Embedded Files
Each month we will be highlighting new authentic Indigenous resources. These are just suggested recommendations. Reviews of all the print resources have been completed using the FNESC review process. Descriptions are from the publisher websites.
Please find an archive of these resources at the bottom of the page.
We All Go Back to the Land: The Who, Why, and How of Land Acknowledgements
Author: Suzanne Keeptwo
Publisher: Brush Education
Grades: K-12, Professional Resource
Cautions: n/a
Land Acknowledgements often begin academic conferences, cultural events, government press gatherings, and even hockey games. They are supposed to be an act of Reconciliation between Indigenous peoples in Canada and non-Indigenous Canadians, but they have become so routine and formulaic that they have sometimes lost meaning. Seen more and more as empty words, some events have dropped Land Acknowledgements altogether.
Métis artist and educator Suzanne Keeptwo wants to change that. She sees the Land Acknowledgement as an opportunity for Indigenous peoples in Canada to communicate a message to non-Indigenous Canadians—a message founded upon Age Old Wisdom about how to sustain the Land we all want to call home.
This is an essential narrative for truth sharing and knowledge acquisition.
You Hold Me Up
Author: Monique Gray Smith & Danielle Daniel
Publisher: Orca
Grades: K-3
Cautions: n/a
You Hold Me Up encourages children to show love and support for each other and to consider each other's well-being in their everyday actions.
*Available in French (Tu es là pour moi / You Hold Me Up (FR)
These Mysterious People
Author: Susan Roy
Publisher: McGills-Queen University Press
Grades: Gr. 10 - 12, Professional Resource
Cautions: n/a
Focusing on the Musqueam people and a contentious archaeological site in Vancouver, These Mysterious People details the relationship between the Musqueam and researchers from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Susan Roy traces the historical development of competing understandings of the past and reveals how the Musqueam First Nation used information derived from archaeological finds to assist the larger recognition of territorial rights.
Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony
Author: Sarah Florence Davidson & Robert Davidson
Publisher: Portage & Main Press
Grades: Professional Resource
Cautions: n/a
Based on the potlatch, the foundational ceremony of the Haida people, Potlatch as Pedagogy presents a model for learning that is holistic, relational, practical, and continuous.
Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids
Editor: Cynthia Leitich Smith
Publisher: Heartdrum - Harper Collins
Grades: Gr. 5-9
Cautions: American terminology and content
Native families from Nations across the continent gather at the Dance for Mother Earth Powwow in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In a high school gym full of color and song, people dance, sell beadwork and books, and celebrate friendship and heritage. Young protagonists will meet relatives from faraway, mysterious strangers, and sometimes one another (plus one scrappy rez dog).
They are the heroes of their own stories.
Report abuse