University of Regina Press

Uncut explores the significance of the foreskin in contemporary culture

The “uncut” penis is viewed by some as attractive or erotic, and by others as ugly or undesirable. Secular parents of male infants worry about whether or not the foreskin should be removed so their little boy can grow up to “look like dad” or to avoid imagined bullying in the locker room. Medical experts and public health organizations argue back and forth about whether circumcision is medically necessary, while “intactivists” advocate that removing an infant’s foreskin without their consent is mutilation.

Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the foreskin and its contentious position in contemporary Anglo-American culture. From language to art, from religion to medicine and public health, Uncut is a provocative book that asks us to ask ourselves what we know and don’t know about this seemingly small piece of skin.

Drawing on all these threads, Jonathan A. Allan leads us through the history and cultural construction of the foreskin—from Michelangelo’s David to parenting manuals, from nineteenth-century panic over masturbation to foreskin restoration—to ultimately ask: what is the future of the foreskin?

In 2015, the New York Times ran just a single headline with the term “sexual misconduct.” Three years later, it ran dozens of such headlines, averaging more than one per week, and expanded coverage across other media organizations followed. This shift in coverage is reflective of significant changes in public discourse about sexual harm helping to hold some perpetrators accountable for their behaviour and paved the path for #MeToo and related movements against sexual abuse and harm to receive national and global attention.

In Defining Sexual Misconduct, Stacey Hannem and Christopher Schneider trace contemporary shifts in power in relation to the increased recognition and censure of sexual misconduct and the ways in which the shifting social landscape is communicated in the coverage of sexual misconduct in media.

Hannem and Schneider also examine the contemporary dynamics of public accusations and their relationship to more formal criminal justice processes, as well as the implications for the stigmatization of alleged abusers and public response to alleged victims. Since behaviours categorized as sexual misconduct may not all be defined as crimes, or punishable through legal means, social censure and cancel culture often stand as proxy forms of punishment, and the authors reflect on what the pursuit of justice might look like in this extra-legal context.

Winner of the 2024 William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books


One of the few biographies of an Inuk man from the 19th Century—separated from his family, community, and language—finding his place in history.
Augustine Tataneuck was an Inuk man born near the beginning of the 19th century on the northwestern coast of Hudson Bay. Between 1812 and 1834, his family sent him to Churchill, Manitoba, to live and work among strangers, where he could escape the harsh Arctic climate and earn a living in the burgeoning fur trade. He was perhaps the first Inuk man employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company as a labourer, and he also worked as an interpreter on John Franklin’s two overland expeditions in search of the northwest passage.

Tataneuck’s life was shaped by the inescapable, harsh environments he lived within, and he was an important, but not widely recognized, player in the struggle for the possession of northwest North America waged by Britain, Russia, and the United States. He left no diaries or letters.

Using the Hudson’s Bay Company’s journals and historical archives, historian Renee Fossett has pieced together a compelling biography of Augustine and the historical times he lived through: climate disasters, lethal disease episodes, and political upheavals on an international scale.

While The Life and Times of Augustine Tataneuck is a captivating portrait of an Inuk man who lived an extraordinary life, it also is an arresting, unique glimpse into the North as it was in the 19th century and into the lives of trappers, translators, and labourers who are seldom written about and often absent in the historical record.

2025 SLA One Book, One Province Selection

Awarded Gold at the 2022 Taste Canada Award


The lyricism of Bread & Water interweaves culinary insights and literary essays to pose fundamental questions about how we live––and how we feed––the larger hungers that motivate our lives.



“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...” —MFK Fisher



When chef and writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith left the city for rural life on a farm in Saskatchewan, she planned to replace cooking and teaching with poetry and prose. But—as begin the best stories—her next adventure didn’t quite work that way.



Food trickled into her poems, her essays, her fiction. And water poured into her property in both Saskatchewan and Calgary during two devastating floods.



Bread & Water uses lyrical prose to examine those two fundamental ingredients, and to probe the essential questions on how to live a life. Hobsbawn-Smith uses food to explore the hungers of the human soul: wilder hungers that loiter beyond cravings for love. She kneads themes of floods and place, grief and loss; the commonalities of refugees and Canadians through common tastes in food; cooking methods, grandmothers and mentors; the politics of local and sustainable food; parenting; male privilege in the restaurant world; and the challenges of aging gracefully.



It is an elegant collection that weaves joy into exploring the quotidian in search for larger meaning.

A fascinating history of the carbon footprint of our concrete world—from ancient Roman architecture to urban cityscapes—and the trouble it spells for sustainability amidst rapid climate change

For readers of The Sixth Extinction and The Uninhabitable Earth, Concrete explores the history of a material that has been central to architecture and design for thousands of years—and what its future looks like in a world experiencing rapid climate change.

Imagine what the world would be like without concrete: there’d be no high-rises, no grand irrigation projects, no lettuce from southern climes in the winter, no multi-lane highways crisscrossing continents, a shortage of electricity, more mud in some places, more solitude in others. But because of the fossil fuels and other resources required to make concrete, there also would be less CO2 in the atmosphere and less dramatic climate change. In Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future, Soderstrom tells the story of concrete’s glorious past, extravagant present, and uncertain future with careful research, lively anecdotes, and thoughtful reflection. The framework for this exploration is one the Romans—famous for concrete structures that are still strong—would understand: the four elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air.

A menu for an edible future

In a world expected to reach a staggering population of 9 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. But can we produce enough food to feed ourselves sustainably for an uncertain future? How will agriculture adapt to a climate change? How will climate change determine what we eat? Will we really be eating bugs?

Uncertain Harvest questions scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future. Examining cutting-edge research on the science, culture, and economics of food, the authors present a roadmap for a global food policy, while examining eight foods that could save us: algae, caribou, kale, millet, tuna, crickets, milk, and rice.

Illuminating two hundred years of lost Black History through the lens of an iconic abolitionist settlement

In the Light of Dawn shines a spotlight on the Dawn Settlement, a historic abolitionist community in rural Ontario led by Reverend Josiah Henson (the real “Uncle Tom” of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark anti-slavery novel), and reveals how the town’s scope and impact eclipses previously narrow interpretations as a “failed” utopian colony at a terminus of the Underground Railroad.

Along a 200-year continuum of resistance and contribution, Dawn’s history (and that of its residents) often intersects with pivotal international events and, beyond Henson, features important abolitionist figures like Fredrick Douglass and Civil Rights movement figures like Rosa Parks. Activism from 19th-century Pennsylvania’s Black Elite and other major American centres runs like a golden thread through successive generations in Dawn, resulting in landmark actions such as the challenge to segregation of private businesses and publicly funded schools.

Far from being a failed colony, the Dawn Settlement emerges here as a vibrant community whose residents drove wider societal change. In the Light of Dawn presents an expansive yet nuanced account of a small rural town that challenges traditional notions of Black History and the contributions of early Black pioneers, leaving behind an enduring legacy.

A visceral new collection from esteemed poet Stephen Torre, grappling with the strength and complexities of life in the northwest wild lands

Drawing from a life lived well, amidst hard work and time for reflection in the northwest wild lands of the Canadian and American Wests, Stephen Torre returns to the literary world with his usual descriptive and lyric intensity. Comprised of new and selected poems, Red Obsidian explores the necessary tensions that arise between genders and the pain and grief of environmental loss.

Inspired and influenced by a diverse array of literary influences—Indigenous oral poets and English pastoral poets, T’ang Dynasty Chinese poets and Latin American poets, American Imagists and poets Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and W.S. Merwin—Torre’s book is a poetic journal of a man passionately engaged at once with the marvel of wilderness and the rural labors of family homesteading, construction, and the logging of that wilderness.

“When there’s more joy or grief or hunger for knowing than I could express or explore elsewhere, I’m afflicted with the need to squeeze language from my fists. One can only hold so much inside,” admits Torre. Readers will feel the torque, squeeze, and pull in these poems.

Indigenous Peoples of the North American Plains were ecologists of the highest order— then the horse came and changed everything

Beaver, Bison, Horse is an interdisciplinary account of the ecological relationships the Indigenous nations of the Plains had to the beaver, bison, horse, and their habitat prior to contact. Morgan’s research shows an ecological understanding that sustained Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, with critical information on how the beaver manage water systems and protect communities from drought in the Northern Great Plains.

Morgan’s work is a game-changer.

For the first time in print, her important research now appears with a foreword by James Daschuk, bestselling and award-winning author of Clearing the Plains, and an afterword by Cristina Eisenberg, author of The Carnivore Way and The Wolf’s Tooth.

Revealing how sex and contagion have become uneasy yet inseparable bedfellows
In an era defined by pandemics, our perceptions of sexuality are deeply intertwined with fears and fantasies of disease, transmission, and safety. Little Deaths navigates the shifting terrain of sex and sexuality in these perilous times, examining the political and psychological life of the body.

Using the AIDS crisis as a reference point, the book draws necessary comparisons to and distinctions from the COVID-19 pandemic. From tracing emergent technologies that make intimacy possible under quarantine, to unpacking the phenomenon of “pandemic asexuality,” to understanding party culture as collective rebellion against social gathering restrictions, these essays all pose the essential question: what does it mean to have a sex life in the middle of a global health crisis?

Little Deaths ponders the future of sex where risk is ever-present, yet the search for pleasure persists. In the end, Little Deaths argues that there are some risks worth taking, risks that are more life-affirming than deadly—risks that just might save us in the end.

A collection of graduate research by Indigenous social work scholars
Stitching Our Stories Together showcases emerging scholars who, by centering their own nations, communities, and individual realities, demonstrate how Indigenous knowledges can challenge settler ideas and myths around pan-Indigeneity.
This collection is bookended with reflections from the scholars’ thesis supervisors, who describe their philosophy of mentoring and supporting students through an Indigenous lens, and how their pedagogies embrace the significance of relationality in Indigenous worldviews.
Stitching Our Stories Together points toward a future where Indigenous ways of knowing and being take their rightful place in spaces of higher learning and social work practice—a necessary intervention in a discipline that has historically been complicit in colonialist harm.

