A very simple act of reconciliation is reading and discussing books by (and, to some extent, about) First Nations and Indigenous and Metis and Inuit peoples; for bookworms, this is an action within reach every day…

but particularly today, on Orange-Shirt Day, or Truth & Reconciliation Day. An official act of remembrance, on which we can recognise how First Nations and Indigenous and Metis and Inuit peoples, in the land currently called Canada, have been impacted by imperialism and colonization, so we can identify historical patterns of exploitation and abuse, in order to create a future that’s respectful, cooperative, and just. (APTN broadcasting of events here.)

It’s Phyllis Webstad’s experience of having been forced to attend Resdential School, and having been stripped of the beloved orange T-shirt her grandmother had given her, which is crystallised in the casual name for the day; it was never returned to her, and came to symbolise home and safety and identity lost to her, but also there were many children who never returned either (gravesites continue to be scanned and studied, but many “disappearances” remain unresolved).

The public library is an excellent resource: here’s a peek at my reading through this summer.

Most Canadians will find the story of Aqueduct (2016) curious and strange, the idea that the capital city of Manitoba, Winnipeg, didn’t have clean drinking water until an aqueduct, 154 km long, was built to extend from Shoal Lake near present-day Kenora, Ontario. A story that is also shameful and unjust, because diverting the water in this way meant that the Indigenous residents of Shoal Lake, instead, spent decades without access to clean drinking water (members of the Objibwe/Anishinaabe nation)

Winnipeg reclaimed the reservation lands in 1915, and it wasn’t until 2021 that a water treatment plant opened and the boil-water advisory was lifted in Shoal Lake. Adele Perry is a settler: research like hers and publications like this from ARP (a skinny, pocket-sized volume in the Semaphore series) are important steps on the road to reconciliation. There are almost more footnotes than pages, but it’s accessible with lots of photographs and images, and some of the details are so outlandish it feels like fiction.

Amanda Peters began by writing short fiction although her debut novel, The Berry Pickers was published first. Her collection of stories, Waiting for the Long Night (2021), is an excellent introduction, not only to her work, but to the general themes and historical sweep of Indigenous history in what’s called Canada today. She herself is of Mi’kmaw and settler descent, and the collection is also a blend of historical and present-day stories which highlight the conflict between colonial and Indigenous priorities against a backdrop of ordinary, day-to-day life.

Her language is precise and she intuitively spirals around the headiest narrative moments with feeling (but not sentimentality) so the prose feels clear (not cloying). “Too many white men causin’ us grief all the time. Stay away from them. Stick to the ones you know. At least when they fuck ya over, you can tell their moms….” When I borrowed her novel previously, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but I’m looking forward to it now.

Helen Knott’s In My Own Moccasins (2019) is one of those chunky little hardcovers that’s exactly the size of one hand; the copy of The Wind in the Willows I recently reread was also this size. It feels peculiarity intimate: you can hold it in your palms perfectly, like it’s a sacred text. And Knott’s memoir, subtitled A Memoir of Resilience is so frank and direct, tender and reflective, that one wants to hold it close. Dane Zaa on her mother’s side, Cree (Nehiyaw) on her father’s—with mixed-Euro descent also—she writes about her personal and intergenerational trauma, with equal parts vulnerability and strength.

As part of her healing, she confronts painful scenes in her past, but she also presents happy memories, like her father reading her Dr. Seuss stories at night (which he later said he found very difficult: he forced himself to sustain this habit because he knew it was important). I also warmed to the way she describes falling “deeply in love with words” as a girl, reading Shakespeare plays in the fourth grade, and eventually learning to escape into stories when reality was too much. And I love the note on which her story ends—“Now go and reclaim that medicine.”—although her own story continues in 2023’s Becoming a Matriarch: a polished and often lyrical successor.

A Steady Brightness of Being (2025) was a whimsical selection for me, from a Climate Justice display in the public library. Including this anthology, with classics by Naomi Klein and John Muir, edited by Sara and Stephanie Sinclair, could have been a nod to the attractive cover design alone! Or, evidence of understanding that First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Indigenous nations more broadly speaking, are knowledge keepers whose traditional ideas about stewardship and responsibility offer solutions to counter the havoc wrecked upon the Earth by colonisation and the human race.

Either way, I’m glad it was there, because this collection was proof that my intention to explore more anthologies is a worthy goal. These voices are distinct and diverse, and the pieces are varied in tone and scope—arranged in four parts: Tobacco, Sage, Cedar, and Sweetgrass. I enjoyed every single one of them from the opening piece by Terese Marie Mailhot to the closing by Waubgeshig Rice. What a work of quality!

Waubgeshig Rice’s novels are discussed in some detail in Patty Krawec’s Bad Indians Book Club (2025) which grew out of conversations with reading friends and a podcast, about the power of reading and writing and discussing stories. Krawec is consistently stretching to engage with narratives, as a means of understanding (both herself and others) and she encourages everyone else to do so too. “Remembering the first rule of Bad Indians book club: Always carry a book.”

Part Anishinaabe and part Ukrainian, she has a footnote about how the scope of her book must be limited, but one’s reading should not be: narratives of colonialism exist in many cultures and one should read widely. She also includes examples of writers and readers and scholars whose early works did not include an Indigenous presence but whose worldview expanded to recognise gaps and slants in cultural narratives that they’d been encouraged not to question.

“This is why I chose multiple books for each genre for our conversations. Multiple stories from Bad Indians can be put into conversations with each other and prevent, or hopefully minimize, the ways we misunderstand or misread the stories being told.”

(Keen eyes may have noticed two books in the photo aren’t discussed here. One is Cherlie Dimaline’s YA novel, which I’ll chat about with some other seasonally, spooky reads soon. The other is a dense and scholarly work of non-fiction, which tidily reveals the shortcomings of consulting only archival material retained and maintained by settlers when exploring a historical conflict between settlers and Inuit communities.)

Any of these would make great reading on Orange Shirt Day, but even more importantly, any- and every- day.

Which have you read, or which would you be most likely to choose?