About this resource list
June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada. National Indigenous Peoples Day is held in celebration and recognition of the diverse and distinct cultures, heritage, and achievements of Indigenous Peoples – First Nations, Inuit, and Métis – in what is now known as Canada.
This sampling of resources has been created in celebration of the Indigenous authors and topics featured in our library collection.
If you have suggestions for Indigenous books that are not yet part of our collection, please let us know by emailing your ideas to library@camosun.ca.
Books for kids
People, life, joy
Mother Earth Plants for Health and Beauty= kikāwīnaw askiy oskihtēpakwa : Indigenous plants, traditions & recipes by 
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Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities by This link opens in a new window
Zaagi'idwin: Silent, Unquestionable Act of Love by This link opens in a new window
Wisdom Engaged: Traditional Knowledge for Northern Community Well-being by This link opens in a new window
Mischief Making: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Art, and the Seriousness of Play by This link opens in a new windowBiographies & memoirs
Jody Wilson-Raybould, 2021
Call number: FC 656 W55 A3 2021
Jesse Wente, 2021
Call number: E 99 C6 W46 2021
Fred Sasakamoose, foreword by Bryan Trottier, 2021
Call number: E 99 C88 S352 2021
Billy-Ray Belcourt, 2020
Call number: PS 8603 E516 H57 2020
Clayton Thomas-Müller, 2021
Call number: GE 56 T56 A3 2021
Nicola I. Campbell, 2021
Call number: PS 8605 A5475 Z46 2021
Darrel J. McLeod, 2021
Call number: E 99 C88 M35 2021
Lynn Gehl, foreword by Mary Eberts
E-book and in print: E 98 W8 G44 2021
Janice Forsyth, foreword by Willie Littlechild, 2020
Call number: E 98 G2 F69 2020
Jordan Abel, 2020
Call number: PS 8601 B437 Z46 2020
David Robertson, 2020
Call number: PS 8585 O32115 Z46 2020
National Film Board of Canada
Written & directed by Asinnajaq, 2017
Running time: 14 minutes
Written & directed by Alanis Obomsawin, 2021
Running time: 29 minutes
Directed by Fritz Mueller, 2021
Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes
Directed by Christopher Auchter; written by Christopher Auchter & Annie Reid, 2017
Running time: 10 minutes
Directed by Rose Stiffarm, 2019
Running time: 9 minutes
Written & directed by Nyla Innuksuk, 2016
Running time: 4 minutes
Stories, poems & essays
77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin by This link opens in a new window
Gather: Richard Van Camp on the Joy of Storytelling by This link opens in a new window
Michelle Good, 2020
Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.
Cherie Dimaline, 2021
Years ago, when plagues and natural disasters killed millions of people, much of the world stopped dreaming. Without dreams, people are haunted, sick, mad, unable to rebuild. The government soon finds that the Indigenous people of North America have retained their dreams, an ability rumored to be housed in the very marrow of their bones. Soon, residential schools pop up – or are re-opened – across the land to bring in the dreamers and harvest their dreams. Seventeen-year-old French lost his family to these schools and has spent the years since heading north with his new found family: a group of other dreamers, who, like him, are trying to build and thrive as a community. But then French wakes up in a pitch-black room, locked in and alone for the first time in years, and he knows immediately where he is –a nd what it will take to escape. Meanwhile, out in the world, his found family searches for him and dodges new dangers – school Recruiters, a blood cult, even the land itself. When their paths finally collide, French must decide how far he is willing to go – and how many loved ones is he willing to betray – in order to survive.
Eden Robinson, 2021
The third and final book of the brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy. Jared, now 18, wakes up in a hospital bed, feeling like hell. Some of the people he loves – the ones who are deaf to magic – assume he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety and went on a bender to end all benders. They think that's why movers found him naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat. The truth for Jared, who has spent two years running from it, is so much worse. He finally knows for sure that he will never be normal because he is the son of Wee'git, a Trickster, and a Trickster himself. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war. A horrible place to be for the sweetest Trickster there's ever been, one whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world around him a kinder, safer, place. As his cousin Kota would say, Sucks to be you, Jared.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2020
Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for "in the bush," and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie's 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. Set in the same place as Moodie's colonial memoir, this genre-fluid novel is offered as a cure for Moodie's racist treatment of Mississauga Nishnaabeg in her writing. The giant Sabe meditates on the gifts and challenges of their recent sobriety. Migrating geese make a case for coordinated formation as a way to get out of "one's own cycling head." Racoons turn Bougie Kwe's Zen-garden pond into their personal urban spa. This is a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits who are all busy with the daily labours of healing – healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. This is the real world, the one where meaning accumulates through close observation and relationship. Enter and be changed.
