Facilitating a deeper understanding of Indigenous Peoples, promoting the preservation of the natural world, and advancing reconciliation by producing transformative learning resources are the three pillars of Strong Nations.

They ingratiated themselves in the community by visiting schools, attending Indigenous education conferences, and author panels—any event where they could connect with educators, organizations, or members of the public. That’s how Strong Nations built up their reputation. “And that’s how we continue to operate now,” Topher Beaton says.

Topher Beaton has been Strong Nations’ Manager of Publishing for approximately three years. He oversees all of their book projects and handles most of the communication between their many authors and illustrators. Beaton is involved with every publishing venture made by Strong Nations in addition to managing which grants they apply to.

The Strong Stories series was one of Strong Nations’ first ventures into publishing. The collection explores Indigenous communities across Canada and the United States, expounding on culture through both a historical and contemporary lens. The idea developed internally first. Authors and illustrators were brought onto the project afterward. Many of their early series followed this model.

“We’re sort of in the reverse of that at the moment … We have a lot of authors coming to us with projects,” Beaton says.

That variety is one of the highlights of Strong Nations; adding something new to their shelves is simply their regular practice. Naturally, each author comes with their own needs, and each project has its own timeline.

Many of the writers that Strong Nations has worked with are educators. Their book proposals may be intended to fill the gaps they’ve noticed in their own classrooms. Other times, it will be the Strong Nations team who identifies an area that could be expanded on. Maybe, as Beaton suggested to me, a project has close ties to social-emotional learning. Usually, authors are eager to bridge toward related subjects.

“Every author has a different background, different perspective, and a different priority for what they want to accomplish with their projects,” Beaton says. While Strong Nations stays on the lookout for what more they could do, they also try not to lose sight of what’s right in front of them.

It would be counterproductive to ask their authors to fit into a mould.

Strong Nations wants people to share their own stories. That’s why most of their publishing ventures have been author-led in recent years. Regardless, they’re always open to new opportunities and collaborations.

“A lot of our partnerships are just about sharing the same values, so some of that for Strong Nations is uplifting Indigenous voices, celebrating environmental stewardship, and encouraging early literacy,” Beaton says.

An important contribution to literacy communities is the inclusion of “decodable” books. According to Surrey Schools One, decodable books encourage grapheme-phoneme correspondence and therefore a more solid foundation in orthographic knowledge. In other words, early readers “decode” new words by sounding them out—developing their independent reading skills in the process.

These resources are sequential in nature, generally being released in series with each installment advancing both word count and sentence structure complexity. The Strong Nations team began playing with the idea of creating their own series, and partnered with Dyslexia Canada to develop the Cedar School Decodable series.

Strong Nations is also a member of The Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, The Association of Canadian Publishers, and The Canadian Children’s Book Centre. It’s not a competitive sphere, like one might suspect. They’re all working towards the same goals.

Strong Nations is Indigenous owned and operated, and their values are also commitments. Uplifting Indigenous voices isn’t just a nice idea—it’s evident in all the work they produce.

Part of making Indigenous content accessible is assisting educators in making sure their resources are authentic. Beaton continuously specifies, “Indigenous content,” meaning the full body, not just the name of titles and stories within, is genuinely Indigenous.

Each of Strong Nations’ materials across their online bookstore is marked with a corresponding Authenticity Label. Beaton calls this merely “due diligence,” noting a long history of non-Indigenous authors writing about Indigenous stories. The source can change the value of the content, which is why Strong Nations does their best to be up-front about their verification.

Still, Beaton notes that despite Strong Nations’ best efforts, they aren’t omniscient. Their Authenticity Labels are a guide. What qualifies as an authentic Indigenous work can be different for each person or purpose.

We, as readers, still need to be doing our own research too.

“We have a strong team with a lot of different experiences and backgrounds,” Beaton says. “So when we don’t know a question, we’re able to really go between each other.” That diversity comes in hand when developing new projects. 

With the Cedar School Decodables series (written by Emma Metallic and illustrated by Natalie Laurin), incorporating Indigenous characters and stories was a fun challenge “because you have such limited words that you can use,” Beaton explains. “We’re working on a teacher’s guide to expand on some of the Indigenous content and the connections for educators to … make sure that they can make those connections within their classrooms.”

Within the team, ensuring accuracy comes from each other. Strong Nations does their own research, too, but culturally, they trust their authors and illustrators. There is no all-knowing encyclopedia.

