Ruby Slipperjack
Ruby Slipperjack, or Ruby Slipperjack-Farrell, (born 1952) is an Ojibwe writer and painter. Her work discusses traditional religious and social customs of the Ojibwe in northern Ontario, as well as the incursion of modernity on their culture.
Background
Ruby Slipperjack-Farrell is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Slipperjack-Farrell spent her formative years on her father's trap line on Whitewater Lake. Her family later moved to a community along the railway mainline. She went to residential school for several years, finished high-school in Thunder Bay. After graduating from high school Slipperjack-Farrell successfully completed a B.A. (History) in 1988; a B.Ed in 1989; and a Master of Education in 1993. In 2005 she completed a Doctoral program at the University of Western Ontario.
Slipperjack-Farrell has retained much of the traditional religion and heritage of her people, all of which inform her writing. Her first novel, Honour the Sun, about a young girl growing up in a tiny Ojibwa community in northern Ontario, earned rave reviews and is widely used schools. Slipperjack-Farrell is also an accomplished visual artist and a certified First Nations hunter. Her work discusses traditional religious and social customs of the Ojibwe in northern Ontario, as well as the incursion of modernity on their culture.
Bibliography
- Honour the Sun, Pemmican Pub., 1987.
- Silent Words, Fifth House Books, 1992.
- Weesquachak and the Lost Ones, Theytus Books, 1998.
- Little Voice, Coteau Books, 2001.
- Dog Tracks, Fifth House Books, 2008.
References
- Kratzert, M. "Native American Literature: Expanding the Canon", Collection Building Vol. 17, 1, 1998, p. 4
