First Peoples website link and a Book recommendation

I was doing some web searching to find some links to add to the site and came across the First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies webpage. Its based out of the States, and has a number of different things going on, most notably book recommendations. Although social work may be 'our' thing, as Indigenous peoples, it can be helpful to find resources spanning a variety of 'disciplines' when writing papers, working on research methods, practice frameworks etc. So that is my rant on why I am including such stuff here.

Here is the link again for the website if you are interested in taking a gander.

The other thing I want to blindly recommend (which is also featured on the first webpage for the site mentioned above) is a book by Scott Morgensen called  Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization.

I had the pleasure of listening to this fellow speak at a little conference at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in Toronto a few months ago. He was fantastic, and for a self proclaimed White settler person, I thought he was the bee's knees in how he approaches issues of settler colonialism paired with a Queer lens. I have not read the book, but would be interested to hear what people thought of it who may have?

If anyone else has some great book ideas that might be helpful resources or of interest to other Indigenous social work students, please share below by leaving a comment! Everyone's little gem's of a book can be a big help for finding new resources!

Also - a note about politics and posting about such stuff through this site. So as some of you may know, the community of Attawapiskat in Northern Ontario on the James Bay coast has declared a state of emergency given their deplorable living conditions.

I contemplated linking anything on this blog about this, as I envision this site to be more of a 'connection and sharing of dialouge, resources and support' type of thing.

However at the same time, I don't believe there is such thing as being politically neutral as Indigenous peoples. I believe Smith (1999) or maybe it was Kovach (2009) - one of the two have cited how as Indigenous peoples, our very presence is political or makes things political (or was it Battiste (2000) ???)

Anywho, I agree with that fact. Although at the same time, unfortunately there are so many issues of concern happening every minute around this World and in Canada regarding the lives and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. This blog cannot function as a newsource for all these things, so I am on the fence with how much to share of this kind of stuff.

Suggestions are welcome on what is the right amount to include, or just generally, what kinds of things you are looking for by visiting this site. Perhaps a forthcoming link to a survey might be appropriate.

Last but not least, I just wanted to apologize if anyone is experiencing problems with leaving comments. This is a brand new site, so hopefully the kinks wont take too long to figure out. Thank-you for your patience!