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

An official launch of the book will take place at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Wednesday, April 19 at 7:00 p.m. with host, James Daschuk.

Baskatawang is an Anishinaabe scholar from Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation in Treaty #3 territory. He graduated with a PhD in Native Studies from the University of Manitoba in 2021. There, he taught online courses, and went on to hold an appointment in the Law and Society Program at York University, where he taught the courses “Indigenous Peoples and Law” and “Social Justice and Law.” Since joining the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law at Robson Hall in 2022, he has taught “Indigenous Methodologies and Perspectives” to upper year law students along with colleagues Marc Kruse, Indigenous Legal Studies Coordinator, and Assistant Professor Daniel Diamond. He also teaches “Introduction to Law and Society,” and “Oral History, Indigenous People and the Law.”

Baskatawang’s primary research interests include: the processes of colonization, reconciliation, and decolonization; social justice; the history of Indigenous peoples (with particular attention to the Anishinaabe); Indigenous law and Canadian policy; treaty interpretation and implementation; Indigenous education; Indigenous resistance and activism; as well as Indigenous literature, art, and representation.

His SSHRC-funded doctoral dissertation “Kinamaadiwin Inaakonigewin: A Path to Reconciliation and Anishinaabe Cultural Resurgence” reflects on the development of the Treaty #3 Anishinaabe education law as it is known in the oral tradition, into a written form of law. As he explains in the following interview, this dissertation was the inspiration behind his new book.

In Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law Baskatawang traces the history of the neglected treaty relationship between the Crown and the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3, and the Canadian government’s egregious failings to administer effective education policy for Indigenous youth—failures epitomized by, but not limited to, the horrors of the residential school system.

Rooted in the belief that Indigenous education should be governed and administered by Indigenous peoples, the future Baskatawang envisions is hopeful for Indigenous nations where their traditional laws are formally recognized and affirmed by the governments of Canada. He details the efforts being made in Treaty #3 territory to revitalize and codify the Anishinaabe education law, kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin. Kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin considers education wholistically, describing ways of knowing, being, doing, relating, and connecting to the land that are grounded in tradition, while also positioning its learners for success in life, both on and off the reserve.

As the backbone of an Indigenous-led education system, kinamaadiwin inaakonigewin enacts Anishinaabe self-determination, and has the potential to bring about cultural resurgence, language revitalization, and a new era of Crown-Indigenous relations in Canada. Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law challenges policy makers to push beyond apologies and performative politics, and to engage in meaningful reconciliation practices by recognizing and affirming the laws that the Anishinaabeg have always used to govern themselves.

What was your motivation for writing this book?

The motivation for writing this book was inspired from my doctoral research. I initially intended to write my dissertation on the Canadian government’s failure to adequately implement the treaty right to education. However, the focus of my research shifted when I learned about the Grand Council Treaty #3’s desire to codify a Treaty #3 Education Law. Being that the Canadian government has historically failed to develop an education policy that is respectful of Indigenous cultures, it seemed to me that having them recognize and affirm the authority of Indigenous nations’ own laws on education was a good way to test the government’s commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s “Calls to Action” and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Who should read this book?

This book was written with the intention of being immediately accessible to all Canadians, whether they are Indigenous or not. As such, I hope the information I provide in the book will be of interest to government officials, policy makers, community leaders, educators, administrators, and students of various disciplines, including law, education, history, political science, and Indigenous studies, as well as to those conducting research on the processes of reconciliation and cultural resurgence. As I say in the book’s introduction, if my book can help to advance any of these matters in the glorious pursuit of social justice, all the better.

What do you most hope readers will take away from this book?

I think there are two important overlapping principles to take away from the book. One is that Canada has a long history of neglecting the treaties it signed with Indigenous nations, which is exacerbated by imposing policies on Indigenous peoples and communities that have been extremely harmful to their overall health and well-being.  The second important message of the book is that all Indigenous nations have their own laws and governance systems that are capable of designing policies for the betterment of their communities and people. These laws and governance systems are formally recognized by UNDRIP, and need to be recognized and affirmed by the Canadian government as well.

What gap in knowledge do you know will be filled with this work?

The fact that Indigenous nations have their own laws and governance systems is only beginning to be recognized by Canadian society in general. This awareness is growing, due in large part by the work of Indigenous legal scholars such as John Borrows, as well as cultural resurgence scholars such as Leanne Simpson and Glen Coulthard. My research builds on the work of these scholars, with the hope that it will be useful to other scholars, as well as community leaders who have an interest in developing laws and policies that will better serve their nations and people.

To what extent can the information in this book be used to help communities in other Treaty areas?

I am conscious of the fact that my research is primarily dedicated to the people of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3. In the book, I am careful to consider that every Indigenous nation, or community for that matter, has different needs and interests that relates to education. That said, I hope the information that I provide in the book will be relevant to any Indigenous government that is considering undertaking a process of codifying some of its laws, particularly those that relate to education, since as I previously mentioned, Canadian education laws and policies have not adequately served Indigenous nations as they ought to.

What research project will you next be working on?

I am currently in the process, with the help of a few colleagues, of developing an annual volume of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Indigenous Inaakonigewin, in association with the Manitoba Law Journal.  As part of this process, we are looking to recruit, both early-career and established scholars, community leaders, Elders, and artists, who have knowledge to share on how Canadian laws and policies can be amended to better serve Indigenous communities and people. Such knowledge mobilization is an integral part of the reconciliation process, and will be reflected in our journal in the form of academic papers, interviews, and artistic expression. In addition to the journal volume, my colleagues and I, are also planning to host an annual conference at the University of Manitoba which will be open and accessible to all, where these ideas can be shared, discussed, and included as part of our journal.

Figure 1. The cover image for “I Will Live for Both of Us” features Joan Scottie, an Inuk Elder, sitting outside on a rock against crashing waves.

Throughout the book, Joan shares the history and stories behind her community’s decade-long fight against uranium mining. Traditional Inuit laws surrounding resource management, the land, and animals are brought to the forefront while other conversations draw from Inuit experiences in residential schools, the politics of gold mining in Nunavut, and the nuclear industry altogether.

I Will Live for Both of Us provides a reflection on political and environmental history. “The authors bring detailed insights into the context of neoliberal resource extraction and ongoing processes of colonial dispossession, making the book of great interest for Inuit, Canadian, and international audiences, alike,” says Rebecca Hall in her review of the book for Canadian Journal of Development Studies. “The text, dynamic and accessible without forsaking depth, will certainly lend itself to research, classroom and popular reading. And its focus on historical and contemporary Inuit resistance will provide inspiration—and, indeed, a suite of tactics—for community organizers.”

Rebecca Hall’s complete review of I Will Live for Both of Us can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02255189.2022.2142935

Citation and authors

Scottie, J., Bernauer, W., Hicks, J. (2022) I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance. University of Manitoba Press. Paper, ISBN: 978-0-88755-265-6

Joan Scottie was born at a traditional Inuit camp in what is known today as Nunavut. She resides as an Inuk Elder living among the community of Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake). She has been a leading voice for Inuit opposition to uranium mining since the 1980s.

Warren Bernauer is a postdoctoral fellow at the Natural Resources Institute and the Department of Environment and Geography with the University of Manitoba’s Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources.

Jack Hicks is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, at the University of Saskatchewan. He has worked for Inuit organizations for more than 30 years.

I Will Live for Both of Us has been published through the University of Manitoba Press and is featured in the series: Contemporary Studies on the North. It can be found here: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/i-will-live-for-both-of-us

A new assistant professor in the departments of Native studies and history, Carleton credits a combination of his university education and a Kwakwaka’wakw family member and Survivor on his partner’s side that revealed the ongoing effects of the residential school system. As a settler scholar of Irish and English descent, Carleton remains committed to raising greater awareness about the residential school system “to ensure that other settlers cannot use their ignorance of the past to justify their ongoing complicity in settler colonialism.”

Shortly after the fifth anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report, former TRC chair Senator Murray Sinclair stated that “this history is not going to stay in the past.” This inspired Carleton to action, which led him and his project collaborators to apply for the Indigenous Initiatives Fund at the University of Manitoba.

