What the Eagle Sees by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger is a deeply fantastic book for both middle school and young adult readers, and even for adults looking to learn and understand.

This book offers up a brilliant explanation of many of the ways Indigenous people in North America have been impacted by colonization since it began. I think one of the best things about this book is that not only does it cover atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples (which must be remembered to prevent them being repeated), but it also covers many of the ways that Indigenous people have fought back against colonization, adapted to newcomers, and more. I think it's so important to have that model of Indigenous resistance since there is still so much fighting to be done, just as it is important for us to acknowledge that Indigenous people have grown and adapted and changed since colonization began, just as every other society has changed in that time--no more myths of all of them being gone. It's also great to see the ways in which preparations are being made for the future, whether that looks like legal action being taken, traditional ceremonies thriving, languages being revived, or the knowledge of elders being recorded.

It's also wonderful to see the ways the anthropology and archaeology, traditionally fields heavily occupied by colonizers, being reclaimed by Indigenous people studying their own communities, discovering their own histories, and making their indigeneity and academia merge into something powerful and decolonial.

I am thrilled to have read this book, and I highly recommend it. It's the kind of book I could recommend to anyone middle grade and up, whether they are Indigenous, white, or a POC.

Non fiction texts are some of the best ways in which we learn about people, places and things. We can learn about history or animals or sports through these important texts. However, these books need to be vetted to ensure the information they provide is accurate and appropriate. I wouldn’t want to read about baseball from a biologist who has never picked up a baseball, likewise I would hesitate to base my understanding of Indigenous history on books written by settlers.

What the Eagle Sees by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger aims to educate youth about the history of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island. It is a critical text for classrooms as it provides us with the history of a long suffering people through their own lens. It is an Own Voices text that travels back 10,000 years to the beginning of Turtle Island and journeys to the present, providing us with a more complete picture of the problematic colonization of Indigenous people and how they resisted that persecution.

For Canadian educators and parents, it’s important to note that although many of the items in this books seem to focus on people who live south of the border, historically there was no Canada, United States or Mexico. All Indigenous people lived and continue to live on Turtle Island which has no borders as we know them today. Different Nations occupied various areas on Turtle Island but the Nations crossed what we use as our boarders now. There are many examples of how both settlers in Canada and the United States aimed to assimilate Indigenous people and how the different nations fought with all of their might against that assimilation.

What the Eagle Sees is an inspiring book especially for Indigenous children as it explains with pride the strength, resilience and resistance of their ancestors. It also provides a critical look for settlers about how our ancestors took these lands from the people who were already here and continue to perpetuate the generational trauma Indigenous people face. I would strongly recommend this book for every classroom studying life in early Canada. While the Ontario curriculum is beginning to open the doors to learning about Indigenous life in Upper Canada there are still significant gaps that need to be closed. Honest texts by the people who have lived the experiences we are trying to understand are one way we can begin to close those gaps

I truly appreciated this book. I highlighted chunks of text and made notes to refer back to for when I wrote this review. Unfortunately, one week later, when I went to use all that, I couldn't open the ebook. Apparently there was 'no valid license’ for it. I can download another copy to reread, but I don't have time.

The history of indigenous peoples isn't comfortable reading. This book begins with a preamble explaining the story of the eagle and of the old North Trail. The trail spans the North American continent from north to what is now the Yukon, south to Mexico. Indigenous peoples used it for millennium prior to first contact with europeans. What the Eagle Sees spans Indigenous history from their victory over the Vikings, to how people manage to survive and thrive today. I appreciated the many photographs, and inserts of additional information.

It’s not as in depth as Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian, but it’s a brilliant introduction for readers unaware of indigenous relationships with settlers.

This is an important read for everyone eleven years and older. It should be mandatory reading for all educators. It goes without saying that it provides an important mirror for indigenous children, and a window for the rest of us. I plan to now go and read the authors’ first book, Turtle Island: The Story of North America's First People.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. WOW, what a book. This book is about tribes and Native Americans that were here before the Europeans arrived. Lots of pictures and great information. Excellent for readers of all ages.