A singular collection of responses to the still life paintings of acclaimed artist David Garneau
Dark Chapters brings together 17 poets, fiction writers, curators, and critics to engage with the works of David Garneau, the Governor General’s Award-winning Métis artist. Featuring paintings from Garneau’s still life series “Dark Chapters” alongside poetry, fiction, critical analysis, and autotheory, the book includes contributions from Fred Wah, Paul Seesequasis, Jesse Wente, Lillian Allen, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Larissa Lai, Susan Musgrave, and more.
A nod to the Reports of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which Justice Murray Sinclair describes the residential school system as “one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our nation’s history,” Garneau’s still life paintings combine common objects (books, bones, teacups, mirrors) and less familiar ones (a Métis sash, a stone hammer, a braid of sweetgrass) to reflect the complexity of contemporary Indigenous experiences. Provocative titles like “Métis in the Academy” and “Smudge Before Reading” invite consideration of the mixed influences and loyalties faced by Indigenous students and scholars. Other paintings explore colonialism, vertical and lateral violence, Christian influence on traditional knowledge, and museum treatment of Indigenous belongings.
Rooted in Garneau’s life-long engagement at the intersections of visual art and writing, Dark Chapters presents a multifaceted reflection on the work of an inimitable, unparalleled artist.
Includes contributions from Arin Fay, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Cecily Nicholson, David Howes, Dick Averns, Fred Wah, Jeff Derksen, Jesse Wente, John G. Hampton, Larissa Lai, Lillian Allen, Paul Seesequasis, Peter Morin, Rita Bouvier, Susan Musgrave, Tarene Thomas, and Trevor Herriot.

A scathing critique of the colonial legal system’s denial of children’s rights

One afternoon in 2016, law professor Robin Hansen receives a call. On the other end of the line is “Jacquie”—a pregnant Indigenous woman, nine weeks from her due date and terrified for the welfare of her unborn son. Jacquie has been sentenced to a custodial prison sentence and her son will be automatically separated from her immediately after his birth.

As Hansen works to help Jacquie with her appeal, she uncovers the legal system’s inherent discrimination against mothers in custody and the children born to them. Using Access to Information requests along with extensive research, Hansen examines the legal rights of these women—the majority of whom are Indigenous—and finds that Jacquie and her son are by no means alone: automatic mother-infant separation without due process remains the norm in most jurisdictions in Canada.
Prison Born calls attention to the colonial and gendered assumptions that continue to underpin the legal system—assumptions that so frequently lead to the violation of the rights and denial of personhood for children and their mothers.

Explores the integral roles that Métis women assumed to ensure the survival of their communities during the fur trade era and onward

Métis Matriarchs examines the roles of prominent Métis women from across Western Canada from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, providing a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of these remarkable women who were recognized as Matriarchs and respected for their knowledge, expertise, and authority within their families and communities.

This edited collection provides an opportunity to learn about the significant contributions made by Métis women during a transitional period in Western Canadian history as the fur trade gave way to a more sedentary, industrialized, and agrarian economy. Challenging how we think about Western Canadian settlement processes that removed Indigenous peoples from the land, this collection of stories examines the ways Métis matriarchs responded to colonial and settler colonial interventions into their lives and livelihoods and ultimately ensured the cultural survival of their communities.

Harold Rhenisch’s poems balance the settler and Indigenous experiences of land and water in the Pacific Northwest
A collection of shanties (songs) laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted on the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land’s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps.
Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the voice of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch’s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe.
Do not be in Mareuil and Périgeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.
We, the land’s singers, are walking the star road on the long way home
with the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuit,
the burrowing owls of N’kmp,
and the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.
Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra, shantie.

Rediscovering, valuing, and embracing Indigenous spirituality and wisdom is critical for humanity to survive in the future.

Civilization is a western, Eurocentric construct borne from a distrust of nature, a desire to endlessly exploit it and profit from it. Despite being a relatively recent development, civilization’s inherent logic has resulted in over-population, inequality, poverty, misery, war, and climate change and now threatens humanity’s very survival. How can humanity expect to survive if it continues to look for solutions from the very structures and ideologies that have brought it to the brink of extinction?

In this final book of his trilogy, Dr. Blair Stonechild deftly illustrates how Indigenous spirituality, wisdom, and land-based knowledge is critical to human survival in the face of environmental destruction and human-induced climate change. Reinterpreting world history from an Indigenous perspective, Stonechild’s solution to this unfolding catastrophe is “ecolization,” a state in which humans recognize they are not the central purpose of creation and a way of existing harmoniously with the natural and spiritual worlds.

Beautifully written, urgent, and critical, Challenge to Civilization reminds us that it is not Earth that is in danger of extinction, but ourselves, and Indigenous spiritual wisdom can be the guiding light through what will otherwise be humanity’s final, ever-darkening days.

Grasslands are among the richest, most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and they are   crucial in the fight against climate change. Unfortunately, since 1970 Canada has lost more than 40 percent of its grasslands, and less than 15 percent of Saskatchewan’s grasslands exist today. What remains are found alongside highways and ditches. The province has some of the highest CO2 and methane emissions per capita and virtually no environmental regulations. How did we allow the grasslands to become one of the most endangered ecosystems on Earth?
 
In some sense, the story of Saskatchewan fits rather neatly into the larger story of Western Canada, where politicians often care more about extraction and growing the economy while destroying the very things the economy depends on. But that isn’t the whole story.
 
Much like Canada’s universal health care, Saskatchewan is also the birthplace of some of the first provincial and national conservation laws, and home to an unsung and unlikely champion for the environment: a farmer with a twelfth-grade education and a really old van…
 
In Protecting the Prairies, Andrea Olive provides a history of wildlife and land conservation in Saskatchewan told through the life story of environmentalist, naturalist, farmer, and former Minister of Environment and Resource Management Lorne Scott. This is a book that challenges and inspires us to be stewards of the environment in our own backyards and communities, and above all, to never be complacent when it comes to protecting the natural world.
 

A residential school survivor finds his way back to his language and culture through his family’s traditional stories.

When reflecting on forces that have shaped his life, Solomon Ratt says his education was interrupted by his schooling. Torn from his family at the age of six, Ratt was placed into the residential school system—a harsh, institutional world, operated in a language he could not yet understand, far from the love and comfort of home and family. In kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember, Ratt reflects on these memories and the life-long challenges he endured through his telling of âcimisowin—autobiographical stories—and also traditional tales.

Written over the course of several decades, Ratt describes his life before, during, and after residential school. In many ways, these stories reflect the experience of thousands of other Indigenous children across Canada, but Ratt’s stories also stand apart in a significant way: he managed to retain his mother language of Cree by returning home to his parents each summer despite the destruction wrought by colonialism.

Ratt then shifts from the âcimisowina (personal, autobiographical stories) to âcathôhkîwina, (sacred stories) the more formal and commonly recognized style of traditional Cree literature, to illustrate how, in a world uninterrupted by colonialism and its agenda of genocide, these traditional stories would have formed the winter curriculum of a Cree child’s education.

Presented in Cree Th-dialect Standard Roman Orthography, syllabics, and English, Ratt’s reminiscences of residential school escapades almost always end with a close call and a smile. Even when his memories are dark, Ratt’s particularly Cree sense of humour shines, making kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân /The Way I Remember an important and unique memoir that emphasizes and celebrates Solomon Ratt’s perseverance and life after residential school.
 

An eye-opening account of the Jewish immigration experience in the 1930s, and one man’s battle against anti-Semitic immigration policies.



In 1930, a young Jewish man, Yehuda Yosef Eisenstein, arrived in Canada from Poland to escape persecution and the rise of Nazism in the hopes of starting a new life for himself and his family. Like countless others who made this journey from “non-preferred” countries, Eisenstein was only granted entry because he claimed to be single, starting his new life with a lie. He trusted that his wife and children would be able to follow after he had gained legal entry and found work. For years, he was given two choices: remain in North America alone, or return home to Poland to be with his family.



Born from years of archival research, Who Gets In is author Norman Ravvin’s deeply personal family memoir, telling the story of his grandfather’s resolute struggle against xenophobic and anti-Semitic government policies. Ravvin also provides a shocking exposé of the true character of nation-building in Canada and directly challenges its reputation as a benevolent, tolerant, and multicultural country.

An expert on the buffalo tells the history of this keystone species through extensive research and beautiful photographs.

The mere mention of the buffalo instantly brings to mind the vast herds that once roamed the North American continent, and few wild animals captivate our imaginations as much as the buffalo do. Once numbering in the tens of millions, these magnificent creatures played a significant role in structuring the varied ecosystems they occupied. For at least 24,000 years, North American Indigenous Peoples depended upon them, and it was the abundance of buffalo that initially facilitated the dispersal of humankind across the continent.

With the arrival of Europeans and their rapacious capacity for wildlife destruction, the buffalo was all but exterminated. In a span of just thirty years during the mid-1800s, buffalo populations plummeted from more than 30 million to just twenty-three. And with them went all of the intricate food webs, the trophic cascades, and the inter-species relationships that had evolved over thousands of years.

Despite this brush with extinction, the buffalo survived, and isolated populations are slowly recovering. As this recovery proceeds, the relationships the animals once had with thousands of species are being re-established in a remarkable process of ecological healing. The intricacy of those restored relationships is the subject of this book.

Based on author Wes Olson’s thirty-five years of working intimately with bison—and featuring Johane Janelle’s stunning photography—The Ecological Buffalo is a story that takes the reader on a journey to understand the myriad connections this keystone species has with the Great Plains.

A probing memoir examining family tragedy on the Great Plains
A surprise rodeo leaves a buffalo bull dead and a cowboy gored to death. Seeing the death of the one man who was kind to him, and knowing it was his fault, Dawn Morgan’s father goes on a bender and ends up dead. His sudden death and the mystery around it, combined with the blundering way Morgan learns of it, forces her to reflect not only on the events of the bloodied corral, but also the buffalo herds decimated and Indigenous Peoples displaced to make way for settlement in what was becoming ranching country in the prairies.

Unsettled is a deeply moving work of literary non-fiction, a probing memoir examining family tragedy in relation to stories—both fact and fiction—of settlers and Indigenous Peoples on the Great Plains. Morgan shares the internal struggle between resistance and allegiance to the settler-descendent stories she grew up with while paying respects to her father and documents the censorship she faces from her mother, loyal still to the pioneer myth of the early twentieth century. It is only when both parents are gone that Morgan is liberated to write a story of reckoning on the northern Great Plains.

A framework for indigenous and settler reparations

Honouring the Declaration provides academic resources to help The United Church of Canada and other Canadian denominations enact their commitment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Featuring essays from scholars working from a range of disciplines, including religious studies, Indigenous legal studies, Christian theology and ethics, Biblical studies, Indigenous educational leadership within the United Church, and social activism, the collection includes both Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices, all of whom respond meaningfully to the Truth and Reconciliation’s Call to Actions.

The texts explore some of the challenges that accepting the UN Declaration as a framework poses to the United Church and other Canadian denominations, and provides academic reflection on how these challenges can be met. These reflections include concrete proposals for steps that Canadian denominations and their seminaries need to take in light of their commitment to the Declaration, a study of a past attempt of the United Church to be in solidarity with Indigenous peoples, a survey of the pitfalls that need to be avoided on the way, and discussions of ethical concepts and theological doctrines that can empower and guide the church in living out this commitment.

Delivers an urgent poetics of resistance and appeal for environmental justice for a Saskatchewan community

“We began to dig ourselves

deeper than we dreamed
when we began to see

metal as other than medicine,
our bodies, more than mineral.”

At Rabbit Lake in northern Saskatchewan lies the second largest uranium mine in the western world. For decades, uranium ore and its poisonous by-products—pitchblende, a highly radioactive rock—were removed, transported and scattered across the land, forever altering the lives of plants, animals, and peoples who live there.

Elise Marcella Godfrey’s Pitchblende is a timely, polyvocal, exquisitely crafted poetic intervention into environmental ethics and extractive industries. Inspired by and adapted from testimonies given at the public hearings about the Rabbit Lake mine, Godfrey creates a parallel structure for the found text—and the voices—to colonize. Interconnected, Godfrey’s poems are a chorus of Indigenous Elders and women protesting a destructive, unwanted mine in their community and a visual, literal representation of how industry, capitalism, and colonialism seek to erase these same people and their voices.

Pitchblende is a powerful, political collection that challenges us to urgently rethink our responsibilities to the land, water, and air that sustains all species, and our responsibilities to one another.

Châhkâpâs: A Naskapi Legend shares the story of Châhkâpâs, a heroic figure in First Nations storytelling, who performs feats of strength and skill in spite of his diminutive size

The book shares this traditional legend as originally recorded in the Naskapi community in northern Quebec in 1967 when it was narrated by John Peastitute, a Naskapi Elder and accomplished storyteller. Transcribed in the Naskapi language and syllabic orthography, the book offers a literary resource for the Naskapi language community, and the English translation enables those unfamiliar with the language, or the story, to discover this important legend.

The book also contains extensive analysis of stories about Châhkâpâs, notes about the provenance of the recordings, a biography of the storyteller, and a history of the Naskapi people. Lavish illustrations from Elizabeth Jancewicz—an artist raised in the Naskapi community—provide a sensitive and accurate graphical account of the legend, which has also been approved by Naskapi speakers themselves.

The first published collection of stories as told by Mary Louise Rockthunder, a much-beloved storyteller of Cree, Saulteaux, and Nakoda heritage

Mary Louise (nee Bangs) Rockthunder, kīskacawēhamās otānisa, was an Elder of Cree, Saulteaux, and Nakoda descent. Born in 1913, raised and married at nēhiyawipwātināhk / Piapot First Nation, Mary Louise, a much-loved storyteller, speaks of her memories, stories, and knowledge, revealing her personal humility and her deep love and respect for her family and her nēhiyaw language and culture.

The recordings that are transcribed, edited, and translated for this book are presented in three forms: Cree syllabics, standard roman orthography (SRO) for Cree, and English. A full Cree-English glossary concludes the book, providing an additional resource for those learning the nēhiyaw language.

A firsthand account of systemic anti-Black racism in Canadian schools

The prevalence of anti-Black racism and its many faces, from racial profiling to police brutality, in North America is indisputable. How do we stop racist ideas and violence if the very foundation of our society is built upon white supremacy? How do we end systemic racism if the majority do not experience it or question its existence? Do our schools instill children with the ideals of equality and tolerance, or do they reinforce differences and teach children of colour that they don’t belong?

#BlackInSchool is Habiba Cooper Diallo’s high school journal, in which she documents, processes, and resists the systemic racism, microaggressions, stereotypes, and outright racism she experienced in Canada’s education system.

Powerful and eye-opening, Cooper Diallo illustrates how our schools reinforce rather than erode racism: the handcuffing and frisking of students of colour by police at school, one-dimensional, tokenistic curricula of Black people, and the constant barrage of overt racism from students and staff alike. She shows how systemic racism works, how it alienates and seeks to destroys a child’s sense of self. She shows how our institutions work to erase the lived experiences of Black youth and tries to erase Black youth themselves.

Cooper Diallo’s words will resonate with some, but should shock, appall, and animate a great many more into action towards a society that is truly equitable for all.

Winner, Indigenous Voices Award, 2021
Winner, Creative Saskatchewan Publishing Award, 2021
Shortlisted, Saskatchewan Book Award, Nonfiction, 2021
Shortlisted, Saskatchewan Book Award, City of Regina Prize, 2021
Shortlisted, Rasmussen & Co. Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award, 2021
Shortlisted, Regina Public Library Book of the Year Award, 2021
Shortlisted, Saskatoon Public Library Indigenous Peoples’ Publishing Award, 2021

Genocidal Love delves into the long-term effects of childhood trauma on those who attended residential school and demonstrates the power of story to help in recovery and healing

Presenting herself as “Myrtle,” Bevann Fox recounts her early childhood filled with love and warmth on the First Nation reservation with her grandparents. At the age of seven she was sent to residential school, and her horrific experiences of abuse there left her without a voice, timid and nervous, never sure, never trusting, and always searching.

This is the story of Myrtle battling to recover her voice.

This is the story of her courage and resilience throughout the arduous process required to make a claim for compensation for the abuse she experienced at residential school—a process that turned out to be yet another trauma at the hands of the colonial power.

This is the story of one woman finally standing up to the painful truth of her past and moving beyond it for the sake of her children and grandchildren. In recounting her tumultuous life, Fox weaves truth and fiction together as a means of bringing clarity to the complex emotions and situations she faced as she walked her path toward healing.

After the Holocaust brings together scholarship, activism, poetry, and personal narratives from some of the last living survivors of the Holocaust to tackle the changing face of Holocaust and human rights education in the 21st century

The collected voices draw on decades of research on the Holocaust and discuss how it can help us understand and educate about a range of human rights issues throughout history, and, in turn, that local histories of other human rights atrocities can shed light on the way the Holocaust is represented and taught. Advancing the dialogue between civic advocacy, public remembrance, and research, the contributors of this edited collection discuss Holocaust education’s broad relevance in a human rights framework. After the Holocaust also focuses on the Canadian context of antisemitism, the legacy of human rights abuses of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II, and examines the ways that the Holocaust provided a template for thinking through human rights legislation and memorialization on a global scale after the Holocaust.

“The first- and second-generation survivor accounts are treasures—invaluable reflections that anchor this collection.” —David MacDonald, author of The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation

Shortlisted, Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award, 2021

Burden is the story of a seventeen-year-old British soldier, Private Herbert Burden, who was shot for desertion during World War I

He was one of hundreds so executed. It is now understood that many had committed no crime, but were suffering from PTSD. Burden’s story is told in the voice of Lance Corporal Reginald Smith, the author’s uncle. The author discovered years later in a box of papers that his uncle, Lance Corporal Smith, had befriended Private Burden but then was ultimately commanded to join in the firing squad that killed his friend. This slim book reaches below standard indictments of war—it shows us that “terrifying,” “senseless,” “horrific” don’t go deep enough. To utter them, the eye must already be closing over. Smith’s account is an object lesson in why poetry matters. It takes us to places even the best journalism can’t reach.

Examines how cultural narratives of time are intimately connected to the challenges and disruptions of ecological time

The environmental crisis is, in many ways, a crisis of time. From the distress cries of birds that no longer know when to migrate, to the rapid dying of coral reefs, to the quickening pace of extreme weather events, the patterns and timekeeping of the natural world are falling apart. We have broken nature’s clocks.

Lying hidden at the root of this problem are the cultural narratives that shape our actions and horizons of thought, but as Paul Huebener shows, we can bring about change by developing a critical literacy of time. Moving from circadian rhythms and the revival of ancient frozen bacteria to camping advertisements and the politics of oil pipelines, Nature’s Broken Clocks turns to works of fiction and poetry, examining how cultural narratives of time are connected to the problems of ecological collapse and what we might do to fix them.

"Urgent and profound, Nature's Broken Clocks is essential reading for anyone interested in time and the environment." —Nicholas Bradley, author of Rain Shadow

“Nature's Broken Clocks will inspire readers to reflect deeply on our manipulations of time, and on the impact of our shifting temporal imaginations and practices on the ecosphere.” —Sarah Wylie Krotz, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

Highlights the commonalities between Indigenous nations, while calling for global recognition and respect of their rights and spirituality.

As a follow-up to his award-winning The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality, Blair Stonechild continues his exploration of the Indigenous spiritual teachings passed down to him by Elders, and then moves his study further afield. He identifies the rise of what he terms a dominant wetigo worldview, marked by an all-consuming and destructive appetite that is antithetical to the relational philosophy of Indigenous thinking whereby all things are interrelated and in need of care and respect.

Based on Stonechild’s work with Indigenous peoples around the world, from Inuit communities in northern Canada, to the Mapuche in Chile, the Dalits in India and the Uighurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, The Loss of Indigenous Eden and the Fall of Spirituality brings together and highlights the fundamental commonalities that connect all Indigenous nations, while calling for global recognition and respect of their rights and spirituality.

An anthology of African-Canadian writing addressing the most urgent issues facing the Black community in Canada.

The killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 by a white assailant inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, which quickly spread outside the borders of the United States. The movement’s message found fertile ground in Canada, where Black activists speak of generations of injustice and continue the work of the Black liberators who have come before them.

Until We Are Free contains some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more.

"Until We Are Free busts myths of Canadian politeness and niceness, myths that prevent Canadians from properly fulfilling its dream of multiculturalism and from challenging systemic racism, including the everyday assaults on black and brown bodies. This book needs to be read and put into practice by everyone." —Vershawn Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity and co-author of Other People's English: Code Meshing, Code Switching, and African American Literacy

Contributors:
Silvia Argentina Arauz - Toronto, ON
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson - Toronto, ON
Patrisse Cullors - Los Angeles, CA
Giselle Dias - Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON
OmiSoore Dryden - Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS
Paige Galette - Whitehorse, YK
Dana Inkster - University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB
Sarah Jama - Hamilton, ON
El Jones - Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS
Anique Jordan - Toronto, ON
Dr. Naila Keleta Mae - University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON
Janaya Khan - Los Angeles, CA
Gilary Massa - York University, Toronto, ON
Robyn Maynard - University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
QueenTite Opaleke - Toronto, ON
Randolph Riley - Halifax, NS
Camille Turner - York University, Toronto, ON
Ravyn Wngz - Toronto, ON

Turning a blind eye to the dangers of the wild can have deadly consequences.

Growing up on a northern trap line, Harold Johnson was taught to keep his distance from wolves. For decades, wolves did the same for humans. But now this seems to be changing.

