Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!
Oct 21 2024
Typically, on the second Monday of October, Indigenous Peoples’ Day recognizes the Indigenous communities that have lived in the Americas for thousands of years. It became increasingly popular as a replacement for Columbus Day, which was meant to celebrate the explorer who sailed with a crew from Spain in three ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, in 1492.As always, one of my favorite ways to continue to educate myself on important topics and celebrations is reading. So, here are some books to read to learn about and help raise Indigenous voices:1. “Making Love with the Land” by Joshua Whitehead“Making Love with the Land” is a startling, challenging, uncompromising look at what it means to live as an Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In these ten unique, heart-piercing non-fiction pieces, award-winning writer Joshua Whitehead illuminates the complex moment we’re living through now, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new and old ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped ideas, histories, words, and our very bodies?2. “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity In the Natural World” by Robin Wall KimmererFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” a bold and inspiring vision for orienting our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world. As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.3. “real ones” by Katherena VermetteJune and her sister, lyn, are NDNs—real ones.Her sister lyn has her pottery artwork, her precocious kid, Willow, and the uncertain terrain of her midlife to keep her mind, heart and hands busy. June, a Métis Studies professor, yearns to uproot from Vancouver and move. With her loving partner, Sigh, and their faithful pup, June decides to buy a house in the last place on earth she imagined she’d end back home in Winnipeg with her family.4. “Prairie Edge” by Conor KerrMeet Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey, two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. 5. “Thunder Song” by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointeThe author of the award-winning memoir “Red Paint” returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States today.Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.As always, don’t forget to share your own recommendations in the comments!