CBC’s Canada Reads bills itself as “the nation’s biggest book club.” This week-long radio program invites well-known Canadian personalities to advocate for their favourite book, and, through debate and daily voting, identify the “one book that all Canadians should read.”

A Two-Spirit Journey is a novel pick for this program; though Manitoba has produced past authors and panelists, this is the first time a book published in the province has been selected for the honour. This is also the first time in the show’s twenty-two-year history that a university press is the originating publisher of a short-listed work. A Two-Spirit Journey is part of the Press’s Critical Studies in Native History series, which “publishes books committed to new ways of thinking and writing about the historical experience of Indigenous people.”

University of Manitoba Press Director David Larsen says the selection “validates and amplifies the important work we do and the efforts we make to reach as many readers as we can. No one is more deserving of this recognition than Ma-Nee Chacaby.”

Born in a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1952, Elder Ma-Nee Chacaby has experienced a life of both extraordinary hardship and extraordinary resilience. This book chronicles her experiences escaping from an abusive marriage, achieving sobriety, working as an alcoholism counsellor, raising foster children, and coming out. Chacaby’s story has been praised by readers and critics alike, with the Winnipeg Free Press calling it “a handbook of hope.” Chacaby gives voice to the struggles of Indigenous peoples facing the social and economic legacies of colonialism. As collaborator Mary Louisa Plummer writes in the afterword, “[Ma-Nee] has lived through important historical transitions and few records of those times are written from the perspective of someone like her, that is, a poor, recovering alcoholic, visually impaired, and lesbian Indigenous woman.”

Ma-Nee emerges from the book’s pages as a person who is full of courage, kindness, and generosity. While A Two-Spirit Journey could have found a home with a trade publisher, both the authors and the Press recognized how much it could also contribute to academic work in Canadian and Indigenous History. Senior Editor Jill McConkey, who acquired the book for the Press, says it “expands our knowledge of how complex the intersections of indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and disability can be. Since the book’s publication in 2016, more and more Canadians have taken up the TRC’s call to confront and learn from the hard truths of the country’s history of settler colonialism. A Two-Spirit Journey continues to help readers do just that, guided by Ma-Nee’s hope and determination to craft a better future for herself and others.” 

Honourable mention

When the Pine Needles Fall by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel with UM Assistant Professor in History and Indigenous Studies Sean Carleton was also on the longlist for the national Canada Reads competition.

Each year, the great Canadian book debate searches for the one book every Canadian should read and, for 2025, the panelists are searching for “one book to change the narrative.” A Two-Spirit Journey and When the Pine Needles Fall were selected alongside 13 other longlisted titles for their “power to change how we see, share and experience the world around us.”

In A Two-Spirit Journey, Ma-Nee Chacaby, a two-spirit Ojibwe-Cree writer, activist, and storyteller tells her extraordinary life story of hope and healing. Growing up learning from her Cree grandmother in a remote northern Ontario community, Chacaby endured and overcame abuse and alcohol addiction, ultimately becoming a counsellor and teacher and leading Thunder Bay’s first gay pride parade. A Two-Spirit Journey won the Ontario Historical Society’s Alison Prentice Award and the Oral History Association’s Book Award.

When the Pine Needles Fall describes Canada’s 1990 siege of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke known as the Oka Crisis from the perspective of the Kanien’kehà:ka (Mohawk) spokesperson during the siege, Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel. The book offers personal and profound insights into Gabriel’s life and work as an Indigenous land defender, human rights activist, and feminist leader.

The five shortlisted titles will be announced, along with their champions, on January 23, 2025, and the debates will take place March 17–20, 2025