Gabriel Dumont Speaks

Examination of two accounts by Dumont of the "Riel Rebellion." The first account was published in 1889, the second account was dictated in 1903.

"The reissue of George Woodcock's superb biography once again opens a door on the vanished world of the nineteenth century Canadian Prairies." - Richard Sandhurst, Prairie Books NOW

Since the mid 1980s, the Kootenay School of Writing, a writer-run center in Vancouver, has been the site of some of the most innovative poetry coming out of North America. Leaving behind conventional ideas about syntax and lyricism, the KSW poets have produced a body of work that is jarring, troubling, provocative, funny, and beautiful. In their introduction to this sampling from the work of fourteen writers, Andrew Klobucar and Michael Barnholden describe the historical and aesthetic environment which produced the Kootenay School of Writing, and in doing so demystify a poetry that many regard as "difficult." WRITING CLASS is a fascinating introduction to the most vital poetry being written today.

The world's first battlefield photographs, taken under fire at the battle of Fish Creek, Saskatchewan, during the War of 1885.

Gabriel Dumont's Wild West Show is a flamboyant epic, constructed as a series of tableaux, about the struggles of the Métis in the Canadian West. It is a multilayered and entertaining saga with a rodeo vibe, loosely based on Buffalo Bill's legendary outdoor travelling show. The creative team behind Gabriel Dumont's Wild West Show includes ten authors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, French- and English-speaking men and women.

Chester Brown reinvents the comic book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel. Brown won the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Metis leader's life. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, an embattled figure in Canadian history, regarded by some as a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.

Why don’t more Métis people go to traditional ceremonies? How does going to ceremonies impact Métis identity? In Rekindling the Sacred Fire, Chantal Fiola investigates the relationship between Red River Métis ancestry, Anishinaabe spirituality, and identity, bringing into focus the ongoing historical impacts of colonization upon Métis relationships with spirituality on the Canadian prairies. Using a methodology rooted in an Indigenous world view, Fiola interviews eighteen people with Métis ancestry, or an historic familial connection to the Red River Métis, who participate in Anishinaabe ceremonies, sharing stories about family history, self-identification, and their relationships with Aboriginal and Eurocanadian cultures and spiritualities.

A picture of the Riel Resistance from one of Canada's preeminent MéŽtis poets With a title derived from John A. Macdonald's moniker for the MéŽtis, The Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont's sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural, and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel. Included in this collection are poems about the bison, seed beadwork, and the Red River Cart, and some poems employ elements of the Michif language, which, along with French and Cree, was spoken by Dumont's ancestors. In Dumont's The Pemmican Eaters, a multiplicity of identities is a strengthening rather than a weakening or diluting force in culture.