This week, in observation of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Wednesday September 30, instead of my usual reviews of books published by graduates of University of King’s College’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program I’m going to write about several books I’ve enjoyed by Indigenous authors in Canada.
One of my favourite authors is Richard Wagamese. He was a brilliant novelist, but I especially love his two memoirs, One Native Life (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008) and One Story, One Song (D&M, 2011). Wagamese did not have an easy life (sadly, he died in 2017). His parents, residential school survivors, were denied the opportunity to learn how to parent from their own parents. Wagamese was taken into government care at a young age and grew up in a series of white foster homes.
As a young journalist and activist, he too became addicted to alcohol. You’d think his memoirs would be sad but instead they’re uplifting. In the introduction to One Native Life, he talks about realizing that life alternates between periods of darkness and light. Both his memoirs comprise a series of short essays (1000–1500 words) divided into four parts (four being a powerful number in some Indigenous cultures). Each essay deals with a time in his life when he found something beautiful nestled in the darkness.
Alicia Elliott’s award-winning debut, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (Anchor Canada, 2020) is another memoir-in-essays. I was lucky enough to hear Elliott speak at a conference of the Creative Nonfiction Collective a few years ago. For someone so young, she is remarkably wise; her prose is sharp and witty, and she doesn’t pull any punches. Where Wagamese writes about growing up with the legacy of the residential school system—a child of the sixties scoop—Elliott writes about more recent phenomena. For example, at one point her school created a special class meant to teach Indigenous children about their heritage. We white people are such classic examples of that saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I’ve just finished re-reading Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (Penguin Random House, 2025), originally published in 1973. I was a young teenager when I read it the first time, and I remember being appalled at the things she endured—and that was the version that excluded her rape by two RCMP officers. Campbell is credited with writing the foundational book on which an entire genre of Indigenous literature in Canada has been built.
I also recently read Wab Kinew’s The Reason You Walk (Penguin, 2015), a multi-award-winning memoir of another life marred by the legacy of residential schools, fractured family relationships, and alcoholism. By now, Kinew’s personal story is well known: musician, DJ, broadcast journalist, writer, and now the NDP premier of Manitoba. Kinew appears regularly in the news and on social media where he constantly impresses me with his down-to-earth, common-sense approach to life and politics. I regularly hear people referring to him as the man who will be the first Indigenous prime minister of Canada. I would work on that election campaign.
Another book on my shelf is Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente (Penguin Random House, 2021). The jacket copy sums it up: “Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled calls for a new, respectful relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples. Wente argues that “’reconciliation’ is a flawed concept: peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can’t be recovered through reconciliation because no such relationship ever existed.” This is the kind of memoir I strive to write, one that seamlessly blends research with memory, supporting my personal perceptions with others’ objective facts—memoir that makes a point.
There have not been a lot of books about Indigeneity to emerge from the master’s program but a couple stand out. Jessica McDiarmid’s national bestseller Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Anchor Canada, 2019) offers an unsparing look at the tragedy of so many Indigenous women disappearing along a remote stretch of highway in BC that it’s now known as the Highway of Tears. Deeply researched and compellingly written, Highway of Tears was a finalist for both the prestigious RBC Taylor Prize and the Hubert Evans nonfiction prize and was named a Hill Times best book.
As the title suggests, Virginia Heffernan’s Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness (ECW 2023) is not a book about Indigenous People. The first and second of three parts walk us through what the Ring of Fire is (a remote and largely inaccessible 5,000-sq km crescent of land in Northern Canada rich in deposits of critical minerals) and reviews the history of and people involved in trying to exploit this mining jackpot, as well as environmental issues arising from such exploitation.
Part 3 then takes a close look at what has been overlooked far too often: the potential impacts on the people who have lived and practised a way of life on this land for almost as long as the rivers have run into James and Hudson’s Bays. Heffernan advocates for an approach that truly involves the Indigenous People who live on this land. Further, it should include their full participation in extracting minerals in ways that will benefit the lives and communities of those who live there while minimizing the environmental impact of mining in this fragile sub-Arctic ecosystem.
Next on my reading list is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the Sixties Scoop edited by Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, and 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph.
This National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I renew my commitment to read as many books as possible by Indigenous authors and continue earning the right to think of myself as an Indigenous ally.
