When the Tents Fell: Racism, denial, and the history that still shapes us

Description

Award-winning crime journalist Lisa Joy has won three awards for her coverage of Indigenous issues, including SWNA First Place for Best First Nations Coverage.

In the summer of 1963, Allan Thomas, a young Cree man from Saulteaux reserve, was killed after a group of white men tore through an Indigenous camp outside Glaslyn, Saskatchewan. Nine men were charged. Three went to trial. None were convicted. The official record closed in 1966, but the story never closed for the people who lived it.

When the Tents Fell is a reconstruction of what happened that night and what was allowed to disappear in the decades that followed. Drawing on surviving court files, archival exhibits, and early reporting, this book traces how a community carried the truth when institutions refused to. It examines the systems that failed Allan Thomas, the silences that protected those responsible, and the persistence of the families who refused to let his story be erased.

This is not a story about a single night. It is a story about the Prairies, about racism, and resilience, and about the long fight to name what happened when the tents fell.