Ruby Slipperjack is a member of the Eabametoong First Nation and she 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. These schools were built all along the Canadian National Railway line where there were enough school-aged children to attend. After Grade 5 she was sent to Residential School, and later attended a city school. For that period, she lived in a room-and-board situation with non-native 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. She is a tenured, full professor in the Indigenous Learning Department at Lakehead University. Her prior novels include Honour the Sun, Silent Words, Weesquachak and the Lost Ones, Little Voice, Weesquachak and Dog Tracks. She contributed stories to the Dear Canada anthologies Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival and A Time for Giving: Ten Tales of Christmas.
Dear Canada books by Ruby Slipperjack
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