In 2005, twenty-two-year-old Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack near his work camp. Part story, part forensic analysis, Cry Wolf examines this and other attacks, showing how we fail to take this apex predator seriously at our own peril.

An essential contribution to Internet activism and a must read for Indigenous educators, A Digital Bundle frames digital technology as an important tool for self-determination and idea sharing, ultimately contributing to Indigenous resurgence and nation building.



By defining Indigenous Knowledge online in terms of “digital bundles,” Jennifer Wemigwans elevates both cultural protocol and cultural responsibilities, grounds online projects within Indigenous philosophical paradigms, and highlights new possibilities for both the Internet and Indigenous communities.

What is an immersive soundscape? It can be as simple as a recording made in a forest: leaves crunching underfoot, birds chirping, a squirrel chattering. Or it can be as complex as a movie soundtrack, which involves music but also uses many other sounds—to set the mood for the action and to literally put the viewer in the picture. Sound art defies categorization, and artists using this medium describe their work in many different ways: as sound installations, audio art, radio art, and music.

The Art of Immersive Soundscapes provides a fascinating tour of contemporary sound art practices that comprises scholarly essays, artists’ statements, and a DVD with sonic and visual examples. Included are perspectives from soundscape composition and performance, site-specific sound installation, recording, and festival curation. The book and accompanying DVD will appeal to a broad audience interested in music, sound, installation art, the environment, digital culture, and media arts. Importantly, it recognizes the pioneering place of Canadian sound artists within this international field.

Stories of indigenous lifeways from kisiskâciwan territory

This groundbreaking anthology from territory that is now Saskatchewan, kisiskâciwan, includes rich oral narratives from Cree, Saulteaux, Nakoda, Dakota, Dene, and Metis cultures; early writings from Cree missionaries; speeches and letters by Treaty Chiefs; stories from elders; archival discoveries; and contemporary literary works in all genres.

Historically and culturally comprehensive, voices include Big Bear, Thunderchild, Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Edward Ahenakew, Maria Campbell, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Rita Bouvier, Harold Johnson, Gregory Scofield, Warren Cariou, Louise Halfe, and many more.

In Being Kurdish in a Hostile World, Ayub Nuri writes of growing up during the Iran-Iraq War, of Saddam Hussein's chemical attack that killed thousands in Nuri's home town of Halabja, of civil war, of living in refugee camps, and of years of starvation that followed the UN's sanctions.


The story begins with the historic betrayal by the French and British that deprived the Kurds of a country of their own.


Nuri recounts living through the 2003 American invasion and the collapse of Hussein's totalitarian rule, and how, for a brief period, he felt optimism for the future. Then came bloody sectarian violence, and recently, the harrowing ascent of ISIS, which Nuri reported from Mosul.

Weaving together the narratives of female farmers from across three continents, Women Who Dig offers a critical look at how women are responding to and, increasingly, rising up against, the injustices of the global food system.

Beautifully written with spectacular photos, it examines gender roles, access to land, domestic violence, maternal health, political and economic marginalization, and a rapidly changing climate. It also shows the power of collective action.

With women from Guatemala, Nicaragua, the United States, Canada, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and Cuba included, it explores the ways women are responding to, as both individuals and in groups, the barriers they face in providing the world a healthy diet.

In this new edition of Charlie Angus's award-winning and bestselling book, he brings us up-to-date on the unrelenting epidemic of youth suicides in Indigenous communities, the Thunder Bay inquiry into the shocking deaths of young people there, the powerful impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report, and how the Trudeau government's commitment to Indigenous communities continues to be stymied by decades-old policy roadblocks.


On the heels of Idle No More and the TRC, Angus says that the push for equity in education, health, and infrastructure will continue to be led by a mobilized Indigenous grassroots that cannot be ignored.

Argues for the cause of protecting native grasslands and reconciliation on the Great Plains

Towards a Prairie Atonement addresses the question of our relationship with the land by enlisting the help of a Metis Elder and revisiting the history of one corner of the Great Plains.

This book's lyrical blend of personal narrative, prairie history, imagery, and argument begins with the cause of protecting native grasslands on community pastures. As the narrative unfolds, however, Trevor Herriot, the award-winning author of Grass, Sky, Song and River in a Dry Land, finds himself recruited into the work of reconciliation.

Facing his own responsibility as a descendent of settlers, he connects today's ecological disarray to the legacy of Metis dispossession and the loss of their community lands. With Indigenous and settler people alienated from one another and from the grassland itself, hope and courage are in short supply. This book offers both by proposing an atonement that could again bring people and prairie together.

How deafness influences one writer's creative process

In Voice, Adam Pottle explores the crucial role deafness has played in the growth of his imagination, and in doing so presents a unique perspective on a writer’s development. Born deaf in both ears, Pottle recounts what it was like growing up in a world of muted sound, and how his deafness has influenced virtually everything about his writing, from his use of language to character and plot choices. Salty, bold, and relentlessly honest, Voice makes us think about writing in entirely new ways and expands our understanding of deafness and the gifts that it can offer.

"Pottle's book is an important contribution to the growing roster of writing supplied by deaf academics, artists, writers, actors and theatre directors and professionals. I felt a 'coming home' experience in reading this book. As a deaf writer, I enthusiastically say 'yes' to his linkages between deafness and writing." —Joanne Weber, author of The Deaf House

The award-winning book about how Canada’s first prime minister starved Indigenous peoples in the pursuit of nationhood

Revealing how Canada's first Prime Minister used a policy of starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement, the multiple award-winning Clearing the Plains sparked widespread debate about genocide in Canada.
In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics—the politics of ethnocide—played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream."

It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.

This new edition of Clearing the Plains has a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Fenn, an opening by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and explanations of the book’s influence by leading Canadian historians. Called “one of the most important books of the twenty-first century” by the Literary Review of Canada, it was named a “Book of the Year” by The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, the Writers’ Trust, and won the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, among many others.

At a time when universities are being defunded by governments and vilified by ultra-conservative pundits, defining their value has never been more urgent


For decades, efforts to quantify the value of universities in dollars and cents led to the corporatization of institutions that are meant to serve their students and society by creating knowledge and teaching—not by turning a profit. Now more than ever, the role of the university in advancing discovery, democracy, equity, and in contributing to its students’ success is under siege and needs to be defended.


Knowledge Under Siege picks up where Spooner and McNinch’s Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education left off and analyzes today’s volatile higher education landscape—one where hostility towards the academy is a growing trend across the globe. Bringing together leading international voices, including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Christopher Newfield, Kevin Kumashiro, and many others, the book considers how universities are facing unprecedented threats that include defunding, criticism of and the dismantling of initiatives to diversify the academy, academic gag orders, and efforts to undermine tenure and academic freedom. It asks how institutions can resist these incursions while working towards becoming engines of social mobility for a diverse student body (not merely serving the most privileged) and graduating critical thinkers who aspire to build a better world.


There is a consensus in higher education that universities must remain autonomous so that our societies can better understand both our history and our rapidly changing world. Knowledge Under Siege is a call to action to fight for our institutions and make them self-reflexive spaces where truth and learning continue to thrive.

Celebrating the artists at the forefront of a Black aesthetic renaissance and how they harness the arts to shape a freer future


In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department and the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet during a mental-health episode attended by Toronto Police Services in the turbulent summer of 2020, communities rose up in rage, grief, and resistance. Alongside mass protests came an outpouring of creative expression by Black artists, producing art that helped make sense of the moment and mobilize for change.


Today, as anti-Black violence persists—fueled by the rise of white supremacy and fascism, even within the highest levels of government—Black artists, too, persist in painting, dancing, drawing, writing, and expressing their outrage and hope.


Free to Be More honours the creative revolutionary labour of Black artists, past and present. This vibrant collection of essays, poems, images, and interviews affirms the deep connection between art and activism. More than that, it’s a testament to how art can amplify a movement and offer tools to gather, organize, and enact transformative interventions in anti-Black racism.


Continuing and expanding the conversation from the bestselling Until We Are Free, Free to Be More brings together contributions from Rodney Diverlus, Ravyn Wngz, Aisha Sasha John, and other visionary artists to serve as both a singular creative archive and a rallying cry for future changemakers.

Part autotheory, part activist manifesto, and part ode to the oldgrowth specklebelly lichen, this book about making poems in an age of ecological desperation is both heartbreaking and beautiful.


Bue thinks itself within me chronicles the poet Kim Trainor’s blockade to prevent logging of Vancouver Island old growth forests. The two-year blockade on logging roads and in tree-sits became the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history—this multi-genre work brings the reader to the front lines of the fight for human and non-human survival in a climate catastrophe.
Trainor asks what, if anything, ecopoetry can do in the face of intensifying extraction of ecological capital. Can poems incorporate non-human species, like the oldgrowth specklebelly lichen that thrives in Fairy Creek, into their very form? How can poetry resist the urge to “capture” the non-human object and instead approach nature with sympathetic care? How might a poem offer an opportunity, like sunlight penetrating a clearing in the forest, to think about nature, to approach, and to be approached by the non-human? How might poetry contribute to a co-making of the world with more-than-human-species?
KIM TRAINOR has won the Gustafson Prize, The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and The Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry in English, Global Poetry Anthology, and Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees. She lives in Vancouver.

Cree poet and kēhtē-aya Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer’s genre-bending collection chronicles her childhood in a cabin on reserve, her experiences in the Indian Residential School system, and finally her reclamation of her nēhiýaw language, culture, and spirituality.


My parents taught us the art of observation. I learned to hunt, skin, and butcher game through non-verbal methods. I also watched my grandparents work on the land and live their spirituality. I helped gather, dry, and grind their medicines. I inhaled the medicines’ power and ingested it. When I left for residential school all this fell asleep.


Poet Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer tells the story of how she woke up from the trauma of separation in these never-before-collected essays and new poems about her life and the source of her inspiration: her culture and the land. In Cree, inspiration is described as a sudden insight. It can come from visits from spirit, from the charged reciprocal experience of being taught by Elders and teaching the next generation, from speaking Cree which allows the poet to “somersault into memory,” and in the practice of observing and being in relationship with the land
as it “constantly gives birth to itself.” wītāmōwik / Tell Them! is a stunning love song to nēhiýaw ways of knowing—ways which Halfe
has reclaimed from the violence of colonization to celebrate their survival and share their enduring relevance with future generations.

What does it mean to be queer and Muslim in a world that insists you cannot be both?


Queer and Muslim is a powerful collection by and for LGBTQ+ Muslims navigating layered identities across lines of faith, family, culture, and community. With contributions spanning essays, poems, letters to past and future selves, and more, the book explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of queer Muslim life and challenges the perception that faith and queerness are inherently incompatible.


