National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Teens)

Updated May 27, 2026
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Orange Shirt Day: September 30th
Webstad, Phyllis
Paper Book
Revised 2023 Edition. Orange Shirt Day, observed annually on September 30th, is also known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It is an official day to honour Residential School Survivors and their families, and to remember the children who did not come home. What was initially...
Speaking our truth : a journey of reconciliation
Gray Smith, Monique
Paper Book
★"Smith's book is an effort that returns, offering diverse voices that invite the world into the reconciliation experience. Absolutely necessary."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review Canada's relationship with its Indigenous people has suffered as a result of both the residential...
Secret path
Lemire, Jeff.
Paper Book
Secret Path is a ten song digital download album by Gord Downie with a graphic novel by illustrator Jeff Lemire that tells the story of Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago. ...
Sugar Falls : a residential school story
Robertson, David
Paper Book
BASED ON A TRUE STORY* A school assignment to interview a residential school survivor leads Daniel to Betsy, his friend's grandmother, who tells him her story. Abandoned as a young child, Betsy was soon adopted into a loving family. A few short years later, at the age of 8, everything changed. Betsy...
Betty : the Helen Betty Osborne story
Robertson, David
Paper Book
A great read and teaching tool for National Indigenous History Month! Helen Betty Osborne, known as Betty to her closest friends and family, dreamed of becoming a teacher. She left home to attend residential school and later moved to The Pas, Manitoba, to attend high school. On November 13...
Broken circle : the dark legacy of Indian residential schools : a memoir
Fontaine, Theodore
Paper Book
Now an approved curriculum resource for grade 9-12 students in British Columbia and Manitoba. Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the...
Righting Canada's Wrongs: the Sixties Scoop and the Stolen Lives of Indigenous Children
Bomberry, Andrew
Paper Book
Starting in 1951, Indigenous children in Canada were taken by social welfare agencies from their families and placed in the care of non-Indigenous families. These children grew up without their birth families, cultural roots, and language. Many tried to run away and some died in the attempt. The...
Righting Canada's Wrongs: Residential Schools: The Devastating Impact on Canada's Indigenous Peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Findings and Calls for Action
Florence, Melanie
Paper Book
"If I were purchasing materials for a high school library, I would buy at least 2 copies, and I would urge Social Studies and Aboriginal Studies classroom teachers to have at least one copy on their bookselves. Perhaps the strongest work to date in the Righting Canada's Wrongs series, Residential...
Walking in two worlds
Kinew, Wab
Paper Book
Bugz is a shy Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and life on the Rez. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massive multiplayer video game universe. Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the...
Killing the Wittigo : Indigenous culture-based approaches to waking up, taking action, and doing the work of healing : a book for young adults
Methot, Suzanne
Paper Book
An unflinching reimagining of Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing for young adults Written specifically for young adults, reluctant readers, and literacy learners, Killing the Wittigo explains the traumatic effects of colonization on Indigenous people and...
Elk Whistle Warrior Society
Revelle, Rick
Paper Book
The Elk Whistle Warrior Society is a novel about Indigenous women taking back their place on Turtle Island and protecting the vulnerable. In the past, the men were responsible for providing the necessities of life, food, shelter and clothing. Pre--contact Native women in all...
Inuit relocations : colonial policies and practices, Inuit resilience and resistance
Tester, Frank J.
Paper Book
In a highly visual and appealing format for young readers, this book explores the many forced relocation of Inuit families and communities in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the 1990s. Governments promoted and forced relocation based on misinformation and racist attitudes. These actions...
Beyond the orange shirt story : a collection of stories from family and friends of Phyllis Webstad before, during, and after their residential school experiences
Webstad, Phyllis
Paper Book
Beyond the Orange Shirt Story is a unique collection of truths, as told by Phyllis Webstad's family and others, that will give readers an up-close look at what life was like before, during, and after their Residential School experiences. In this book, Survivors and Intergenerational Survivors share...
#NotYourPrincess : voices of Native American women
Paper Book
Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book.  In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays...
What the eagle sees : Indigenous stories of rebellion and renewal
Yellowhorn, Eldon
Paper Book
"There is no death. Only a change of worlds." --Chief Seattle [Seatlh], Suquamish Chief        What do people do when their civilization is invaded? Indigenous people have been faced with disease, war, broken promises, and forced assimilation....
