Tom King is the *real* thing!
With Cherokee ancestry from south of the 49th, he's an Honourary Blackfoot from the Blood Nation in Southern Alberta, and he's been teaching Indigenous literature and culture, at Guelph University, for almost as long as the sun has been rising and setting,
He's also been *creating* -- both prose fiction (GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATERS, etc....) and radio drama (the much-missed "Dead Dog Cafe" soap opera, on CBC Radio) -- which is relatively rare in a world where those who do, actually DO, and those who can't do basically only teach!
Not all of the contributions in this collection are up to the level of excellence regularly attained by Mr. King's own work.
(If you've got the time, check out a series of Thomas King lectures called THE TELLING OF STORIES -- and don't forget to read the sixth and final lecture! It provides more proof of "credibility" than this review -- or any other -- could ever hope to do....)
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Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past Paperback – Sept. 20 2005
Enhance your purchase
A collection of original stories written by some of the country’s most celebrated Aboriginal writers, and inspired by pivotal events in the country’s history.
Inspired by history, Our Story is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada’s most celebrated Aboriginal writers.
Asked to explore seminal moments in Canadian history from an Aboriginal perspective, these ten acclaimed authors have travelled through our country’s past to discover the moments that shaped our nation and its people.
Drawing on their skills as gifted storytellers and the unique perspectives their heritage affords, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it’s like to participate in history. From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events, taking us into the unknown, while also bringing the familiar into sharper focus.
Our Story brings together an impressive array of voices — Inuk, Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Salish to name just a few — from across the country and across the spectrum of First Nations. These are the novelists, playwrights, journalists, activists, and artists whose work is both Aboriginal and uniquely Canadian.
Brought together to explore and articulate their peoples’ experience of our country’s shared history, these authors’ grace, insight, and humour help all Canadians understand the forces and experiences that have made us who we are.
Maria Campbell • Tantoo Cardinal • Tomson Highway • Drew Hayden Taylor • Basil Johnston • Thomas King • Brian Maracle • Lee Maracle • Jovette Marchessault • Rachel Qitsualik
From the Hardcover edition.
Inspired by history, Our Story is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada’s most celebrated Aboriginal writers.
Asked to explore seminal moments in Canadian history from an Aboriginal perspective, these ten acclaimed authors have travelled through our country’s past to discover the moments that shaped our nation and its people.
Drawing on their skills as gifted storytellers and the unique perspectives their heritage affords, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it’s like to participate in history. From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events, taking us into the unknown, while also bringing the familiar into sharper focus.
Our Story brings together an impressive array of voices — Inuk, Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Salish to name just a few — from across the country and across the spectrum of First Nations. These are the novelists, playwrights, journalists, activists, and artists whose work is both Aboriginal and uniquely Canadian.
Brought together to explore and articulate their peoples’ experience of our country’s shared history, these authors’ grace, insight, and humour help all Canadians understand the forces and experiences that have made us who we are.
Maria Campbell • Tantoo Cardinal • Tomson Highway • Drew Hayden Taylor • Basil Johnston • Thomas King • Brian Maracle • Lee Maracle • Jovette Marchessault • Rachel Qitsualik
From the Hardcover edition.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor Canada
- Publication dateSept. 20 2005
- Dimensions15.24 x 1.8 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-100385660766
- ISBN-13978-0385660761
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Product description
Review
"Ingenious. . . . The concept works. . . brilliantly."
—Maclean’s
"Our Story is an impressive collection of original fiction. . . . Brian Maracle’s retelling of the Iroquois creation myth is . . . powerful and haunting. . . . Jovette Marchessault’s 'Moon of the Dancing Sons' is, simply, beautiful and heartrending, while Rachel Qitsualik’s 'Skraeling'is a narrative of the highest order. . . . Our Story bridges native and European narrative traditions with considerable force."
—Quill and Quire
—Maclean’s
"Our Story is an impressive collection of original fiction. . . . Brian Maracle’s retelling of the Iroquois creation myth is . . . powerful and haunting. . . . Jovette Marchessault’s 'Moon of the Dancing Sons' is, simply, beautiful and heartrending, while Rachel Qitsualik’s 'Skraeling'is a narrative of the highest order. . . . Our Story bridges native and European narrative traditions with considerable force."
—Quill and Quire
From the Inside Flap
A collection of original stories written by some of the country's most celebrated Aboriginal writers, and inspired by pivotal events in the country's history.
Inspired by history, Our Story is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada's most celebrated Aboriginal writers.
Asked to explore seminal moments in Canadian history from an Aboriginal perspective, these ten acclaimed authors have travelled through our country's past to discover the moments that shaped our nation and its people.
Drawing on their skills as gifted storytellers and the unique perspectives their heritage affords, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it's like to participate in history. From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events, taking us into the unknown, while also bringing the familiar into sharper focus.
Our Story brings together an impressive array of voices -- Inuk, Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Salish to name just a few -- from across the country and across the spectrum of First Nations. These are the novelists, playwrights, journalists, activists, and artists whose work is both Aboriginal and uniquely Canadian.
Brought together to explore and articulate their peoples' experience of our country's shared history, these authors' grace, insight, and humour help all Canadians understand the forces and experiences that have made us who we are.
Maria Campbell - Tantoo Cardinal - Tomson Highway - Drew Hayden Taylor - Basil Johnston - Thomas King - Brian Maracle - Lee Maracle - Jovette Marchessault - Rachel Qitsualik
Inspired by history, Our Story is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada's most celebrated Aboriginal writers.
Asked to explore seminal moments in Canadian history from an Aboriginal perspective, these ten acclaimed authors have travelled through our country's past to discover the moments that shaped our nation and its people.
Drawing on their skills as gifted storytellers and the unique perspectives their heritage affords, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it's like to participate in history. From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events, taking us into the unknown, while also bringing the familiar into sharper focus.
Our Story brings together an impressive array of voices -- Inuk, Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Salish to name just a few -- from across the country and across the spectrum of First Nations. These are the novelists, playwrights, journalists, activists, and artists whose work is both Aboriginal and uniquely Canadian.
Brought together to explore and articulate their peoples' experience of our country's shared history, these authors' grace, insight, and humour help all Canadians understand the forces and experiences that have made us who we are.
Maria Campbell - Tantoo Cardinal - Tomson Highway - Drew Hayden Taylor - Basil Johnston - Thomas King - Brian Maracle - Lee Maracle - Jovette Marchessault - Rachel Qitsualik
"From the Hardcoveredition.
From the Back Cover
"Ingenious. . . . The concept works. . . brilliantly."
—Maclean’s
"Our Story is an impressive collection of original fiction. . . . Brian Maracle’s retelling of the Iroquois creation myth is . . . powerful and haunting. . . . Jovette Marchessault’s 'Moon of the Dancing Sons' is, simply, beautiful and heartrending, while Rachel Qitsualik’s 'Skraeling'is a narrative of the highest order. . . . Our Story bridges native and European narrative traditions with considerable force."
—Quill and Quire
—Maclean’s
"Our Story is an impressive collection of original fiction. . . . Brian Maracle’s retelling of the Iroquois creation myth is . . . powerful and haunting. . . . Jovette Marchessault’s 'Moon of the Dancing Sons' is, simply, beautiful and heartrending, while Rachel Qitsualik’s 'Skraeling'is a narrative of the highest order. . . . Our Story bridges native and European narrative traditions with considerable force."
—Quill and Quire
About the Author
Thomas King is of Cherokee, Greek, and German descent and is currently chair of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. His short stories have been widely published throughout the United States and Canada, and a film, based on his much acclaimed first novel Medicine River, has been made for television.
Tomson Highway is a Cree from Brochet, in northern Manitoba. He is the celebrated author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won Dora Mavor Moore Awards and Floyd S. Chalmers Awards. He holds three honorary degrees and is a member of the Order of Canada.
From the eBook edition.
Tomson Highway is a Cree from Brochet, in northern Manitoba. He is the celebrated author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won Dora Mavor Moore Awards and Floyd S. Chalmers Awards. He holds three honorary degrees and is a member of the Order of Canada.
From the eBook edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface
The standard textbook history of Aboriginal peoples begins twelve millennia ago as the world was coming out of an Ice Age. The ancestors of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to North America. Moving steadily south and east, over the course of hundreds of generations, the descedants of this original group of explorers won for themselves a continent. In the path of their migration, up and down the face of North and South America, they created a quilt-work of civilizations, each with its own history and values. Over the millennia these nations rose, fell, and evolved in concert with the larger rhythms of nature.
Flash forward to the early 1500s when our conventional narrative gathers steam. Along the eastern shore of North America the first European explorers make their landfalls and experience the ‘first contact’ that gave Canada its name. The arc of history moves through the early wars of conquest to the establishment of the first permanent European settlements in the 16th and 17th centuries. To Canadians, the signposts in this historical journey are a series of familiar dates strung out in succession: Jacques Cartier landing at Chaleur Bay in 1534, Champlain’s voyage up the St. Lawrence in 1603, and the creation of the Hudson Bay Company in 1670.
Having witnessed the European migration to their land, Aboriginal peoples are moved figuratively to the sidelines of history. The standard history of Canada from the 17th century onward is the story of European colonial wars, the introduction and impact of Western technology and industry, and the deepening of a North American political culture based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. Increasingly strangers in their own lands, Aboriginal peoples come to be perceived, more and more, as an administrative challenge as opposed to a dynamic force in the unfolding of the country’s identity. The combined effects of the treaty and reserve systems, the failed Rebellions of 1885 and subsequent Indian Acts all conspire to render Canada’s Aboriginal peoples an historical anachronism in the eyes of the dominant culture. This sentiment, in various forms, has continued up to the present-day despite a decades-long revival of Aboriginal culture, industry, and government.
Even this most cursory look at the traditional narrative of the history of Aboriginal peoples confirms that we read their story through our systems of understanding. It is difficult, if not impossible, for one culture to capture the historical reality of another culture that it has displaced. As hard as non-Aboriginals might try to correct for biases, our history and traditions are different. European culture sees the passage of time as a chronology of events as opposed to cycle of being and becoming. It embraces scientific criteria to determine what is an historical fact and looks askance at myth and oral history. And ultimately, it stresses the very process of historical inquiry as a hallmark of civilization. All of these attitudes not only set Western culture apart from an Aboriginal world view, they determine the very way history is recorded, created, and conveyed to future generations.
This is not to say that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures are incapable of creating common understandings and mutual respect. What we need to work on is finding new ways – after more than four hundred years of living together – to hear each others’ stories anew, to step out of preconceived notions of not only what constitutes our history but how our history is constituted. Our Story is an important contribution to moving dialogue in this direction.
The nine works of fiction contained in this volume tell the story of Aboriginal peoples in Canada not as a string of facts laid bare in chronological order. Instead, each of the Aboriginal authors has chosen an historical event and through the act of storytelling, turned it into a work of fiction. In each of these fictionalized accounts we are exposed to the Aboriginal sense of place, the passage of time, and the complex relationship of myth and truth. The result is a new vantage point not just on how Aboriginals perceive their place in Canadian history but a different approach to recounting the past and making it come alive in the present.
As a fusion of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal notions of storytelling and history, Our Story contains, at its heart, the basis for the two cultures not only to better understand and appreciate each other, but also to move forward together.
Rudyard Griffiths
The standard textbook history of Aboriginal peoples begins twelve millennia ago as the world was coming out of an Ice Age. The ancestors of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to North America. Moving steadily south and east, over the course of hundreds of generations, the descedants of this original group of explorers won for themselves a continent. In the path of their migration, up and down the face of North and South America, they created a quilt-work of civilizations, each with its own history and values. Over the millennia these nations rose, fell, and evolved in concert with the larger rhythms of nature.
Flash forward to the early 1500s when our conventional narrative gathers steam. Along the eastern shore of North America the first European explorers make their landfalls and experience the ‘first contact’ that gave Canada its name. The arc of history moves through the early wars of conquest to the establishment of the first permanent European settlements in the 16th and 17th centuries. To Canadians, the signposts in this historical journey are a series of familiar dates strung out in succession: Jacques Cartier landing at Chaleur Bay in 1534, Champlain’s voyage up the St. Lawrence in 1603, and the creation of the Hudson Bay Company in 1670.
