Must-Read Books by Indigenous Authors

Mackenzie, a young Cree woman, continues to have dreams that return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite. But when the waking world starts closing in, too, she returns to her rural hometown in Alberta, finding her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. And still, her dreams intensify, ultimately forcing her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community, and the land they call home.

The descendant of Cherokee ancestors who had been forced to walk the Trail of Tears, Wilma Mankiller experienced her own forced removal from the land she grew up on as a child. As she got older and learned more about the injustices her people had faced, she dedicated her life to instilling pride in Native heritage and reclaiming Native rights. She went on to become the first woman Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Alex Naranjo and Marlene Vargas, the owners of the biggest metaphysical shop on the West Coast, empower you to hear your inner voice and design your own powerful rituals in response. Part memoir, part ritual guide, Your Intuition Led You Here is ultimately a path to accessing the healing potential of magic, understanding your power, and putting your intuition into practice.

Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations. This book details his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus rides across the desert about dreams of leaving home and the fear of the same.

Little Big Bully begins with a question asked of a collective and troubled we – how did we come to this? In answer, this book offers personal myth, American and Native American contexts, and allegories driven by women’s resistance to narcissists, stalkers, and harassers. The past for Indigenous people, ecosystem collapse from near-extinction of bison, and the present epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women underlie these poems. Here, survivors shout back at useless cautionary tales with their own courage and visions of future worlds made well.

Lewis “Shoe” Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he’s not used to is white people being nice to him — people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family’s poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan’s side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis’s home — will he still be his friend?

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Intimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Her poems move from rhythmic discussions of the Kardashians, sugar daddies, and Twilight to exquisite renderings of the natural world and precise emotions. Along the way, Tibble scrutinizes perception and how she as a Māori woman fits into trends, stereotypes, and popular culture.

From acclaimed Native American storyteller Joseph Bruchac comes a collection of seven lively plays for children to perform, each one adapted from a different traditional Native tale. Filled with heroes and tricksters, comedy and drama, these entertaining plays are a wonderful way to bring Native cultures to life for young people. Each play has multiple parts that can be adjusted to suit the size of a particular group and includes simple, informative suggestions for props, scenery, and costumes that children can help to create. Introductory notes and beautiful, detailed illustrations add to young readers’ understanding of the seven Native nations whose traditions have inspired the plays.

Drawing inspiration from Native American philosophy and tradition, The Warrior Within outlines a new model for personal power in the face of overwhelming chaos. A true warrior is not the toughest or bravest person in the room. A true warrior is committed to self-mastery, knows how to navigate change and disruption, transforms setbacks into opportunities for achievement, refuses to quit, and most importantly, always fights for something bigger than the self. With a vast array of stories and examples, from vision quests to treacherous hikes to veterans and service providers at the front lines, Vanas shows how to apply these principles to transform how you show up both for yourself and those around you.

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana’s vast emptiness.

In this chapter book biography by award-winning author Christine Day, readers learn about the amazing life of Maria Tallchief. Maria Tallchief loved to dance, but was told that she might need to change her Osage name to one that sounded more Russian to make it as a professional ballerina. She refused, and worked hard at dancing her best, becoming America’s first prima ballerina, and inspiring many famous American ballets that were created for her.

An Indigenous legend about how four extraordinary individuals of dual male and female spirit, or Mahu, brought healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii. With illuminating words and stunning illustrations by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, and Daniel Sousa, this children’s book is a monument to an Indigenous Hawaiian legend and a classic in the making.

Dog Flowers is an arresting, photo-lingual memoir that masterfully weaves together images and text to examine mothers and mothering, sisters and caretaking, and colonized bodies. Exploring loss and inheritance, beauty and balance, Danielle Geller pays homage to our pasts, traditions, and heritage, to the families we are given and the families we choose.

In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on a grand scale. The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.

Toni Jensen grew up around guns.  And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten. In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America.

Celebrate the lives, stories, and contributions of Indigenous artists, activists, scientists, athletes, and other changemakers in this beautifully illustrated collection. From luminaries of the past, like nineteenth-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis—the first Black and Native American female artist to achieve international fame — to contemporary figures like linguist jessie little doe baird, who revived the Wampanoag language, Notable Native People highlights the vital impact Indigenous dreamers and leaders have made on the world.

