Co-authors Andrew Stobo Sniderman (JD 2014) and Professor Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii)
Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) and co-author Andrew Stobo Sniderman have received another accolade for their 2022 co-authored book.
Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation has been awarded the 2023 High Plains Book Award in the Indigenous Writer category. Sanderson is a Professor, Prichard Wilson Chair in Law & Public Policy and decanal adviser on Indigenous issues at U of T's Faculty of Law.
The awards, established in 2006 by the Billings Public Library in Yellowstone County, Montana, recognizes regional authors or literary works that examine and reflect life on the High Plains, which includes the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
The narrative non-fiction Valley of the Birdtail tells the story of two communities in Manitoba “divided by a valley, a river and 150 years of racism.
“What my work has been trying to do over the years is to think about how Indigenous and settler people can live side by side in a condition of equality,” Sanderson told U of T News last year when the book was published.
Writer Stobo Sniderman, an alumnus of the Juris Doctor program U of T’s Faculty of Law, laid the groundwork for the book during his studies at U of T. After his first year of law school, he worked as a reporter for Maclean's magazine and wrote about the communities of Waywayseecappo and Rossburn.
Valley of the Birdtail has garnered numerous accolades, including the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and an honourable mention from the Canadian Law and Society Association’s W. Wesley Pue Book Prize. The book was also shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust of Canada Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
It is currently shortlisted for two awards from the Quebec Writers’ Federation, with the winners to be announced on November 13.
Read more about the High Plains Book Award winners at CBC News