Having witnessed the European migration to their land, Aboriginal peoples are moved figuratively to the sidelines of history. The standard history of Canada from the 17th century onward is the story of European colonial wars, the introduction and impact of Western technology and industry, and the deepening of a North American political culture based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. Increasingly strangers in their own lands, Aboriginal peoples come to be perceived, more and more, as an administrative challenge as opposed to a dynamic force in the unfolding of the country’s identity. The combined effects of the treaty and reserve systems, the failed Rebellions of 1885 and subsequent Indian Acts all conspire to render Canada’s Aboriginal peoples an historical anachronism in the eyes of the dominant culture. This sentiment, in various forms, has continued up to the present-day despite a decades-long revival of Aboriginal culture, industry, and government.
Even this most cursory look at the traditional narrative of the history of Aboriginal peoples confirms that we read their story through our systems of understanding. It is difficult, if not impossible, for one culture to capture the historical reality of another culture that it has displaced. As hard as non-Aboriginals might try to correct for biases, our history and traditions are different. European culture sees the passage of time as a chronology of events as opposed to cycle of being and becoming. It embraces scientific criteria to determine what is an historical fact and looks askance at myth and oral history. And ultimately, it stresses the very process of historical inquiry as a hallmark of civilization. All of these attitudes not only set Western culture apart from an Aboriginal world view, they determine the very way history is recorded, created, and conveyed to future generations.
This is not to say that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures are incapable of creating common understandings and mutual respect. What we need to work on is finding new ways – after more than four hundred years of living together – to hear each others’ stories anew, to step out of preconceived notions of not only what constitutes our history but how our history is constituted. Our Story is an important contribution to moving dialogue in this direction.
The nine works of fiction contained in this volume tell the story of Aboriginal peoples in Canada not as a string of facts laid bare in chronological order. Instead, each of the Aboriginal authors has chosen an historical event and through the act of storytelling, turned it into a work of fiction. In each of these fictionalized accounts we are exposed to the Aboriginal sense of place, the passage of time, and the complex relationship of myth and truth. The result is a new vantage point not just on how Aboriginals perceive their place in Canadian history but a different approach to recounting the past and making it come alive in the present.
As a fusion of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal notions of storytelling and history, Our Story contains, at its heart, the basis for the two cultures not only to better understand and appreciate each other, but also to move forward together.
Rudyard Griffiths
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Product details
- Publisher : Anchor Canada (Sept. 20 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385660766
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385660761
- Item weight : 263 g
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 1.8 x 22.86 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Canadian Short Stories
- #2 in Historical Short Stories
- #3 in Historical Anthologies
- Customer Reviews:
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4.6 out of 5
150 global ratings
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Reviewed in Canada on May 15, 2022
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Reviewed in Canada on November 17, 2021
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Stories told by some of the best storytellers out there. I love how each story has a note from the author letting us know why they chose to share this story. A great read!
An awesome gift idea!
An awesome gift idea!
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2022
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The book is a collection of fictional stories written by authors of indigenous ancestry about important points in the history of the native peoples in Canada. It is an entertaining compliment to a formal history which makes these important time points more relatable to persons not of indigenous heritage, like me.
Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2016
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This is a fine collection of short stories and essays by nine of Canada's brilliant Aboriginal writers. The variety in the stories' settings, times, tones, styles and purposes is striking. The writers were asked to base their stories on definitive moments in the history of their nations, so these range from the Iroquois Creation Story to the Inuits' meeting with the Vikings and to 1960 when the Indians were given the right to vote. The range from very serious to charming, amusing and highly thoughtful.
6 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in Canada on March 7, 2022
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I thought it was going to be a more scholarly type of book. My mother really enjoyed it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
The writing is wonderful - different stories on different aspects of aboriginal history ...
Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2016Verified Purchase
The writing is wonderful - different stories on different aspects of aboriginal history - and the book was in good condition. The shipping could have been better though. The soft cover book was crammed into an envelope that was too small, and I had to lay it flat and weigh it down to try to straighten it out so I could actually read it.
Please make sure the shipping envelope is the correct size in future!
Please make sure the shipping envelope is the correct size in future!
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in Canada on December 23, 2021
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I truly enjoyed reading each of the stories in this collection.
Reviewed in Canada on January 22, 2022
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Everyone needs to read these stories. These stories gives an eye opening perspective of colonialism through Indigenous voices. Highly recommend.
Top reviews from other countries

Rhea Pollock
5.0 out of 5 stars
our story; aboriginal voices on canada past
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2014Verified Purchase
i am connected somehow by aboriginal history, resources, stories....have been so for most of my life......so this is another source... i am also canadfian