Cherie Dimaline, 2019
Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year. One terrible, hungover morning in a Walmart parking lot, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher named Eugene Wolff. By the time she staggers into the tent, the service is over. But as she is about to leave, she hears an unmistakable voice. She turns, and there Victor is. But his hair is short and he's wearing a suit and he doesn't recognize her at all. No, he insists, she's the one suffering a delusion: he's the Reverend Wolff and his only mission is to bring his people to Jesus. Except that, as Joan soon discovers, that's not all the enigmatic Wolff is doing. With only the help of Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with a knowledge of the old ways, and her odd, Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan has to find a way to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor. Her life, and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon it.
Thomas King, 2022
For the first time since the pandemic, Thumps DreadfulWater has finally found some peace in small-town Chinook. Sure, his beloved cat is still missing and his relationship with Claire is more than uncertain, but at least he can relax in the comfort of his home. And now that local businesses are starting to open their doors again, everything can go back to normal. But when Thumps unintentionally discovers a body at the bottom of a treacherous canyon, he becomes entangled once again in an inexplicable mystery. As more puzzling details come to the surface, Thumps begins to question whom he can truly trust – especially when an unexpected visitor walks back into his life.
Richard Van Camp, 2019
The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves ("The Camel Clutch"), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or "Sky People," love, lust and prayers for peace. While this is Van Camp's most hilarious short story collection, it's also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity. The stories in Moccasin Square Gardens show that medicine power always comes with a price. To counteract this darkness, Van Camp weaves a funny and loving portrayal of the Tłı̨chǫ Dene and other communities of the North, drawing from oral history techniques to perfectly capture the character and texture of everyday small-town life.
Karen McBride, 2019
Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow. He tells her he's here to help her, save her. From what, exactly? Sure, her dad's been dead for almost two years and she hasn't quite reconciled that grief, but is that worth the time of an Algonquin demigod? Soon Hazel learns that there's more at play than just her own sadness and doubt. The quarry that's been lying unsullied for over a century on her father's property is stirring the old magic that crosses the boundaries between this world and the next. With the aid of Nanabush, Hazel must unravel a web of deceit that, if left untouched, could destroy her family and her home on both sides of the Medicine Wheel.
Thomas King, 2022
Thumps DreadfulWater's world is turned upside down when Nina Maslow, the producer of a true-crime reality-TV show, turns up dead after working on a cold case that Thumps has spent years trying to forget. What's more, someone seems set on taunting Thumps, leaving reminders of the Obsidian murder case around town. Is it possible that the elusive serial killer who murdered his girlfriend and her daughter all those years ago has resurfaced in Chinook? Or is this the work of a copycat looking to mess with Thumps by stirring up memories from his past? Dragged back into a case that has haunted him for years, Thumps DreadfulWater is determined to solve the mystery of the Obsidian murders. But as he works the case, he begins to realize just how dangerous the person he is dealing with is--and that he might be the next target. Thumps DreadfulWater, the sly, wry, reluctant investigator of Cold Skies and A Matter of Malice, returns in another irresistible mystery that only Thomas King could create.
Katherena Vermette, 2021
Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly. As Cedar floats between foster homes, and eventually goes to live with her estranged father, she grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and sister, Phoenix. These are the Strangers, each of them haunted in their own way by the death of Elsie's youngest daughter, Sparrow, a sweet, boisterous 8-year-old who died suddenly of pneumonia, leaving the family reeling from the weight of her loss. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that dares them to succeed, but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, and a severe ignorance that surrounds them and confines their every move, they urge each other to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they will ever emerge on the other side.
