Consumption: A novel
by Kevin Patterson
from Nan A. Talese
In Rankin Inlet, a small town bordering the Arctic Ocean, the lives of the Inuit are gradually changing. The caribou and seals are no longer plentiful, and Western commerce has come to the community through a proposed diamond mine. Victoria Robertson wakes to a violent storm, her three children stirring in the dark. Her father, Emo, a legendary hunter who has come in off the land to work in a mine, checks to see if the family is all right. So does her Inuit lover, as Victoria’s British husband is away on business.
Thus the reader enters into the modern contradictions of the Arctic—walrus meat and convenience food, midnight sun and 24-hour satellite TV, dog teams and diamond mines—and into the heart of Victoria's internal exile. Born on the tundra in the 1950s, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic life of the Inuit until, at the age of ten, she is diagnosed with tuberculosis and evacuated to a southern sanitarium. When she returns home six years later, she finds a radically different world, where the traditionally rootless tribes have uneasily congregated in small communities. And Victoria has become a stranger to her family and her culture.
Victoria compounds her marginalization by marrying a non-Inuit, Robertson, the manager of the town store. Over the years, as her children gravitate toward the pop culture of the mainland, and as her husband aggressively exploits the economic opportunities that the Arctic offers, Victoria feels torn between her family and her ancestors, between the communal life of the North and the material life of the “South.” Through Victoria, Kevin Patterson deftly exposes the costs and consequences of cultural assimilation, and the emotional toll that such significant lifestyle changes take on communities.
Spanning countries, generations, and cultures, Consumption is an epic novel of the Arctic, and a penetrating portrait of generational division and cultural dissonance.
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Indigenous Americas)
by Thomas King
from Univ Of Minnesota Press
My Spirit Soars
by Chief Dan George
from Hancock House Publishing
Ojibway Ceremonies (Basil Johnston Titles)
by Basil Johnston
from Bison Books
Johnston focuses on a young member of the tribe and his development through participation in the many rituals so important to the Ojibway way of life, from the Naming Ceremony and the Vision Quest to the War Path, and from the Marriage Ceremony to the Ritual of the Dead. In the style of a tribal storyteller, Johnston preserves the attitudes and beliefs of forest dwellers and hunters whose lives were vitalized by a sense of the supernatural and of mystery.
When The Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990
In this long-awaited book from one of the most recognized and respected scholars in Native Studies today, Emma LaRocque presents a powerful interdisciplinary study of the Native literary response to racist writing in the Canadian historical and literary record from 1850 to 1990. In When the Other Is Me, LaRocque brings a metacritical approach to Native writing, situating it as resistance literature within and outside the post-colonial intellectual context. She outlines the overwhelming evidence of dehumanization in Canadian historical and literary writing, its effects on both popular culture and Canadian intellectual development, and Native and non-Native intellectual responses to it in light of the interlayered mix of romanticism, exaggeration of Native “difference,” and the continuing problem of internalization that challenges our understanding of the colonizer/colonized relationship.
Dream Weaver
by Penina Keen Spinka
from Dutton Adult
Fans of Jean Auel will love this series that began with Picture Maker, a book called "an absorbing adventure tale...brought to life through the eyes of [Spinka's] courageous heroine", Library Journal crowned it "absolutely fascinating."
Publishers Weekly called Picture Maker "an absorbing adventure tale...brought to life through the eyes of [Spinka's] courageous heroine." Library Journal crowned it "absolutely fascinating." Now Penina Keen Spinka once again sweeps readers back nearly a thousand years...to a time when the Vikings crossed the vast oceans in search of a new homeland, and a place--the majestic wilds of North America--bitterly divided by blood and war.
In the four years since Picture Maker and her loved ones were driven north, many changes have come to a people and a land. The long, arduous journey that took Picture Maker from a young Indian separated from her tribe to a bride of Halvard has come to an end. It falls to Halvard and their daughter, Ingrid, an emerging woman, to return to Greenland and reclaim their home. Here, their Norse traditions are rejected by the newly Christian community, where an infestation of beautiful rare butterflies has resulted in plunder and bloodshed. Forced to wander once more, the family takes refuge with the Inuits, who have proven to be allies in the past. But Ingrid, answering the powerful call of her mother's blood, soon embarks on another journey-one that takes her to a far-off land, where her true destiny awaits.
Breathtaking in scope and historical detail, this is a sprawling adventure in the grand tradition of Jean M. Auel and Jane Smiley by a gifted author who writes "unique and remarkable stories" (Anna Lee Waldo, author of Circle of Stones and Sacajawea).
Inuit Tales - A Treasury of Eskimo Myths and Legends
by Clara Kern Bayliss
from LeClue 22
A collection of myths and Legends from the Native people of Alaska and Canada. Stories include: "The Giant", "The Woman Magician", "Up to the Top of the Sky", and "Down to the Bottom of the Sea". "The Dwarf People", "Why the Moon Waxes and Wanes", "The Last of the Thunderbirds". "The Red Skeleton" and "Even a Grass Plant can become Someone if it Tries."
Gatherings, Volume VII - Standing Ground: Strength and Solidarity Amidst Dissolving Boundaries (Gatherings Series , Vol 7)
The Pale Indian
by Robert Arthur Alexie
from Penguin Global
Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series)
by Hartwig Isernhagen
from University of Oklahoma Press
These interviews showcase three Native writers in dialogue with a European critic who becomes their partner in exploring individual and tribal identity, cultural survival and exploitation, and writing techniques.
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