29 21st century First Nations writers

Jordan Abel is a Nisga'a poet who lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Evan Tlesla Adams is an Aboriginal Canadian actor, playwright, and physician. A Coast Salish from the Sliammon First Nation near Powell River, British Columbia, he is best known internationally for his roles in the films of Sherman Alexie, as Thomas Builds-the-Fire in the 1998 film Smoke Signals and Seymour Polatkin in the 2002 film The Business of Fancydancing.

Jo-Ann Archibald, also known as Q’um Q’um Xiiem, is an Indigenous studies scholar from the Sto:lo First Nation in British Columbia, Canada.

Marie Annharte Baker is an Anishnabe poet and author, a cultural critic and activist, and a performance artist/contemporary storyteller. Former surnames are Baker and Funmaker.

James Karl Bartleman, is a Canadian former diplomat and author who served as the 27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 2002 to 2007.

Joane Cardinal-Schubert was an artist of Kainaiwa ancestry. She was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She was an activist for native sovereignty.

Gwaai Edenshaw is a Haida artist and filmmaker from Canada. Along with Helen Haig-Brown, he co-directed Edge of the Knife, the first Haida language feature film.

Naomi Fontaine is a Canadian writer from Quebec, noted as one of the most prominent First Nations writers in contemporary francophone Canadian literature.

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is an Innu poet and actress. Born in Pessamit, Quebec, Fontaine first became noticed in 2012 as part of the Montreal poetry scene. Her first poetry collection, Do Not Enter My Soul in Your Shoes, earned her the 2013 Prize of the Society of Francophone Writers of America; her second, Manifeste Assi, was released in 2014 and debuted at the Étonnants Voyageurs festival. In 2016 she was a guest of honour at the Rimouski Book Fair, alongside Deni Ellis Béchard; the same year, the National Film Board of Canada announced funding for 3 projects as part of the 150th Anniversary of the founding of Canada, including #Legacies150, a photo-essay series Fontaine is contributing to.

Andrew George Jr. is a Canadian chef and writer.

Candice Hopkins is a curator, writer, and researcher who predominantly explores areas of history, art, and indigeneity, and their intersections. Hopkins is co-curator of the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa tomada and recently named senior curator for the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art and on the curatorial team of the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She was a curator for documenta 14. She has held curatorial positions at prestigious institutions including the Walter Phillips Gallery, Western Front Society, the National Gallery of Canada, and The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Robert Houle is a Saulteaux First Nations Canadian artist, curator, critic, and educator. Houle has had an active curatorial and artistic practice since the mid-1970s. He played an important role in bridging the gap between contemporary First Nations artists and the broader Canadian art scene through his writing and involvement in early important high-profile exhibitions such as Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. As an artist, Houle has shown both nationally and internationally. He is predominantly a painter working in the tradition of Abstraction, yet he has also embraced a pop sensibility by incorporating everyday images and text into his works. His work addresses lingering aspects of colonialism and their effects on First Nation peoples. Houle often appropriates historical photographs and texts, repurposing and combining them with Anishnaabe language and traditionally used materials such as porcupine quills within his works.

Liz Howard is a Canadian writer. Her debut poetry collection, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry at the 2015 Governor General's Awards, and winner of the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born citizen of Canada and the Cherokee Nation. He is professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia. He started his studies at University of Northern Colorado and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He began his career at the University of Toronto, where he taught English and worked in association with the Aboriginal Studies Program.

Wabanakwut Kinew, better known as Wab Kinew, is the Leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.

Tracey Lindberg is an award-winning writer, scholar, lawyer and Indigenous Rights activist from the Kelly Lake Cree Nation in British Columbia. She is Cree-Métis and a member of the As'in'i'wa'chi Ni'yaw Nation Rocky Mountain Cree.

Larry Loyie (Oskiniko) was an award-winning Canadian author and playwright of Cree ancestry. He was known for works about his residential school experience as a child.

Lee Maracle, is a Canadian poet and Sto:lo author. She speaks out as a critic of the treatment of Indigenous people by the Canadian state, and she particularly highlights the issues relating to Indigenous women.

Gerald Raymond McMaster, O.C. is a curator, artist, and author and a Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation. McMaster is a professor at OCAD University and is the adjunct curator at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Lindsay Nixon is an Indigenous Canadian writer, who won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for emerging LGBTQ writers in 2019.

Matchewan Noël is a civil servant and award-winning writer of Algonquin descent from the Outaouais region of Quebec.

Alanis Obomsawin, is an American Canadian Abenaki filmmaker, singer, artist and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues.

Sharron Proulx-Turner was a two-spirit Métis writer. She investigated themes of Métis storytelling and was recognized as a mentor to other writers.

Waubgeshig Rice is an Anishinaabe writer and journalist from the Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound, Ontario, in Canada. Rice has been recognized for his work throughout Canada, including an appearance at Wordfest's 2018 Indigenous Voices Showcase in Calgary.

Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.

Gregory Scofield is a Canadian Métis poet, beadwork artist, dramatist and non-fiction writer. He is a graduate of the Gabriel Dumont Institute Native Human Justice Program. His written and performance art draws on Cree story-telling traditions. He has published two instruction books on doing Métis flower-beadwork for the Gabriel Dumont Institute.

Paula Sherman is an Algonquin writer, activist and educator. She is of Omàmìwinini (Algonquin) heritage and a Family Head on Ka-Pishkawandemin, the traditional governing council for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. She is also a professor of Indigenous Studies at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario. Her recent book entitled Dishonour of the Crown: The Ontario Resource Regime in the Valley of the Kiji Sibi chronicles the Ardoch community's struggle to prevent uranium prospecting on their traditional lands and is published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing, Winnipeg, MB. She is also a contributor to Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations, a collection of essays writing by emerging Indigenous activists and academics edited by Mississauga academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

Richard Wagamese was a Canadian author and journalist. An Ojibwe from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in northwestern Ontario, he was best known for his 2012 novel Indian Horse, which won the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature in 2013, was a competing title in the 2013 edition of Canada Reads, and was adapted into a 2017 feature length film, Indian Horse, released after his death.

Alfred Young Man, Ph.D. or Kiyugimah is a Cree artist, writer, educator, and an enrolled member of the Chippewa-Cree tribe located on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, Montana, US. His Montana birth certificate lists him as being 13/16th Cree by blood-quantum, his full sister, Shirley, is listed as 16/16ths. He is a former Department Head (2007–2010) of Indian Fine Arts at the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan and former Chair (1999–2007) of Native American Studies, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge and University of Regina.