This mini book is designed to put basic facts and truths down in simple words and design, providing a brief introduction to several aspects of Canada’s colonial reality.
A is for assimilation is aimed at teens and anyone who isn’t familiar with the basic history of the nation’s First People. Available in bundle on Strong nations website

Traveling to be reunited with her family in the arctic, 10-year-old Margaret Pokiak can hardly contain her excitement. It’s been two years since her parents delivered her to the school run by the dark-cloaked nuns and brothers. Coming ashore, Margaret spots her family, but her mother barely recognizes her, screaming, “Not my girl.” Margaret realizes she is now marked as an outsider. And Margaret is an outsider: she has forgotten the language and stories of her people, and she can’t even stomach the food her mother prepares. However, Margaret gradually relearns her language and her family’s way of living. Along the way, she discovers how important it is to remain true to the ways of her people—and to herself. Highlighted by archival photos and striking artwork, this first-person account of a young girl’s struggle to find her place will inspire young readers to ask what it means to belong. * USBBY Outstanding International Books Honor List Best Bets List, Ontario Library Association White Ravens Collection, International Youth Library, Munich Independent Publishers Book Award Skipping Stones Honor Book Best Books for Kids & Teens, Canadian Children’s Book Centre Nonfiction Honor List, VOYA Book of the Year Award finalist, Foreword Reviews Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist First Nation Communities Reads Selection finalist Golden Oak Award nomination

Two young sisters are taken from their home and family. Powerless to change their fortunes, they are separated, and each put into different foster homes. Yet over the years, the bond between them grows. As they each make their way in a society that is, at times, indifferent, hostile, and violent, one embraces her Métis identity, while the other tries to leave it behind. In the end, out of tragedy, comes an unexpected legacy of triumph and reclamation.

Arts of Engagement focuses on the role that music, film, visual art, and Indigenous cultural practices play in and beyond Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. Contributors here examine the impact of aesthetic and sensory experience in residential school history, at TRC national and community events, and in artwork and exhibitions not affiliated with the TRC. Using the framework of “aesthetic action,” the essays expand the frame of aesthetics to include visual, aural, and kinetic sensory experience, and question the ways in which key components of reconciliation such as apology and witnessing have social and political effects for residential school survivors, intergenerational survivors, and settler publics.

Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at a residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing. In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history. Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.

Canada's First Nations is a comprehensive history of Canada's original inhabitants. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines techniques from history, anthropology, archaeology, biology, sociology, and political science, the story of the more than 50 First Nations of Canada is carefully woven together. A central argument in the text is that "Amerindians" and Inuit have responded to persistent colonial pressures through attempts at co-operation, episodes of resistance, and politically sophisticated efforts to preserve their territory and culture. The fourth edition has been fully updated to include current topics such as the effects of global warming on the Innu, the Ipperwash Inquiry, and the Caledonia land claims dispute. This is a text that transcends the familiar and narrow focus on Native-White relations to identify the history of the First Nations as a separate and proud tradition.

Tim Giago weaves memoir, commentary, reflection and poetry together to boldly illustrate his often-horrific experiences as a child at a residential school run by the Catholic Church. Through his words, the experience of one child becomes a metaphor for the experience of many who were literally ripped from their tribal roots and torn from their families for nine months of the year in order to be molded to fit into colonial society. Dramatic and intensely moving black-and-white illustrations by Giago’s daughter Denise illuminate the text.

The second edition explores the myriad ways that education, broadly defined, molds each of us in profound and enduring ways. Laid against the supporting scaffolding of modern critical theory, the chapters offer cutting edge perspectives on going to school in British Columbia. How has education been tailored by race, class and gender? How do representations of schools and schooling change over time and whose interests are served? What echoes of current tensions can we hear in the past? Children, Teachers and Schools offers a glimpse of the deep contradictions inherent in an experience that we all share.

As a poet and citizen deeply concerned by the Oka Crisis, the Idle No More protests and Canada’s ongoing failure to resolve First Nations issues, Montreal author Mark Abley has long been haunted by the figure of Duncan Campbell Scott, known both as the architect of Canada’s most destructive policies and as one of the nation’s major poets. Who was this enigmatic figure who could compose a sonnet to an “Onondaga Madonna” one moment and promote a “final solution” to the “Indian problem” the next? In this passionate, intelligent and highly readable enquiry into the state of Canada’s troubled relations with Indigenous peoples, Abley alternates between analysis of current events and an imagined debate with the spirit of Duncan Campbell Scott, whose defence of the Indian Residential School and belief in assimilation illuminate the historical roots underlying today’s First Nations’ struggles.

From the authors: "Decolonizing Gender: A Curriculum is a guided reflection on gender identity, race, and colonialism. Designed for both individuals and groups, this zine asks deep and probing questions about why the gender binary is seen as the "norm", despite people who choose to exist outside of the binary having existed forever."