Winner of the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award! A young girl notices things about her grandmother that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully coloured clothing? Why does she speak Cree and spend so much time with her family? As the girl asks questions, her grandmother shares her experiences in a residential school, when all of these things were taken away. Also available in a bilingual Swampy Cree/English edition. Download the free teacher guide on the Portage & Main Press website.

This title introduces readers to the Cree people. Text covers traditional ways of life, including social structure, homes, food, art, clothing, and more. Also discussed is contact with Europeans and American settlers, as well as how the people keep their culture alive today. Table of contents, map, fun facts, timeline, glossary, and index are included. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Big Buddy Books is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Kiyam contemplates language loss and recovery in the twenty-first century, by relating one woman's journey in learning an Indigenous language.

With the help of this book, you can learn to speak Cree!

In Stones Will Shout, Helen E. Herr shares poetic anecdotes that demonstrate life's ironies and loveliness in equal measure. "Our children have left home for their careers/I just begin mine," she writes, reminiscing about obtaining a theology degree in her 40s; and, after a beloved foster son's death, she reveals that in the heart of deepest pain "all smile for family photos". Herr also celebrates Saskatchewan's beauty and the gifts nature delivers, ie: crocuses "dress frosty hills/in mauve," and seagulls at Greig Lake "map routes in the sand". This is a writer who not only understands that the "Black-eyed oak refuses/to face the ocean" because it is "ashamed to be a bench/on a beach," but also empathizes with that misplaced tree. The human body becomes wind, tree, moon, bird, water. In their disparate subject matter—and with Herr's ability to press the bruises—the poems in this candid and well-honed collection remind us that where there have been shadows, the light one day returns. How does one survive a life? By naturalizing sorrow, creativity, community, and the self as part of the order of all things animate and inanimate. - Taylor Leedahl, Toronto, ON