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Indigenizing Columbia College: Library Resources

Indigenizing the classroom, decolonizing our minds

First Nations, Métis and Inuit

Braiding Sweetgrass

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation."

The End of the World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada

Drawing on their work in Indigenous activism, the labour movement, youth climate campaigns, community-engaged scholarship, and independent journalism, the six authors challenge toothless proposals and false solutions to show that a just transition from fossil fuels cannot succeed without the dismantling of settler capitalism in Canada.

Our Hearts are as One Fire

This work draws on Ojibway-, Ota'wa-, and Ishkodawatomi-Anishinabe world views, history, and lived experience to develop a wholly Ojibway-Anishinabe interpretation of the role of traditional leadership and governance today.

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Art

Wabanaki Modern

The “Micmac Indian Craftsmen” of Elsipogtog rose to national prominence in the early 1960s. At their peak, they were featured in print media from coast to coast. Primarily self-taught, deeply rooted in their community, and fluent Mi’kmaw speakers, they were among the first modern Indigenous artists in Atlantic Canada. They produced an eclectic range of handmade objects that were sophisticated, profound, and eloquent. 

Indigenous Media Arts in Canada

This collection explores those issues with a focus on settler-Indigenous cultural politics in the country known as Canada, looking in particular at Indigenous representation in media arts.

Residential Schools

Tsqelmucwílc : The Kamloops Indian Residential School

In May 2021, the world was shocked by news of the detection of 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. At these Christian-run, government-supported institutions, they were subjected to physical, mental, and sexual abuse while their Indigenous languages and traditions were stifled and denounced. Tsqelmucwílc is the story of those who survived the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

No Time to Say Goodbye 

In this fictional account of residential schools, five children are taken by from their homes by government agents. They experience the pain of homesickness and confusion while trying to adjust to a completely different world, in which their language and cultural practices are forbidden. In spite of the harsh realities of residential school, the children find adventure in escape, challenge in competition, and camaraderie with fellow students.

Memoirs

Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls 

Sterritt shares her memoir alongside investigative reporting into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, showing how colonialism and racism led to a society where Sterritt struggled to survive as a young person, and where the lives of Indigenous women and girls are ignored and devalued. 

Half-Bads in White Regalia

A memoir about a tumultuous childhood and breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Graphic Novels Available as eBooks

Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story

Abandoned as a young child, Betsy is adopted into a loving family. A few short years later, at the age of 8, everything changes. Betsy is taken away to a residential school.

The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book

 An illustrated history of Indigenous activism and resistance in the Americas over the previous 500 years, from contact to present day.

Graphic Novels and Picture Books

The Spirit of Denendeh: A Blanket of Butterflies

Explores the journey of Shinobu, a mysterious stranger who visits Fort Smith, NWT, to retrieve his family's samurai suit of armor and sword from the local museum. When he discovers that his grandfather's sword has been lost in a poker game to the man they call 'Benny the Bank,' he sets out to retrieve it with the help of a young boy, Sonny, and his grandmother.

The Woman in the Woods

Loup Garrou, trickster rabbits, and spirits with names that can't be spoken--the plains and forests of North America are alive with characters like these, all waiting to meet you in this collection of folklore retold in comics!

Come Home, Indio

Between the Ho-Chunk community of his Native American family in Wisconsin and his schoolmates in the Chicago suburbs, Terry tries in vain to fit in. Terry shares with the reader the process by which he finds hope and gets sober, as well as the powerful experience of finding something to believe in.