Which Indigenous books should you take with you to a desert island? – TVO

Sep 3, 2024

The market is flooded with quality reading material from and about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. I asked three experts for their recommendations

Indigenous book publishing has exploded in the past 50 years, and the market is flooded with quality reading material from and about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. I remember when it used to be months between releases of Native books. And I’m afraid there are some droughts that Danielle Steel and John Grisham just couldn’t solve.

The spectrum of genres being explored by Indigenous authors today goes well beyond the impacts of colonialism: science fiction, adventure, romance, fantasy, thriller, and horror to name just a few.  I myself am thinking of adapting The Da Vinci Code into The Norval Morrisseau Code. Perhaps Jurassic Park could be Algonquin Park.

To try to make sense of this growing canon, I set out to ask three experts within the Indigenous community a familiar question: What five books would you bring with you to a desert island? However, I realized I had to amend the premise. We do not have many desert islands in the First Nations community in Canada. So, at first, I was going to suggest a deserted island instead, somewhere off the Haida Gwaii coast or maybe deep in the Georgian Bay interior.

Read More: https://www.tvo.org/article/which-indigenous-books-should-you-take-with-you-to-a-desert-island