The opening chapter of What the Eagle Saw notes that eagle feathers are “part light and part dark,” just like the last 500 years or so have been for the indigenous people of the Americas, as they have survived slavery, deadly diseases, loss of land, forced assimilation, and more. Published by a Canadian press, this book provides a fuller context for the history of Indigenous people across the continent. The final chapter ends the book on a hopeful, resilient note, celebrating survival and efforts to reclaim traditions, languages, music, and place names.

The beautiful book design seamlessly incorporates visual elements like drawings, maps, and paintings, photographs. Pull out sections go into more detail about specific objects, technology, artifacts, traditional stories, and famous figures, while haunting “imagine” sections invite readers to reflect on moments in history – what it would be like to watch most of your village die from an unknown disease or fleeing your home, leaving everything behind. Throughout, thoughtful questions prompt discussion – if aliens arrived on Earth and you had to speak for humanity, what would you say? How would you communicate?

Highly recommended resource for expanding Indigenous history beyond a sidebar in a history textbook.

This book covered a surprising amount for being so few pages. Multiple tribes and centuries of histories are succinctly summarized with vivid language and pertinent images.

I greatly enjoyed reading this highly educational book and recommend it to readers of all ages.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley.

4.5 stars that I'm rounding up to 5 because I think it's a very important book that we should all read. It's more of a history book than a story, but much of it is written as if an elder were relating the story (at least that's what I was hearing in my head). This is the story of the indigenous people of North America (Canada, US, and Mexico) written by Eldon Yellowhorn, a member of the Piikani Nation, and also an archaeologist. I think this would be a very appropriate book for a Middle School library, but older Elementary School students would likely find value in it as well. The history is not complete, nor is it necessarily in chronological order. Rather, he divides the book into sections having to do with the early visitors (Vikings), Slavery, the Crumbling of old nations, invaders, New ways, the major loss of land, assimilation, and then the survival and restoration of some of these nations and how understanding the past will lead to a better future. I know the US has a terrible record of how we have treated the Indigenous people, but I didn't realize Canada and Mexico were also guilty of similar things. In fact, some of what's described here was quite brutal. But the author shares hope for the future by describing some of what Canada has done to try to make reparations (some helpful, some not so helpful), none of which I was aware of. This book is very well laid out with very helpful illustrations and I think it would be great as the basis for a Social Studies unit in middle school social studies.

Thanks to NetGalley, Eldon Yellowhorn, and Annick Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The way history is taught, at least in the United States, is that there was nothing before the Europeans came to the New World. As though the continents were empty of all human life, but that was not the case.

This book, written by a First Nations member, anthropologist. This is a story told from the other side, not from the invaders point of view, but from the Ingenious people. Very thoughtfully written.

The author explains that White people worked under something called "the doctrine of discovery" the false idea that land was vacant until a white man had seen it. This would explain how Lewis and Clark discovered land that was empty.

This is a separate book from his first one Turtle Island, but it is also a companion piece, going on beyond the invasion of the Europeans, which was where Turtle Island left off.

Thoughtful, well written, and with little stabs of insight throughout. This is a great book to flip the perspective, and show what was happening to the indigenous students with the residency school.s

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This is an illustrated non-fiction book that tells the story of Indigenous and all over the Americas. It gives us a brief overview of the trials and tribulations that they have gone through;being removed from their lands, having their traditions outlawed, being victims of genocide.
The story of the indigenous people of the Americas is a tragic one, yet they resisted and are still here today.
This book makes you think of the privilege afforded to those of us living in these places that used to belong to them. We should be thanking them every single day, because our prosperity is on their backs.

What the Eagle Sees is a fantastic book about what the Indigenous people did when invaders arrived in their homeland.

This was a beautiful, and haunting book showing the atrocities of the past as well as the resiliency of the indigenous people.

Being a Canadian this was incredibly educational and eye opening to what occurred in our past. Dark and light somehow finding a way to coexist in a country divided by a violent history.