Indian Schools

The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man."

The sixth book in the Charles Bloom Murder Mystery series… In 1961, two Navajo boys must bet each other’s lives - and risk their most prized possessions - to escape the wrath of the sadistic headmaster of a Gallup Indian boarding school. The white devil and his spawn will stop at nothing - not even murder - to acquire the objects of their desire. Fifty years later, a brush with death draws Rachael Yellowhorse and Charles Bloom back to the Navajo reservation, where they unwittingly stumble on a decades-old secret of child abuse and stolen heirlooms.

In 1903, over 300 Indian children from across America lived at the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School in a remote, isolated valley in Montana. Among the children were a handful of teenage girls, many who had only lived in tepees. They quickly learned to play basketball and resoundingly crushed all opponents, including men's and women's university teams. After the games, the girls recited Shelley and Longfellow, played mandolins and violins, sang, danced, and pantomimed.

Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight was four years old when armed federal agents showed up at her home and took her from her family. Under the authority of the government, she was sent away to a boarding school specifically created to strip her of her Ponca culture and teach her the ways of white society. Little Moon was one of thousands of Indigenous children forced to attend these schools across America and give up everything they'd ever known: family, friends, toys, clothing, food, customs, even their language.

In A Canadian Shame, Darren Grimes has collected and presented overwhelming evidence which shows beyond doubt that a monster bent on the complete destruction of the Indigenous peoples of Canada (First Nations, Inuit, Metis, and all the other Aboriginal inhabitants of the land) has been devouring not only men and women, but also children of those cultures, that this monster has been doing so for hundreds of years, that this destruction has been deliberate and systematic rather than accidental or unintended.

Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived. He played professional football, major league baseball, and won Olympic gold medals in track and field. But his life wasn't an easy one. Born on the Sac and Fox Reservation in 1887, he encountered much family tragedy, and was sent as a young boy to various Indian boarding schools: strict, cold institutions that didn't allow their students to hold on to their Native American languages and traditions.

Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. Valley of the Birdtail is about how two communities became separate and unequal—and what it means for the rest of us.

The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever heard before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide.

Will Isabelle find romance this Thanksgiving? Kindergarten teacher Isabelle Swanner has her hands full with her class and the upcoming Thanksgiving play at school. One of her students, Cooper Bryant, is running her ragged, and she has no idea how to help the boy control his behavior. Love is the last thing on her mind, but when she meets Cooper's uncle, Isabelle starts to realize she has a lot of things to be thankful for--and maybe love is one of them. Casey Bryant is an attorney trying to help with his nephew after a tragedy leaves Cooper motherless. Between long hours at work, an unruly ...