Residential Schools - Recommended Reading for Adults

Updated August 26, 2024
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Winnipeg Public Library
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1

Nishga
Abel, Jordan
Paper Book
WINNER of the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize at the 2022 BC and Yukon Book Prizes From Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel comes a groundbreaking, deeply personal, and devastating autobiographical meditation that attempts to address the complicated legacies of Canada's...
Also available in eBook format.

2

Genocidal love : a life after residential school
Fox, Bevann
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2021 INDIGENOUS VOICES AWARD How can we heal in the face of trauma? How can we transform intergenerational pain into a passion for community and healing?   Presenting herself as "Myrtle," residential school survivor and Indigenous television...
Also available in eBook format.

3

The reason you walk
Kinew, Wab
Paper Book
No Marketing Blurb

When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who'd raised him. The Reason You Walk spans the year 2012, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school.

Also available in eBook, eAudiobook and DAISY formats.

4

The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir - New Edition
Merasty, Joseph Auguste
Paper Book
The Education of Augie Merasty offers a courageous and intimate chronicle of life in a residential school. Now a retired fisherman and trapper, Joseph A. (Augie) Merasty was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their...
Also available in eBook and DAISY formats.

5

Up Ghost River : a chief's journey through the turbulent waters of Native history
Metatawabin, Edmund
Paper Book
A powerful, raw and eloquent memoir about the abuse former First Nations chief Edmund Metatawabin endured in residential school in the 1960s, the resulting trauma, and the spirit he rediscovered within himself and his community through traditional spirituality and knowledge. After being seperated...
Also available in eBook format.

6

From Bear Rock Mountain : the life and times of a Dene residential school survivor
Mountain, Antoine
Paper Book
In 1949, Antoine Mountain was born on the land near Radelie Koe (Fort Good Hope) in the Northwest Territories just south of the Arctic Circle. At the tender age of seven, he was stolen away from his home and sent to a residential school--run by the Roman Catholic Church in collusion with...
Also available in eBook format.

7

Call me Indian : from the trauma of residential school to becoming the NHL's first Treaty Indigenous player
Sasakamoose, Fred
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Fred Sasakamoose played in the NHL before First Nations people had the right to vote in Canada. This page turner will have you cheering for 'Fast Freddy' as he faces off against huge challenges both on and off the ice--a great gift to every proud hockey fan,...
Also available in eBook and eAudiobook formats.

8

They called me number one : secrets and survival at an Indian residential school
Sellars, Bev
Paper Book
BC Book Prize, Non-Fiction, Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Finalist) Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature: Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Third Prize winner) Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world,...
Also available in eBook and DAISY formats.

9

Indian Horse
Wagamese, Richard.
Paper Book
Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he's a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he's sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he'll find it only through telling his...
Also available in eBook and DAISY formats and as a Book Club Kit.

10

Cheval Indian
Wagamese, Richard
Paper Book
Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he's a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he's sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he'll find it only through telling his...

Enferme dans un centre de desintoxication, Saul Cheval Indien touche le fond et il semble qu'il n'y ait plus qu'une seule issue a son existence. Plonge en pleine introspection, cet Ojibwe, d'origine Anishinabeg du Nord ontarien, se rememore a la fois les horreurs vecues dans les pensionnats autochtones et sa passion pour le hockey, sport dans lequel il excelle. Saul, confronte aux dures realites du Canada des annees 1960-1970, a ete victime de racisme et a subi les effets devastateurs de l'alienation et du deracinement culturels qui ont frappe plusieurs communautes des Premieres Nations.

Aussi disponible en format numerique.

11

The red files
Bird-Wilson, Lisa
Paper Book
This debut poetry collection from Lisa Bird-Wilson reflects on the legacy of the residential school system: the fragmentation of families and histories, with blows that resonate through the generations. Inspired by family and archival sources, Bird-Wilson assembles scraps of...
Also available in eBook format.

12

The Knowing: The Enduring Legacy of Residential Schools
Talaga, Tanya
Paper Book
From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family's story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members...

13

Surviving Canada : indigenous peoples celebrate 150 years of betrayal
Ladner, Kiera L.
Paper Book
Surviving Canada: Indigenous Peoples Celebrate 150 Years of Betrayal is a collection of elegant, thoughtful, and powerful reflections about Indigenous Peoples' complicated, and often frustrating, relationship with Canada, and how--even 150 years after Confederation--the fight for recognition of...
Also available in eBook format.

14

Residential schools : with the words and images of survivors
Loyie, Larry
Paper Book
For over a century, Canada removed more than 150,000 Aboriginal children from their families to attend church-run residential schools, often in remote locations far from home. This hidden history is told by award-winning author and former student Larry Loyie in Residential Schools, With the Words...

15

Picking up the pieces : residential school memories and the making of the Witness Blanket
Newman, Carey
Paper Book
"Will educate and enlighten Canadians for generations to come. It's a must-read for anyone seeking to understand Canada's residential-school saga. Most importantly, it's a touchstone of community for those survivors and their families still on the path to healing."--Waubgeshig Rice, journalist...
Also available in eBook format.

16

Kiss of the fur queen
Highway, Tomson
Paper Book
In the 1950s, Abraham Okimasis becomes the first Indian ever to win the Trapper's Festival Dog Sled Race and, as tradition dictates, he is kissed by the festival's beautiful Fur Queen. Nine months afterward, Abraham's wife Mariesis gives birth to their son, Champion, in a tent on a trapline in snowy...
Also available in eBook format.

17

Champion et Ooneemeetoo : roman
Highway, Tomson
Paper Book
In the 1950s, Abraham Okimasis becomes the first Indian ever to win the Trapper's Festival Dog Sled Race and, as tradition dictates, he is kissed by the festival's beautiful Fur Queen. Nine months afterward, Abraham's wife Mariesis gives birth to their son, Champion, in a tent on a trapline in snowy...

Champion et Ooneemeetoo, ce sont deux freres cris nes d'aurores boreales, eleves au rythme des rires et des sabots de caribou martelant le sol de la toundra. Un jour, ils sont envoyes tres loin dans le sud dans un pensionnat autochtone, ou une tout autre realite les attend. Heureusement, la Reine blanche veille sur eux. Impregnes a la fois de la magie et de l'humour de la culture crie, et du potentiel redempteur de l'art, les freres se fabriqueront, l'un par la musique et le theatre, l'autre par la danse, une liberte nouvelle.

Aussi disponible en format numerique.

18

Honorer la ve?rite?, re?concilier pour l'avenir : sommaire du rapport final de la Commission de ve?rite? et re?conciliation du Canada
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Paper Book
Canada's residential school system for Aboriginal children was an education system in name only for much of its existence. These residential schools were created for the purpose of separating Aboriginal children from their families, in order to minimize and weaken family ties and cultural linkages,...

19

A knock on the door : the essential history of residential schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Paper Book
"It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer." So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools...

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