These raw accounts confront the psychological toll of grappling with tensions between religious expectations and queer identity and offer rare insight into the ways mental health is lived, expressed, and supported across diverse cultural and theological landscapes. They tell of building chosen families and reconnecting with birth families, radical healing, cultivating spaces of belonging, and reclaiming faith on your own terms.


In an era of rising Islamophobia and escalating threats to queer and trans lives, the stories contained within Queer and Muslim—stories of resilience, grief, pleasure, rage, and joy—are vital, each of them an affirmation of the multiplicity of queer Muslim identities. Queer and Muslim invites readers to listen deeply, think expansively, and care more courageously.

A bold, forward-thinking collection exposing the colonialist ideology embedded within the Canadian settler state—and building strategies to dismantle it


On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Relations & Resistances presents strategies for carving pathways to decolonial futures. It builds on the landmark work On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands & Peoples, which reckons with the legacy of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and lays a foundation for understanding the settler state and society.


Bringing together Indigenous, racialized settler, immigrant settler, and white settler perspectives, the book cultivates a dialogue on how reconciliation can become a lived and shared reality. Contributors offer approaches on seeking solutions outside of the settler state, honouring Treaty responsibilities, centering Indigenous knowledge systems, and making space for Indigenous self-determination.


On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Relations and Resistances poses essential questions: what do decolonial efforts look like on the ground today? How do we meaningfully support Indigenous resurgence movements? And what are the responsibilities of the settler in the ongoing work of decolonization?

An urgent examination of Canada’s legal, cultural, and historical acceptance of corporal punishment and the children it continues to fail


In Spare the Child: Ending Childhood Corporal Punishment, author Ailsa Watkinson exposes a troubling truth: since 1982, Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal code has granted legal defense for parents and caregivers who use corporal punishment on children for the purpose of “correction.” Remarkably, children remain the only group in Canada explicitly left unprotected from physical punishment under the law.


In 2004, a legal challenge heard by the Supreme Court of Canada argued that Section 43 directly violated children’s equality and security rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The challenge argued further that Section 43 undermined the three P’s of children’s rights—provision, protection, and participation—as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Despite all this, the Supreme Court upheld the right to use corporal punishment in the home, reinforcing a legal framework that prioritizes parental rights over those of children. Watkinson critically examines that decision, its legal implications, and the psychological and social consequences of permitting physical force against children.


Beyond the courtroom, Spare the Child deconstructs a practice long accepted as a common sense means of disciplining children. It traces the deep historical roots of corporal punishment, including the legacy of European colonization, religion, and ideology in its justification—particularly through its devastating role in residential schools and lasting impact on Indigenous communities.


Grounded in evidence-based research, the book reveals the long-term psychological harms of corporal punishment, urging parents and policymakers to defend children’s fundamental right to dignity, safety, and protection.

Is the Canadian government contributing to its own underperformance? An insider’s guide to steering our nation toward greater efficiency

Canada is struggling. Our growth is anemic, our standard of living is stagnant, our housing is unaffordable, and our health care system is nearing a breaking point. To make matters worse, the government fails to deliver core services and avoid management fiascos like the ArriveCan and Phoenix scandals.

These failures are systemic and interconnected. What connects them is a fatal flaw in how the federal government operates, makes decisions, and takes action. Power has shifted from Cabinet to the Prime Minister and Prime Minister’s Office, with political staff taking on a larger role relative to the Public Service, and parliament has lost its ability to call the elected government to account.

With 50 years of combined experience in leadership positions in government, authors Lynch and Mitchell offer an expert’s perspective on how to restore accountability and rebuild a culture of excellence by proposing a new blueprint for reshaping government. As Canadians face uncertainties at home and abroad, these practical and straightforward recommendations offer a path forward to ensure our nation’s prosperity.

Reflections from the lone traveller, for whom a highway was never the intended destination

Walking the Bypass recounts Ken Wilson’s singular experience of walking alongside the decidedly pedestrian-unfriendly Regina Bypass, all while situating the highway within the ongoing history of settler colonialism in southern Saskatchewan.

Through a series of ambitious and unconventional walks, Wilson sets out to understand the arrival and significance of the new (and politically contentious) highway encircling Saskatchewan’s capital as well as the Global Transportation Hub, a sprawling warehouse park the Bypass was intended to serve. He offers a new perspective on these heavily travelled yet untrodden spaces in a region dominated by industrial agriculture and high-speed transportation. Reflecting on the profound transformations to the land since the arrival of settlers in the 1880s, he wonders whether it’s possible to form a connection with the land through walking—even on the gravelly edge of the freeway.

In vivid and sincere prose that captures the thoughts of a man trudging along the roadside, Walking the Bypass explores how walking can transform non-places into places and enable settlers to forge a relationship with the land around them.

How can health professionals use advocacy and activism to advance social justice?
Changing Care: Advancing Social Justice in the Health Professions is a collection of essays from healthcare practitioners presenting unique and diverse perspectives on the devastating effects of structural injustice from the front lines of the health care system. They witness the impact of poverty, racism, misogyny, and ableism on their patients’ wellbeing, seeing firsthand how these and other forms of structural violence can obstruct access to vital resources necessary for health and survival. Despite this deeply felt urgency, educational and regulatory bodies have been painfully slow to respond to these systemic inequities.

Changing Care explores the crucial roles that health professions and practitioners can—and should—play in advancing social justice amid some of the most urgent public health issues of our time, including anti-Black racism, data governance, and the opioid crisis. Through a blend of research, case studies, and personal stories, the book offers practical strategies and solutions that can be applied both in an everyday practice and beyond traditional health care settings.

Changing Care carves a path forward for both health professionals and the organizations that educate, train, and regulate their services to embrace their responsibility in driving social and structural change.

The A Word provides a feminist perspective on the history of abortion, working to end the taboos that surround this procedure—and the word itself.
The A Word champions the women advocating for free and legal access to the seventy-three million abortions performed around the world every year, more than half of which require women to resort to underground procedures that put their lives at risk. This global history defines the term and the practice of abortion as it exists today and tells the stories of women all over the world engaged in the fight to take back control of their bodies.

From the Indigenous use of abortive plants before colonization to the complicated legacy of Margaret Sanger, to modern advocates like Maria Antonieta Alcalde Castro, Wendy Davis, and Simone Veil, the book shines a light on pivotal moments and figures of the abortion struggle and asks: Why do poor women fare worse when trying to access abortion? How was abortion criminalized? Who profits from its illegality?

The A Word reflects on how the struggle for reproductive justice became a movement that has defined our time. It is a fight that has united feminists across continents and decades to secure safe access to a choice that recent history has shown we cannot take for granted.

Turning a lens on the dark legacy of colonialism in horror film, from Scream to Halloween and beyond
Horror films, more than any other genre, offer a chilling glimpse—like peering through a creaky attic door—into the brutality of settler colonial violence. While Indigenous peoples continue to struggle against colonization, white settler narratives consistently position them as a threat, depicting the Indigenous Other as an ever-present menace, lurking on the fringes of “civilized” society. Indigenous inclusion or exclusion in horror films tells a larger story about myths, fears, and anxieties that have endured for centuries.
Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes traces connections between Indigenous representations, gender, and sexuality within iconic horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. The savage killer, the romantic and doomed Indian, the feral “mad woman”—no trope or archetype escapes the shadowy influence of settler colonialism. In the end, horror both disrupts and uncovers colonial violence—only to bury its victims once more.

An unflinching examination of the impacts of settler colonialism from first contact to the contemporary nation state.
On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples is the first installment in a comprehensive collection investigating settler colonialism as a state mandate, a structuring logic of institutions, and an alibi for violence and death. The book examines how settler identities are fashioned in opposition to nature and how eras of settler colonialism have come to be defined. Scholars and thinkers explore how settlers understood themselves as servants of empire, how settler identities came to be predicated on racialization and white supremacy, and more recently, how they have been constructed in relation to multiculturalism.

Featuring perspectives from Indigenous, Black, mixed-race, and other racialized, queer, and white European-descended thinkers from across a range of disciplines, On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples addresses the fundamental truths of this country. Essays engage contemporary questions on the legacy of displacement that settler colonialism has wrought for Indigenous people and racialized settlers caught up in the global implications of empire.

Asserting that reconciliation is a shared endeavor, the collection’s final section exposes the myth at the heart of Canada’s constitutional legitimacy and describes the importance of affirming Indigenous rights, protecting Indigenous people (especially women) from systemic violence, and holding the Canadian settler nation state—which has benefited from the creation and maintenance of genocidal institutions for generations—accountable.

Something for the Dark centres Indigenous knowledge to probe the limits of what we know, confront the unknown, and reckon with our place in the world.
Randy Lundy’s newest collection of poetry—the final in a trilogy that began with Blackbird Song and continued with Field Notes for the Self—turns the poem to our relationships with the land, animals, and people, showing how our failures to see and live by the personhood of all other beings in the world, human and non-, leads inevitably to heartbreak.

As Lundy’s poems accumulate like snow on cedar, his recounting of experiences that transcend language invites the reader to bend their understanding and notice what was once unseen—how a red-winged blackbird clings to a swaying reed, how mist rises after rainfall, how dogs keen and howl, how fingers taste bitter after lighting sage, how hunger smarts, how liquor burns, and how the pain survivors carry is not merely their own.

The first English-language analysis of Amazigh film

Amazigh Cinema: An Introduction to North African Indigenous Film examines the emergence and history of Amazigh visual media and actively contributes to decolonizing the study of Amazigh artistic expression. An exploration of film from across the Amazigh homelands produced by and about Imazighen (Indigenous peoples of North Africa historically referred to as “Berbers”), the book underscores the importance of cinema in shaping the contemporary Amazigh identity against a backdrop of historical oppression. The chapters in this volume trace connections between oral performance, amateur video, and feature films produced for global audiences. These works expose a tension between the pull of nostalgia and push for change as filmmakers use their cameras to re-establish a sense of presence in a shifting landscape. Resisting the commodification of traditional Amazigh expression for the viewer, these filmmakers use new tools to craft narratives of Amazigh life and create a space for all audiences to witness Indigenous lives and their strategies—and celebration—of survival.

