Drew Hayden Taylor Books in Order

Two plays explore Indigenous identity and education: a teenager encounters people from his community’s past and future, while spirits confront a government minister. Both question how young people can preserve culture while shaping what comes next.

After a failed church fundraiser leaves her with 143 cases of beer, teetotal Martha decides to sell it illegally. Her constable son’s objections and her children’s romantic complications turn the scheme into a family crisis.

Anne has spent thirty-five years longing for the daughter removed from her by child welfare workers. A Christmas reunion finally brings them together, but both women must face the gap between their hopes and the lives they actually lived.

In articles, essays and columns, Taylor examines contemporary Indigenous life in Canada with humour and a personal perspective. His observations move through cultural assumptions, everyday contradictions and the difficult encounters that shape relations between communities.

Taylor’s stories explore encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, challenging assumptions on both sides. Moving between humour, tenderness and tragedy, the collection examines how stereotypes obscure the complicated lives and motives of the people they describe.

Adopted into a white family, Grace is asked by her birth sister to return to their reserve for their mother’s funeral. Facing old wounds, she struggles to acknowledge the family and culture from which she was separated.

Taylor returns with stories and articles about Indigenous life, cultural identity and the arts. From experiences in Indigenous communities to films, books and theatre, his humorous observations examine the contradictions of navigating different cultural worlds.

Three generations of men travelling the powwow circuit leave women to raise the children of their brief encounters. This farce examines the family conflicts that follow, exposing contradictions in ideas of heritage, responsibility and personal identity.

An Indigenous writer and his Jewish partner host a dinner party for friends with sharply different politics and lifestyles. As the evening unravels, arguments over culture and identity expose the limits of everyone’s carefully cultivated convictions.

Two plays explore young people finding identity across cultures. A boy stages a vision quest in his treehouse, while a quiet girl’s extraordinary drawings leave a lasting mark on friends struggling to understand her life.

In a third collection of stories and articles, Taylor reflects on contemporary Indigenous life through humour and personal experience. Everyday incidents become occasions to examine identity, cultural expectations and the assumptions people make about one another.

Marianne brings her reluctant mother Martha to an Elders conference, where academic theories about Indigenous courtship collide with lived experience. Romantic complications and competing personalities expose how institutional assumptions keep people trapped inside cultural stereotypes.

Taylor concludes his series of humorous observations with reflections on same-sex marriage, SARS, travel and everyday life. Moving between public controversies and personal anecdotes, he considers the unexpected situations encountered by a widely travelling Ojibway writer.

Pregnant Janice, also known as Grace, must decide where she belongs after reconnecting with her Ojibway birth family. Her adoptive parents and her child’s father offer competing futures, forcing her to reconsider the meaning of home.

Jason is preparing to return to his reserve when an unknown half-brother arrives asking him to donate a kidney. Their shared father abandoned Jason as an infant, leaving both men questioning loyalty, responsibility and the families they thought they knew.

Teenager Tiffany resents the mysterious lodger renting her room on the Otter Lake reserve. Unaware that he is a vampire returning home after centuries abroad, she flees family troubles and encounters him in the midnight woods.

German developers offer an Ojibway community a lucrative theme park built around European fantasies of Indigenous life. As residents debate the proposal, the promise of prosperity exposes divisions over culture, identity and who controls their representation.

A handsome stranger rides into Otter Lake and wins the attention of its chief, Maggie. Her suspicious teenage son teams up with his uncle to drive him away, drawing the community into an increasingly magical disturbance.

Taylor draws on travels around the world in humorous essays about Indigenous life and cross-cultural encounters. Organized around four directions, these reflections explore identity, community and the misunderstandings that arise when familiar assumptions meet unfamiliar traditions.

Six stereotyped Indigenous characters discover a dead white writer in a locked room. Realizing they resent the lives written for them, they try to reinvent themselves, only to find escaping someone else’s expectations is harder than it appears.

A Cree woman living on the streets recognizes a bishop she believes abused her at residential school. Following him into his office, she demands acknowledgement, forcing a confrontation over memory, responsibility and the possibility of healing.

A struggling blues band arrives to play a benefit for a First Nation community in conflict with authorities. When every other act cancels, the musicians are trapped behind barricades with internal disputes and an unexpected former girlfriend.

Cecil and Evie celebrate thirty-five years of marriage with their first overseas trip, to a Mexican resort. As they adjust to unfamiliar surroundings and befriend a housekeeper, Cecil’s unexplained worries cast a shadow over their holiday.

Nine science-fiction stories place Indigenous characters and histories at the centre of alien encounters, artificial intelligence and time travel. Familiar speculative situations expose new questions about colonization, cultural survival and connections between generations.

Bobby plans to recover his grandfather’s stolen medicine pouch by taking Canada’s first prime minister’s bones hostage. Joined by a friend and an opinionated stranger, his journey becomes an argument over colonial history, justice and reconciliation.

A quiet girl’s astonishing drawing of a horse wins a childhood art contest on the Otter Lake reserve. The reactions it provokes shape four friends’ lives, leaving them to carry its mysterious influence into adulthood.

Arthur Copper begins restoring wild rice to lakes in his home territory, angering non-Indigenous cottage owners. His conflict with Maureen Poole brings competing understandings of land, community and responsibility into sharp and sometimes comic focus.

Indigenous artists, activists, writers, elders and young people imagine possible futures in this edited collection. Essays draw on traditional knowledge and lived experience to explore language renewal, cultural resilience, advocacy and the worlds future generations might inherit.

A professor, a fading hockey player, a detective and a celebrated plane-crash survivor become linked by a series of disturbing deaths. As their separate lives converge, an increasingly menacing presence appears to be hunting them all.

Prospective buyers compete for a house in an overheated market, each convinced they deserve it most. When a police incident traps them inside, their rival claims ignite arguments about discrimination, colonization and middle-class aspirations.

An Indigenous couple reaches an isolated cottage after their car plunges through an ice road. Rescued by the cottage owners, they appear fortunate to survive, until questions about the accident expose hidden histories and conflicting intentions.