Dear Canada: These Are My Words

Ruby Slipperjack is a member of the Eabametoong First Nation and is fluent in her Anishinabe language. She was born and raised at her father’s trapline at Whitewater Lake, Ontario, and entered a one-room Indian Day School, with no knowledge of English, at the age of seven. After grade five, she was sent to residential school and later attended a city school. During that period, she lived in a room-and-board situation with non-Indigenous families until she graduated from high school. She retained her traditional knowledge and still practises her Nation’s cultural activities at her family’s homeland at Whitewater Lake.

Ruby completed her formal education with a B.A. in History, B.Ed. and M.Ed. from Lakehead University and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from the University of Western Ontario. Now retired, she was a tenured, full professor in the Indigenous Learning Department at Lakehead University. Her other novels include Honour the Sun, Silent Words, Little Voice, Weesquachak and Dog Tracks. She has also contributed stories to the Dear Canada anthologies Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival and A Time for Giving: Ten Tales of Christmas.