Some of the most influential writing by First Nations, Métis and Inuit authors is not fiction at all. It is argument: books, essays, editorials and reports that set out to change how readers understand a policy, a history or a city, and often to change what governments do. Reading argument well is a different skill from reading a novel. You still pay attention to language and structure, but your main questions shift: what exactly is the writer claiming, what evidence supports it, how does the reasoning connect the two, and which sentences report facts while others interpret them? These questions are not a way of doubting Indigenous writers. They are how you take an argument seriously enough to explain why it works, use it in your own writing, and answer people who dismiss it.
Claim, evidence and reasoning
| Part | What it is | Questions to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Claim | The position the writer wants you to accept | Can I state it in one sentence? Is it debatable? |
| Evidence | Facts, statistics, testimony, documents, history, personal experience | Is it specific, relevant and from a credible source? Whose voices are included? |
| Reasoning | The explanation of how the evidence supports the claim | Does the evidence actually prove this, or something smaller? |
| Counterargument | An opposing view the writer acknowledges | Is it stated fairly? Is it answered with evidence? |
| Call to action | What the writer wants readers or institutions to do | Is it specific? Who is responsible for acting? |
Two books to know
Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society (1969). In 1969 the federal government released a policy proposal, known as the White Paper, that would have ended Indian status, dismantled the Indian Act and moved responsibility for First Nations to the provinces. The government presented it as equality. Cardinal, a Cree leader from Sucker Creek First Nation in Alberta who was then president of the Indian Association of Alberta, answered with a book whose title turned Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's slogan, the 'Just Society', against him. His central claim was that the proposal was assimilation presented as equality, and that it would erase treaty rights rather than honour them. The Association's formal response, Citizens Plus (1970), became known as the Red Paper, and the government withdrew the proposal. Cardinal's book is a model of argument that redefines the opponent's key term.
Tanya Talaga, Seven Fallen Feathers (2017). Talaga, an Anishinaabe journalist, investigated the deaths of seven First Nations high school students in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011. Each had left a remote home community to attend high school in the city, because there was no high school at home. The book won the RBC Taylor Prize. Its structure is part of its argument: Talaga tells each student's story with the help of their families, and connects those stories to the longer history of residential schools and treaty promises about education, so the deaths read as the result of a long pattern rather than seven separate accidents. Reading it well means tracking how personal testimony, documents, history and reporting work together.
Separating fact from interpretation
(1) Birch Lake First Nation, a fly-in community invented for this lesson, has no high school.
(2) Each September, its fourteen-year-olds board planes to attend school in a city 500 kilometres away.
(3) Last year, eleven students left; four were home again before December.
(4) A government spokesperson described the situation as "a transportation challenge."
(5) That description is wrong.
(6) Sending children away at fourteen is a choice, and it is time to make a different one.- A fact can be checked. Sentences 1 to 3 could be confirmed with records: whether a school exists, where students go, how many left and returned.
- Reported speech is a fact about what someone said. Sentence 4 is factual if the spokesperson really said it, even though the phrase itself is an interpretation. Keep the two levels apart.
- An interpretation explains or judges. Sentences 5 and 6 are the writer's claim: they reframe a 'transportation challenge' as a choice.
- Interpretation is not a weakness. Arguments need it. The question is whether the facts support it. Here, students leaving at fourteen and a third of them returning within months makes 'transportation' look like an inadequate description.
- Watch for loaded words. Words like 'challenge', 'tragedy', 'crisis' or 'choice' carry a frame. Ask what each frame makes responsible: weather and distance, fate, or decision-makers.
- Distorts or omits evidence that would weaken the claim
- Misrepresents opponents
- Hides who is speaking or why
- Writes openly from a position, such as a community or a profession
- States its evidence and sources
- Can be checked and argued with fairly