mahikan ka onot collects the finest work of accomplished Indigenous poet Duncan Mercredi, from his first book in 1991 to recent unpublished poems. These are poems of life on the land as well as life in the city, vibrant with the rhythms of traditional Cree and Métis storytelling but also with the clamour and the music of the streets. This book brings the work of Duncan Mercredi (Cree/Métis) back into the public eye, providing a new generation of readers with the opportunity to experience his unique artistry. Mercredi brings to these poems the sensibility of a Cree speaker and a renowned oral storyteller, revealing a deep attachment to the land and a nuanced understanding of the complexities of contemporary Indigenous life. In startlingly direct, plainspoken language, the poet explores themes of cultural resurgence and steadfast connections among the generations, even amid the unfolding tragedies wrought by colonialism. Some of these poems are memories of traditional life on the land, especially in the time before Manitoba Hydro radically altered Mercredi’s home community of Grand Rapids, Manitoba. Others focus on the urban Indigenous experience, based upon Mercredi’s longstanding and intimate knowledge of Winnipeg. Like mahikan, the wolf, Mercredi’s characters are often outsiders in certain contexts, but the poems reveal other perspectives that allow us to understand their loyalty and their love of community. The volume includes an afterword by Duncan Mercredi and an introduction by Métis scholar Warren Cariou, both of which provide resources for deeper study of the poems.

To describe the writing of Marilyn Dumont is to call her a poet of reclamation and resurgence. Some thirty-five years ago she set about documenting her life as a young Métis woman and telling the story of her people, the Red River Métis, and, in the process, she has become a principal literary voice for the “Renaissance” of the Métis nation. To understand Marilyn Dumont’s work is to understand Métis culture and history, that of a people who originated in the 17thth century upon the meeting of the First Nations and the newcomers, the European voyageurs and cartographers who travelled along the great waterways of Turtle Island/ North America. How does a Métis poet write about a country where its politicians and bureaucrats are honoured as national figures when they made family fortunes from confiscated Métis and First Nations lands? For Dumont, the answer to this question resides in telling the truth, about the present and the past. Through carefully crafted poems, Dumont takes the reader through a range of personal and historically connected experiences grounded in emotional truth. For Dumont, perception, like memory, is as much about the body as it is the mind, surfacing as visionary insight, which has become the hallmark of her poetry. Reclamation and Resurgence contains poems selected from A Really Good Brown Girl, green girl dreams Mountains, from that tongued belonging, and The Pemmican Eaters, as well as previously uncollected poems, and includes an introduction by Armand Garnet Ruffo and an afterword, "Contradictory Co-existence," by Marilyn Dumont.

With compassion, humour and sharp-eyed irreverence, Ronna Bloom's work has made a significant impact on Canadian poetry. A Possible Trust is selected from her work to date. Bloom writes concisely of the precarious, the ephemeral, the epic, and of the fragility and determination of people in daily life and extraordinary health crises. She is attentive to suffering, as well as to spontaneous connections and gestures of love. Her poetry has been used by teachers, architects, spiritual leaders, and in hospitals across Canada. This is poetry engaged with spontaneity, presence, work, and health care. There is a tenderness here where living matters, as does dying, a valuing of the incident, the encounter, the unexpected, the sorrow and the bowl-me-over delight. Bloom speaks to us about how vulnerability, suffering, and the release into joy, can combine as an ongoing, never-ending life practice. She mines her own experience while looking out into the world with awareness, empathy and the willingness to risk being wide open. These poems stand firm with readers. Editor and poet Phil Hall's Introduction "To Lead by Crying" argues for a poetics of empathy, and is an enthusiastic retrospective of Bloom's work. In Ronna Bloom's Afterword, she traces the relevance of photography, psychotherapy, and meditation in her work. Defiant, comical, revealing, impolite yet respectful, A Possible Trust is a retrospective and celebration.

Molecular Cathedral is the first ever selection of the extraordinary poems of John Lent, renowned Okanagen-based writing instructor and poet. Lent's work is restlessly experimental and yet always approachable especially as it remains dedicated to seeking clarities between the poet and the reader. These poems deepen Lent's legendary status by offering a selection of his dazzling, often genre-defying poems and covering nearly fifty years of Lent's poetry career. While these poems are regularly unexpected in terms of their luminous play with form they always—in their at once conversational and wildly sensual lyricism—reach for and care about their reader. The volume includes an introduction by Jake Kennedy, "At the Junction of the Eye and Heart," and an illuminating, wide-ranging, and joyous afterword from Lent himself. Molecular Cathedral is a fascinating and accessible introduction to one of Canada’s most unique poets.

DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono engages actively with a diasporic world: Otiono is equally at home critiquing petroculture in Nigeria and in Canada. His work straddles multiple poetic traditions and places African intellectual history at the forefront of an engagement with Western poetics. The poems in this selection are drawn from Otiono's two published collections, Voices in the Rainbow, and Love in a Time of Nightmares, and the volume includes previously unpublished new poems. Peter Midgley’s introduction contextualizes Otiono's work within the frame of diaspora and newer critical frames like Afropolitanism, attending to form as well as his political engagement. The volume concludes with an afterword written by the poet with Chris Dunton.

