Celebrate Indigenous History Month with These Great BC Books

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada, an opportunity to strengthen our understandings of the cultures, history and experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people with whom we share this land.

We've gathered three selections from some of our favourite local publishers to help you start exploring, all available where fine books are sold.

The Secret Pocket
By Peggy Janicki
(Orca Book Publishers)

Based on Janicki's mother's experience at residential school, The Secret Pocket is a story of survival and resilience in the face of genocide and cruelty. But it's also a celebration of quiet resistance to injustice, and how the sewing skills passed down through generations of Indigenous women gave these girls a future, stitch by stitch, as they sewed secret pockets into their dresses to hide food.

An excerpt:

We found our ways to survive.
We made plans, especially for the top-secret missions to the kitchen.
We discovered that many of us could sneak food out. The hard part
was moving under watchful eyes and not getting spotted.
So when we saw the rags in the rag box, we had a genius idea.
We sewed secret pockets into our petticoats to hide the food we took!

We woke up brave and hopeful the next morning.
Our hearts burst with pride when we walked past
the Sisters with our secret pockets filled with food.
We sewed more pockets. We took more food —
apples, carrots, pieces of bread.
We fed the small hungry girls and ourselves.
We found our ways and filled our pockets with
what we needed to carry on. We filled our pockets
with so much more than food. We filled them
with our future.

JAJ: A Haida Manga
By Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
(Douglas & McIntyre)

Johan Adrian Jacobsen, or JAJ, was a Norwegian adventurer who sailed north along the West Coast in the late 1800s on the SS Dakota. With gorgeous imagery, visual artist Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization of the West Coast.

“It was an incredible era of violence, greed, audacity, sentimentality, undirected exuberance, and an almost reverential attitude toward the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it,” says Dee Brown of the period, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

For a preview of the JAJ's panels and for additional context of the visual history, read our review.

Spells, Wishes and the Talking Dead: ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣ ᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤ ᓂᑭᐦᒋ ᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân
By Wanda John-Kehewin
(Talonbooks)

Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead is an unflinching look at colonialism’s sickening trail, from its ongoing detriment to the safety and mental health of Indigenous people, to its theft of language and its intergenerational harms.

With the unrelenting power of resistance and great strength in truth, John-Kehewin plays with form, space and language, demonstrating which magics cannot be suppressed.

An excerpt:

I wanted to write about kisêmanitow comma a word that when translated into English means the Creator of all things period Why is it every time I write Creator or God or kisêmanitow I feel the burning need to capitalize it question mark Is it because everything important to me has to be capitalized like Mom or Dad because they left me and left this world too soon or is it because of the rules of punctuation question mark Or is it because I do not want Creator or God or kisêmanitow to be angry with me question mark Is capitalizing a way for me to show their importance as if Creator or God or kisêmanitow would ever sit on top of St. Joseph’s Hill comma cup of coffee in hand comma reading my poems to figure out if I always capitalized their earthly names question mark Perhaps Creator or God or kisêmanitow already knows what I am going to write before I even have the thought of writing it comma not sure if this punctuation should be a question mark or a period comma I don’t have an answer either way period

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To learn more about the books offered by these great local publishers, visit Orca Book Publishers, Douglas & McIntyre and Talonbooks.