As the season starts to change, we are looking forward to slowing down and taking time to reflect. The authors and artists featured below explore themes of home, family, and healing, and reveal important truths about the ongoing impacts of past and present Canadian colonialism.
Learn more below – and find new ideas for your to-read, to-watch and to-listen lists.
This post is part of our “What We’re Watching” blog series, which highlights great books, films, shows, and music by Indigenous writers and artists across the country. Check out our summer edition here.
Do you have any recommendations? Let us know.
SHORT STORIES
Waiting for the Long Night Moon | Amanda Peters
I think I've been around these stories for so long and sat in these circles for so long, that it's just something that I unconsciously feel a responsibility to talk about.
In 2021, Amanda Peters’ short story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon” was the recipient of the Indigenous Voice Awards’ prize for unpublished fiction. Peters’ debut short story collection features this story alongside others that collectively write about family, ceremony, language, grief, and healing. The short story collection, Waiting for the Long Night Moon, was released on August 18 and follows Peters’ critically acclaimed and award-winning 2023 novel The Berry Pickers.
Read more about Waiting for the Long Night Moon here and order it from your local bookstore.
BOOK & DOCUSERIES
The Knowing | Tanya Talaga
My knowing is everyone else’s knowing. [...] Now the rest of the country is waking up to what we’ve always known.
Tanya Talaga’s newest non-fiction book is both a deeply researched and personal retelling of Canada’s colonial history through the lens of Talaga’s own family. The book recounts her family’s decades-long journey to learn more about her great-great-grandmother, Annie Carpenter, and in the process explores important truths about legacies of state- and Church-led violence and enfranchisement of Indigenous women in Canada.
The Knowing has been adapted into a four-part documentary series that premieres at TIFF this month and will be available on CBC Gem starting on September 25.
Read or listen to a CBC interview with Tanya Talaga about her new book here. Find The Knowing at your local bookstore and catch Talaga speaking at events across the country this fall.
PERFORMANCE
Uvattani | Elisapie
We want to dance and cry at the same time and that’s okay.
- Elisapie
In a new 90-minute multimedia show, Elisapie brings together music, narration, video, and performance. The title of the show, Uvattani, means “home” in Inuktitut and reflects the show’s connection to Elisapie’s own story and home territory in Nunavik.
Elisapie is an award-winning Inuk artist who most recently won her first solo JUNO Award for her 2023 album Inuktitut. In 2018, Elisapie’s album The Ballad of the Runaway Girl was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. In an interview, Elisapie shares about the inspiration behind her album Inuktitut and her musical journey.
Catch Elisapie performing Uvattani across Canada this fall and winter, starting in Vancouver on Sep 28.
For more reading and watching recommendations about Indigenous rights, check out First Peoples Law’s reading lists.
First Peoples Law is a law firm dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. We work closely with First Nations to defend their Aboriginal title, rights and Treaty rights, uphold their Indigenous laws and governance and ensure economic prosperity for their members.
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