Here are 100 books that Copper Thunderbird fans have personally recommended if you like
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Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world.
Perhaps one of the most seminal plays to come out of the First Nations community, if not the Canadian theatre community in general. It starts off with the simplest of plots, seven Indigenous women plan to leave their community on Manitoulin Island to participate in the world's largest bingo game in Toronto. It’s funny, tragic, and a wonderful introduction to the colourful world which we come from.
Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play
Nominated for the Governor General's Award
This award-winning play by Native playwright Tomson Highway is a powerful and moving portrayal of seven women from a reserve attempting to beat the odds by winning at bingo. And not just any bingo. It is THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD and a chance to win a way out of a tortured life.
The Rez Sisters is hilarious, shocking, mystical and powerful, and clearly establishes the creative voice of Native theatre and writing in Canada today.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world.
A historical play that tells the story of a single Cree warrior doing battle with the Canadian military. Each of the two acts approaches the story differently. The first is more linear and poetic, the second more lyrical and surreal. Many have said they loved the first act and hated the second. And vice versa. Whatever you may feel, an excellent exploration of colonization as seen through the eyes of a poet.
Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world.
An amazing play that explores the repercussions of Residential schools on the Indigenous population, and how its effects are frequently intergenerational. Winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Best Drama, this play spares no one as it sheds light on the damage and healing happening in Indigenous communities across the country.
Where the Blood Mixes is meant to expose the shadows below the surface of the author’s First Nations heritage, and to celebrate its survivors. Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd’s alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play’s main character?
Loring’s title was inspired by the mistranslation of the N’lakap’mux (Thompson) place name…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world.
Many of the plays written by Indigenous playwrights are usually dark and critical. This play is a little different. It’s an unabashed comedy celebrating the Indigenous sense of humour. Essentially, the play is about two German entrepreneurs who travel to a First Nations community planning to build the world’s largest Native theme park, called Ojibway world. The play deals with stereotypes and the global marketing of culture.
A consortium of German developers shows up on the fictional Otter Lake Reserve with a seemingly irresistible offer to improve the local economy: the creation of “Ojibway World,” a Native theme park designed to attract European tourists, causing hilarious personal and political divisions within the local community.
The Berlin Blues concludes Drew Hayden Taylor’s Blues quartet, showcasing contemporary stereotypes of First Nations people, including a fair number that originate from Indigenous communities themselves, to the often outraged delight of his international audiences.
Yet Europeans and other ethnic groups are not exempt from Taylor’s incisive but good-humoured caricatures. Central to the…
I think about the positive identity development of Native youth all the time and not just because I am an educator and author. I love my Ojibwe language and culture, but I want to turn Native fiction on its head. We have so many stories about trauma and tragedy with characters who lament the culture that they were always denied. I want to show how vibrant and alive our culture still is. I want gripping stories where none of the Native characters are drug addicts, rapists, abused, or abusing others. I want to demonstrate the magnificence of our elders, the humor of our people, and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
I loved this book because it grapples with some of the really tough topics that our people have to face.
The characters were relatable and dynamic. I think America and Canada need a wake-up call and an effort to reconcile with their historical treatment of Native people, especially with regard to residential boarding schools. People can only handle calls to justice when they relate to those who were treated unjustly.
In spite of the heavy topics, this book does that really well.
Named a "Best Novel of the Decade" by Literary Hub
Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibway youth. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother—and then his home itself.
Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey. Rising at dawn to…
I used to think of television as a third parent. As a child of immigrants, I learned a lot about being an American from the media. Soon, I realized there were limits to what I could learn because media and tech privilege profit over community. For 20 years, I have studied what happens when people decide to make media outside of corporations. I have interviewed hundreds of filmmakers, written hundreds of blogs and articles, curated festivals, juried awards, and ultimately founded my own platform, all resulting in four books. My greatest teachers have been artists, healers, and family—chosen and by blood—who have created spaces for honesty, vulnerability, and creative conflict.
Our elders are maps to our history and lands. My grandmother taught me how to navigate America with grit and care and inspired my work in community.
This book narrates how to learn by honoring our ancestors, using the example of the Anishinaabeg tribes in Canada: how to draw maps and re-envision the world from the perspective of people without PhDs but who hold centuries of knowledge.
As an academic, I was taught that people outside of the university were sources of data that we could use to generate theory. I had to learn that everyday people hold powerful theories of the world that PhDs would do well to honor and uplift, especially if we want our knowledge to make the world a better place.
When was the last time you asked an elder the history of where you live and come from: the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable?
Winner: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's Best Subsequent Book 2017 Honorable Mention: Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017
Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women. In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I can’t lay claim to expertise in the fantasy genre, but I am passionate about it! My best friend introduced me to fantasy a few years ago, and my life has never been the same. As a nerdy kid, I read high-brow books like Wuthering Heights and War & Peace, but it wasn’t until I started reading, writing, and watching fantasy stories like LOTR that my imagination really ignited. I’m a woman with picky tastes, so finding a good story that I can relate to is an ongoing and satisfying quest. Most importantly, if I can make even one person’s day brighter with my own writing, it’s all worth it.
