In the United States, the second Monday of October is officially observed as Columbus Day. However, some cities and states have begun to instead observe Indigenous Peoples' Day as a counter-celebration to acknowledge the fact that many indigenous peoples were already living in North America at the time that Columbus "discovered" it. Close to home, the Boston MFA is offering free admission and special events in honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day. Another great way to observe the day would be to read some of these books by Native American authors.
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Killer of enemies
by Joseph Bruchac Years ago, seventeen year old Apache hunter Lozen and her family lived in a world of haves and have-nots. There were the Ones (people so augmented with technology and genetic enhancements that they were barely human) and there was everyone else who served the Ones. Then the Cloud came, and everything changed. Tech stopped working. The world plunged back into a new steam age. The Ones' pets - genetically engineered monsters - turned on them and are now loose on the world. With every monster she takes down, Lozen's powers grow, and she connects those powers to an ancient legend of her people. It soon becomes clear to Lozen that she is not just a hired gun... Lozen is meant to be a hero. |
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Give me some truth
by Eric L Gansworth In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves. |
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Dreaming in Indian : contemporary Native American voices
by Lisa Charleyboy Anthology of art and writings from some of the most groundbreaking Native artists working in North America today. Whether addressing the effects of residential schools, calling out bullies through personal manifestos, or simply citing hopes for the future, Dreaming In Indian refuses to shy away from difficult topics. |
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Hearts Unbroken
by Cynthia Leitich Smith When Louise Wolfe's boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. She'd rather spend her senior year with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, an ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper's staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director's inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey. But 'dating while Native' can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey's? |
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House of purple cedar
by Tim Tingle Rose Goode, a Choctaw Indian girl living in pre-statehood Oklahoma, must endure a life plagued by white land-grabbers, who savagely beat her grandfather and burn down her school, an event in which she is the only student to survive. |
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Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko On a New Mexico reservation, one Navajo family--including Tayo, a World War II veteran deeply scarred by his experiences as a Japanese POW and by the rejection of his own people--struggles to survive in a world no longer theirs in the years just before and after World War II. |
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House Made of Dawn
by N. Scott Momaday This 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of a young American Indian struggling to reconcile the traditional ways of his people with the demands of the 20th century. |
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Crazy brave : a memoir
by Joy Harjo This memoir from the Native American poet and author of She Had Some Horses describes her youth with an abusive stepfather, becoming a single teen mom and how she struggled to finally find inner peace and her creative voice. |
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Prison writings : my life is my sun dance
by Leonard Peltier Incarcerated for the last twenty-four years after a trial resulting from his actions at the Incident at Oglala, the 1960s Native American activist shares his life story, as well as philosophical views on prison and how it has affected him. |
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Heart berries : a memoir
by Terese Marie Mailhot A powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. |
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Future home of the living god : a novel
by Louise Erdrich Evolution has reversed itself: woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. For Cedar Hawk Songmaker, this change is profound and deeply personal: she is four months pregnant. As society begins to disintegrate, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation. There are rumors of martial law, and rewards for those who turn pregnant women in. It will take all Cedar has to keep her baby safe. |
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American Indian stories
by Zitkala-èSa Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Sá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering a free education to all Sioux children. The catch: the children must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Sá begs her mother to let her go--and her mother, aware of the advantage that an education offers, reluctantly agrees. But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Sá expected: the school is a strict one, her long hair is cut, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, she adapts to her environment--excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. Vivid and poignant, this memoir is the story of an activist in the making, a woman whose extraordinary career partially inspired the events of Killers of the Flower Moon. |
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Trail of lightning
by Rebecca Roanhorse When a small town needs her help in finding a missing girl, Maggie Hoskie, a Dinetah monster hunter and supernaturally gifted killer, reluctantly enlists the help of an unconventional medicine man to uncover the terrifying truth behind the disappearance—and her own past. |
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Mongrels
by Stephen Graham Jones Enduring a hardscrabble, marginalized existence with his impoverished family outside of a society that does not understand or want him, a young boy travels in the night to escape legal harassment while his family watches diligently to see if he will display the same differences that have shaped their unusual lives. |
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There there
by Tommy Orange A novel—which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans; with an inheritance of profound spirituality; and with a plague of addiction, abuse and suicide—follows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. |