Download or read book Song of Eskasoni written by Rita Joe and published by Women's Press (CA). This book was released on 1988 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I was born in Whycocomagh in 1932. When mother died in 1937 there were many foster homes until I was twelve years old. I put myself into the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. That school plays an important part in my life, along with native upbringing by many mothers. My education is by my people - I have a front seat to see and feel their needs, the major one being that we, too, live with ideal productiveness. The label is deeply rooted and the stroke of a native pen does wonders, especially for the coming generation. The importance of my country is why I try to portray the Indian as they are, so that others may see the part we play in our society. If I get too sentimental in my choice of words, excuse me. I have to call attention to the gentle peopleof Canada. My song is gentle, bear with me. I still want to offer my hand in friendship, the Indian of today." - Rita Joe

Download or read book Song of Rita Joe written by Rita Joe and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the enlightening story of an esteemed and eloquent Mi’kmaq woman whose message of “gentle persuasion” has enriched the life of a nation. Rita Joe is celebrated as a poet, an educator, and an ambassador. In 1989, she accepted the Order of Canada “on behalf of native people across the nation.” In this spirit she tells her story and, by her example, illustrates the experiences of an entire generation of aboriginal women in Canada. Song of Rita Joe is the story of Joe’s remarkable life: her education in an Indian residential school, her turbulent marriage, and the daily struggles within her family and community. It is the story of how Joe’s battles with racism, sexism, poverty, and personal demons became the catalyst for her first poems and allowed her to reclaim her aboriginal heritage. Today, her story continues: as she moves into old age, Joe writes that her lifelong spiritual quest is ever deepening.

Download or read book I Lost My Talk written by Rita Joe and published by Nimbus Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stolen Words I Am Not A Number When We Were Alone I'm Finding My Talk by Rebecca Thomas

Download or read book Lnu and Indians We re Called written by Rita Joe and published by Women's Press Literary. This book was released on 1991 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this collection, celebrated poet and Micmac Indian, Rita Joe, expands uponher desire to communicate gently with her own people, and reach out to the wider community of Canadians. On the eve of the 500th Anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas, Rita Joe once again extends her hand to us in friendship, and reminds us of the native culture that was here long before the Europeans. These new poems compel us to listen.

Download or read book Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America written by Victoria Levine Lindsay Levine and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging anthology, scholars offer diverse perspectives on ethnomusicology in dialogue with critical Indigenous studies. This volume is a collaboration between Indigenous and settler scholars from both Canada and the United States. The contributors explore the intersections between music, modernity, and Indigeneity in essays addressing topics that range from hip-hop to powwow, and television soundtracks of Native Classical and experimental music. Working from the shared premise that multiple modernities exist for Indigenous peoples, the authors seek to understand contemporary musical expression from Native perspectives and to decolonize the study of Native American/First Nations music. The essays coalesce around four main themes: innovative technology, identity formation and self-representation, political activism, and translocal musical exchange. Related topics include cosmopolitanism, hybridity, alliance studies, code-switching, and ontologies of sound. Featuring the work of both established and emerging scholars, the collection demonstrates the centrality of music in communicating the complex, diverse lived experience of Indigenous North Americans in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book For the Children written by Rita Joe and published by Tidelow Press. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in 1932, in Whycocomagh, RITA JOE lived a hardscrabble existence, from foster home to foster home, experiences that helped her decide to admit herself to Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, a place most Mi'kmaq people had come to dread. It was a rare example of the child choosing Shubie, "to better myself," to get an education. That same determination compelled her to write about her personal combination of traditional Mi'kmaw spiritualism and Catholic faith, carrying forward her 'gentle war'. Her last poem, unfinished, was found in her typewriter when she died in March 2007.

Download or read book The Mi kmaq Anthology written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A varied and spirited collection of work by the Mi’kmaq writers of Atlantic Canada, this volume brings together young and old and includes short stories, autobiography, poetry and personal essays. Valuable as a landmark of an ancient culture, The Mi’kmaq Anthology also delivers to a wide audience the wealth of creative talent within the Mi’kmaq community. Although many voices here are new to the reading public, this volume radiates with deep spirituality, social awareness, intellectual energy and a passionate concern for preserving the Mi’kmaq way of life.Authors include Don Julien, Lindsay Marshall, Murdena Marshall, Mary Louise Martin, Elsie Charles Basque, Shirley Kiju Kawi, Noel Knockwood, Helen Sylliboy, Marie Batiste, Theresa Meuse, Isabelle Knockwood, Katherine Sorbey, Daniel N. Paul, Sunset Rose Morris, Harold Gloade and Rita Joe.

Download or read book Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume One Summary written by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

Download or read book From the Iron House written by Deena Rymhs and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In From the Iron House: Imprisonment in First Nations Writing, Deena Rymhs identifies continuities between the residential school and the prison, offering ways of reading “the carceral”—that is, the different ways that incarceration is constituted and articulated in contemporary Aboriginal literature. Addressing the work of writers like Tomson Highway and Basil Johnston along with that of lesser-known authors writing in prison serials and underground publications, this book emphasizes the literary and political strategies these authors use to resist the containment of their institutions. The first part of the book considers a diverse sample of writing from prison serials, prisoners’ anthologies, and individual autobiographies, including Stolen Life by Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson, to show how these works serve as second hearings for their authors—an opportunity to respond to the law’s authority over their personal and public identities while making a plea to a wider audience. The second part looks at residential school narratives and shows how the authors construct identities for themselves in ways that defy the institution’s control. The interactions between these two bodies of writing—residential school accounts and prison narratives—invite recognition of the ways that guilt is colonially constructed and how these authors use their writing to distance themselves from that guilt. Offering new ways of reading Native writing, From the Iron House is a pioneering study of prison literature in Canada and situates its readings within international criticism of prison writing. Contributing to genre studies and theoretical understandings of life writing, and covering a variety of social topics, this work will be relevant to readers interested in indigenous studies, Canadian cultural studies, postcolonial studies, auto/biography studies, law, and public policy.

