, and Indian identity in the Southern United States, Gerald Sider, Cambridge U. Press 1993. A fascinating look at definitions of identity. The Lumbee of North Carolina fought for many, many years for recognition as an indigenous people. Dr. Sider also has spent a lot of time in Newfoundland. Also well worth reading is The Lumbee Problem: The making of an American Indian People, 1980 by Karen Blu, Cambridge UP 1980.

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Enough is Enough: Aboriginal women speak out, Janet Silman (compiler), Women’s Press 1992. Stories from the Maliseet women of Tobique NB. They tell about their lives as well as their protests against gender discrimination in the Indian Act.

 

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Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City, Tanya Talaga, House of Anansi 2017. “Canada’s J’Accuse” about Thunder Bay and indigenous youth death.

 

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The Politics of Indianness: Case studies of Native ethno-politics in Canada, Adrian Tanner (ed.) Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial U of Nfld 1983. A collection of essays that look at Indigenous politics in the 1970s. It includes case studies of political action among the Mi’kmaq as well as in the Canadian north and west.

 

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The Queen at the Council Fire: The Treaty of Niagara, Reconciliation, and the Dignified Crown in Canada, Nathan Tidridge, Dundurn 2015. “This [1764] treaty, symbolized by the Covenant Chain Wampum, is seen by many Indigenous peoples as the birth of modern Canada.”

 

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The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Edited and Abridged, TRC, U of Manitoba Press 2015. Published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, the report includes a foreword written by former AFN national chief Phil Fontaine. Additionally, the archive of recordings and documents collected by the TRC is in an afterword by Aimée Craft.

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A Pony Day, Hélène de Varennes, Paul Lang and Imelda Perley, Bouton d’Or Acadie 2018. A beautifully illustrated children’s book written in French, Wolastoqey and English. Using three languages of New Brunswick, it tells a story of a girl, her grandfather and a pony.

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Nitassinan: The Innu struggle to reclaim their homeland, Marie Wadden, Douglas & McIntyre 1991. The story of the Labrador Innu, internally colonized perhaps doubly. First by the Dominion of Newfoundland, then by Canada.

 

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Where The Pavement Ends: Canada’s aboriginal recovery movement and the urgent need for reconciliation, Marie Wadden, Douglas & McIntyre 2009. Like The Dispossessed, a journalist travels around First Nations communities. The stories told are both sad and hopeful, personal and political.

 

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From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous nations for a stronger Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Purlich Books 2019. “In this powerful book she urges all Canadians – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – to build upon the momentum already gained or risk hard-won progress being lost.” (Amazon description)

 

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Stolen Continents: Conquest and resistance in the Americas, Ronald Wright, Penguin Canada 1992. First subtitled ‘The “New World” through Indian eyes since 1492’, it is the story of contact and its aftermath in North, Central and South America told from the perspective of the indigenous peoples.

 

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The Dispossessed: Life and death in native Canada, Geoffrey York, Vintage UK 1989. This was the book that Dr. Gordon Inglis also suggested as an indigenous issues course text. Some students said it was depressing. Yep, it is. And what’s more depressing is that, all these years later, it still reads like current news.

 

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People of the Pines: The Warriors and the legacy of Oka, Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera, Little, Brown & Co. 1991. The standoff in the summer of 1990 at Oka and Kahnawake told by two reporters who covered it.

 

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