Wabanang, Daughter of the Stars: An Anishinaabe Novel
Montgomery, Judi
Paper Book
In the winter of 1876, a baby is born to Anishinaabe parents along the trapline in the northern Ontario wilderness. Seventy five years later, her granddaughter is seeking information about her grandmother's life, why her family is so fractured, and what part the residential school played in the...
My Indian
Joe, Mi'sel
Paper Book
***2022 ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS: APMA BEST ATLANTIC-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD - SHORTLIST*** ***2022 BMO WINTERSET AWARD - LONGLIST*** ***2022-2023 HACKMATACK AWARD: ENGLISH FICTION - SHORTLIST*** ***2022 IPPY AWARDS: MULTICULTURAL FICTION: JUV/YA - SILVER***
Hunting by Stars: (a Marrow Thieves Novel)
Dimaline, Cherie
Ebook
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The thrilling follow-up to the bestselling, award-winning novel The Marrow Thieves, about a dystopian world where the Indigenous people of North America are being hunted for their bone marrow and ability to dream. Years ago, when plagues...
The marrow thieves
Dimaline, Cherie
Paper Book
Winner of the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award (Young People's Literature - Text) Winner of the 2017 Kirkus PrizeWinner of the 2018 Sunburst Award Winner of the 2018 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award Winner of the 2018 Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit...
Braiding sweetgrass for young adults : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
Paper Book
I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass as thick and shining as the braid that hung down my grandmother's back. But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself. I offer, in her place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. As a...
Little moons
Storm, Jen
Paper Book
In this moving graphic novel, thirteen-year-old Reanna grieves the loss of her older sister. Can she find comfort through her family's Ojibwe traditions? It's been a year since Reanna's sister, Chelsea, went missing on her way home from school. Without any idea of what happened, Reanna and...
April raintree
Mosionier, Beatrice.
Ebook
Legendary Frybread Drive-In : Intertribal Stories
Smith, Cynthia Leitich.
Paper Book
Michael L. Printz Award Winner American Indian Youth Literature Award Winner Featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers and edited by bestselling Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of interconnected stories serves up laughter...
A knock on the door the essential history of residential schools from the 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...
The outside circle
LaBoucane-Benson, Patti
Paper Book
Winner, CODE's 2016 Burt Award for First Nation, Inuit and Métis Literature In this important graphic novel, two brothers surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence, try to overcome centuries of historic trauma in very different ways to bring about positive change in their lives....
Five little Indians
Good, Michelle
Paper Book
WINNER: Canada Reads 2022 WINNER: Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction WINNER: Amazon First Novel Award WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize  Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize Finalist: BC & Yukon...
If I go missing
Jonnie, Brianna
Paper Book
Combining graphic fiction and non-fiction, this young adult graphic novel serves as a window into one of the unique dangers of being an Indigenous teen in Canada today. The text of the book is derived from excerpts of a letter written to the Winnipeg Chief of Police by fourteen-year-old...
Firekeeper's daughter
Boulley, Angeline
Paper Book
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller! A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick! A Printz Medal AND Morris Award Winner! Soon to be adapted at Netflix for TV with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground.
Fire song
Jones, Adam Garnet
Paper Book
How can Shane reconcile his feelings for David with his desire for a better life?   Shane is still reeling from the suicide of his kid sister, Destiny.  How could he have missed the fact that she was so sad? He tries to share his grief with his girlfriend, Tara, but...
In this together : fifteen stories of truth & reconciliation
Metcalfe-Chenail, Danielle.
Paper Book
The release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) findings and recommendations in the spring of 2015 was an immensely important day for the people of Canada. It marked the hopeful beginning of change--a change of thinking, a change of opinion, a change in understanding. But how do...
The theory of crows : a novel
Robertson, David
Paper Book
A poignant and evocative novel about the bonds of family and the gifts offered by the land When a troubled father and his estranged teenage daughter head out onto the land in search of the family trapline, they find their way back to themselves, and to each other Deep in the night,...
Indigenous healing Exploring traditional paths
Ross, Rupert.
Ebook
Imagine a world in which people see themselves as embedded in the natural order, with ethical responsibilities not only toward each other, but also toward rocks, trees, water and all nature. Imagine seeing yourself not as a master of Creation, but as the most humble, dependent and vulnerable part....

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