Ruby Slipperjack, known also as Ruby Slipperjack-Farrell (born 1952) is an Ojibwe writer and painter. Her work discusses traditional religious and social customs of the Ojibwe in northern Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, as well as the incursion of modernity on their culture.

Background

Ruby Slipperjack-Farrell is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Dr. Slipperjack-Farrell spent her formative years on her father's trap line on Whitewater Lake. Her family later moved to a community along the railway mainline. She went to residential school for several years, finished high-school in Thunder Bay. After graduating from high school Dr. Slipperjack-Farrell successfully completed a B.A. (History) in 1988; a B.Ed in 1989; and a Master of Education in 1993. In 2005 she completed a Doctoral program at the University of Western Ontario.

Dr. Slipperjack-Farrell has retained much of the traditional religion and heritage of her people, all of which inform her writing. Her first novel, Honour the Sun, about a young girl growing up in a tiny Ojibwa community in northern Ontario, earned rave reviews and is widely used schools. Dr. Slipperjack-Farrell is also an accomplished visual artist and a certified First Nations hunter. Her work discusses traditional religious and social customs of the Ojibwe in northern Ontario, as well as the incursion of modernity on their culture.