November is Native American Heritage Month, a time to celebrate the cultural contributions of Native Americans. Here are some great books for readers of all ages, written by Native American authors.
Books by Native American Authors for Younger Readers
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My heart fills with happiness
by Monique Gray Smith A board book that celebrates happiness and invites children to reflect on the little things in life that bring them joy. The sun on your face. The smell of warm bannock baking in the oven. Holding the hand of someone you love. What fills your heart with happiness? |
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We sang you home
by Richard Van Camp This celebration of the bond between parent and child captures the wonder new parents feel as they welcome their new baby. |
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Bowwow powwow : bagosenjige-niimi'idim
by Brenda J. Child When Uncle and Windy Girl attend a powwow, Windy watches the dancers and listens to the singers. She eats tasty food and joins family and friends around the campfire. Later, Windy falls asleep under the stars. Uncle's stories inspire visions in her head: a bowwow powwow, where all the dancers are dogs. In these magical scenes, Windy sees veterans in a Grand Entry, and a visiting drum group, and traditional dancers, grass dancers, and jingle-dress dancers--all with telltale ears and paws and tails. All celebrating in song and dance. All attesting to the wonder of the powwow. |
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You hold me up
by Monique Gray Smith Diverse families and friends help to hold one another up by being kind, sharing, learning, playing, laughing, and doing other supportive things together |
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When we were alone
by David Robertson When a young girl helps tend to her grandmother's garden, she begins to notice things that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully colored clothing? Why does she speak another language and spend so much time with her family? As she asks her grandmother about these things, she is told about life in a residential school a long time ago, where all of these things were taken away. When We Were Alone is a story about a difficult time in history, and, ultimately, oneof empowerment and strength. |
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My father is taller than a tree
by Joseph Bruchac A tribute to the relationship between fathers and their boys profiles 13 diverse father-and-son pairs, offering insight into their cultural backgrounds and the universal qualities of their shared bonds. |
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The people shall continue
by Simon J. Ortiz The People Shall Continue was originally published in 1977. It is a story of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, specifically in the US, as they endeavor to live on lands they have known to be their traditional homelands from time immemorial. Even though the prairies, mountains, valleys, deserts, river bottomlands, forests, coastal regions, swamps and other wetlands across the nation are not as vast as they used to be, all of the land is still considered to be the homeland of the people. |
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Kamik joins the pack
by Darryl Baker Jake brings his puppy Kamik to meet his uncle, who is a dog sled racer, with the hope that Kamik is good enough to join the sled dog team. |
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Chester Nez and the unbreakable code : a Navajo code talker's story
by Joseph Bruchac As a boy, Chester Nez was taught his native language and culture were useless, but he was later called on to use his Navajo language to help create an unbreakable military code during WWII. |
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In the footsteps of Crazy Horse
by Joseph Marshall A mixed-race Lakota youth learns about his Native American heritage through the story of Crazy Horse, in an account that draws on oral traditions to recount his heroic advocacy of his people and how he lead a war party to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. |
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How I became a ghost : a Choctaw Trail of Tears story
by Tim Tingle Isaac, a Choctaw boy, tells of his tribe's removal from its homeland and how the exodus led him to become a ghost--one able to help those left behind. |
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Makoons
by Louise Erdrich Living with their Ojibwe family on the Great Plains of Dakota Territory in 1866, twin brothers Makoons and Chickadee must learn to become buffalo hunters, but Makoons has a vision that foretells great challenges that his family may not be able to overcome. |
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Trickster : Native American tales : a graphic collection
by Matt Dembicki Collects twenty-one short stories in graphic novel format of tricksters from a variety of Native American traditions. |
Books by Native American Authors for Older Readers
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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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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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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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#Notyourprincess : voices of Native American women
by Lisa Charleyboy A collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art exhibit the voices of Indigenous women across North America. |
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The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
by Sherman Alexie Leaving the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white high school, Junior struggles to find his place in his new surroundings in order to escape his destiny back on the reservation. |
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Hearts Unbroken
by Cynthia Leitich Smith When Louise Wolfe's first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It's her senior year, anyway, and she'd rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the 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 as she's learned, "dating while Native" can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey's? |
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No Name
by Tim Tingle When his mother leaves, sixteen-year-old Bobby, a Choctaw, begins living in a hole in his backyard to avoid his abusive father, and is surprised to find friends and neighbors willing to help him. Inspired by the traditional Choctaw story. |
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The marrow thieves
by Cherie Dimaline In a world where most people have lost the ability to dream, a fifteen-year-old Indigenous boy who is still able to dream struggles for survival against an army of "recruiters" who seek to steal his marrow and return dreams to the rest of the world. |
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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. Reader's Guide available. |
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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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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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Future home of the living god : a novel
by Louise Erdrich A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows the efforts of a pregnant woman who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species. |
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Maud's line
by Margaret Verble Enduring a hardscrabble existence on a Cherokee government allotment in 1928 Eastern Oklahoma, young Maud catches the attention of a handsome, book-carrying stranger and embarks on a life marked by high-stakes decisions. |
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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. A first novel. |
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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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You don't have to say you love me : a memoir
by Sherman Alexie The National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian presents a literary memoir of poems, essays and intimate family photos that reflect his complicated feelings about his disadvantaged childhood on a Native American reservation with his siblings and alcoholic parents. |
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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. |