EPL.ca: Aboriginal Books for Teens

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie
Arnold Spirit is 14 when he makes the life-altering decision to transfer to a school off the Spokane Indian Reservation. The only other Indian at his new school is the mascot.

Bone Dance - Martha Brooks*
When her father wills her a cabin on land in rural Manitoba, Alexandra meets a young man who shares her Aboriginal heritage and her experience of being haunted by spirits.

Darkness Calls - Steven Keewatin Sanderson*
Kyle's struggle to fit in is based on a retelling of a Gitxsan traditional story about the Watsx monster. Comic book format.

Deadly Loyalties - Jennifer Storm*
Through the murder of a friend, Blaise, a 14-year-old Native teen, enters the world of street gangs in Winnipeg.

Dreamspeaker - Anne Cameron*
In a desperate attempt to escape the institution where he has been committed and to exorcise the unnamed evil that haunts him, Peter Baxter runs deep into the forests of British Columbia, where he is rescued by an old Native Dreamspeaker and his mute companion. Through their teachings, Peter discovers the power of the spirit world--and the courage to face his terror alone.

Girl with a Baby - Sylvia Olsen*
The perfect daughter in a less-than-perfect, mixed-heritage family, fourteen-year-old Jane Williams now has a daughter of her own.

Good for Nothing - Michel Noel*
Kicked out of a residential school at age 15, unhappy back on his Anishnabe reserve, and overcome be the pressures of fitting in with a foster family in town, Nipishish is eventually rescued by his family and friends.

Initiations: A Selection of Young Native Writings - Marilyn Dumont, editor*
A selection of 21 stories written by Canadian Aboriginal authors between the ages of 14 and 29.

Invited Threat - Steven Keewatin Sanderson*
Each of the three members of a modern First Nations family have a vision as they walk home through the snow after a band council meeting. Comic book format.

Moccasin Thunder: American Indian Stories for Today - Lori Marie Carlson, editor
All of the narrators in these ten short stories are contemporary young Aboriginal people, shakily standing on the precipice of adulthood, trying to find their place in the world and trying to figure out what truths the stories hold.

Night Wanderer - Drew Hayden Taylor*
A troubled teenager's life on a reservation is complicated when her father rents her room to an ancient vampire, newly returned to his tribal home from Europe.

Rain Is Not My Indian Name - Cynthia Leitich Smith
Tired of staying in seclusion since the death of her best friend, a fourteen-year-old girl takes on a photographic assignment with her local newspaper to cover events at an Aboriginal youth camp.

Tobanz - Edgar Danny Desjarlais*
A bantam minor hockey team of the highest-skilled boys (and one girl) from First Nation reserves and Metis communities throughout Manitoba goes on to compete in a championship in England.

Wabi: A Hero's Tale - Joseph Bruchac
After falling in love with an Abenaki Indian woman, a white great horned owl named Wabi transforms into a human being.

Way - Joseph Bruchac
Cody LeBeau is the new kid at school and a target for bullies. He's Abenaki, like most of the school, but still doesn't fit in. Things begin to change when his uncle comes to town for a martial arts competition and he and Cody begin training together.

Who Will Tell My Brother? - Marlene Carvell
During his lonely crusade to remove offensive mascots from his high school, an Aboriginal teenager learns about his heritage, his ancestors and his place in the world.

Will's Garden - Lee Maracle*
Will comes of age in a Sto:loh community in British Columbia, where he re-examines the women in his life and considers his future, all the while dealing with the problems of illness, love and saving face.

X-Indian Chronicles: The Book of Mausape - Thomas Yeahpau
A collection of interwoven stories that chronicles the lives of several X-Indians - those Indians who have lost their traditional beliefs and traditions - as they grow up and become young men.

Dreadfulwater Shows Up - Hartley Goodweather*
Ex-California cop, Thumps DreadfulWater, a Cherokee Indian, now makes his living as a fine-arts photographer but when a dead body turns up he can't help getting involved, especially when he realizes that the number one suspect is the son of Claire Merchant, head of the tribal council and Thumps's onetime love.

Fools Crow - James Welch
Fools Crow is a young warrior in a Blackfoot band in 1870. The Napikwans - white men - threaten not only his peoples' traditional way of life, but also their continued existence in the future.

In Search of April Raintree - Beatrice Culleton Mosionier*
The powerful life stories of two Metis sisters who suffer the breakdown of their family relations and the injustices of the social services system.

Keeper'n Me - Richard Wagamese*
Garnet Raven was taken from his home when he was three and grew up in a series of foster homes. As an adult he goes looking for his lost heritage and his soul.

Kiss of the Fur Queen - Tomson Highway*
When Abraham Okimasis wins a major dog-sled race in the 1950s, part of his prize is a kiss from the young white winner of a local beauty pageant. This touch of white culture indelibly marks the lives of his sons, Jeremiah and Gabriel, who are taken from their family to be raised in a residential school far away.

Lesser Blessed - Richard Van Camp*
Larry Sole is a member of the Tlicho (Dogrib) Nation in the Northwest Territories. He's in high school. He's skinny. He listens to rock music. He's in love.

Monkey Beach - Eden Robinson*
Lisa comes of age in Kitamaat, B.C., where her Haida community includes uncles involved in First Nations warrior movements, industrious grandmothers with one foot in the grave and the other in various spirit worlds, and the long-armed specter of residential schools.

Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past
An illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada's most celebrated Aboriginal writers.

Porcupines and China Dolls - Robert Arthur Alexie*
Alexie, past Chief of the Teetl'it Gwich'in in the Northwest Territories, uses humour to ease the heartbreak in his story about the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in missionary schools and the effects these atrocities have had on their communities.

Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden*
Two Cree friends, Xavier and Elijah, leave northern Canada to end up in the horrific trenches of World War I. After the war, Xavier's elderly aunt Niska takes her wounded nephew back home to the bush in a canoe. Their trip is the three-day road of the title, which also refers to the journey taken after death.

Truth & Bright Water - Thomas King*
Two young cousins, Tecumseh and Lum, live in Truth, a small American town, and Bright Water, the reserve across the border and over the river. Family is the only reason most of the people stay in the towns, and yet old secrets and new mysteries keep pulling the more nomadic residents back to the fold.

Whispering in Shadows - Jeannette Armstrong*
A young woman living on a reservation is exposed to pesticides while working as a fruit picker in the Okanagan Valley orchards.

Bear Bones & Feathers - Louise Halfe*
Cree writer Louise Bernice Halfe sets out to heal the past with poetry employing Native spiritualism, black comedy and the memories of her own childhood, finding an source of strength and dignity in her people.

Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond - Joseph Medicine Crow
The autobiography of Joseph Medicine Crow, who was first trained in traditional ways and then educated in the White world.

Crazywater: Native Voices on Addiction and Recovery - Brian Maracle*
Hundreds of first-person-accounts on how alcohol, solvent abuse and drugs have robbed so many lives.

Finding My Talk: How Fourteen Canadian Native Women Reclaimed Their Lives After Residential School - Agnes Grant*
When residential schools opened in the 1830s, First Nations envisioned their children learning in a nurturing environment, staffed with their own teachers, ministers, and interpreters. Instead, students were taught by outsiders, regularly forced to renounce their cultures and languages, and some were subjected to degradations and abuses that left severe emotional scars for generations.

Funny, You Don't Look Like One : Observations from a Blue-Eyed Ojibway - Drew Hayden Taylor*
Taylor, a blue-eyed Ojibway himself, describes his collection as "simply the ideas and observations of a Native person living in this country we call Canada - the good, the bad and the ugly."

Gchi-mnaadendmaa ntaawgiyaanh = My Special Ceremony - Marie Gaudet*
The story of a 10-year-old Ojibway girl at the onset of menstruation and the traditional teachings that surround women's moon time.

I Knew Two Metis Women: The Lives of Dorothy Scofield and Georgina Houle Young - Gregory Scofield*
In these haunting, hilarious and heartbreaking stories told in poems, two strong women tell tall tales, soothe hurts, and offer their love as the best things they have to give.

In the Bear's House - N. Scott Momaday
In this collection of poems and paintings, the celebrated pioneer of modern Native American literature examines the one animal that has both inspired and haunted him.

Inuk Boy Becomes a Hunter - John Igloliorte*
The Inuit of northern Labrador developed a rich culture of customs and traditions to meet the challenges of living in a harsh environment, but with the encroachment of the modern world and the depletion of wildlife and fish stocks, the Inuit way of life has changed dramatically.

Joe from Winnipeg: All My Best - Ian Ross*
A series of humourous weekly commentaries penned and performed by Ian Ross on CBC Radio One. He delves into such pressing social issues as moose on the road, immunization, peekaboo, little dogs wearing nail polish, springrolls, and odometer checks.

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography - Chester Brown*
The story of the charismatic nineteenth century Metis leader, whose struggle to win rights for his people led to violent rebellion on the Canadian frontier.

Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales - Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, of the Myskoke or Creek Nation, melds memories, dream visions, myths, and stories from America's brutal history into a poetic whole.

Norval Morrisseau: Travels to the House of Invention - Norval Morrisseau*
Norval Morrisseau is a Shaman, a storyteller and the inspiration for one of Canada's national art movements, the Woodland School of Art.

Not Vanishing - Chrystos*
Poems to dispel the common stereotypes, myths, and misconceptions that are associated with Aboriginal people as well as to educate on how issues of oppression, class, gender, and colonialism have affected Aboriginal culture.

Peace Walker: The Legend of Hiawatha and Tekaniwita - C.J. Taylor*
Taylor has drawn on her Mohawk heritage and versions of the story she has gathered from elders to tell of the Confederacy of Five Nations (which became six after European contact) and of the heroic peace walker, Hiawatha.

People of the Dancing Sky: The Iroquois Way - Myron Zabol*
100 modern black and white photographs produced at the Six Nations Reserve in Brantford, Ontario, of Iroquois in traditional, contemporary, and distinctively individual regalia.

Reading Rock Art: Interpreting the Indian Rock Paintings of the Canadian Shield - Grace Rajnovich
More than 400 rock paintings adorn the Canadian Shield from Quebec, across Ontario and as far west as Saskatchewan. The pictographs are the legacy of Algonkian speaking Cree and Ojibway, whose roots may extend to the beginnings of human occupancy in the region almost 10,000 years ago.

Really Good Brown Girl - Marilyn Dumont*
Poignant, humorous, and fierce, these poems offer insight into discrimination and the ability of individuals to transcend cultural and racial barriers.

Shaman's Nephew: A Life in the Far North - Simon Tookoome*
Tookoome has created a legacy for his people with these detailed vignettes of life before the Inuit were forced into settlements.

Thunder Through My Veins: Memories of a Metis Childhood - Gregory Scofield*
Scofield survived a childhood marked by loss, poverty and violence and did not learn to accept himself until he accepted his Metis heritage.

Otipemisiwak

Redwire: Native Youth Media Society

SAY Magazine: Spirit of Aboriginal Youth

Spirit

Windspeaker

Aboriginal Peoples

*denotes Canadian author; updated June 2008