Continued collaboration, profiles of storytellers

Ours to Tell: Reclaiming Indigenous Stories
by Eldon Yellowhorn & Kathy Lowinger

Toronto: Annick Press, 2025
24.99  /  9781773219530

Reviewed by Kristina Hannis

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“As a native writer, there’s a certain feeling that you have to set the record straight before you even begin. It’s been told wrong, and not told, so often.” -Tommy Orange

Award-winning duo Dr. Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger are back with a new book, Ours to Tell: Reclaiming Indigenous Stories. This is their fourth collaboration, following the successful Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People; What the Eagle Sees: Indigenous Stories of Rebellion and Renewal; and Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge. Though similar in format and audience, each of these books tackles a big topic, distilling large concepts into simple writing and pairing it with lush illustrations. Like Lowinger and Yellowhorn’s previous books, this slim 130-page volume is a small book with a lot to say. Set up as a series of profiles of Indigenous storytellers, its format makes it accessible to all audiences and knowledge bases, from young audiences to academics. Even those with a strong background in Indigenous literature will learn something.

Ours to Tell provides a great introduction to iconic Indigenous storytellers such as Métis poet Marilyn Dumont, Beothuk mapmaker Shawnadithit, and the legendary Pauline Johnson.  Covering staggering ground, contemporary novelist Tommy Orange shares the pages with Mayan storytellers who lived in the 1600s. The individuals profiled in this book use all kinds of narrative formats, telling stories through poetry and prose, pictographs, maps, ribbon skirts, and beadwork. There is a serious challenge of scope with such a short volume, but it is successful in its brevity at providing a glimpse of the multitude of Indigenous storytellers.

This book’s introductory style opens important conversations. Ours to Tell demonstrates how Indigenous stories are critically different from the stories told by newcomer settlers. From its introduction, the book explains why Indigenous people must tell their own stories, showcasing a different version of the American Thanksgiving story. Instead of a traditional American fable, it is a violent colonial story of murder and taking. In this way, and constant in every profile, scenes of the settler colonial erasure of Indigenous histories build to a very effective whole.

From Gasper Antonio Chi (1531-1610) working with Mayan codex, and Sequoyah writing Cherokee in syllabics in the late 1700s, to the modern writers, the storytellers is this book are performing acts of resistance. Yellowhorn and Lowinger position storytellers of the past within the current struggles for landback and self-determination. I particularly loved the highlight of Ella Cara Deloria with a sidebar to her more famous relative Vine Deloria Jr. We are left with no doubt that every one of these icons deserves a volume of their own.

Dr. Eldon Yellowhorn has had a career as a professor of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University and is a founder of its Indigenous Studies department. Likely close to retirement, he has spent a lifetime teaching Indigenous histories.  This book could be a lifetime of stories longer, and my hope is that Dr. Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger will consider a larger project in this vein. This book is a joy and a pleasure to read, and I am sure it will challenge many people to think about the stories they’ve been told, and not told, and open many minds to learning more. Books from the sources and resources section at the end of Ours to Tell have already become requests for me at my library.

 

[Editor’s Note: Ours to Tell: Reclaiming Indigenous Stories has just been listed on the New York Public Library’s Best Books for Teens 2025.]

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Kristina Hannis is of Anglo-Scandinavian ancestry and grew up on Treaty Six Territory. She has resided on xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), səlilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Swwú7mesh (Squamish) Nations’ territory for over a decade.  Currently she works as a Researcher for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. [Editor’s Note: Kristina Hannis has reviewed the work of Yellowhorn & Lowinger previously for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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