Since Time Immemorial Book Club

Launched in the Summer 2024 and as part of the Indigenous Literature Café initiative, the Since Time Immemorial Seasonal Book Club offers a facilitated space for engaging, collective discussion of Indigenous YA novels.


The Since Time Immemorial Seasonal Book Club is intended to better support Indigenous and non-Indigenous English and Language Arts educators, pre-service teachers, and students, as well as Indigenous community members, who are interested in learning and teaching Indigenous literatures.

Interested in joining the next session? Register for an upcoming event below!

Next Session

  • Ravensong by Lee Maracle

    Set along the Pacific Northwest Coast in the 1950s, Ravensong: A Novel tells the story of an urban Indigenous community devastated by an influenza epidemic. Stacey, a 17-year-old First Nation, struggles with the clash between white society’s values and her family’s traditional ways, knowing that her future lies somewhere in between. Celia, her sister, has visions from the past, while Raven warns of an impending catastrophe before there is any reconciliation between the two cultures. In this passionate story about a young woman’s quest for answers, author Lee Maracle speaks unflinchingly of the gulf between two cultures: a gulf that Raven says must be bridged. Ravensong is a moving drama that includes elements of prophecy, mythology, cultural critique, and even humour. New and updated, this edition features a preface by Lee Maracle. First Published in 1993 and reprinted in 2011.

    Grade Levels: Grade 11, 12, College & University

Past Sessions

  • Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer. She’ll be working in her family’s ice-cream shack with her newly ex-boyfriend—whose kisses never made her feel desire, only discomfort—and her former best friend, King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago without a word.

    But when she gets a letter from her biological father—a man she hoped would stay behind bars for the rest of his life—Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him, no matter how much he insists.

    While King’s friendship makes Lou feel safer and warmer than she would have thought possible, when her family’s business comes under threat, she soon realizes that she can’t ignore her father forever.

    Grade level: Twelve, Adult Education

  • And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot


    On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve—a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture—is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she’s the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.

    Then strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can’t explain, all while her neighbors’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival. She just has to finish it before it’s too late

  • Moon of the Crusted Snow

“This story deserves to be told; all stories do. Even the waves of the sea tell a story that deserves to be read. The stories that really need to be told are those that shake the very soul of you-

I prepare to be shaken”

  • Lee Maracle, Celia’s Song