John Steckley photo by Emary Johnston

In an agreement finalized last week, Humber College professor, John Steckley will publish a middle-school text, The Invisible Ape, with Five Rivers.

Steckley has been teaching at Humber College in Toronto since 1983, and has also taught Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and at Trent University, and Native Studies and Anthropology at Laurentian University.

He has published 12 books, including Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women’s Stories (1999); (with Bryan Cummins) Full Circle: Canada’s First Nations (2001; second edition 2007), and Aboriginal Policing: A Canadian Perspective (2002); Aboriginal Voices and the Politics of Representation in Canadian Introductory Sociology Textbooks (2003) and De Religione: Telling the 17th Century Jesuit Story in Huron to the Iroquois (2004), Words of the Huron (2007), (with Guy Letts) Elements of Sociology: A Critical Canadian Introduction (2007, second edition 2010), A Huron-English/English-Huron Dictionary (2007), White Lies About the Inuit (2008), and Gabriel Sagard’s Dictionary of Huron (2010), The First French-Huron Dictionary by Father Jean de Brébeuf and his Jesuit Brethren (2010), and Introduction to Physical Anthropology (2011).

He worked as a consultant for CBC’s Canada: A People’s History, and has been interviewed on several radio and television stations.  His area of specialization is Canada’s Aboriginal people, and he is a leading expert in the Huron language and culture. He has a doctorate in Education from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, an M.A. in Anthropology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and a B.A. in Anthropology from York University.  He was adopted into the Wyandot tribe of Kansas in 1999, and was given the name Tehaondechoren (“He splits the country in two”).

The Invisible Ape explores the world of gibbons, their natural habitat and habits, endangered status, and zoo conservancy, accompanied by wonderful photographs and illustrations (black and white for print, full colour for eBook) and personal anecdotes from Steckley’s own professional involvement with the species.

The Invisible Ape is scheduled for release in both trade paperback and eBook in 2013.