Listed below are examples of books that schools could use a novel studies to help teachers and staff understand the importance of Canada's past specifically. These books look into issues such as residential schools, assimilation, and overall loss of culture. Some of these books could also be used as a novel study within the classroom to integrate First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives.
At six years old, Seepeetza is taken from her happy family life on Joyaska Ranch to live as a boarder at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Life at the school is not easy, but Seepeetza still manages to find some bright spots. Always, thoughts of home make her school life bearable. An honest, inside look at life in an Indian residential school in the 1950s, and how one indomitable young spirit survived it.
|
The moving memoir of an Inuit girl who emerges from a residential school with her spirit intact. In the face of such cruelty, Margaret refuses to be intimidated and bravely gets rid of the stockings. Although a sympathetic nun stands up for Margaret, in the end it is this brave young girl who gives the Raven a lesson in the power of human dignity.
|
The powerful memoir of an Inuvialuit girl searching for her true self when she returns from residential school.
|
When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from, despite the efforts of the nuns who are in charge at the school and who tell her that she is not to use her own name but instead use the number they have assigned to her. When she goes home for summer holidays, Irene's parents decide never to send her and her brothers away again. But where will they hide? And what will happen when her parents disobey the law?
|
These stories of love, loss, rage and resilience match virtuosic style with clever wit to turn stereotypes on their head and reveal the traditions and grace of our First Peoples. Readers come to know a butterfly-costumed boy fascinated by the world of professional wrestling, a young woman who falls in love with a wolf, to the leader of an all-girl Native punk band and Painted Tongue, the unforgettable character from Through Black Spruce.
|
In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about theresidential school's lasting effects on her and her family - from substance abuse to suicide attempts - and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.
|
Website created by: Kayli O'Donnell & Brittany Mahon