A celebration of achievement, accomplishments, and courage! Native American Medal of Honor recipients, Heisman Trophy recipients, U.S. Olympians, a U.S. vice president, Congressional representatives, NASA astronauts, Pulitzer Prize recipients, U.S. poet laureates, Oscar winners, and more. The first Native magician, all-Native comedy show, architects, attorneys, bloggers, chefs, cartoonists, psychologists, religious leaders, filmmakers, educators, physicians, code talkers, and inventors. Luminaries like Jim Thorpe, King Kamehameha, Debra Haaland, and Will Rogers, along with less familiar notables such as Native Hawaiian language professor and radio host Larry Lindsey Kimura and Cree/Mohawk forensic pathologist Dr. Kona Williams. Their stories plus the stories of 2000 people, events and places are presented in Indigenous Firsts: A History of Native American Achievements and Events, including … Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., Chickasaw Nation, the first Native female meteorologist in the country Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Wampanoag from Martha’s Vineyard, graduate of Harvard College in 1665 Debra Haaland, the Pueblo of Laguna, U.S. Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior Sam Campos, the Native Hawaiian who developed the Hawaiian superhero Pineapple Man Thomas L. Sloan, Omaha, was the first Native American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court William R. Pogue, Choctaw, astronaut Johnston Murray, Chickasaw, the first person of Native American descent to be elected governor in the United States, holding the office in Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955 The Cherokee Phoenix published its first edition February 21, 1828, making it the first tribal newspaper in North America and the first to be published in an Indigenous language The National Native American Honor Society was founded by acclaimed geneticist Dr. Frank C. Dukepoo , the first Hopi to earn a Ph.D. Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot, became the first Native American in the National Baseball League in 1897 as an outfielder with the Cleveland Spiders Jock Soto, Navajo/Puerto Rican, the youngest-ever man to be the principal dancer with the New York City Ballet The Seminole Tribe of Florida was the first Nation to own and operate an airplane manufacturing company Warrior's Circle of Honor, the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian The Iolani Palace, constructed 1879–1882, the home of the Hawaiian royal family in Honolulu Loriene Roy, Anishinaabe, White Earth Nation, professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, former president of the American Library Association Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, U.S. representative and U.S. senator from Colorado Hanay Geiogamah, Kiowa /Delaware, founded the American Indian Theatre Ensemble Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Nation, writer, literary critic, and journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later Donehogawa), Tonawanda Seneca, lieutenant colonel in the Union Army, serving as General Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary Fritz Scholder, Luiseno, painter inducted into the California Hall of Fame The Native American Women Warriors, the first all Native American female color guard Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman to become a board-certified surgeon Kay “Kaibah” C. Bennett, Navajo, teacher, author, and the first woman to run for the presidency of the Navajo Nation Sandra Sunrising Osawa, Makah Indian Nation, the first Native American to have a series on commercial television The Choctaw people’s 1847 donation to aid the Irish people suffering from the great famine Otakuye Conroy-Ben, Oglala Lakota, first to earn an environmental engineering Ph.D. at the University of Arizona Diane J. Willis, Kiowa, former President of the Society of Pediatric Psychology and founding editor of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology Shelly Niro, Mohawk, winner of Canada’s top photography prize, the Scotiabank Photography Award Loren Leman, Alutiiq/Russian-Polish, was the first Alaska Native elected lieutenant governor Kim TallBear, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, the first recipient of the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Environment Carissa Moore, Native Hawaiian, won the Gold Medal in Surfing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Will Rogers, Cherokee, actor, performer, humorist was named the first honorary mayor of Beverly Hills Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank, Kiowa, was the first Native American cookbook to win the James Beard Award Diane Humetewa, Hopi, nominated by President Barack Obama, became the first Native American woman to serve as a federal judge Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, Crow, the first Native American nurse to be inducted into the American Nursing Association Hall of Fame Indigenous Firsts honors the ongoing and rich history of personal victories and triumphs, and with more than 200 photos and illustrations, this information-rich book also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness. This vital collection will appeal to anyone interested in America’s amazing history and its resilient and skilled Indigenous people.

(Re)Generation contains selected poetry by Anishinaabe writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm exploring a range of issues: from violence against Indigenous women and lands to Indigenous erotica and the joyous intimate encounters between bodies. From her earliest work in my heart is a stray bullet and Bloodriver Woman, through her spoken word works standing ground and A Constellation of Bones, Akiwenzie-Damm’s poetry demonstrates how to represent Indigenous peoples in their full complexity, especially as it pertains to bodily pleasure, love, and loss. Akiwenzie-Damm's afterword speaks to the relations and obligations Indigenous peoples have to one another and their other-than-human kin, as she reflects on the resilient work that Indigenous creative work has done and continues to do in spite of colonial violence. She stakes a claim for the necessity of poetry in the face of ongoing colonialism, not only in the present but in the future and for the generations to come. The introduction by Dallas Hunt locates Akiwenzie-Damm within the field of Indigenous literature and meditates on her influence on the field of Indigenous erotica. Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm writes in service of Indigenous brilliance, love, intimacy, and joy, and speaks with an unwavering voice, one that, to paraphrase Akiwenzie-Damm herself, “shakes the earth.”