Explores the far-reaching impacts of pesticides in Ecuador’s banana industry, tracing their roots through more than a century of history in the banana-producing Americas
At the southern end of Ecuador’s la costa region lies the city of Machala, the self-described “Banana Capital” of the world. There, farmers and workers experience alarming health effects associated with widespread pesticide use in banana production, compounded by precarious and unsafe working conditions. Banana Capital: Stories, Science, and Poison at the Equator reveals the often grim realities of daily life in banana-producing parts of the world and, beyond that, seeks to understand and address these challenges.
Ben Brisbois’s search for solutions leads him back to the 19th-century origins of banana production in the Americas and through over a century of imperialism, bloodshed, ecological devastation, diverse workforces, and not-so-diverse bananas. Along the way, however, attempts by powerful Northern corporations and their government allies to extract wealth from Latin American territories and bodies prove vulnerable when met with resistance mounted by workers, Latin American nations, and the ever-unpredictable natural world.
Banana Capital issues an urgent call to action, unveiling the power dynamics of life in the banana industry—dynamics vividly experienced by workers in ways that are rooted in significant relationships to communities, the land, and neocolonial power structures. Ultimately, the book provides a roadmap toward social justice and sustainability in the uncertain future of banana production.

A dreamlike collection of poetry that intertwines an embodied experience of the natural world with mythology, memory, and the creative process

Woven together from fragments collected in notebooks and dream journals over two decades of introspection, Dog and Moon inhabits a space of sleeplessness, enveloped in the darkness of night. Kelly Shepherd draws inspiration from the free-verse ghazal but takes the form and bends it to create a sort of Indra’s Net, with couplets echoing and reflecting across his poems. They are a series of juxtapositions: nature writing placed in conversation with the language of poetry workshops, mythology and childhood memories, and sensorial encounters with the natural world colliding with images of home and belonging.
My ribs, the mattress’s ribs—I can’t sleep. This is a war,
says the newscaster reporting on the winter storm.

A war with Mother Nature.
When a metaphor is taken too far it becomes a projectile.

Try to talk to someone when they’re snoring:
their responses are all the same. The mind races.

Happiness is only a purchase away,
but what happens when the box store runs out of boxes?

Time moves differently depending on your bedsprings.
From a net of clouds, the moon:

so much of writing is trying to remember
your thoughts from other states of consciousness.

An inexplicable need to follow
the pathways of unseeable sparks and insects in the blankets.

A user-friendly guide that teaches the core Nakoda vocabulary and how to use it in conversation

Practising Nakoda contains basic Nakoda vocabulary, organized into 30 themes (such as animals, clothing, directions, and time) and divided into sections meant to enhance daily and ceremonial communication (including dances, ceremonies, and ceremonial clothing). The guide provides the basic words for every theme from which the reader can forge a general view of word formation patterns.

In a thematic dictionary, words are not organized alphabetically but are grouped according to the root element or their meaning. Since Nakoda is a polysynthetic language where words are often built up with many elements that attach to the root, this is a necessary format that enhances the learner’s “morphological awareness.” The guide will help learners identify the root of each word, along with the “morphemes,” critical to the successful learning of the Nakoda language, and the comprehension of complex vocabulary.

A guide from bestselling author Alice Kuipers on how to write for children and young adults—from igniting an initial idea to creating a finished draft

In Spark, acclaimed children’s and YA author Alice Kuipers shares her rules for writing for readers both young and young at heart, all while discussing the importance of travelling through passion, purpose, joy, and fear across the creative process.

In each chapter, Kuipers explores key aspects of writing for young readers—from voice and character to setting and plot—and provides examples and exercises to help you develop your story. Drawing on her experience as an author and writing coach, Kuipers shares crucial tips, tricks, and techniques that make all the difference for writers, along with some highs and lows of her own writing journey.

Spark is open, honest, and practical—a must-read for aspiring authors and literature fans alike that shows you how to become the writer you’ve always wanted to be.

A collection of memories chronicling love, grief, and a life lived on and off stage Raised on a farm and educated in a prairie Bible school, Layne Coleman escapes the confines of his stiflingly religious upbringing at an early age to pursue a life in theatre. He migrates to Saskatoon and later Toronto where he immerses himself in the Bohemian lifestyle of the 1980s theatre scene, carving out a career as a successful actor, playwright, and eventual Artistic Director of the Theatre Passe Muraille. While there, his path intersects with that of his future wife, a captivating and glamorous French journalist. Their transformative relationship is ultimately cut short when she tragically loses her life at 48, following a painful battle with cancer.

What follows is a raw and bruised account of Coleman’s struggle to make sense of his new identity as a widower and single father. Unfolding through a series of vignettes, Coleman’s memoir takes us into the heart of loss as he wrestles with mental health and addiction while confronting his own mortality and moral compass.

Shattering yet hopeful, An Open-Ended Run is an exploration of a life spent in the arts and a man’s search for meaning in the face of grief.

An analysis of how neoliberal policies have radically restructured farming in Western Canada.

The establishment of a Western Canadian economy dominated by family farming was part of the government’s post-Confederation nation building and industrial development strategy. During this era, Western family farms were established and promoted to serve as a market for Canadian industrial goods and a source of export cash crops, which both played essential roles in the national economy. 
 
In Eroding a Way of Life, Murray Knuttila shows how decades of neoliberal policies, state austerity, deregulation, and privatization have fragmented agrarian communities across Western Canada, a process hastened by the advent of the capitalization of machinery and high-input industrial farming. As a result, earning a living on the family farm has become increasingly impossible. As farmers sell off their land to larger producers, rural communities are watching their railroads, schools, churches, post offices, and hospitals close, and many villages and small towns are being reduced to plaques on the highway.
 
Analyzing the history of prairie agriculture through the lenses of class, federal policies, and global capitalism, Knuttila describes the physical, social, and political reordering of the countryside and the resulting human costs paid by farmers, labourers, and families.
 

The first book published in Tsuut’ina—a critically endangered language—in over a century

With fewer than 150 speakers, Tsuut’ina is a critically endangered language. Isúh Áníi / As Grandmother Said brings together nine traditional narratives and historical accounts in the Tsuut’ina language, originally narrated by Elders Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis (1883–1987) and Ninàghá Tsìtł’á Willie Little Bear (1912–1989). At once an act of language preservation and a learning resource, each story is retold in Tsuut’ina by Dit’óní Didlíshí Dr. Bruce Starlight and is presented with English translations and a Tsuut’ina-to-English glossary.

The narratives included in this collection cover considerable ground, ranging from the creation of the world in the caring hands of Xàlítsa-tsii and his animal helpers, to accounts of separation, migration, and cross-cultural contact that mark major turning points in Tsuut’ina history, and to important cultural and ceremonial items and practices that the Tsuut’ina Nation maintains to this day.

These stories will be of lasting value to Tsuut’ina language learners and teachers, and will share the legacy of Elders Bessie Meguinis and Willie Little Bear with generations of Tsuut’ina to come.

A motley group’s long trek across the prairies, witnessing the land, reflecting on the past, and creating new paths for the future

The Good Walk is a memoir, travelogue, and manifesto, recounting how a growing group of dreamers instigated prairie pilgrimages on foot, starting in 2015 and continuing almost every year since. The story is steeped in Treaty Four and Treaty Six history and edged with Canadian, nêhiyaw, and Métis stories and poetry. It braids Indigenous perspectives together with rural Saskatchewan characters along routes increasingly emptied of the family farms and small towns that once defined a province. It doesn’t shy away from the clearing of the plains in the 1870s and 1880s nor the 2016 killing of Colton Boushie that again separated the rural communities from the Indigenous communities. Travel with the author through prairie storms, family histories, and humorous encounters, and bear difficult witness to the evolving politics of ownership and of racialized land access.

Readers will share the real-life adventures of a group of Indigenous and settler walkers, trekking thousands of kilometres on swollen feet along the Traders’ Road, the Battleford Trail, the Frenchman and the Fort Qu’Appelle Trails—prairie paths that haven’t been walked in over a century.

Award-winning author paulo da costa meditates on fatherhood, place, and memory during a trip to his childhood home in Vale de Cambra, Portugal.

During an extended stay in his childhood home in Portugal, author paulo da costa distills the wide-eyed innocence, joy, and curiosity of his four-year-old son as he meets his aging grandparents and explores an unfamiliar country and culture into a beautiful, tender, and poetic portrait of father-son relationships.

Evocative and heartwarming, Trust the Bluer Skies is a literary time capsule—a father’s vivid account of his son’s early years, a sensory-rich journey through rural Portugal, and a poignant exploration of masculinities that is positive, compassionate, and nurturing.

Breaks the deafening silence of Indigenous women’s voices in academic leadership positions.

Since the 2015 release of the report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, new Indigenous policies have been enacted in universities and a variety of interconnecting Indigenous senior administrative roles have been created. Many of these newly created roles have been filled by Indigenous women. But what does it mean for Indigenous women to be recruited to Indigenize Western institutions that have not undergone introspective, structural change?

Informed by her own experiences and the stories of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities, Candace Brunette-Debassige explores the triple-binding position Indigenous women often find themselves trapped in when trying to implement reconciliation in institutions that remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The author considers too the gendered, emotional labour Indigenous women are tasked with when universities rush to Indigenize without the necessary preparatory work of decolonization.

Drawing on an Indigenous feminist decolonial theoretical lens and positioning Indigenous story as theory, Brunette-Debassige illustrates how Indigenous women can and do preserve and enact their agency through resistance, and help lead deeper transformative changes in Canadian universities. Ultimately, her work provides a model for how reconciliation and Indigenization can be done at an institutional level.

Emily McGiffin’s poems examine imperial violence and colonialism in South Africa and Canada.

Multifaceted and multi-voiced, Emily McGiffin’s poems explore the ongoing violence, destruction, and loss wrought by colonialism and capitalist extraction across time and geographic space, from Turtle Island to South Africa. McGiffin animates the spectres that haunt our private and public pasts. Her words remind us that we live in a world shaped by the events and people of the past, by suffering, and seizure, yet at times in the shadow of great acts of generosity. This world, largely built by iterations of violence, still concentrates wealth into the hands of a few, and McGiffin reminds us that power wants to hold its grip, to reproduce itself.

my body an ark
carrying successors like a chambered nautilus

what i was placed here to do
ferry the unborn
across the inhospitable land
make a bed amid the thornbush
make a tea table, forge the domestic
bliss of my country
raise them as heirs
draw our lineage in the sand

An examination of the barriers facing Indigenous people within the healthcare system from the perspective of an empathetic settler physician

After leaving her medical practice in Pennsylvania in 2011, Jarol Boan returned to her childhood home in Saskatchewan, Canada to practise medicine. There she found a healthcare system struggling with preventable chronic diseases and institutional racism. Shocked by the high rate of preventable diseases in her patients, Boan realized that a paternalistic deficit model does not support Indigenous communities. Through working to provide medical services in Indigenous communities and learning first-hand from her Indigenous patients, Boan embarked on a road to enlightenment and reconciliation.