Zitkála-Šá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservation’s children a free education. The catch: They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Combining Zitkála-Šá’s childhood memories, her short stories, and her poetry, American Indian Stories is the origin story of an activist in the making, a remarkable woman whose extraordinary career deserves wider recognition.

Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

At four years old, Ria Thundercloud was brought into the powwow circle, ready to dance in the special jingle dress her mother made for her. As she grew up, she danced with her brothers all over Indian country. Then Ria learned more styles — tap, jazz, ballet — but still loved the expressiveness of Indigenous dance. And despite feeling different as one of the only Native American kids in her school, she always knew she could turn to dance to cheer herself up. Follow along as Ria shares her dance journey in this picture book.

Louis Nolette, a fifteen-year-old Abenaki Indian from Canada, is recruited to fight in the northern Irish Brigade in the Civil War. Though he is too young, and neither American nor Irish, he finds the promise of good wages and the fight to end slavery persuasive enough to join up. But war is never what you expect, and as Louis fights his way through battles, he encounters prejudice and acceptance, courage and cowardice, and strong and weak leadership in the most unexpected places.

On a sweltering day in August 1942, Frankie Washburn returns to his family’s rustic Minnesota resort for one last visit before he joins the war as a bombardier. But before the homecoming can be celebrated, the search for a German soldier, escaped from the POW camp across the river, explodes in a shocking act of violence. Prudence is a story of desire, loss, and the search for connection in a riven world; of race and class in a supposedly more innocent era. Most profoundly, it’s about the secrets we choose to keep, the ones we can’t help telling, and whom – and how – we’re supposed to love.

Kaya is a Nez Perce girl who takes pride in helping out and supporting the tribe — and also in her beloved horse, Steps High. But when she chooses racing her horse over family responsibilities, Kaya has to prove herself to earn her tribe’s respect. Kaya’s story of adventure in the wilderness is sure to engage today’s readers as they learn what it was like to be a Native American girl in 1764 in this Step 3 Step into Reading leveled reader.

Rich with storytelling, history, and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and reveals the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Joseph Marshall is a member of the Sicunga Lakota Sioux and has dedicated his entire life to the wisdom he learned from his elders. Here he focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of life–bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion.

Created by Samala Chumash descendent, Karissa Valencia, Spirit Rangers is a fantasy-adventure preschool series following Native American sibling trio Kodiak, Summer and Eddy Skycedar, who have a shared secret—they’re Spirit Rangers! Spirit Rangers protect every crook, cranny and critter of Spirit Park. With the blessing of the Chumash and Cowlitz tribes, we’ll join the Skycedar kids on their amazing adventures with spirits inspired by Indigenous stories.

An action-packed blend of folk tale, romance, epic, and myth, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta tells the story of the Gold Rush-era Mexican immigrant Joaquín Murieta, whose efforts to find fortune and happiness are thwarted by white settlers who murder his family and drive him off his land. In retaliation, Murieta organizes a band of more than 2,000 outlaws–including the sadistic “Three-Fingered Jack” – who take revenge by murdering, stealing horses, and robbing miners, all with the ultimate goal of reconquering California.

Nothing’s been the same for Beth Teller since the day she died. Her dad is drowning in grief. He’s also the only one who has been able to see and hear her since the accident. But now she’s got a mystery to solve, a mystery that will hopefully remind her detective father that he needs to reconnect with the living. This brilliantly written thriller explores the lives – and deaths – of two girls, and what they will do to win justice.

Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and journeys from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of nineteenth-century Marseille. Left behind in a Marseille hospital after a serious injury while the show travels on, he is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He struggles to adapt as well as he can while holding on to the memories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows.

In this personal, moving essay, environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez uses his art and his activism to show that climate change is a human issue that can’t be ignored.

Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. A sweeping history – and counter-narrative – of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. The human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.

Kristiana Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai’i, making the fabled place her own. Exploring the deep tensions between local and tourist, tradition and expectation, façade, and authentic self, This Is Paradise provides an unforgettable portrait of life as it’s truly being lived on Maui, Oahu, Kaua’i, and the Big Island.

