Always give the gift of reading

Page 11

ah-ayitaw isi e-ki-kiskeyihtahkik maskihkiy = They Knew Both Sides of Medicine: Cree Tales of Curing and Cursing Told by Alice Ahenakew

Edited and translated by H.C. Wolfart & Freda Ahenakew

314 pgs (sc)

The University of Manitoba Press

The book is made up of stories told by Alice Ahenakew, who shares her personal reminiscences of her life. Ahenakew was born in 1912, and was raised in Sturgeon Lake in north-central Saskatchewan after the death of her mother during the flu epidemic of 1918. She tells of the epidemic in the book, along with stories of her childhood, and her courtship and marriage to Andrew Ahenakew, who later became a well-known Anglican priest and Cree healer. The stories tell of encounters with a windigo, as well as recollections of visions and curses. Ahenakew's stories are presented both in Cree and in English, and the book includes a Cree-English glossary.

We Were Not The Savages: A Mi'kmaq Perspective on the Collision Between European and Native American Civilizations-New Twenty-First-Century Edition

By Daniel N. Paul

359 pgs (sc) $24.95

Fernwood Publishing

Paul has rewritten and updated his original bestseller, expanding upon the first edition and including new information. The book presents a history of the Mi'kmaq people's struggle for survival, from first European contact to the present. The book, Paul indicates in the foreward, recounts the atrocities suffered by his ancestors "to persuade people of the majority society to use whatever power they have to see that Canada makes meaningful amends for the horrifying wrongs of the past."

"The Mi'kmaq were, and are, a great people. To be a descendent of this noble race, who displayed an indomitable will to survive in spite of incredible odds against them, fills me with pride."