Returning was a short and sweet read that I happened on by chance. It’s a prequel novella about a siren who’s searching for her very own ‘The One’. With a romance story at its heart and an edgy tone, it’s a fast-paced urban fantasy that I ate up in a couple of days.
I liked the worldbuilding, the crisp dialogue, and the intriguing premise. The book is a little old-fashioned in theme, but oh-so-satisfying in a nostalgic way as you hustle to survive and fall in love right alongside Mira, the main character of Returning.
I’m giving it bonus points because it’s set, in part, in Canada, which is where I’m from. Any time I see even a smidge of my beautiful home country in fiction, it makes my heart smile.
It’s time to leave the ocean. Mira Belshaw has been at sea for… well, she doesn’t know how many years. It’s hard to keep track of time when you live in the ocean. But after enough time, the salt water triggers the desire to procreate, and her time is up.
For weeks, she’s been swimming north. Finding a mate is the most important thing to her right now, and to do that, she has to return to the place where she was last human - the coastal city of Saltford.
After writing a novel about the toll true crime can take on victims’ loved ones and the risk it runs of glamourizing killers while overshadowing victims, I’ve been on the hunt for true crime books that don’t fall into these traps. The titles on this list showcase beautiful writing and tell compelling stories without dehumanizing the victims or glamourizing the perpetrators.
Gabby Petito. Natalee Holloway. Laci Peterson. These names probably sound familiar. Lauren Cho, Stephany Flores, and Latoyia Figueroa might not. This illustrates what news anchor Gwen Ifill dubbed “missing white woman syndrome,” the disproportionate media coverage in missing persons cases that attractive, upper-middle-class white women receive.
McDiarmid’s moving book illustrates this phenomenon, following the cases of thousands of Indigenous women who have disappeared from a stretch of road in British Columbia dubbed “The Highway of Tears.” For decades, the cases garnered little media attention until a white woman named Nicole Hoar disappeared in 2002, bringing more resources and coverage.
In painstaking detail, this immersive and necessary book follows several of these previously ignored women’s lives, illustrating the systemic issues that failed the victims and their loved ones.
“These murder cases expose systemic problems... By examining each murder within the context of Indigenous identity and regional hardships, McDiarmid addresses these very issues, finding reasons to look for the deeper roots of each act of violence.” —The New York Times Book Review
In the vein of the bestsellers I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and The Line Becomes a River, a penetrating, deeply moving account of the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and a searing indictment of the society that failed them.
For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been…
I am a Canadian freelance writer, who has a BA in honours history from Smith College, an MA in history from McGill University, and a Bachelor in Journalism from Carleton University. As I have a special interest in Canadian history and Canadian biography, I have authored books in these subject areas. These include an award-winning biography of Sir William Van Horne, a polymath and railway general who pushed through the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Cairine Wilson. Canada’s first woman senator, who was celebrated for her work with refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, and a best-selling survey of Canadian immigration and immigration policy, Strangers At Our Gates.
This book, which was written when serious questions were being asked about Canadian immigration, is a gold mine of information on this delicate and emotional subject. The research is both extensive and meticulous. Moreover, the author does not just cite and explain facts about events and circumstances, she also provides clues as to what she feels constitutes an immigration policy.
Remarkable changes have taken place in Canadian immigration policy, law, and management since this book was first published. A long-awaited new Immigration Act was passed in 1976 and became law in 1978. This marked the beginning of a new, more liberal, and more co-operative era in Canadian immigration. The new Act established clear national objectives in immigration and refugee policy. The new edition of Canada and Immigration takes into account these major changes in Canadian attitudes and policies toward immigration. The author discusses what these changes have meant for Canada, considering the new laws, closer federal-provincial collaboration, more confident and…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I’ve been a writer most of my life, moving from high-school essays to working for newspapers to creating novels. One way or another, I’ve also spent much of that time exploring Canada's back roads and smaller communities. Those places and the people living in them have a pungent reality that I often find missing in the froth of modern urban society. The places and their people are interesting and inspiring, and I always get drawn back to reading and writing about them.
I loved this book because I loved the characters. Richards invested them with dignity even when they were flawed or endlessly frustrated by fate. They can go through life largely unnoticed except by their closest acquaintances and relatives. But they offer hope despite their failures and tragedies.
This was the first novel in Richards’ MiramichiTrilogy. It and the two subsequent novels, plus much of Richards’ later work, create a strong sense of the province of New Brunswick, even when the characters have a universal quality.
David Adams Richards’ Governor General’s Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards’ acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’…
