American Indian

The author assembles a vast array of anecdotes, facts, stories, legends, archaeological discoveries, language comparisons, and speculation from a large collection of different sources to support the claim that the American Indians are descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.

Unflinchingly honest about the brutality of this nation’s founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and genocide, the impact of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s 2014 book is profound. This classic is revisited with new material that takes an incisive look at the post-Obama era from the war in Afghanistan to Charlottesville’s white supremacy-fueled rallies, and from the onset of the pandemic to the election of President Biden.

In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making.

Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were, for centuries, at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science.

In these essays, stories, and reflections, trailblazing Yankton Dakota writer and artist Zitkála-Šá honors the rich heritage of Sioux oral tradition. She muses on her childhood and early schooling, shares warrior tales of ancient spirits, and tells of the foreboding appearance of white settlers and missionaries. As a committed activist and a seminal voice for change, Zitkála-Šá also explores the oppressive forces that sought to erase her culture and remove her people from their land.

Nine American Indian stories written by noted Native American author and advocate Zitkala-Su, Red Bird, that are endearing, moving, and sad. A must-listen for all students of American history and literature. Helen Keller’s letter of praise in 1919 serves as the introduction.

American Indian Stories is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fictions, and essays written by the Sioux author Zitkala-Ša. The collection includes legends and stories from Sioux oral tradition, along with an essay titled "America's Indian Problem", which advocates rights for Native Americans and calls for a greater understanding of Native American cultures.

American Indian Fairytales is a collection of Native American folklore retold for children and young adults. Margaret Compton (1852-1903) drew on authentic lore from a wide selection of regions. The tales include "The Story-Teller Himself", "Snowbird and the Water-Tiger", "The Coyote or Prairie Wolf", and "How Mad Buffalo Fought the Thunder-Bird".

At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, including first-person accounts, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than 50 battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of the great divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote 11 books attempting to reconcile the two cultures. This book is his illumination of Indian spiritual beliefs and practices. A convert to Christianity, Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to his existence and to the natural world.

As the Revolutionary war draws to an end, the violence on the frontier only accelerates. The infamous Girty brothers incite Indians to a number to massacres, but when the Village of Peace, a Christian utopian settlement is destroyed, the settlers know they will have to hunt them down.

This synthesis of Indian-white relations west of the Appalachians from the end of the French and Indian War to the beginning of the Mexican War is not simply a story of whites versus Indians. The term "whites" encompassed British, Spanish, and American settlers and governments, and the hundreds of Indian tribes who opposed them were no more unified than their European colonizers.

Millie Two Bears lives alone in a trailer in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Since her husband went to jail, she’s been on the outs with the reservation. And it’s not just people she has to contend with. Now the prairie dogs are moving in on her patch of land. When a strange woman comes into Millie’s life, and Millie’s rodent war escalates, a fateful confrontation with vengeance, secrets, and survival is just underfoot.

Deep in the heart of Northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5 million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. 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.

A revelatory biography of the first Black woman to stand for Vice President, charting how the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California became one of this country’s most effective power players.

Luther Standing Bear was seemingly everywhere in the course of his extraordinary life. He met Chief Crazy Horse on the eve of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, was enrolled in the first class at the government-run Carlisle Indian Industrial School, witnessed the Ghost Dance movement, toured the US and Europe with showman Buffalo Bill, and devoted his later years to Indian rights. His firsthand accounts of those experiences—and his reflections on Sioux culture, customs, and traditions—combine to make this narrative a landmark of Native American literature.

James Fenimore Cooper was the most popular American writer of his day, but today he is best known for The Last of the Mohicans. A part of his Leatherstocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and England battled for control of the American and Canadian colonies.

Rahul Kapoor is heading into seventh grade in a small town in Indiana. The start of middle school is making him feel increasingly anxious, so his favorite person, his grandfather Bhai, gives him some well-meaning advice: Find one thing you’re really good at and become the best at it. Those four little words sear themselves into Rahul’s brain. While he’s not quite sure what that special thing is, he is convinced that once he finds it, bullies like Brent Miller will stop torturing him at school. And he won’t be worried about staring too long at his classmate Justin Emery.

Ayesha Shetty lost her brother seven years ago, the same time she lost everything else important to her: her dreams, her fierce independence, and the man she loved. Not wanting to see her mother hurt anymore, she put her wild self away and became the dutiful daughter her mother needed and took on her brother’s role in the family business. Now her best friend’s big, fat Indian wedding is a chance to get away from her endless duties at the restaurant and maybe even have some fun (if she remembers how).

Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U.S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains.