Book lovers like to share, but as a suspicious GenXer, I’ve never been too into BookTok hype or even Goodreads! I’ll tell my friends what I’m reading, but the marketing demographers can figure me out some other way. Ha ha. As if, right? But I was excited to be asked to write a list of recommended reads by the 49thshelf.com, a website whose goal is to make it easier for people to find Canadian books. I really wanted to highlight some other perspectives on Haida Gwaii, while promoting the story I wrote. You can find the list (which talks about some of these books and more here.) I snuck in other important books in this picture, because I live in Ts’elxweyeqw territory now and the bottom two, You Are Asked to Witness and Being Ts’elxweyeqw, are powerful reads about my current home.
The Ethnology of the Haida is an amazing work put together in the early 1900s that was reprinted in 2004 by the Council of the Haida Nation. It features stories, cultural history, artistic practices, and more that would have been passed on through the generations via strict oral protocols. Smallpox, tuberculosis and other diseases devastated Haida populations in the late 1800s and only a few hundred people survived. Then the missionaries and residential schools continued to try and destroy the culture. Swanton was sent by the American Museum of Natural History to document, what was then thought to be a dying culture. Thankfully, he was wrong. From the preface: “This should not be considered a book by Swanton, but rather a transfer of knowledge from our relatives of one hundred years ago, who, in turn received their knowledge from those before them. This is the word of our people… this is our book.”
For more book recommendations check out my list:
https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2025/03/17/Haida-Gwaii-Intimate-Encounters-in-a-Forest