 Occasionally, they’ll ask their partners to connect with an Elder or Knowledge Keeper in order to be sure—the exact definition of either differs between Indigenous cultures and communities, but the common denominator tends to be sustaining traditions and providing guidance for their community members. Ultimately, it comes down to faith in the people they’re working with.

To accompany the Cedar School Decodables  series, Strong Nations is releasing Decodable Reading Strategies posters and Words of Encouragement stickers. Both are adorned with Natalie Laurin’s illustrations and use language consistent with the series.

“It’s hard as a publisher, because reading is our focus,” Beaton says, “but we also know there’s other ways to learn.”

Strong Nations has other posters and stickers available on their website, in addition to games and activities to support experiential learning. They offer lesson plans as free downloadable resources.

In order to make pairing resources and finding relevant materials as easy as possible, they offer themed bundles . These bundles cover a diverse set of topics (including Outdoor Learning Resources, Numeracy, Emotions & Feelings) and age groups. Some of their Series Bundles merely collect trilogies, while other types of Bundles include additional materials like flash cards, finger puppets, or candles.

Educators and schools make up a significant portion of Strong Nations’ customer base. They’re the target demographic for Strong Nations bundles, but the bundles are also available for anyone interested in learning. Their Content Coordinator has put together a number of custom Bundles on request, pulling the amount of Strong Nations Bundles available close to 300.

 A substantial amount of their Bundles are aimed at younger age categories. Early childhood is one of the most formative periods of life, which is why early literacy is one of Strong Nations’ priorities. “We think it’s so essential to have a solid foundation of reading skills,” Beaton says. The earlier that tools are introduced, the easier and more natural they become to use later in life.

With a lot of the material produced by Strong Nations being scholastic, extending that facet beyond bookselling or publishing was only natural.

Virtually, Strong Nations’ resources are able to reach educators across Canada. Their frequent collaborators The Outdoor Learning School & Store and Take Me Outside are working together to offer six virtual workshops free-of-charge starting September 23, 2025.

The first, titled, “Learning from the Land: Indigenous Teachings & Resources,” is in part led by Sarah-Anne Tourond. She is currently publishing her All That You Are series with Strong Nations. Leah Marie Dorion and Bill Helin, who are Strong Nations alumni, are also facilitating workshops.

Their partners, Outdoor Learning School & Store and Take Me Outside, feature Strong Nations’ authors and illustrators, uplifting Indigenous voices by having them participate in their events and workshops. For Strong Nations, they’re able to utilize the strong connections they have with their own authors. They look for ways to make their relationships mutually beneficial.

“We attend a lot of events. We’re always networking,” Beaton says. “That’s the foundation of Strong Nations, to an extent … It was started as a mom and pop shop and they really made their name and expanded by getting out there.”

There’s not really a story behind how Strong Nations discovered themselves. From the beginning, they knew what they wanted to accomplish, and they were determined to do it. “I wanted to share, too, one of our bigger commitments … is our commitment to positivity,” Beaton says.

A lot of Canadians weren’t introduced to Indigenous content until later in life. Introducing Indigenous content to early-year curriculums can be a bit of a balancing act between what topics to cover, how to integrate them, and how to remain authentic to a younger audience. Historical content will always have value, but Strong Nations also works to move beyond those difficult stories.

“We’re very open and willing to do some of the harder stories whenever there’s opportunity,” Beaton says. In those cases, they do their best to follow it up with something lighter—another piece of the balancing act.

“People forget that Indigenous people are still here and we’re still creating stories.”

Strong Nations will be publishing their first children’s chapter book this year, Charlie the Matachewan Moose, written by Shawna Lee Corbould. Lost in a storm, a young moose calf is taken in by a couple who offer him shelter and give him his name. Eventually, he must return to the forest and discover what it means to be a moose.

In her debut novel, Corbould explores identity and reconnecting with ancestral roots. More information will be available on Strong Nations’ website soon.

“We do have a newsletter,” Beaton mentions. “It’s very frequent and we often have different discount codes and deals for people … We try to cover a lot of different content and promote different events and cultural days, as well.”

It’s heartening to know an organization has committed itself to joy, wellness, environmental stewardship, and the vitality of Indigenous voices. The might of Strong Nations and their climbing number of authors and projects is impressive, but there are still so many stories to be heard. Not all of the books are written yet.

“No,” Beaton responds. “They’re absolutely not.”