5 Books by Indigenous Authors You Should Read

It's December, and 2017 is nearing, so I thought I'd revisit some of my 2016 reading goals and see how terribly I did (although seriously who wrote these goals!? They are super broad and they aren't measurable or specific... whoever wrote them should probably read my post on how to write goals.)

One of my goals was to "read more books by Indigenous authors, not just from the US and Canada but outside as well."

I didn't read as many books by Indigenous authors as I would have liked, and none outside of the US and Canada (books by Indigenous authors are very hard to find), but I thought I'd share the ones I did read.

1. Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman.


I did a review of this, so you can check that out, but I really enjoyed this book. I loved the author's voice, her story was so interesting to read, and I'm so happy that this book was republished otherwise I don't think I would have ever found it. Good on ya, U of M Press. (Also they favourited the tweet of my review, so that's fun).

 2.  Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (translated from French, translated from Inuktitut)

I was a bit surprised by this book, since the cover makes it seem like a dark, harrowing tale of life up North, when it's actually just a lot of short, quite funny stories about Inuit life. The writing was very direct which was hard to get into sometimes, but it was interesting being immersed in that culture for a bit and enjoying reading about the clumsy happenings of the community.









3. Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel

I picked up this book because I've read a lot of glowing reviews of it in various publications, and its hailed as being super accessible to read. There was also one review I read that said that the author contests the arguments of John Ralston Saul, and I had to read A Fair Country for a course this semester so I was curious what she had to say. The reviewers are right - Indigenous Writes is a super accessible introductory book, aimed at Canadians ignorant of Indigenous issues in Canada. It provides a starting point for understanding Indigenous issues in Canada. The chapters are kind of written like (in depth, very well researched) blog posts. Reading this book definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things, and I definitely agree with Vowel that all Canadians need to become more aware of these issues.

4. North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette

Recently I realized that while I like writing poetry, I don't really read a lot of poetry. One of the best ways to learn about writing is to read, so I bought this poetry collection at my local bookstore a few weeks ago.  This book of poetry has been highly regarded, and in 2013 it won the Governor General's Award for Poetry, which is one of Canada's highest literary awards I think. Let me just say that it definitely deserves the award, what a gorgeous book of poetry. This collection of poems brings you deep into the life and emotion of living in Winnipeg's North End. Now I'm excited to get my hands on her new novel, The Break.


Annd bonus 5. Thunder Boy Jr. by Sherman Alexie 

I was browsing in the children's section at my local bookstore to get a gift for my friend's baby's first birthday, and stumbled across this book. The fun thing about picture books is I could read it in five minutes on the spot at the bookstore. It's SO CUTE. It's about a boy who doesn't like that he has the same name as his dad, and wants his own name. It is super funny and a great father-son story. I ended up buying it for my friend's kid to read when he's a little older. ;) 

Who are your favourite Indigenous authors? Have you read any of these books? What did you think?

Review: Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman

In my attempt to read more indigenous fiction this year, I picked up Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman. I didn't realize it when I took it out of the library, but this book was only just recently re-published, in 2015, after initially being published sometime in the 70s. 

It has a very interesting history behind its publication, including controversial things about residential schools being cut out, and the government buying three thousand copies of the book and hiding them away for years. It never really got the attention it deserved, though, so a bunch of professors from the University of Alberta decided to re-edit it and put it out into the world again, this time attempting to respect the vision of the author in their editing. (If you do pick up this book, I highly recommend you read the afterword by the editors, which overviews the history and importance of this story to Canadian indigenous literature). 

Anyway, Life Among the Qallunaat is a memoir about a young Inuit woman, Mini, and her experiences growing up in the north of Nunavut and her and her family's interaction with the "qallunaat" (the Inuktitut word for white people or English speakers; literally, "people who pamper their eyebrows"). It starts with Mini in "the South" (Ontario), and her experience feeling out of place in the unfamiliar culture of the South. Then eventually the story goes back to her growing up in Nunavut and the various ways her culture adapts to missionaries and other outside influences,  as well as her experiences attending residential schools, and eventually leaving the North to be a translator for the Canadian government in Ontario. 

The book is split up into little short stories with very fitting titles (which is apparently a change that Mini Aodla Freeman made for the republished version), and I ended up reading two or three of her stories every night before bed. I found reading about Mini's life fascinating and also comforting. Every night, I looked forward to reading another part of Mini's life and her take on it. I loved Mini's voice and found her so relatable, since she talked about how she was painfully shy. However, even though she talked about how she was super shy, I was amazed at her resilience and insight into her situations and other people around her. Her insights about cultural differences are so, so great. Here's a great section that really struck me:

“Some [qallunaat] are nice and kind, but none want to see or understand my Native culture. Some don’t want to know, some don’t have time, some try but find it too deep to understand or accept. They all want to cover it up with their ways. They always want me to be different, a novelty, and they refuse to see that I am a plain human being with feelings, humanity, pain, joy, happiness, gratitude, and all the other things that every other being was capable of having, doing, thinking and acting. They think that the Inuit were nothing but a bunch of smiley, happy people. They never stop to think that Inuit, too, are capable of killing and murdering, just as their society is full of. They want Inuit to dress and talk like them, and to forget their own ways. Yet they will never really accept the Inuit fully. They want us to remain different from them as cold is from hot.”- Mini Aodla Freeman, Life Among the Qallunaat.

Just, wow. I just think the way she analyzes the way people think about other cultures is so spot on, even today, thirty-eight years after its original publication. I think there are a lot of people (including myself) that need to realize these things about people from different cultures. Her story is so important and so relevant, and I'm so glad that it was republished in 2015 so that I had the opportunity to read this amazing woman's story. 

Life Among the Qallunaat at U of M Press
Life Among the Qallunaat on Amazon
Life Among the Qallunaat on Goodreads