Moon Of The Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice
Description:
Publisher's Description (ECW Press):
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
Author Biography (Strong Nations):
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in October 2018 and became a National Bestseller. Reporting for CBC News for the bulk of his career, in 2014 he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling and from 2018 to 2020 he hosted Up North, CBC Radio’s afternoon show for northern Ontario.
Resource type: Book (Fiction)
Age recommendation: Grades 10-12, post secondary
Keywords: Speculative Fiction, Dystopian, First Nation Communities Read, post-apocalyptic, Anishinaabeg, survival, intercultural, traditional knowledges, living on the land, importance of the land, Anishinaabe tradition, allegory, resilience, community, Anishinaabe language, science fiction, Ojibwe, old ways, family, winter, Elder
Year of publication: 2018
Publisher information: ECW Press
Teaching & Learning Ideas
Our team collaborated with new teachers, alumni of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program, to create teaching and learning plans for texts in this website. With audiences ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Post-Secondary, lesson plans across this resource address a wide range of school subject areas, inclusive approaches, and Indigenous education topics, such as the revitalization of Indigenous languages. As this website was designed with Undergraduate Programs in Education instructors, as well as teachers in mind, connections to UPE courses have been flagged on each lesson plan. These lessons are intended as a starting place for educators, to help you envision ways in which you might bring Indigenous literatures, as well as ways of knowing, being, and doing, into your teaching contexts. Please adapt, use, and share these lessons in ways that are generative for your teaching practice. We offer our sincere thanks to the dozens of new teachers who gifted us with these creative ideas!
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