Up Ghost River: A Chief’s Journey through the Turbulent Waters of Native History (Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House Canada, 2014) written by Edmund Metatawabin with Alexandra Shimo, was the winning entry of the 2015 Speaker’s Book Award. The Honourable Dave Levac, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, made the announcement during a ceremony at the Ontario Legislature on March 7th, 2016. 

Up Ghost River is Edmund Metatawabin’s memoir of growing up in Fort Albany in northern Ontario. The oldest of 11 children, Metatawabin was born and raised in the valley of the Kistachowan Sipi, re-named in English as the Fort Albany River. His family lived as the Mushkegowuk (Lowlands Cree) had lived for millennia, and for the first seven years of his life Edmund spent his winters on an inland tributary and his summers on the shore of Winipek (James Bay). At eight, he was taken from his family and placed in the St. Anne’s Residential School in Peetabeck (Fort Albany). At school, he was assigned a number and stripped of his Indigenous identity. While there he was also physically, emotionally and sexually abused.  

After leaving school, he turned to alcohol to forget the trauma. He later left behind his wife and family, and fled to Edmonton, where he joined a First Nations support group that helped him come to terms with his addiction and face his PTSD. By listening to an elder's wisdom, he learned how to live an authentic First Nations life within a modern context, thereby restoring what had been taken from him years earlier. After studying and working in Alberta for several years, Edmund returned to Fort Albany to reconnect with the land, and was elected Chief of his community. 

Now a former Chief, he lives in a self-made log house off the reserve boundary at Fort Albany. He devotes himself to righting the wrongs of the past and educating Native youth in traditional knowledge while continuing to be a Cree writer, educator and activist.