Download or read book We are the Dreamers written by Rita Joe and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wood Mountain Poems written by Andrew Suknaski and published by Regina : Hagios Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As fresh and relevant as when first published, Wood Mountain Poems is one of the first books from Canadian prairie literature to examine the division and shared experience between European settlers and Aboriginal peoples. In these poems we gain insight into the lives of historical figures such as Sitting Bull, Crowfoot and Gabriel Dumont. Readers will again relish this prairie journey as they are led by a poetic voice that is impossible to forget. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Reason You Walk written by Wab Kinew and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving story of father-son reconciliation told by a charismatic aboriginal star When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who’d raised him. The Reason You Walk spans that 2012 year, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. An intriguing doubleness marks The Reason You Walk, itself a reference to an Anishinaabe ceremonial song. Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief and an urban activist. His father, Tobasonakwut, was both a beloved traditional chief and a respected elected leader who engaged directly with Ottawa. Internally divided, his father embraced both traditional native religion and Catholicism, the religion that was inculcated into him at the residential school where he was physically and sexually abused. In a grand gesture of reconciliation, Kinew's father invited the Roman Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to a Sundance ceremony in which he adopted him as his brother. Kinew writes affectingly of his own struggles in his twenties to find the right path, eventually giving up a self-destructive lifestyle to passionately pursue music and martial arts. From his unique vantage point, he offers an inside view of what it means to be an educated aboriginal living in a country that is just beginning to wake up to its aboriginal history and living presence. Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and for a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.

Download or read book Mi kmaq Landscapes written by Anne-Christine Hornborg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explore historical changes in the lifeworld of the Mi'kmaq Indians of Eastern Canada. The Mi'kmaq culture hero Kluskap serves as a key persona in discussing issues such as traditions, changing conceptions of land, and human-environmental relations. In order not to depict Mi'kmaq culture as timeless, two important periods in its history are examined. Within the first period, between 1850 and 1930, Hornborg explores historical evidence of the ontology, epistemology, and ethics - jointly labelled animism - that stem from a premodern Mi'kmaq hunting subsistence. New ways of discussing animism and shamanism are here richly exemplified. The second study situates the culture hero in the modern world of the 1990s, when allusions to Mi'kmaq tradition and to Kluskap played an important role in the struggle against a planned superquarry on Cape Breton. This study discusses the eco-cosmology that has been formulated by modern reserve inhabitants which could be labelled a 'sacred ecology'. Focusing on how the Mi'kmaq are rebuilding their traditions and environmental relations in interaction with modern society, Hornborg illustrates how environmental groups, pan-Indianism, and education play an important role, but so does reserve life. By anchoring their engagement in reserve life the Mi'kmaq traditionalists have, to a large extent, been able to confront both external and internal doubts about their authenticity.

Download or read book Travelling Knowledges written by Renate Eigenbrod and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of de/colonization, the boundary between an Aboriginal text and the analysis by a non-Aboriginal outsider poses particular challenges often constructed as unbridgeable. Eigenbrod argues that politically correct silence is not the answer but instead does a disservice to the literature that, like all literature, depends on being read, taught, and disseminated in various ways. In Travelling Knowledges, Eigenbrod suggests decolonizing strategies when approaching Aboriginal texts as an outsider and challenges conventional notions of expertise. She concludes that literatures of colonized peoples have to be read ethically, not only without colonial impositions of labels but also with the responsibility to read beyond the text or, in Lee Maracle's words, to become "the architect of great social transformation." Features the works of: Jeannette Armstrong (Okanagan), Louise Halfe (Cree), Margo Kane (Saulteaux/Cree), Maurice Kenny (Mohawk), Thomas King (Cherokee, living in Canada), Emma LaRocque (Cree/Metis), Lee Maracle (Sto: lo/Metis), Ruby Slipperjack (Anishnaabe), Lorne Simon (Miikmaq), Richard Wagamese (Anishnaabe), and Emma Lee Warrior (Peigan)

Download or read book Dawnland Voices written by Siobhan Senier and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dawnland Voices calls attention to the little-known but extraordinarily rich literary traditions of New England’s Native Americans. This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag. Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that “real” Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago.

Download or read book Dictionary of Cape Breton English written by William John Davey and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biff and whiff, baker’s fog and lu’sknikn, pie social and milling frolic – these are just a few examples of the distinctive language of Cape Breton Island, where a puck is a forceful blow and a Cape Breton pork pie is filled with dates, not pork. The first regional dictionary devoted to the island’s linguistic and cultural history, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English is a fascinating record of the island’s rich vocabulary. Dictionary entries include supporting quotations culled from the editors’ extensive interviews with Cape Bretoners and considerable study of regional variation, as well as definitions, selected pronunciations, parts of speech, variant forms, related words, sources, and notes, giving the reader in-depth information on every aspect of Cape Breton culture. A substantial and long-awaited work of linguistic research that captures Cape Breton’s social, economic, and cultural life through the island’s language, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English can be read with interest by Backlanders, Bay byes, and those from away alike.

Download or read book Writing the Everyday written by Danielle Fuller and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2004 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Writing the Everyday Danielle Fuller analyses writing by Atlantic Canadian women from diverse backgrounds. Drawing extensively on original interviews with writers, editors, and publishers, Fuller investigates how and why communities form around texts that record women's everyday realities, histories, and traditions, showing that prose writing and poetry performances combine oral storytelling, family history, and other aspects of local cultures with popular literary genres to address issues of racism, sexism, and poverty.