In The Medicine Chest, Boan exposes the healthcare disparities in a country that prides itself on an equitable healthcare system and examines the devastating effects of diabetes, the myth of “the drunken Indian,” the inner workings of hospitals, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, epidemics on reserves, and residential school trauma. Exploring the intersectionality of common diseases and social determinants of health gained from her experience of caring for Indigenous patients, Boan weaves historical data, comments on health policy, and jurisdictional gaps into the narrative while investigating how Canada’s healthcare system is failing those most in need.

An exposé of the reality of Saskatchewan’s potash industry management—prioritizing private profit over public interest

A single province in Canada—Saskatchewan—is blessed with a remarkable birthright: 50% of the world’s potash reserves.

Potassium is a necessary ingredient of the fertilizer required to feed a growing world population. Accordingly, prices and corporate profits have soared to unprecedented levels in recent decades. While other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Norway have taken steps to capture the value of their natural resources for their people, Saskatchewan has failed to leverage the value of its potash and has given much of it up for an inadequate price.

Billions of dollars of forgone revenue has resulted in tax unfairness, program underfunding and malfunction, and a growing and worrying divide between the affluent and the very poor. Analysts from across the political spectrum have identified this revenue problem, as well as a straightforward solution. Unfortunately, the Saskatchewan government has declined to review the situation and instead seems to rely upon the advice of the industry itself. The province now faces the game-changing issue of how to tax appropriately the small number of multinational conglomerates that now own these potash mines. Whether or not the province obtains reasonable value for its potash will determine whether Saskatchewan will be a place of opportunity for all of its citizens or continue on a path of wealth for a few and extreme poverty for many.

Eighteen female lawyers—some with highly successful careers behind them, some just starting out—reflect on their hopes, challenges, triumphs, and, sometimes, regrets.

Creating a Seat at the Table is an edited collection that compiles the experiences of eighteen women as they navigate their way through the male-dominated spaces of law school and the legal profession. Hear from women from different generations and areas of the law—big and small law firms, legal aid, government and politics, the judiciary, in-house positions, administrative agencies. The authors discuss a multitude of issues they’ve faced in their careers, including the compound effects of discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, or disability as well as gender. The stories presented here are inspirational at times and discomforting at others.

Creating a Seat at the Table shows that much has been done to advance women in law but also highlights that much remains to be done.
 

The powerful debut from author and poet M.W. Jaeggle.

Like the coastal zone where high tides deposit organic materials and other debris, M.W. Jaeggle’s Wrack Line traces loss, guilt, and subsequent loneliness, while exploring regenerative possibilities of language, memory, and land, taking readers on a journey that will leave them like “A black horse...winded at the gate” of some new grace.
 

Provides insights into traditional Cree ways of life and the damage done by colonialism

kôkominawak otâcimowiniwâwa / Our Grandmothers’ Lives is a collection of reminiscences and personal stories from the daily lives of seven Cree women over the past century, presented here in Cree and English. Faithfully transcribed and translated, their voices illustrate the prominent role women had in Cree society, accurately describe a way of life that existed for centuries, and speak to the decline of social cohesion, deprivation, and destruction caused by colonialism.

Originally recorded in Cree in the 1980s, these women share their memories of their lives and the history of their peoples, describing activities such as household chores, snaring rabbits and picking berries, going to school, marriage, bearing and raising children, and providing insights into the traditional teachings of a society in which the practical and spiritual are never far apart.

This language lab workbook is a comprehensive companion resource to renowned Cree language scholar Jean L. Okimāsis’s Cree: Language of the Plains textbook. Updated and redesigned, this educational resource offers a broad range of learning materials and exercises that are easily accessible to Cree language learners.

The complete collection includes the new edition of the Cree language textbook, this language lab workbook, and the Cree language audio labs, which are available online through the University of Regina Open Textbook program at https://www.uregina.ca/oer-publishing/. Please note the language labs are also available as podcasts. Just search "Cree Language of the Plains" on your favourite podcast app.

In all these poems
I’m partly somewhere else.
With you, without you,
walking toward you or away,
but you are there, your small face
watching from the shadow of a doorway
or a set of stairs, from behind a curtain or a table.
Sometimes I see you at the piano.
You stop playing, turn to me,
and in that pause,
tell me something necessary.
 
  
Poet Karen Enns takes the reader on a lyrical journey, wrapped in the vicissitudes of seasons and weather—while observing human and other-than-human lives. Enns invites us to peer and is concerned always with the locations and dislocations perspective implies and creates.
 

Speaking Cree in the Home, Belinda Daniels and Andrea Custer provide an introductory text to help families immerse themselves, their children, and their homes in nēhiyawēwin—the Cree language.
 
Despite the colonial attacks on Cree culture, language, and peoples, Custer and Daniels remind readers that the traditional ways of knowing and transferring knowledge to younger generations have not been lost and can be revived in the home, around the table, every day.
 
Speaking Cree in the Home is an approachable, hands-on manual that helps to re-forge connections between identity, language, family, and community—by centering Indigenous knowledge and providing Cree learners and speakers with a practical guide to begin their own journey of reclaiming and revitalizing Cree in the home.
 
Readers are guided through methods for language learning, the basics of reading Cree and Standard Roman Orthography, pronunciation of vowels, engaging language-learning games, and examples of high-frequency words and phrases that can easily be incorporated into daily routines and taught to children young and old.
 

Exploring what it means to be alive in this increasingly contradictory, unjust, and frightening era in human history, award-winning poet Michael Trussler grapples with the beauty and violence of the present in his new collection, The History Forest.
 
Trussler’s vivid, sensory, surreal writing explores the myriad ways that wonder can exist alongside suffering. He ruminates on nuclear war, school shootings, and ecological destruction, alongside his own experiences with mental health, aging, and loss.
 

Walking Together is the seventh title in the Voices of the Prairies series. Developed by the Prairie Child Welfare Consortium, this edited collection brings together accomplished Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars from the prairie provinces to forward critical research about a range of contemporary child welfare issues currently impacting Indigenous children in Canada.
 
Centering Indigenous knowledge and working to decolonize child welfare, contributors address the over-representation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system, the un-met recommendations of the TRC, the connections between colonialism and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, the impact of Bill C-92, and more.
 
Contributors include: Jason Albert, Dorothy Badry, Cindy Blackstock, Elder Mae Louise Campbell, Peter Choate, Linda Dano-Chartrand, Michael Doyle, Koren Lightning Earle, Arlene Eaton Erickson, Yahya El-Lahib, Hadley Friedland,  Don Fuchs, Del Graff, Jennifer Hedges, Bernadette Iahtail, Jennifer King, Brittany Mathews, Eveline Milliken, Kelly Provost—Ekkinnasoyii (Sparks in a Fire), Christina Tortorelli, Gabrielle Lindstrom Tsapinaki, Susannah Walker, and Robyn Williams
 

Rik McWhinney spent thirty-four years and four months in Canada’s federal penitentiaries—sixteen of those in solitary confinement. His incarceration began in the 1970s, as a system-wide war was raging over the implementation of penal reforms. Though he was physically confrontational during the early years of his imprisonment, resulting in his segregation and medical torture, McWhinney eventually turned to writing to combat the conditions of his confinement.

The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney collects his poetry, essays, grievance forms, letters, and interviews to provide readers with insight into the everyday life of incarcerated individuals, amplifying the lives and voices of a demographic that society would rather ignore. McWhinney relays the horrors of solitary confinement and provides a vivid account of the violence and psychological turmoil that he endured while incarcerated.

Ultimately, McWhinney’s words are an indictment of the prison system, a system that institutionalizes individuals, subjecting them to an environment that manufactures post-traumatic stress rather than fulfilling its mission of rehabilitation and reform.
 

"Black Writers? African, Bluesy, Classical, Disrespectful, Erudite, Fiery, Groovy, Haunting, Inspiring, Jazzy, Knowing, Liberating, Militant, Nervy, Optimistic, Pugnacious, Quixotic, Rambunctious, Seductive, Truculent, Urgent, Vivacious, Wicked, X-ray sharp, Yearning, Zesty. And so, they matter!" —George Elliott Clarke
An anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues with beautiful, sometimes raw, prose. As editor Whitney French says in her introduction, Black Writers Matter “injects new meaning into the word diversity [and] harbours a sacredness and an everydayness that offers Black people dignity. ” An “invitation to read, share, and tell stories of Black narratives that are close to the bone,” this collection feels particular to the Black Canadian experience.

An award-winning poet attempts to map the brain’s neural connections, raising fundamental questions about identity and interiority.

This intricate, yearning work from award-winning poet Alison Calder asks us to think about the way we perceive and the ways in which we seek to know ourselves and others.

In Synaptic, each section explores key themes in science, neurology, and perception. The first, Connectomics, riffs on scientific language to work with and against that language’s intentions. Attempting to map the brain’s neural connections, it raises fundamental questions about interiority and the self. The lyric considerations in these poems are juxtaposed against the scientific-like footnotes which, in turn, invoke questions undermining authority and power. The second section, Other Disasters, explores ways of seeing or and being seen, from considerations of folklore to modern art to daily life.

The speakers in these poems are searching for knowledge. Everyone is looking for a miracle.

An in-depth look at the political landscape of Saskatchewan from its leftist roots to its recent shift to the right.

In From Left to Right, Dale Eisler explores the events that have changed the character of the province, and how others see it, in significant ways. Eisler traces the evolution of Saskatchewan from the homeland of the NDP to the domain of the Saskatchewan Party.

Beginning his analysis in the late 1960s, Eisler outlines major international and domestic events that shaped the world and Canada. He then traces specific moments in time in the political and economic life of Saskatchewan that were a result of those factors, leading to the political and economic reality of Saskatchewan today.

A satiric and searing collection of poetry obsessed with television, oceans, Jewish history, and time.

Nature isn’t dying
it’s simply revising
its target audience

In Shifting Baseline Syndrome, Aaron Kreuter asks the hard questions: will the Anthropocene have a laugh track? Is it okay to marry your eighteenth cousin? How different would the world look from outside the life-frame of the human? What is it like to have an acid trip in a portapotty? Is it the end . . . of Earth? Of capitalism? Of television?

Throughout Kreuter’s sophomore collection, the TV remote is never far.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is both searching and searing, veering between satire and sincerity, history and prophecy, and human and non-human worlds. As these clash ecstatically with loathing—and with the end looming—Kreuter demonstrates why we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: hoping, for once, that the series finale will be good.

A powerful memoir from an Indigenous educator.

