Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier’s article “‘Singular Plurality’: Settler Colonial Transcendence and Canada’s 2021 Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the Frankfurt Book Fair,” published in the Fall 2023 issue of Book History, uses qualitative data drawn from a survey the authors sent to Indigenous-owned publishers in Canada in the winter of 2022. The authors identified eight such publishers currently working in Canada: Éditions Hannenorak, Eschia Books, the Gabriel Dumont Institute, Inhabit Media, Kegedonce Press, Pemmican Publications, Strong Nations Publishing, and Theytus Books. (Though the Louis Riel Institute was once involved in publishing, it is not clear that they continue to be active in this area, and so the authors did not send a questionnaire to them.) The results of the survey are summarized in the Book History article. The survey can be accessed as a pdf here (in English) and here (in French).
Working with the information gathered from this data and with a wide selection of published materials, the authors drafted a report for the three stakeholders most implicated in the funding and communications issues that presented obstacles to the participation of Indigenous-owned publishers in Guest-of-Honour campaign programs. This report was shared with Heritage Canada, the Canada Council, and Livres Canada Books in September of 2022. The full report repeats information in the Book History article, but the main recommendations for stakeholders can be accessed as a pdf here (in English). (NB: The recommendations refer to the “Big Four” publishers, grouping Simon and Schuster under Penguin Random House. In November of 2022, the sale of Simon and Schuster to Penguin Random House was blocked by a U.S. District Court.)
The Book History article contains many references to the website that was created for Canada’s Guest-of-Honour Campaign, https://canadafbm2021.com/. Since this website will eventually be defunct, this slideshow curates some of the key images in one place. Another important site for the FBM2021 campaign was its Instagram account; since this is not shared publicly without a request to follow, the authors curated a selection of images from the account that can be accessed here.
Cite this article:
Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier, “Survey of Indigenous-Owned Publishers in Canada and Report for Government Stakeholders in Canada’s Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2020/21,” Book History Unbound (2023), https://sharpweb.org/book-history-unbound/2023/mason-pelletier/.