Larry Loyie (Oskiniko/Young Man) (1933-2016 Cree) was an award-winning Canadian author and playwright. Larry Loyie was born in Slave Lake, Alberta, where he spent his early years living a traditional Cree life. At the age of nine, he was taken from his family to St. Bernard Mission residential school in Grouard, Alberta.

Larry Loyie is the author of award-winning and unique books dealing with Indigenous traditions, residential school history (both personal and national), health and wellness, and Indigenous life in the fur trade.

Larry first shared his residential school experience in his play Ora Pro Nobis, Pray for Us, directed by his partner and co-author Constance Brissenden, in 1994. First published in 1998, it was republished in a 20th anniversary edition by Indigenous Education Press in partnership with www.goodminds.com.

Larry Loyie continued with As Long as the Rivers Flow, a poignant last summer before residential school, winner of the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction and First Nation Communities Read (published in French as Tant que couleront les rivières). Its sequel, Goodbye Buffalo Bay, a chapter book, tells of the author's life in residential school and moving on to find personal freedom. Other books by Larry Loyie are The Moon Speaks Cree, A Winter Adventure; When the Spirits Dance, A Cree Boy’s Search for the Meaning of War; The Gathering Tree; and Welcome to the Circle.

An award-finalist, Wild Waters, Inside a Voyageur's World, is a unique imagining of life as a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) paddler for the Hudson's Bay Company in 1828 through the eyes of Larry Loyie's four times great-grandfather. Larry Loyie's acclaimed work, Residential Schools, With the Words and Images of Survivors, A National History (co-authors Wayne K. Spear/Constance Brissenden) received the prestigious 2016 Golden Oak Award in Ontario's Forest of Reading program and was a Finalist for the 2015 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction.

In celebration of award-winning Cree author Larry Loyie's life and legacy, Indigenous Education Press with GoodMinds.com has published Young Man, True Stories of a Cree Childhood, a must-have anthology of three of his books reflecting his traditional childhood in an era of change: The Moon Speaks Cree, A Winter Adventure; When the Spirits Dance, A Cree Boy’s Search for the Meaning of War; and Goodbye Buffalo Bay, Life in a Residential School and Moving On. New editions of these individual titles are available with multiple historic photos.

The Larry Loyie and Constance Brissenden research collection will launch at the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre in May 2024.

Tansi! Books by Larry Loyie. This video provides an introduction to the life, themes, and books of author Larry Loyie.