Native Indigenous

A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity. Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-20th century through Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, after which the word "psychedelic" was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: The earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples.

Call them Native Americans, American Indians, indigenous peoples, or first nations - a vast and diverse array of nations, tribes, and cultures populated every corner of North America long before Columbus arrived. Native American History for Dummies reveals what is known about their pre-Columbian history and shows how their presence, customs, and beliefs influenced everything that was to follow. This straightforward guide breaks down their 10,000-plus year history and explores their influence on European settlement of the continent.

David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi - the name means "enemy ancestors" in Navajo - who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism.

David E. Stuart incorporates extensive new research findings through groundbreaking archaeology to explore the rise and fall of the Chaco Anasazi and how it parallels patterns throughout modern societies in this new edition.

Native America presents an infinitely surprising and fascinating deep history of the continent's Indigenous peoples. Kenneth Feder, a leading expert on Native American history and archaeology, draws on archaeological, historical, and cultural evidence to tell the ongoing story, more than 20,000 years in the making, of an incredibly resilient and diverse mixture of peoples, revealing how they have ingeniously adapted to the many changing environments of the continent, from the Arctic to the desert Southwest.

In Living in the Tall Grass: Poems of Reconciliation, Chief Stacey Laforme gives a history of his people through stories and poetry to allow us to see through the eyes of indigenous people. In it, he hits hard on matters of residential schools, the environment, suicide among indigenous youth, domestic abuse, and so on, but also writes poems of love and hope. Chief Laforme’s universal message is, “We should not have to change to fit into society, the world should adapt to embrace our uniqueness.”

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and US development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves.

This program is read by the author. Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau uses the lens of motherhood to craft a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice—and what it takes to find shelter. Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the...

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.

After the Indian wars, many Americans still believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But at Ganado Mission in the Navajo country of Northern Arizona, a group of missionaries and doctors - who cared less about saving souls and more about saving lives - chose a different way and persuaded the local parents and medicine men to allow them to educate their daughters as nurses. In this detailed history, Jim Kristofic traces the story of Ganado Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation.

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.

The tragedy of our Indian policies demands reexamination immediately - not only because they make the lives of millions of American citizens harder and more dangerous - but also because they represent a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with modern liberalism. They are the result of decades of politicians and bureaucrats showering a victimized people with money and cultural sensitivity instead of what they truly need-the education, the legal protections, and the autonomy to improve their own situation.

Thirty years ago, tribal college educator and poet Thomas Davis began writing poems about the tribal college movement, beginning with the founding of College of Menominee Nation in Northern Wisconsin. He had no intention of developing a book out of the poems, using napkins and scraps of papers to create a mostly free verse poetry that chronicled the events and people trying to build a new kind of educational system that would preserve and evolve Indigenous language, history, and culture. Davis gave these poems away and many were lost. Until now.

Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse—it's hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within.

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath - known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwigara - has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. Salmon teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths.

Based upon a 10,000 year old oral tradition, these stories reflect three essential elements of the cumulative wisdom of Paula Underwood's Native American ancestors. "Who Speaks for Wolf" deals with the human impact on the Earth, "Winter White and Summer Gold" deals with planning for the future, "Many Circles, Many Paths" deals with living together in peace.

Drawing on archaeology, historical evidence, oral traditions, and linguistics, this audiobook provides a view of Iroquois life from the prehistoric period and Owasco sites through the establishment of the Five Nations/

For more than 150 years between their first encounters with the English in the 1670s and forced removal along the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees negotiated mounting pressures. As their world was convulsed by the spread of European diseases, competition for guns, furs, and deerskins, and imperial powers’ unrelenting pursuit of “savage” allies, Cherokee communities responded by creating new solidarities.

The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man."

Whenever young Carol sang along to her family’s music, her heart felt light and full of joy. Learning from her great-grandfather, Moshum, Carol listened closely to the drums’ heartbeat until one day, Moshum made her a drum of her very own.