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Book Recommendations from Indigenous Authors - Part Three

Updated: Aug 14, 2020

By: Farrah L., Halton Youth Initiative Communications Crew

July 2, 2020


This is the third in a series of three posts curated by members of the Halton Youth Initiative's Communications Crew listing fiction and non-fiction books by Indigenous authors. We invite you to visit your local library or book store to check out at least one of the recommendations in honour of National Indigenous History Month.


Here is a link to the Oakville Public Library website where you can view the list online.


By: Aaron Paquette

A fantasy novel about Aisling, a young Cree woman who sets out into the wilderness with her

Kokum (grandmother), Aunty and two young men she barely knows. They have to find and

rescue her runaway younger brother, Eric. Along the way she learns that the legends of herd that she has a growing power of her own.



By: Katherena Vermette


Echo Desjardins, a 13-year-old Métis girl adjusting to a new home and school, is struggling with loneliness while separated from her mother. Then an ordinary day in Mr. Bee’s history class turns extraordinary, and Echo’s life will never be the same.


The Halton Youth Initiative hosted a Book Club focused on A Girl Called Echo. The questions they used are attached below.


By: Michael Hutchinson

Sam, Otter, Atim, and Chickadee are four inseparable cousins growing up on the Windy Lake

First Nation. Nicknamed the Mighty Muskrats for their habit of laughing, fighting, and exploring

together, the cousins find that each new adventure adds to their reputation. When a visiting

archeologist goes missing, the cousins decide to solve the mystery of his disappearance


By: Adam Garnet Jones

Shane, a gay Anishnabe teenager living in Northern Ontario, struggles to support his family after his sister commits suicide. If he fails, he will be forced to choose between keeping the family home or saving his future.


By: Lisa Charleyboy

This book presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change.


By: Eden Robinson

A coming of age novel where a teenage boy wades through the complications of a broken

family, social pressure, drugs, alcohol and poverty and discovers the Haisla trickster Wee'jit. je


By: Melanie Florence

Juggling soccer, school, friends and family leaves John with little time for anything else. But one day at the local community center, following the sound of drums, he finds himself in an

Indigenous dance class.


By: Alison Kooistra

A mesmerizing blend of vampire thriller and coming-of-age story.


By: Eden Robinson

In an effort to keep all forms of magic at bay, Jared, 17, has quit drugs and drinking. But his

troubles are not over: now he's being stalked by David, his mom's ex — a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking.


By: Cherie Dimaline

A survival story set in a Canada where “recruiters” harvest the bone marrow of Indigenous

people. They do so to serve a non-Indigenous clientele that has lost the ability to dream, and

hopes to restore their dreams by consuming Indigenous marrow.



By: Ruby Slipperjack

A haunting novel about a 12-year-old girl’s experience at a residential school in 1966.


By: Jennifer Dance

Starving and lonely, an orphaned timber wolf is befriended by a boy named Red Wolf. But under the Indian Act, Red Wolf is forced to attend a residential school far from the life he knows, and the wolf is alone once more. Courage, love and fate reunite the pair, and they embark on a perilous journey home. But with winter closing in, will Red Wolf and Crooked Ear survive? And if they do, what will they find?


By: Jordan Abel

A long poem about racism and the representation of Indigenous peoples.


By: Jesse Thistle

A remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a

Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle

briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had

known.

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