Why don’t more Métis people go to traditional ceremonies? How does going to ceremonies impact Métis identity? In Rekindling the Sacred Fire, Chantal Fiola investigates the relationship between Red River Métis ancestry, Anishinaabe spirituality, and identity, bringing into focus the ongoing historical impacts of colonization upon Métis relationships with spirituality on the Canadian prairies. Using a methodology rooted in an Indigenous world view, Fiola interviews eighteen people with Métis ancestry, or an historic familial connection to the Red River Métis, who participate in Anishinaabe ceremonies, sharing stories about family history, self-identification, and their relationships with Aboriginal and Eurocanadian cultures and spiritualities.

Returning to Ceremony is the follow-up to Chantal Fiola’s award-winning Rekindling the Sacred Fire and continues her ground-breaking examination of Métis spirituality, debunking stereotypes such as “all Métis people are Catholic,” and “Métis people do not go to ceremonies.” Fiola finds that, among the Métis, spirituality exists on a continuum of Indigenous and Christian traditions, and that Métis spirituality includes ceremonies. For some Métis, it is a historical continuation of the relationships their ancestral communities have had with ceremonies since time immemorial, and for others, it is a homecoming – a return to ceremony after some time away. Fiola employs a Métis-specific and community-centred methodology to gather evidence from archives, priests’ correspondence, oral history, storytelling, and literature. With assistance from six Métis community researchers, Fiola listened to stories and experiences shared by thirty-two Métis from six Manitoba Métis communities that are at the heart of this book. They offer insight into their families’ relationships with land, community, culture, and religion, including factors that inhibit or nurture connection to ceremonies such as sweat lodge, Sundance, and the Midewiwin. Valuable profiles emerge for six historic Red River Métis communities (Duck Bay, Camperville, St Laurent, St François-Xavier, Ste Anne, and Lorette), providing a clearer understanding of identity, culture, and spirituality that uphold Métis Nation sovereignty.

Defining Métis examines categories used in the latter half of the nineteenth century by Catholic missionaries to describe Indigenous people in what is now northwestern Saskatchewan. It argues that the construction and evolution of these categories reflected missionaries’changing interests and agendas. Defining Métis sheds light on the earliest phases of Catholic missionary work among Indigenous peoples in western and northern Canada. It examines various interrelated aspects of this work, including the beginnings of residential schooling, transportation and communications, and relations between the Church, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the federal government. While focusing on the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and their central mission at Île-à-la-Crosse, this study illuminates broad processes that informed Catholic missionary perceptions and impelled their evolution over a fifty-three-year period. In particular, this study illuminates processes that shaped Oblate conceptions of sauvage and métis. It does this through a qualitative analysis of documents that were produced within the Oblates’ institutional apparatus—official correspondence, mission journals, registers, and published reports. Foran challenges the orthodox notion that Oblate commentators simply discovered and described a singular, empirically existing, and readily identifiable Métis population. Rather, he contends that Oblates played an important role in the conceptual production of les métis.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.-- University of Pennsylvania)

Gregory Cajete has provided another must-read book for educators seeking a comprehensive theory and action to Indigenous education. In clear, coherent, and accessible style, he answers the most important education quest today: what kind of pedagogy can maintain and revitalize the Indigenous peoples in the 21st century? Twofold: Comprehend Indigenous peoples' historical trauma and reclaim Indigenous ways of thinking, teaching, and learning from a context of community, land, and spirit. Done!-- Marie Battiste, Mi'kmaw educator, University of Saskatchewan

Mallory Smyth has been where many young Catholics are today. But the difference between her and other fallen-away Catholics is that she figured out that when she overlooked the shortcomings of the Church as an institution, she fell in love with Jesus and rediscovered the beauty and truth of her faith. In Rekindled, Smyth's raw, relatable account of her own disillusionment and departure is sure to resonate with anyone who has struggled to feel at home in the Church. For anyone who has left the faith or has one foot out the door, this powerful book just might illuminate a path back home--to a Church that is both holy and in need of perfection. Shallow homilies. Hypocritical authority figures. Trite answers to pressing questions. These and other shortcomings of the Church have led plenty of Catholics to question their faith--or to abandon it entirely. Rekindled is for those who have left the Church and those with one foot out the door. Smyth's account of her own disillusionment and departure is relatable and honest. She understands and validates the pain and doubt that many Catholics and former Catholics feel. Smyth also provides you with practical guidance for keeping your faith even when what you encounter in the Church falls short: How to recognize Christ's presence even in the most mediocre Mass experiences. Strategies for finding faithful role models when authority figures let you down. Where to turn when the answers and pastoral guidance you receive don't reach the heart of the issue. How to find fulfillment in Christ and in the community of the saints even when joy seems to be in short supply in the Church.

A passionate call to action from a veteran prosecutor, Firewater examines alcohol--its history, its myths, and its devastating impact on Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.