NCW Libraries

2023 Canada Reads Longlist Selection

National Bestseller

Winner of the 2019 OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

Shortlisted for the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award

Shortlisted for the 2019/20 First Nation Communities READ Indigenous Literature Award

2020 Burlington Library Selection; 2020 Hamilton Reads One Book One Community Selection; 2020 Region of Waterloo One Book

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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.

A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species. Evolution has reversed itself: woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. For Cedar Hawk Songmaker, this change is profound and deeply personal:...

"When Klaus Shawano abducts Sweetheart Calico, the seductive Indian woman who has stolen his heart, and takes her far from her native Montana plains to his own Minneapolis home, he cannot begin to imagine the eventual ramifications his brazen act will entail. Shawano's mysterious Antelope Woman has utterly mesmerized himand soon proves to be a bewitching agent of chaos whose effect on others is disturbing and irresistible, as she alters the shape...

Ojibwa describes the history and culture of the people, and introduces their most important figures.

This novel is based on the extraordinary life of the author's grandfather Patrick Gourneau, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington. With lightness and gravity, and with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a literary master, this story follows captivating characters. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel-bearing plant, the first...

"The latest in the New York Times bestselling Cork O'Connor Mystery Series follows Cork in a race against time to save his wife, a mysterious stranger, and an Ojibwe healer from bloodthirsty mercenaries. The ancient Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux has had a vision of his death. As he walks the Northwoods in solitude, he tries to prepare himself peacefully for the end of his long life. But peace is destined to elude him as hunters fill the woods seeking...

Beyond food, the Anishinabek and Ojibwe People of the Great Lakes region have a long-established set of practices, lifestyles, and governance structures that are deeply integrated into cultures and communities. The arrival of Europeans and the eventual establishment of the colonial state violently disrupted Indigenous ways of being. However, Indigenous people have persisted. This has included court battles to protect Inherent rights and active participation...

"When Uncle and Windy Girl attend a powwow, Windy watches the dancers and listens to the singers. She eats tasty food and joins family and friends around the campfire. Later, Windy falls asleep under the stars. Uncle's stories inspire visions in her head: a bowwow powwow, where all the dancers are dogs. In these magical scenes, Windy sees veterans in a Grand Entry, and a visiting drum group, and traditional dancers, grass dancers, and jingle-dress...

"In the first of three linked stories, an Ojibway grandfather--Mishomis--and his grandchild--Noshen--set out early one morning in grandfather's birchbark canoe ... In each story, the child gradually learns the ways of nature and discovers his own place in the world--in harmony with nature--guided by his grandfather's wise, patient and loving ways."--Dust jacket.