Another Story Bookshop and the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto present the launch of On Wholeness: Anishinaabe Pathways to Embodiment and Collective Liberation (House of Anansi) by Quill Christie-Peters, with special guests Al Hunter and Jana Rae-Yerxa.
Doors open at 5:45pm and event will begin at 6pm.
Dinner will be provided. Children are welcome and art supplies will be supplied. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Through reflections on childbirth, parenting, creative practice, and expansive responsibility as pathways to wholeness, Anishinaabe visual artist Quill Christie-Peters explores how reconnecting with the body can be an act of resistance and healing. She shows that wholeness-despite pain and displacement-is not just possible but essential for liberation, not only for Indigenous people but for all of us.
In poetic and raw storytelling, Quill shares her own experiences of gendered violence and her father's survival of residential school, revealing how colonialism disconnects us from ourselves. Yet, through an Anishinaabe lens, the body is more than just flesh-it extends to ancestors, homelands, spirit relations, and animal kin.
This fierce and enlightening book reimagines the way we understand settler colonialism-through the body itself. On Wholeness takes us on a journey that begins before birth, in a realm where ancestors and spirits swirl like smoke in the great beyond.
QUILL CHRISTIE-PETERS is an Anishinaabe educator and self-taught visual artist from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation located in Treaty 3 territory. She is the creator and director of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a master's degree in Indigenous governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love. She has spoken at Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and California College of the Arts, and her written work can be found in GUTS magazine and Canadian Art. She is also a mother, beadwork artist, and traditional tattoo practitioner following the protocols of her community. All of her work can be found at @raunchykwe.
Al Hunter is Anishinaabe from Manitou Rapids, Rainy River First Nation in Treaty 3 territory. He is a proud member of the caribou clan who are responsible for peacemaking, conflict resolution and preserving the creative and artistic traditions of the Anishinaabeg. Al is the author of 3 books of poetry published by Kegedonce Press.
Jana-Rae Yerxa is Anishinaabe from Couchiching, First Nation in Treaty #3 Territory. She is a manoomin harvester, advocate, educator, writer, and poet whose work is grounded in Indigenous feminisms. Jana-Rae is faculty and curriculum developer in Anishinaabe Gikendaasowin at Seven Generations Education Institute and a doctoral student at Royal Roads University.
Published by House of Anansi Press
Funding for this event comes from the Technoscience Research Unit, the Canada Research Chair in Science and Technology Studies and Environmental Data Justice, and the Acceleration Consortium. In addition, we thank Another Story Bookshop, House of Anansi and the Indigenous Literatures Lab for their support.