When Daniel Coleman went into his office in McMaster University on a beautiful April morning in 2006 he was startled to see over thirty police vehicles parked on campus, and soon discovered that the campus was providing lodging for the officers who had raided the site of an Indigenous land dispute near the town of Caledonia. This discovery changed how Coleman thought about Indigenous issues, which he'd long supported, bringing home that there is no part of life in Canada where you are outside of the broken relationship between the nation of Canada and the Indigenous nations who have lived here since time immemorial. This began Coleman's journey, working closely with Indigenous scholars, to understand more fully that relationship and to find a way to repair not only it, but our relationship with the land we call home. In Grandfather of the Treaties Coleman introduces the founding Wampum covenants that the earliest European settlers made with the Haudenosaunee nation and shows how returning to these covenants, and the ways they were made, could heal our society. (From Wolsak and Wynn)

Daniel Coleman is a writer and professor based in the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Aanishinaabe in what is called Hamilton. He teaches English at McMaster University and studies Canadian literature, Indigeneity, diaspora and whiteness. His book Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place was shortlisted for the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize.