Saskatchewan is the anchor and epitome of the ‘prairie’ provinces, even though half of the province is covered by boreal forest. The Canadian penchant for dividing this vast country into easily-understood ‘regions’ has reduced the Saskatchewan identity to its southern prairie denominator and has distorted cultural and historical interpretations to favor the prairie south. Forest Prairie Edge is a deep-time investigation of the edge land, or ecotone, between the open prairies and boreal forest region of Saskatchewan. Ecotones are transitions from one landscape to another, where social, economic, and cultural practices of different landscapes are blended. Using place history and edge theory, Massie considers the role and importance of the edge ecotone in building a diverse social and economic past that contradicts traditional “prairie” narratives around settlement, economic development, and culture. She offers a refreshing new perspective that overturns long-held assumptions of the prairies and the Canadian west.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the “old ones” still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and the complex, unforgettable characters we have come to know from Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story, The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with the profound insight into humanity and Native American culture we have come to expect from Nerburn’s journeys. As the American Indian College Fund has stated, once you have encountered Nerburn’s stirring evocations of America’s high plains and incisive insights into the human heart, “you can never look at the world, or at people, the same way again.”

“In this eye-opening debut study, Frerick, an agricultural policy fellow at Yale University, reveals the ill-gained stranglehold that a handful of companies have on America’s food economy...It’s a disquieting critique of private monopolization of public necessities.” --Publishers Weekly, starred Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. What was the key to his success? Hard work and exceptional business savvy? Maybe. But more than anything else, Mike benefitted from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation’s rural towns and local businesses. Along with Mike McCloskey, readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will discover how a small grain business transformed itself into an empire bigger than Koch Industries, with ample help from taxpayer dollars. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. These, and the other stories in this book, are simply examples of the monopolies and ubiquitous corruption that today define American food. The tycoons profiled in these pages are hardly unique: many other companies have manipulated our lax laws and failed policies for their own benefit, to the detriment of our neighborhoods, livelihoods, and our democracy itself. Barons paints a stark portrait of the consequences of corporate consolidation, but it also shows we can choose a different path. A fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

2021 Scholarly Writing Award in the Saskatchewan Book Awards This book presents two of the most important traditions of the Dakota people, the Red Road and the Holy Dance, as told by Samuel Mniyo and Robert Goodvoice, two Dakota men from the Wahpeton Dakota Nation near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Their accounts of these central spiritual traditions and other aspects of Dakota life and history go back seven generations and help to illuminate the worldview of the Dakota people for the younger generation of Dakotas, also called the Santee Sioux. "The Good Red Road," an important symbolic concept in the Holy Dance, means the good way of living or the path of goodness. The Holy Dance (also called the Medicine Dance) is a Dakota ceremony of earlier generations. Although it is no longer practiced, it too was a central part of the tradition and likely the most important ceremonial organization of the Dakotas. While some people believe that the Holy Dance is sacred and that the information regarding its subjects should be allowed to die with the last believers, Mniyo believed that these spiritual ceremonies played a key role in maintaining connections with the spirit world and were important aspects of shaping the identity of the Dakota people. In The Red Road and Other Narratives of the Dakota Sioux, Daniel Beveridge brings together Mniyo and Goodvoice's narratives and biographies, as well as songs of the Holy Dance and the pictographic notebooks of James Black (Jim Sapa), to make this volume indispensable for scholars and members of the Dakota community.

The area of native prairie known as the Great Plains once extended from Canada to the Mexican border and from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to western Indiana and Wisconsin. Today the declines in prairie landscape types, estimated to be as high as 99%, exceed those of any other major ecosystem in North America. The overwhelming loss of landscape and accompanying loss of species constitute a real threat to both ecological and human economic health.Prairie Conservation is a comprehensive examination of the history, ecology, and current status of North American grasslands. It presents for the first time in a single volume information on the historical, economic, and cultural significance of prairies, their natural history and ecology, threats, and conservation and restoration programs currently underway. Chapters cover: environmental history of the Great Plains the economic value of prairie prairie types -- tallgrass, mixed grass, shortgrass, wetlands -- and the ecological processes that sustain each type prairie fauna -- invertebrates, fish and other aquatic creatures, amphibians and reptiles, birds, and mammals conservation programs such as the Great Plains Partnership, Canada's Prairie Conservation Action Plan, the U.S. Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, and others The book brings together knowledge and insights from a wide range of experts to describe and explain the importance of prairies and to position them in the forefront of North American conservation efforts. Praire Conservation is an essential reference for anyone interested in prairie ecology and conservation and will play a critical role in broadening our awareness and understanding of prairie ecosystems.

In the early days, Plains Indians travelled on foot across the vast Canadian prairies, with only fierce, wolf-like dogs as companions. Later, with the arrival of Europeans, horses and canoes appeared on the scene. In Rediscovering the Prairies, Norman Henderson, a leading scholar of the world’s great temperate grasslands, revives the earlier modes of prairie travel. He journeys along 325 kilometres of Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley by dog and travois (the wooden rack pulled by dogs and horses used by First Nations to transport belongings), then by canoe, and finally by horse and travois. Henderson’s often humourous descriptions of his attempts to find and train a dog and a horse highlight the difficulties involved in recreating traditional travel methods. Henderson interweaves his own adventures with the exploits of earlier travellers, such as La Vérendrye, Alexander Henry and Peter Fidler, and the experiences of fur traders and others who struggled across this strange and forbidding landscape. His captivating account will foster a better appreciation for, and a deeper understanding of, the natural and human history of the Canadian prairies.