“Through my eyes, my community was creative, innovative and self-sufficient. In this remote northern traditional First Nation society, the skills, knowledge and abilities that the community needed to survive were all there. . . . The stories are not just of survival and hardship but of the power of the human spirit and the sheer natural genius of individuals.” —Cecil King

Cecil King grew up in the small settlement of Buzwah, Ontario, situated on Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island. This moving memoir shares King’s life on reserve in the 1930s and ’40s and describes a vibrant community full of interesting characters who shared knowledge, warmth, affection, and humour. King also describes his experiences attending Buzwah Indian Day School and St. Charles Garnier Residential School.

After furthering his education, King returned home to Buzwah as a teacher. He quickly became disillusioned with the Ontario curriculum and how inadequately it resonated with on-reserve youth and the realities of Indigenous life. It was then that King began his unparalleled legacy to ensure Indian Control of Indian Education in Canada.

King helped create curriculum that connected to traditional Indigenous cultures and established First Nation language courses in elementary and secondary schools. Over the course of his fifty-year career in education, he would found the Indian Teacher Education Program at the University of Saskatchewan, become the first director of the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program at Queen’s University, and develop Ojibwe language courses across North America.

A remarkable story about a remarkable man, The Boy from Buzwah is a powerful testament to Dr. Cecil King’s work and legacy.

How the Gehl decision advanced indigenous rights in Canada

“[R]emarkable . . . a monument in Indigenous struggles with the colonial Crown.” —Veldon Coburn, Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, University of Ottawa

A follow-up to Claiming Anishinaabe, Gehl v Canada is the story of Lynn Gehl’s lifelong journey of survival against the nation-state’s constant genocidal assault against her existence. While Canada set up its colonial powers—including the Supreme Court, House of Commons, Senate Chamber, and the Residences of the Prime Minister and Governor General—on her traditional Algonquin territory, usurping the riches and resources of the land, she was pushed to the margins, exiled to a life of poverty in Toronto’s inner-city.

With only beads in her pocket, Gehl spent her entire life fighting back, and now offers an insider analysis of Indian Act litigation, the narrow remedies the court offers, an important critique of the methodology of legal positivism, and an analysis of obfuscating parliamentary discourse. Drawing on social identity and Indigenous theories, the author offers Disenfranchised Spirit Theory, revealing insights into the identity struggles facing Indigenous Peoples to this day.

“Gehl embodies essential Indigenous wisdom, bravery, and responsibility in her work to dismantle the systems of colonial oppression. Her work serves as a beacon in a network of pathways for our people to make their way home.” —Chief Wendy Jocko, Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation

“The legal decision in Gehl v Canada will have profound effects for the future, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of Indigenous mothers will be able to pass their status on to their children. This victory, the product of decades of struggle by Lynn Gehl, is chronicled here. Read it and learn!” —Bonita Lawrence, author of Fractured Homeland

The definitive story of the Nakoda people, in their own words

Born out of a meticulous, well-researched historical and current traditional land-use study led by Cega̔ K´iɳna Nakoda Oyáté (Carry the Kettle Nakoda First Nation), Owóknage is the first book to tell the definitive, comprehensive story of the Nakoda people (formerly known as the Assiniboine), in their own words. From pre-contact to current-day life, from thriving on the Great Plains to forced removal from their traditional, sacred lands in the Cypress Hills via a Canadian “Trail of Tears” starvation march to where they now currently reside south of Sintaluta, Saskatchewan, this is their story of resilience and resurgence.

A new edition of a seminal textbook to support Cree language study

Cree: Language of the Plains is a comprehensive educational resource, offering a broad range of learning materials that is easily accessible to Cree language learners. This new edition provides an updated and redesigned language textbook, and is linked to Cree language audio labs and a Cree language workbook available online.

Language labs are also available as podcasts, available at uregina.ca/open-access or by searching “Cree Language of the Plains” on your favorite podcast app.

A moving, unflinching exploration of life in Prince Albert, SK, as told through one family’s multigenerational story

Robert Boschman grew up in the living quarters of the King Koin Launderette in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, sandwiched between a residential school and a jail built in the aftermath of the Riel Resistance of 1885. White Coal City is the story of this hard hockey-obsessed white-settler town on Treaty Six territory and Boschman’s troubled family who lived within it.

Trauma was palpable but never spoken of in the family, and this silence hounded the psychology of their men and boys. Years later, Boschman discovered the reason behind it: the devastating fate of his grandmother, killed by a hit-and-run driver while she was six months pregnant. Her husband, who saw it happen, was plagued by the crime. Their story is gently shared through letters, journal entries, newspaper clippings, and accounts from the coroner’s inquest.

With its penitentiary, sanatorium, pulp mill, and half-built hydro-electric dam, Boschman describes the city of Prince Albert as a “circle of pain”—one felt by white settlers but more so for the generations of First Nations and Métis people in the city and surrounding lands who were forcibly removed, incarcerated, or abducted. The harms of colonialism touched Boschman’s own family; his Cree sister Crystal was adopted by his parents during the Sixties Scoop when she was just a baby. Careful to tell his own story, not hers, Boschman accounts for his family’s own part in Canada’s shameful past.

White Coal City is a poetic, necessary exploration of the painful landscapes of colonial cities in Canada.

Analyzes sport in Canada as a tool for both colonization and Indigenous self-determination

Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state’s role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports. This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination.

Shortlisted, Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book, 2021

Tells the story of the unsolved murder of indigenous activists, police investigation misconduct, and the community who tracked down the clues which officials failed to uncover

Missing persons. Double murder? Métis leader James Brady was one of the most famous Indigenous activists in Canada. A communist, strategist, and bibliophile, he led Métis and First Nations to rebel against government and church oppression. Brady’s success made politicians and clergy fear him; he had enemies everywhere. In 1967, while prospecting in Saskatchewan with Cree Band Councillor and fellow activist, Absolom Halkett, both men vanished from their remote lakeside camp. For 50 years rumours swirled of secret mining interests, political intrigue, and murder. Cold Case North is the story of how a small team, with the help of the Indigenous community, exposed police failure in the original investigation, discovered new clues and testimony, and gathered the pieces of the North’s most enduring missing persons puzzle.

Anihšināpēmowin / Beginning Saulteaux is an introductory look at one of the most widely spoken of all North American Indigenous languages, regionally known as Saulteaux, Ojibway, Ottawa (Odawa), Chippewa, and Algonquian. In an easy-to-use and easy-to-read series of lessons, both designed for self-study or for use in the classroom, Beginning Saulteaux will guide beginners through the language’s grammatical structures and spelling systems, as well as everyday terms and phrases. The book grounds the language in both traditional and contemporary contexts, and sheds light on the Saulteaux world view. For example, there is no word for good-bye in the language, so upon parting people will usually say Kika-wāpamin mīnawā, meaning “I’ll see you again.”

The third in our Indigenous Languages for Beginners series, Beginning Saulteaux is an invaluable resource produced in consultation with Elders, Language Keepers, and community members, and continues our commitment to revitalizing Indigenous languages.

Vivid stories from a Canadian literary icon, who shares a life spread across continents and immersed in books

It’s the life that many young women dream of: education in some of Europe’s most beautiful cities before becoming a novelist, essayist, translator and literary curator.

But the start of Linda Leith’s journey is anything but idyllic. The daughter of a glamorous mother and a charming left-wing doctor, she is never told of her father’s psychiatric breakdown or his subsequent shock therapy for what was then called manic depression.

As this secret festers, Leith’s father uproots the family to various European cities as he reinvents himself as a corporate executive, eventually moving across the Atlantic to Montreal.

It’s there, in her first year of university, that Leith is inspired by Madame de Staël: a writer and salonnière, banished from Paris by Napoleon himself. With none of Staël’s advantages—no wealth, no social status, no château on Lake Geneva—Leith can scarcely imagine a salon, but she is drawn to Paris, and dreams of becoming a writer.

This dream fuels her education in London, her marriage and writing in Budapest, and—finally—her journey back to Montreal where she meets a community of writers and readers who she works with to transform the city’s literary scene.

As Leith publishes, translates, and curates, she also comes to terms with her troubled father and the secrets of her childhood.

A luscious read, this book will rivet readers of Jill Ker Conway’s The Road from Coorain and Tara Westover’s Educated, or anyone who has dreamed of building a cultural life.

A collection of essays that explores the possibility that ecological stewardship could also include the pursuit of 'the good life'

Despite our brief tenure on planet Earth, Homo sapiens have reached an epoch—the Anthropocene—that is characterised by our species’ uncanny ability to spoil our own nest. In the face of this somber reality of ecological degradation and massive species extinction, the editors ask the critical question, “What does living well look like in the Anthropocene?” It is vitally important that we turn towards the cultivation of eco-virtues, a new set of values by which to live, if there is to be hope for us and other species to continue. These essays inspire readers not just to ponder, but to embody and live the ideals of these timeless ecological virtues.

Writers across the globe speak out against sexual assault and abuse in this powerful new poetry anthology, edited by Sue Goyette

These collected poems from writers across the globe declare one common theme: resistance. By exploring sexual assault and violence in their work, each writer resists the patriarchal systems of power that continue to support a misogynist justice system that supports abusers. In doing so, they reclaim their power and their voice.

Created as a response to the Jian Ghomeshi case, writers including Joan Crate, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, and Beth Goobie are, as editor Sue Goyette explains, a “multitude, resisting.” The collection could not be more timely. The work adds a new layer to the ever-growing #MeToo movement.

Resistance underscores the validity of all women’s experiences, and the importance of dignifying such experiences in voice, however that may sound. Because once survivors speak out and disrupt their pain, there is no telling what else they can do.

Master storyteller and bestselling author Richard Van Camp on how to tell a good story

Gathering around a campfire, or the dinner table, we humans have always told stories. Through the stories we tell, we define our own identities and shape our understanding of the world. Master storyteller and bestselling author Richard Van Camp writes of the power of storytelling and its potential to transform both the speaker and the audience in Gather. Describing the elements required to make a story, he offers insights into how to read a room, how to capture the attention of listeners, how to create community through storytelling, and how to banish loneliness. A member of the Tlicho Dene First Nation, Van Camp includes stories from Elders whose wisdom influenced him.

Reverence takes on a new meaning in this original memoir of an avid gardener walking the Camino de Santiago

The Camino de Santiago has been a journey for pilgrims for more than 1,000 years, testing—to varying degrees—their spirit, faith, and physical endurance. Lyndon Penner’s attention lies elsewhere. A renowned gardener and lover of literature, he revels in the plants, trees, and flowers that tell the history of the people and ecology of northern Spain.

Brimming with wry observations—of nature, himself, and other pilgrims on the road—The Way of the Gardener reveals the beauty and the darkness of the human condition while underscoring the deeply fascinating nature of nature itself. This textured work makes for perfect armchair—or garden—reading.