Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

For those ready to move on to a young adult or mature fiction recommendation this week, try Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past. It’s an anthology—a collection of nine short stories by nine different authors. If one story doesn’t speak to you, just try the next! Our Story is described in the preface as: “each of the Aboriginal authors has chosen an historical event and through the act of storytelling, turned it into a work of fiction.” It’s a great choice for readers interested in how storytelling can reshape history and reveal Indigenous perspectives often missing from textbooks, historical media, and academics.

Title: Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

Authors: 

Tantoo Cardinal

Tomson Highway

Basil Johnston

Thomas King

Brian Maracle

Lee Maracle

Jovette Marchessault

Rachel A. Qitsualik

Drew Hayden Taylor

Age range: Grades 10-12+

Length: 256 pages

Content warnings: Mature themes

Our Story is a fitting name because that’s exactly what the chapters are, stories. Stories of history and experience. Contributor's notes before each chapter connects you with the writer and helps to understand why they chose what they wrote about.

The first story is The First Words by Brian Maracle. Maracle is a Mohawk writer and broadcaster raised in Ohsweken, Ontario and in New York. The First Words explains how the world was created with mud by a woman on the back of a turtle. It feels like a story that you would hear underneath a warm blanket, or sitting around a fire, during a moment of peace.

The next story is Skraeling by Rachel A. Qitsualik. She is an award winning writer of Inuk, Scottish and Cree descent. Qitsualik writes about an ancient Inuit-Viking encounter where unfriendly vikings landed upon the beaches of a village. It tackles topics more intense than The First Words but is full of mystery and conflict.

Overall, if you’d like to hear a new perspective on something you may already be familiar with, or you’re learning about something for the first time, these voices are a breath of fresh air. These were just two of the nine works in this collection. I encourage you to pick up the book if you’d like to read about other moments from Canada’s past from these amazing writers.

If these sound interesting to you, check your local library for copies! Here are links to the book on the Vancouver Public Library, Surrey Libraries, Burnaby Public Library and Fraser Valley Regional Library.

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Author: Callum, ITMP Blog Writer

Image credits: Amazon, Arnold Jacobs, Canadian Museum of Civilization