Crazywater

Brian Maracle, a Mohawk journalist who once hosted CBC's Our Native Land, gathers seventy-five Indigenous voices from across Turtle Island in this unflinching look at alcohol, trauma and recovery. The accounts come out of more than 200 interviews, and they are told by the people who lived them rather than filtered through a government report or an academic study. The backdrop is the ongoing damage of residential schools, systemic racism, land theft and cultural erasure, which still ripple through Indigenous communities today. Maracle does not treat that history as a footnote. The speakers describe how deep the pain runs, and why drinking took hold in so many places. But the book refuses to settle for a story of addiction alone. Alongside the hurt, the interviews trace a revival of language, culture and spiritual practice that is taking root in communities across the country. In doing so, they push back against the degrading stereotypes that so often shape public talk about Indigenous people. With Indigenous health, mental wellness and sovereignty in the national conversation, Crazywater offers a humane and clear-eyed contribution. It names the costs of colonization honestly, and it insists that healing is possible, one story at a time.