Indigenous Science

After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of 18th-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos.

Anton Treuer has been at the forefront of the battle to revitalize Ojibwe for many years. In this impassioned argument, he discusses the interrelationship between language and culture, the problems of language loss, strategies and tactics for resisting, and the inspiring stories of successful language warriors. He recounts his own sometimes hilarious struggle to learn Ojibwe as an adult, and he depicts the astonishing success of the language program at Lac Courte Oreilles, where a hundred children now speak Ojibwe as their first language.

52 Ways to Reconcile is an accessible, friendly guide for non-Indigenous people eager to learn, or Indigenous people eager to do more in our collective effort towards reconciliation, as people, and as a country. As much as non-Indigenous people want to walk the path of reconciliation, they often aren’t quite sure what to do, and they’re afraid of making mistakes. This book is the answer and the long overdue guide.

Indigenous peoples have faced the end of the world before. Now, humankind is on a collective march toward the abyss. Global pandemics, extreme weather, and massive wildfires define this era many now call the Anthropocene. From Brazil comes Ailton Krenak, renowned Indigenous activist and leader, who demonstrates that our current environmental crisis is rooted in society’s flawed concept of “humanity” - that human beings are superior to other forms of nature and are justified in exploiting it as we please.

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe and a founder of the American Indian Movement, is one of the most influential Indian leaders of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Darrell Dennis is a stereotype-busting, politically incorrect Native American/Aboriginal/Shuswap. With a large dose of humour and irreverence, he untangles some of the truths and myths about First Nations: Why do people think Natives get free trucks, and why didn’t he ever get one? Why does the length of your hair determine whether you’re good or bad? By what ratio does the amount of rain in a year depend on the amount of cactus liquor you consume? In addition to answering these burning questions, Dennis tackles some tougher subjects.

At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, Canada and the United States had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had made an expansive international border that restricted movement.

Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands. As of 2021, the California cannabis economy was valued at $3.5 billion. In Settler Cannabis, Kaitlin Reed demonstrates how this "green rush" is only the most recent example of settler colonial resource extraction and wealth accumulation. Reed shares this history to inform the path toward an alternative future.

The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions and a call for environmentalists to learn from the indigenous community’s rich history of activism.

Wizard of the Upper Amazon is an extraordinary document of the life among a tribe of South American Indians at the beginning of the 20th century. For many listeners, the most compelling sections of the audiobook will be the descriptions of the use of Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca of the Amazon forests. This powerful hallucinogen has long been credited with the ability to transport human beings to realms of experience where telepathy and clairvoyance are commonplace. Manual Córdova, the narrator of these adventures, is well-known as a healer in Peru.

Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction writers.

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, settlers dispossessed Indigenous people and undermined their sovereignty as nations. One site of invasion was Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien’kehá:ka community and part of the Rotinonhsiónni confederacy. The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawà:ke law; the establishment of modern Kahnawà:ke in the context of French imperial claims.

In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna’s, but Savanna’s body would not be found for days. The horrifying crime sent shock waves far beyond Fargo, North Dakota, where it occurred, and helped expose the sexual and physical violence Native American women and girls have endured since the country’s colonization.

Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory explores Canada’s hydroelectric boom in the Lake of the Woods area. It complicates narratives of increasing affluence in postwar Canada, revealing that the inverse was true for Indigenous communities along the Winnipeg River.

We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the "Old World" encountered the "New", when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. As Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others—enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders—the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs.

In a world that requires knowledge and wisdom to address developing crises around us, The Gatherings shows how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can come together to create meaningful and lasting relationships.

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the 17th century, Native peoples - Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others - formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous.

This carefully researched exploration of Native American culture investigates the complex, often misunderstood histories of hundreds of indigenous peoples. Author James Wilson has drawn from ethnographic and archaeological studies, historical texts, and the rich written and oral traditions of Native Americans to complete this important work.

Literatures, Communities, and Learning: Conversations with Indigenous Writers gathers nine conversations with Indigenous writers about the relationship between Indigenous literatures and learning, and how their writing relates to communities. Relevant, reflexive and critical, these conversations explore the pressing topic of Indigenous writings and its importance to the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples and to Canadian education. It offers listeners a chance to listen to authors’ perspectives in their own words.