Each year, NWTLC compiles and shares a list of suggested learning resources related to the history and ongoing impacts of the Indian Residential School System. As an educational organization, this is a small step in our commitment to ensure we work towards understanding the truth, and working with our Indigenous partners as we walk towards reconciliation. We publish this list as a stepping stone for you to use in a day of learning and reflection on September 30, and then refer back to throughout the year to continue learning and sharing.
This year we put out a call for suggestions on Facebook and have added those along with our own list. Máhsı, Mársı, Máhsı, Hąį’, Quana, Qujannamiik, Quyanainni, kinanāskomitin and Mahsı̀ to everyone who shared their suggestions.
We hope this list inspires you to keep learning. We recognize that this is not an exhaustive list, and there are always new resources to add. If you have suggestions for future editions, please email to katie@nwtliteracy.ca and we will include it.
Websites
Podcasts
- Pieces by CBC
- Telling Our Twisted Histories by CBC
- Kuper Island by CBC
Adult books
- Re-Storying Education: Decolonizing Your Practice Using a Critical Lens by Carolyn Roberts
- Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente
- Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
- They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars
- Stations of the Crossed by Carol Rose GoldenEagle
- Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
- Dancing with a Ghost: Exploring Aboriginal Reality by Rupert Ross
- Living In Two Worlds: A Gwich'in Woman Tells Her True Story by Therese Remy-Sawyer
- Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation by the Honourable Murray Sinclair
- Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix it by Bruce McIvor
- My Heart Shook Like a Drum: What I Learned at the Indian Mission Schools, Northwest Territories by Alice Blondin-Perrin
- Kinauvit?: What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for her Grandmother by Norma Dunning
- Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga
- In Search of April Raintree by Beatrice Mosionier
- Beyond the Orange Shirt Story by Phyllis Webstad
- Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
- Call Me Indian: From the Trauma of Residential School to Becoming the NHL's First Treaty Indigenous Player by Fred Sasakamoose
- Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell
- Picking Up the Pieces: The Making of the Witness Blanket by Carey Newman and Kirstie Hudson
- From Bear Rock Mountain: The Life and Times of a Dene Residential School Survivor by Antoine Mountain
- Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit by Marie Battiste
- The Journey Forward: Novellas on Reconciliation: Lucy & Lola; and When We Play Our Drums, They Sing! by Monique Gray Smith and Richard Van Camp
- Residential Schools with the Words and Images of Survivors by Larry Loyie
- In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott
- The Break by Katherena Vermette
- Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Arthur Alexie
- Stoneface: A Defiant Dene by Stephen Kakfwi
- True Reconciliation: How to be a Force for Change by Jody Wilson-Raybould
Children and Teen books:
- When We Were Alone by David A. Robertson
- With Our Orange Hearts by Phyllis Webstad, video
- Secret Path by Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire
- Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation by Monique Gray Smith
- The Orange Shirt Story by Phyllis Webstad
- I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer
- Shin-chi's Canoe by Nicola I. Campbell
- Shi-shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell
- Stolen Words by Melanie Florence
- I Lost My Talk by Rita Joe
- A Stranger At Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
- When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
- Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
- This Place: 150 Years Retold by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
- Dear Canada: These Are My Words by Ruby Slipperjack
- The Secret Pocket by Peggy Janicki
- Why We Dance: A Story of Hope and Healing by Deidre Havrelock
- Be a Good Ancestor by Leona Prince & Garbielle Prince
Courses and learning series:
Videos:
- Katie Johnson, Program Director
