Anahareo (1906-1985) was a Mohawk writer, environmentalist, and activist. She was also the wife of Grey Owl, aka Archie Belaney, the internationally celebrated writer and speaker who claimed to be of Scottish and Apache descent, but whose true ancestry as a white Englishman only became known after his death.

Devil in Deerskins is Anahareo’s autobiography up to and including her marriage to Grey Owl. In vivid prose she captures their extensive travels through the bush and their work towards environmental and wildlife protection. Here we see the daily life of an extraordinary Mohawk woman whose independence, intellect and moral conviction had direct influence on Grey Owl’s conversion from trapper to conservationist. Though first published in 1972, Devil in Deerskins’s observations on indigeneity, culture, and land speak directly to contemporary audiences.

Devil in Deerskins is the first book in the First Voices, First Texts series. This new edition includes forewords by Anahareo’s daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell, an afterword by Sophie McCall, and reintroduces readers to a very important but largely forgotten text by one of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal writers.

Anahareo (1906-1985) was born Gertrude Bernard in Mattawa, Ontario. For her work in conservation she was admitted into the Order of Nature of the Paris-based International League of Animal Rights in 1979 and received the Order of Canada in 1983.

Anahareo's profile page

Sophie McCall is an associate professor in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches Indigenous literatures and contemporary Canadian literature. Her most recent publication, with co-editor, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, is The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation (2015).

Sophie McCall's profile page

• Winner, Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Award

“The new edition is indeed impressive: the quality of the production, including everything from paper stock to design is outstanding. It is a book that simply feels good to hold.”

The Canadian Journal of Native Studies

"Devil in Deerskins was first published in 1972, and this new version, which includes forewords by Anahareo's daughters and a lengthy afterword which gives us the historical context for her life, is the first book in a new series called First Voices, First Texts. An auspicious beginning."

Geist