4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning 2025-26 Book Bundle

Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples.

Jesse Wente remembers the exact moment he realized that he was a certain kind of Indian--a stereotypical cartoon Indian. He was playing softball as a child when the opposing team began to war-whoop when he was at bat. It was just one of many incidents that formed Wente's understanding of what it means to be a modern Indigenous person in a society still overwhelmingly colonial in its attitudes and institutions.

As the child of an American father and an Anishinaabe mother, Wente grew up in Toronto with frequent visits to the reserve where his maternal relations lived. By exploring his family's history, including his grandmother's experience in residential school, and citing his own frequent incidents of racial profiling by police who'd stop him on the streets, Wente unpacks the discrepancies between his personal identity and how non-Indigenous people view him.

Wente analyzes and gives voice to the differences between Hollywood portrayals of Indigenous peoples and lived culture. Through the lens of art, pop culture, and personal stories, and with disarming humour, he links his love of baseball and movies to such issues as cultural appropriation, Indigenous representation and identity, and Indigenous narrative sovereignty. Indeed, he argues that storytelling in all its forms is one of Indigenous peoples' best weapons in the fight to reclaim their rightful place.

Wente explores and exposes the lies that Canada tells itself, unravels "the two founding nations" myth, and insists that the notion of "reconciliation" is not a realistic path forward. Peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can't be recovered through reconciliation--because no such relationship ever existed.

About the Author: Jesse Wente is a husband and father, as well as a writer, broadcaster, speaker and arts administrator. Born and raised in Toronto, Jesse's family comes from Chicago and Genaabaajing Anishinaabek and he is an off-reserve member of the Serpent River First Nation.

In this bestselling memoir, a son who grew up away from his Indigenous culture takes his Cree father on a trip to the family trapline and finds that revisiting the past not only heals old wounds but creates a new future.

The son of a Cree father and a white mother, David A. Robertson grew up with virtually no awareness of his Indigenous roots. His father, Dulas—or Don, as he became known—lived on the trapline in the bush in Manitoba, only to be transplanted permanently to a house on the reserve, where he couldn't speak his language, Swampy Cree, in school with his friends unless in secret. David's mother, Beverly, grew up in a small Manitoba town that had no Indigenous people until Don arrived as the new United Church minister. They married and had three sons, whom they raised unconnected to their Indigenous history.

David grew up without his father's teachings or any knowledge of his early experiences. All he had was “blood memory": the pieces of his identity ingrained in the fabric of his DNA, pieces that he has spent a lifetime putting together. It has been the journey of a young man becoming closer to who he is, who his father is and who they are together, culminating in a trip back to the trapline to reclaim their connection to the land.

Black Water is a memoir about intergenerational trauma and healing, about connection and about how Don's life informed David's own. Facing up to a story nearly erased by the designs of history, father and son journey together back to the trapline at Black Water and through the past to create a new future.

DAVID A. ROBERTSON is an author, editor, and speaker on Indigenous issues, mental health and freedom of expression. He has won awards such as the TD Canadian Children’s Literary Award, the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award and has been shortlisted for many others. He was the writer and host of the podcast Kiwew, which won the 2021 RTDNA Prairie Region Award for Best Podcast. In 2023, the University of Manitoba honoured him with a doctor of letters for his contributions to the arts. David A. Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation. He lives in Winnipeg.

In Native Science, Dr. Gregory Cajete "tells the story" of Indigenous science as a way of understanding, experiencing, and feeling the natural world. He points to parallels and differences between the Indigenous science and Western science paradigms, with special emphasis on environmental/ecological studies.

After discussing philosophical foundations, Cajete addresses such topics as history and myth, primal elements, social ecology, animals in myth and reality, plants and human health, and cosmology and astronomy. In the Indigenous view, we human observers are in no way separate from the world and its creatures and forces. Because all creatures and forces are related and thus bear responsibility to and for one another, all are co-creators.

Five centuries ago Europeans arrived on the American continent, but they did not listen to the people who had lived for millennia in spiritual and physical harmony with this land. In a time of global environmental degradation, the science and worldview of the continent's First Peoples offer perspectives that can help us work toward solutions.

Rooted in Indigenous teachings, this stunning picture book encourages readers of all ages to consider the ways in which they live in connection to the world around them and to think deeply about their behaviors.

Addressing environmental issues, animal welfare, self-esteem and self-respect, and the importance of community, the authors deliver a poignant and universal message in an accessible way: Be a good ancestor to the world around you. Thought-provoking stanzas offer a call to action for each one of us to consider how we affect future generations. Every decision we make ripples out, and we can affect the world around us by thinking deeply about those decisions.

Indigenous Author Leona Prince is from the Lake Babine Nation and Nak’azdli Whut'en and belongs to the Lhts’umusyoo (Beaver) Clan. Leona is an award-winning educator and is currently the Director of Instruction of Indigenous Education for School District 91 (Nechako Lakes). She also authored A Dance through the Seasons.

Illustrated by Carla Joseph, a Cree artist from Prince George, B.C. She has a very unique style which many people look forward to experiencing. She loves the way she makes people feel with her art. It inspires her to continue with her gift.

Readers of all ages will admire Young Woman as she endures and learns from each of the four seasons using many traditional means.

Like Young Woman, we all have something to learn – from nature, the seasons, and our Elders, when we recognize and trust in our guides.

Indigenous Author Leona Prince is from the Lake Babine Nation and Nak’azdli Whut’en and belongs to the Lhts’umusyoo (Beaver) Clan. Leona is an award-winning educator and is currently the Director of Instruction of Indigenous Education for School District 91 (Nechako Lakes). She also authored Be a Good Ancestor.

Illustrated by Carla Joseph, a Cree artist from Prince George, B.C. She has a very unique style which many people look forward to experiencing. She loves the way she makes people feel with her art. It inspires her to continue with her gift.