Fred Sasakamoose, torn from his home at the age of seven, endured the horrors of residential school for a decade before becoming one of 120 players in the most elite hockey league in the world. Sasakamoose’s groundbreaking memoir sheds piercing light on Canadian history and Indigenous politics and follows this extraordinary man’s journey to reclaim pride in an identity and a heritage that had previously been used against him.

Set on a North Dakota reservation, The Grass Dancer reveals the harsh price of unfulfilled longings and the healing power of mystery and hope. Rich with drama and infused with the magic of the everyday, it takes readers on a journey through both past and present — in a tale as resonant and haunting as an ancestor’s memory, and as promising as a child’s dream.

An extraordinary compilation of legends and rituals about nature’s ever-present signs. From the birds that soar above us to the insects beneath our feet, Native American healer Bobby Lake-Thom shows how the creatures of the earth can aid us in healing and self-knowledge.

A searing, beautifully told memoir by a Native American doctor on the trials of being a doctor-soldier in the Iraq War, and then, after suffering a stroke that left his life irrevocably changed, his struggles to overcome the new limits of his body, mind, and identity.

With eloquent simplicity, Native American medicine man Bear Heart demonstrates how traditional tribal wisdom can help us maintain spiritual and physical health in today’s world.

The Portable North American Indian Reader compiles myths, tales, poetry, and oratory from the Iroquois, Cherokee, Winnebago, Sioux, Blackfeet, Hopi, and many other tribes. In addition, Frederick Turner includes a number of “culture contact” selections — explorers’ accounts, captives’ narratives, and Indian autobiographies—as well as a section on the conflicting popular images of the Indian in white literature and, finally, contemporary reassessments by such writers as Luther Standing Bear, N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, Jr., James Welch, Simon Ortiz, and Gary Snyder.

Edward Proctor Hunt, a Pueblo Indian man, was born in 1861 in the mesa-top village of Acoma, New Mexico, and initiated into several secret societies, only to later break with his people’s social and reli­gious codes. In 1928, he recited his version of the origin myth of the Acoma Indians to Smithsonian Institution scholars. Hailed by many as the most accessible of all epic narratives recounting a classic Pueblo Indian story of creation, migration, and ulti­mate residence, the myth offers a unique window into Pueblo Indian cosmology and ancient history, revealing how a premodern society answered key existential questions and formed its customs.

A spellbinding journey between two worlds, this remarkable book describes surgeon Lori Arviso Alvord’s struggles to bring modern medicine to the Navajo reservation in Gallup, New Mexico — and to bring the values of her people to a medical care system in danger of losing its heart. She came to merge the latest breakthroughs of medical science with the ancient tribal paths to recovery and wellness, following the Navajo philosophy of a balanced and harmonious life.

Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring.

Almost forty years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature — a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Masterfully written and filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power.

Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who — with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership — fought for his people’s land, livelihood, and honor. In this fascinating biography, Joseph M. Marshall, himself a Lakota Indian, creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy.

Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a stunning and lyrical Native American coming-of-age story.

Upon its publication in 1833, this unflinching narrative by the vanquished Sauk leader Black Hawk was the first thoroughly adversarial account of frontier hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans. Black Hawk, a complex, contradictory figure, relates his life story and that of his people, who had been forced from western Illinois in what was known as the Black Hawk War. The first published account of a victim of the American war of extermination, this vivid portrait of Indian life stands as a tribute to the author and his extraordinary people, as well as an invaluable historical document.

Infused by turns with darkness and humor, Monkey Beach is a spellbinding voyage into the long, cool shadows of B.C.’s Coast Mountains, blending teen culture, Haisla lore, nature spirits, and human tenderness into a multi-layered story of loss and redemption.

The powerful, visionary, Booker Award-winning novel about the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage.

From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Cynthia Leitich Smith turns to realistic fiction with the thoughtful story of a Native teen navigating the complicated, confusing waters of high school — and first love.

Dr. Apelles, a translator of ancient texts, has made an unsettling discovery: a manuscript that has languished for years, written in a language that only he speaks. Moving back and forth between the scholar and his text, from a lone man in a labyrinthine archive to a pair of beautiful young Indian lovers in an unspoiled and snowy woodland, David Treuer weaves together two love stories. Enthralling and suspenseful, The Translation of Dr. Apelles dares to redefine the Native American novel.