November is Indigenous Peoples’ Month and in the reading community it’s also “nonfiction November.” This month I’ll be sharing books, both nonfiction and fiction, written by Indigenous authors. I’m hoping to highlight Indigenous voices, both from North America and around the world. Indigenous people exist all over the world, and not just within countries formed through colonialism.

---

Most Indigenous Peoples have a rich history of oral storytelling. For many generations, they would pass along their traditional knowledge orally. It could be in the form of stories, kind of like how religions use stories or parables for sharing moral ideas.

Since there’s a strong history of storytelling, it’s no surprise that Indigenous authors excel at storytelling too.

One of the most interesting ways to experience storytelling is through short stories. They may not have the same depth or details as full length novels, but they can leave a huge impact when done well.

Short stories are also a great way to get out of a reading slump, or even to explore new genres, since the reading commitment is quite low. You get to experience a whole story with only a few pages or maybe the length of a typical chapter.

The drawback with short stories, is that not all of them are amazing. Just like novels, not all will impress you, luckily it’s a lot faster to finish the short stories.

If you’re unsure of who to read or what short story to start with, I would recommend picking up an anthology. These are collections of stories, usually around a certain theme, from many different authors. It’s a fantastic way to see how each author handles the specific theme and try out different authors’ writing style to see if you want to read more of them in the future.

I’ve put together a list of five short story collections by Indigenous authors. Two of them are anthologies, with stories contributed by many different authors.

Hopefully something in the list below sparks your interest.

Five short story collections by Indigenous authors

Here’s a list of five short story collections by Indigenous authors.

1. Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past – an anthology (2004)
2. Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Short Stories by Norma Dunning (2021)
   Inuit
3. Glorious Frazzled Beings by Angélique LaLonde (2021)
   Dwells on Gitxsan territory
4. God Isn’t Here Today by Francine Cunningham (2022)
   Saddle Lake Cree Nation and Metis
5. Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (2023)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past (2004)

An Anthology

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.

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.

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.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Short Stories (2021)
Inuit

by Norma Dunning

Drawing on both lived experience and cultural memory, Norma Dunning brings together six powerful new short stories centred on modern-day Inuk characters in Tainna. Ranging from homeless to extravagantly wealthy, from spiritual to jaded, young to elderly, and even from alive to deceased, Dunning’s characters are united by shared feelings of alienation, displacement and loneliness resulting from their experiences in southern Canada.

In *Tainna—*meaning “the unseen ones” and pronounced Da‑e‑nn‑a—a fraught reunion between sisters Sila and Amak ends in an uneasy understanding. From the spirit realm, Chevy Bass watches over his imperilled grandson, Kunak. And in the title story, the broken-hearted Bunny wanders onto a golf course on a freezing night, when a flock of geese stand vigil until her body is discovered by a kind stranger.

Norma Dunning’s masterful storytelling uses humour and incisive detail to create compelling characters who discover themselves in a hostile land where prejudice, misogyny and inequity are most often found hidden in plain sight. There, they must rely on their wits, artistic talent, senses of humour and spirituality­ for survival; and there, too, they find solace in shining moments of reconnection with their families and communities.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • About the author
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
    • About the book
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Glorious Frazzled Beings (2021)
Dwells on Gitxsan territory

by Angélique LaLonde

Home is where we love, suffer, and learn. Some homes we chose, others are inflicted upon us, and still others are bodies we are born into. In this astounding collection of stories, human and more-than-human worlds come together in places we call home.

Four sisters and their mother explore their fears while teeny ghost people dress up in fragments of their children’s clothes. A somewhat-ghost tends the family garden. Deep in the mountains, a shapeshifting mother must sift through her ancestors’ gifts and the complexities of love when one boy is born with a beautiful set of fox ears and another is not. In the wake of her elderly mother’s tragic death, a daughter tries to make sense of the online dating profile she left behind. And a man named Pooka finds new ways to weave new stories into his abode, in spite of his inherited suffering.

A startling and beguiling story collection, Glorious Frazzled Beings is a love song to the homes we make, keep, and break.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

God Isn’t Here Today (2022)
Saddle Lake Cree Nation and Metis

by Francine Cunningham

Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunningham’s characters are presented with moments of choice–some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God’s office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck’s song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide, but comes with a burden of its own.

The stories in Francine Cunningham’s debut collection God Isn’t Here Today ricochet between form and genre, taking readers on a dark, irreverent, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice.

Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunningham’s stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature–and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (2023)

An Anthology

A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: “Are you ready to be un-settled?”

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear–and even follow you home.These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which short story authors or collections you have enjoyed. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.