Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream by Charlie Angus Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $27.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-401-8 Unbelievable. Appalling. Horrific. These are adjectives that could be used to describe the contents of Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream. This book will make readers feel uncomfortable. It’s designed to have that effect. Discomfort is the first step to justice, and justice is the first step to recovery and reconciliation. Member of Parliament Charlie Angus pleads throughout his book that Canada’s treatment of Aboriginals is a national shame. Those most severely affected are the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, part of Treaty 9 territory. Many homes are without running water, plumbing, or electricity. Even when water is available, it often has to be boiled. When the sewage station fails, sewers overflow. Educational opportunities are lacking. Suicides are at epidemic proportions. Angus provides an historical overview of the signing of Treaty 9 in 1910. Among its provisions is a promise to provide Aboriginals with proper education. The Attawapiskat school is infected with black mould and the ground under it swollen with toxins. When it’s torn…

Reinvesting in Families by Dorothy Badry, Don Fuchs, H. Monty Montgomery, and Sharon McKay, eds. Published by University of Regina Press Review by Leslie Vermeer $39.95 ISBN 978-0-888977-352-3 Healthy families make healthy communities. The inverse is also true: when families struggle, the community suffers. Reinvesting in Families: Strengthening Child Welfare Practice for a Brighter Future, a collection of research edited by Dorothy Badry and colleagues, argues that on the prairies we need new, evidence-based social work practices to help families and communities be strong and healthy. The book takes a big step toward identifying practices that work and asking questions about future improvements. Reinvesting in Families is part of a series developed by the Prairie Child Welfare Consortium (PCWC). The University of Regina was a founding member of PCWC, whose goal is “to share information, conduct research, and consult, collaborate, and partner … to enhance and strengthen child welfare service delivery, education, and training.” Several of the contributors to this book point out that Aboriginal children and families are particularly affected by social services and social policies. They call for new, “innovative programs based on Indigenous knowledge and methods.” Changing the way social work is done — not only by…

The Sky Was 1950s Blue Written by Katherin Edwards, Design by Melissa Haney Published by Jackpine Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $30.00 ISBN 978-1-927035-22-1 Jackpine Press recently released The Sky Was 1950 Blue-a collaborative chapbook written by Katherin Edwards and designed by Melissa Haney-and I received #51 of a limited edition of 75 copies for review. Limited edition, handmade books are Jackpine’s foray, and each time I receive one I’m excited to see how the author and designer-often one and the same-have reconciled content and construct: concepts are such interesting animals. Edwards’ colourful title comes from an Ian Tyson lyric, and the 1950s are represented here not only in the saddle-stitched book’s hue and interior drawings, but also in the fact that each poem includes a year (between 1950 and 1959) in its title. I opened the chapbook to discover that it also possesses a subtitle, “Poems from the Clothesline,” and indeed a continuous drawn clothesline acts like a border, stretching across the top of each page and supporting simple drawings of the clothing and linens referenced in each of the thirteen poems. The books were printed via a three hundred year-old process called cyanotype, which involves both “sunning”…

Goodbye Stress, Hello Life! by Allan Kehler Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Leslie Vermeer $15.95 978-1-927756-53-9 Allan Kehler wants you to find your joy. At a more down-to-earth level Kehler — a Saskatoon-based counsellor and speaker — wants to help people manage their stress. But more than that, he wants us to start really living. To that end, his timely new book Goodbye Stress, Hello Life! succeeds in delivering insights and strategies anyone can use to make changes in their lives and embrace their full humanity. Almost everyone can use some help dealing with stress. So many of us feel an excess of tension or anxiety in our lives, whether from workplace conflict, relationship troubles, money problems, or some other source. Kehler starts his book by explaining what stress is and unpacking some myths surrounding stress. Turns out humans actually need some stress to thrive. But too much stress hurts us at physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels, and we don’t always recognize our own pain. Kehler then introduces a variety of tools with which to manage stress and offers stress-management tips that are easy to use — easy but surprisingly effective. Some of the topics Kehler…

homecoming Written by Zondra M. Roy Published by Jackpine Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $30 ISBN 978-1-927035-20-7 Sometimes the lines between genres blur. As I began reading Zondra M. Roy’s chapbook, homecoming, I thought: looks like poetry, feels like a first-person essay. This isn’t poetry filled with similes, metaphors, alliteration, and finely-crafted images, this is a straight-up story (with line breaks) that shouts This is how it’s been, I’ve made mistakes, and I’m grateful for the people and activities (like performing hip-hop) that’ve helped me along the way. The Dené/Cree/Métis writer left home at thirteen and she doesn’t hold back on her life’s gritty details as she writes of bouncing between various homes in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick (“for a few months”), and British Columbia. Actually, the word home is a misnomer here–no warm connotations of homemade bread and a family sitting around a fireplace exist when one’s stays include a juvenile detention centre in Saskatoon; jail; and that hardest of beds–the street. Roy begins her story with family history: “My parents were born into a society that was built to facilitate their failures.\well, fuck\they were native people in the northern prairies.” Strong language and a strong voice,…