Indigenous Fiction

One Good Story, That One is a collection steeped in native oral tradition and shot through with Thomas King's special brand of wit and comic imagination. These highly acclaimed stories conjure up Native and Judeo-Christian myths, present-day pop culture, and literature while mixing in just the right amount of perception and experience.

A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today. Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.

Mink is a witness, a shape shifter, compelled to follow the story that has ensnared Celia and her village, on the West coast of Vancouver Island in Nuu’Chahlnuth territory. Celia is a seer who—despite being convinced she’s a little “off”—must heal her village with the assistance of her sister, her mother and father, and her nephews. While mink is visiting, a double-headed sea serpent falls off the house front during a fierce storm. The old snake, ostracized from the village decades earlier, has left his terrible influence on Amos, a residential school survivor.

From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young listeners alike.

Devastated by the loss of her older brother to cancer, Bugz returns to the place where she can always find solace and strength: the Floraverse. Over the past year, she has regained her position of power in that virtual world, and while the remaining Clan:LESS members still plot against her, she is easily able to overcome their attacks. Even better, she's been secretly working on a bot that will be both an incredible weapon and a source of comfort: Waawaate.

When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family’s secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered...

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Only spoken of in whispers as "the sandman," he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation's main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons' dreams and ambitions and also preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a mid-twenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine's siren song.

For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman have featured a recurring character—an alter ego of sorts, a shape-shifting, time-travelling elemental being named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Though we have glimpsed her across the years, and on countless canvases, it is finally time to hear her story, in her own words. And, in doing so, to hear the whole history of Turtle Island anew.

The Raven is as much a paradoxical creature as he is important in the myths of many native cultures. The central character of these stories, the Raven is considered the benevolent creator, filling the world with beauty and harmony, the master mind behind all that is good and looked upon with warm admiration. On the other hand, he is often viewed as a malevolent conniving, scheming trickster with self-gratification as his only goal.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is relevant in the news today, rightfully so with the staggering statistics of racism, indifference, and the lack of historical pursuit for justice. This novella is fictionalized accounts of what our Native American women and girls lived through and died by the hands of assailants of all backgrounds that think indigenous women are invisible.

The Narrows of Fear (Wapawikoscikanik) navigates the unsettling, but necessary. When love of, and respect for, culture goes awry, it is our indigenous women who bring us back to what is important. This novel is an interweaving of stories centered on a range of characters, both male and female, though the women, for the most part, are the healers. Though several were abused both in their own community and in residential schools, these women are smart and loving and committed to helping one another.

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection - but it can be harder when Joe's around.

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy - "Zits" - who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer.

Buck, government name Michael Fineday, Ojibwe name Miskwa’ doden (Red Deer), is on the brink of suicide. He has just been served divorce papers by his wife, Naomi, who is fed up with his savior complex and the danger it often attracts to their door. Living on the border of Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation, Buck makes a living as a boatbuilder and carpenter. He spends his days alone, trying to win the trust of a feral cat … until a semi-feral girl shows up, fascinated by the canoe Buck is building.

When Nathan goes to visit his grandma, Nali, at her mobile summer home on the Navajo reservation, he knows he’s in for a pretty uneventful summer, with no electricity or cell service. Still, he loves spending time with Nali and with his uncle Jet, though it’s clear when Jet arrives that he brings his problems with him. One night, while lost in the nearby desert, Nathan finds someone extraordinary: a Holy Being from the Navajo Creation Story - a Water Monster - in need of help.

Native is about identity, soul-searching, and the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God. As both a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a Christian, Kaitlin Curtice offers a unique perspective on these topics. In this book, she shows how reconnecting with her Potawatomi identity both informs and challenges her faith.

Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World” since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives.

In this enthralling narrative, professor and award-winning author Jeffrey Ostler recounts the Lakota Sioux’s loss of their spiritual homeland and their remarkable legal battle to regain it. Moving easily from battlefields to reservations to Supreme Court chambers, Ostler captures the strength that bore the Lakotas through the worst times and kept alive the dream of reclaiming their cherished lands.

Winter’s Gifts is the tale of a young Potawatomi girl named Dani whose family celebrates the darkest season of the year by treasuring the slowness that winter brings. Dani’s schoolmates think it’s silly to think that Earth gives us presents, but on a magical snowy day, her family and Creator give Dani the courage to teach her friends about the gifts of winter—resting, remembrance, and gratitude. Can Dani help them receive winter’s gifts?