Native American Memoir

Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.

Colin Calloway uses the prism of George Washington's life to bring focus to the great Native leaders of his time and the tribes they represented: the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware; in the process, he returns them to their rightful place in the story of America's founding. The Indian World of George Washington spans decades of Native American leaders' interactions with Washington, from his early days as surveyor of Indian lands to his military career against both the French and the British to his presidency.

In 1976, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota—or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up.

A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.

The story is set in the American West and follows the life of a young Native American girl named Running Eagle. Running Eagle is a fierce and determined warrior who is determined to prove herself to her tribe and become a respected member of her community. She faces many challenges along the way, including the disapproval of her father and the prejudice of those who underestimate her because of her gender. As Running Eagle grows and matures, she becomes a symbol of strength and resilience for her people.

This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.

A tribute to the courageous chiefs and warriors who fought to protect their people and preserve the Native way of life in the face of European expansion across North America, including: Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented a system of writing for his people; Sitting Bull, the powerful warrior and spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux who doggedly fought white incursions on Sioux land; Chief Joseph, who led the Nez Perce on a heroic and doomed flight to freedom; and more.

Since its publication in 1932, Black Elk Speaks has moved countless readers to appreciate the American Indian world that it described. John Neihardt’s popular narrative addressed the youth and early adulthood of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious elder. Michael F. Steltenkamp now provides the first full interpretive biography of Black Elk, distilling in one volume what is known of this American Indian wisdom keeper whose life has helped guide others. Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic shows that the holy-man was not the dispirited traditionalist commonly depicted in literature....

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

The first known autobiography by a Native American woman, Life Among the Paiutes is an eye-opening hybrid of history and memoir by a pioneering activist who witnessed firsthand the impact of the US’s westward expansion.

Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother's consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage. When La Tray attended his grandfather's funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. "Who were they?" he wondered, and "Why was I never allowed to know them?"

In the heart of Indian country in the American west, clandestine criminals were profiting greatly from the sale of sacred Native American artifacts stolen from tribal lands. These artifacts were so ancient they had been used since the migration of the first Americans into North America some 15,000 years ago. In the year 1998, the illegal trafficking of these artifacts peaked in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Here is one of the most extraordinary and invaluable documents in the annals of Native American history: the authentic testament of a remarkable "war shaman" who, for several years, held off both Mexico and the United States in fierce defense of Apache lands. During 1905 and 1906, Geronimo, the legendary Apache warrior and honorary war chief, dictated his story through a native interpreter to S. M. Barrett.

En los años veinte, la comunidad india de los Osage en Oklahoma era la población de mayor renta per cápita del mundo. El petróleo que yacía bajo sus propiedades les convirtió en millonarios: construyeron mansiones, tenían chóferes privados y mandaban a sus hijos a estudiar a Europa. Pero un espiral de violencia asoló esta comunidad indígena cuando sus miembros empezaron a morir y a desaparecer en extrañas circunstancias. La familia de una mujer Osage, Mollie Burkhart, se convirtió en un objetivo principal.

The name Pocahontas is one of the most recognized in the world, and many think they know the story of how she met and fell in love with a European colonist meddling in her Native American affairs. But is this really what happened? It certainly has been a popular theme, and whole Disney movies have been made celebrating this narrative, but besides these conveniently glossed-over tales, what is the real story?

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Edward Curtis's iconic photographs, following him throughout Indian country from desert to rainforest as he struggled to document the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. Even with the backing of Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, it took tremendous perseverance. The undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate.

Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict - involving not just the North and South, but also the West.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

At the start of the 1840s, the Oregon Country had no political boundaries or effective government. The first to begin showing up in large numbers were missionaries...Narcissa Prentiss Whitman became the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains...A teacher and missionary, she accomplished the journey with her like-minded husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman. Their history-making tenure in the northwestern wilderness caused them to become one of the most well-known couples of the 19th century, and their story was soon known to the entire nation.

Throughout history, there have been men of war and men of peace, but few have actually had a war named after them. When it comes to Pontiac, a few facts are certain. For one thing, he certainly led the first major attack of Pontiac's War in May 1763, when he and 300 of his men attacked Fort Detroit in what is now the city of the same name. Unfortunately for his cause, Pontiac failed to gauge just how strong the British presence was, and his attack was quickly repelled. On the other hand, he was not a man who easily gave up.