The project, which is a collaboration between the department of Native studies, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and the University of Manitoba Press, will create an accessible learning tool in the medium of a graphic novel called A Knock on the Door. The novel will be illustrated by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Gord Hill.

In the spirit of putting ‘truth’ before ‘reconciliation,’ Carleton says the goal of the project is “to establish innovative linkages on campus to support knowledge mobilization and education throughout Manitoba and Canada.”

“Comics, or graphic novels, are an accessible medium to share information and education,” he says. “They are a transformative tool for empathic and empowering teaching and learning.”

There are plenty of resources that currently exist in educating adults, including the TRC’s publication entitled A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (University of Manitoba Press, 2016), and Carleton hopes to use the publication as the launching point for the graphic novel.

“Many Indigenous comics creators are showing the power of the graphic form as a way of storytelling and consciousness raising, including one of my colleagues and grant collaborator Niigaan Sinclair,” Carleton says. As well, he adds that UM is in a unique position “to be a hub of residential school knowledge,” citing the advantages of having the NCTR on campus, as well as a strong Native studies department. “Collaboration and knowledge dissemination are the main goals for this project.”

Inspired by the TRC’s call to action #62, which calls for “age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools,” both publication and dissemination of A Knock on the Door is to work alongside educators in the K-12 system to develop a meaningful way for young learners to become aware of residential school history.

Awarded $30,000 for the project,  A Knock on the Door is one of eight projects selected this year for a total of $350,514 in funding. The Indigenous Initiative Funds are open to faculties, schools, colleges, libraries and administrative units to support unit-based projects that further the Indigenous Achievement goals and priorities outlined in Taking Our Place, UM’s Strategic Plan.

Penashue led the Innu campaign against NATO’s low-level flying and bomb testing on Innu land during the 1980s and ’90s, and was a key respondent in a landmark legal case in which the judge held that the Innu had the “colour of right” to occupy the Canadian Forces base in Goose Bay, Labrador.

Her book Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive began as a diary written in Innu-aimun, in which she recorded day-to-day experiences, court appearances, and interviews with reporters.

“Here is the diary of a living legend,” says Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Innu poet and actress. “It is also a diary for today, an invitation to follow the steps of our ancestors through a single Innu woman whose love for the land never falls apart even within the biggest struggle storms of our time. The Innu people always believed in dream and imagination to travel through lands if physically we couldn’t. We can walk now with Tshaukuesh Penashue.”

Her book launches on Nov. 10, 2019, at 3 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers

Darryl Leroux is an associate professor in the Department of Social Justice and Community Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). He has been working on the dynamics of racism and colonialism among fellow French descendants for nearly two decades and his book Distorted Descent examines a social phenomenon that has taken off in the twenty-first century: otherwise white, French descendant settlers in Canada shifting into a self-defined “Indigenous” identity.

This study is not about individuals who have been dispossessed by colonial policies, or the multi-generational efforts to reconnect that occur in response. Rather, it is about white, French-descendant people discovering an Indigenous ancestor born 300 to 375 years ago through genealogy and using that ancestor as the sole basis for an eventual shift into an “Indigenous” identity today.

After setting out the most common genealogical practices that facilitate race shifting, Leroux examines two of the most prominent self-identified “Indigenous” organizations currently operating in Quebec. Both organizations have their origins in committed opposition to Indigenous land and territorial negotiations, and both encourage the use of suspect genealogical practices. Distorted Descent brings to light to how these claims to an “Indigenous” identity are then used politically to oppose actual, living Indigenous peoples, exposing along the way the shifting politics of whiteness, white settler colonialism, and white supremacy.

“Distorted Descent is a brave, original piece of scholarship, offered in the context of a politically sensitive and socially controversial subject of Indigenous identity,” says Pamela Palmater, Chair in Indigenous Governance, Department of Politics and Public Administration, at Ryerson University. “His research exposes the extent to which white settler colonialism undermines Indigenous rights through the theft of Indigenous identity. It’s a real wake-up call.”

Leroux’s book launches on Nov. 13, 2019, at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers