Native Life

Tâpwê can’t wait to spend a week with his cousins on the other side of the Cree reserve—especially since Kokhom, his grandma, has given him the most amazing gift: a Magic Hat with bluebirds and grass snakes that come to life! Tâpwê is so excited that he soon forgets Kokhom’s advice: Watch out for tricksters! Tâpwê’s adventure is everything he imagined. He meets his cousins, takes part in a powwow, and sleeps in a tipi. But soon he’s reminded of Kokhom’s words. Is his new friend Wâpos leading him astray with mischief?

Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to. That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor.

Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation. She’s there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There’s a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration. Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family and community safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn’t go outside to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories.

In Trinidad, in 1796, teenage Rosa Rendon quietly but purposefully rebels against typical female roles and behavior. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house - it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she expects to be her birthright, despite her two older siblings. But as her homeland goes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners - Rosa's family among them - will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

Old Keb Wisting is somewhere around ninety-five years old (he lost count awhile ago) and in constant pain and thinks he wants to die. He also thinks he thinks too much. Part Norwegian and part Tlingit Native ("with some Filipino and Portuguese thrown in"), he's the last living canoe carver in the village of Jinkaat, in Southeast Alaska. When his grandson, James, a promising basketball player, ruins his leg in a logging accident and tells his grandpa that he has nothing left to live for, Old Keb comes alive and finishes his last canoe, with help from his grandson.

In the 18th century, when Europeans first came upon the giant mounds and earthworks dotting the North American landscape, they couldn't imagine that the Native Americans they came into contact with were capable of producing such advanced technology and masterful engineering. In fact, when President George Washington sent Rufus Putnam to survey land in southeastern Ohio, Putnam reported that he'd discovered an impressive walled earthwork complex, which was obviously the work of some long-forgotten ancient civilization.

Here is the amazing personal story of Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow, from his birth on the Southern Ute reservation, through his childhood at Picuris Pueblo, to his work today as a healer, visionary and man of peace. It is a story of the power of Native American ceremonies, both ancient and contemporary, of visions, miracles, and mystical knowledge.

Since the late 1800s, it has been believed that Native American civilization has been wiped from the United States. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee argues that Native American culture is far from defeated—if anything, it is thriving as much today as it was 100 years ago.

Sayed Kashua has been praised by The New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society". An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian 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.

Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist's storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present. With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation.

A controversial figure in his day, Black Hawk was the leader of the Sauk American Indian tribe in the early 1800s. The son of the tribe’s medicine man, Black Hawk’s exploits as a warrior aided his rise to the status of tribal war leader. Here, Black Hawk chronicles his life as well as the story of his tribe, who were forced from their lands in Illinois during a series of skirmishes with American settlers in what came to be known as the Black Hawk War.

With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty renowned writers, performers, athletes, and activists explore what it means to be Native American today. Through a series of essays and poems, these luminaries give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy.

Savage Teen Money Skills is your comprehensive guide to financial empowerment. It makes financial literacy practical, actionable, and fun as you move towards adulthood. Saving for college or a big purchase, managing summer job income, or learning to budget, this book has you covered.

When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football", they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.

Discover the remarkable life of Geronimo...The legendary Geronimo led one of the last great Apache uprisings against American expansionism. The lands of the Apache tribe comprised what is today part of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, and Geronimo was one of the last who dared to stand up to the powers that encroached on the Native American way of life. In the end, even the cunning and might of Geronimo had to surrender to the wayward expansion of the west.

Carson Mastick is entering his senior year of high school and desperate to make his mark, on the reservation and off. A rock band - and winning the local Battle of the Bands, with its first prize of a trip to New York City - is his best shot. But things keep getting in the way. Small matters like the lack of an actual band, or the fact that his brother just got shot confronting the racist owner of a local restaurant.

A pioneer girl traveling west with her Mormon family at the mid-point of the 19th century, Olive Oatman’s life story began like many others. But when Olive’s family were massacred and she was taken captive by Native Americans, her story took a unique turn. An extraordinary tale of survival and loss, the life of Olive Oatman is stranger than fiction.

The use of hallucinogenic substances like peyote and desert tobacco has long played a significant role in the spiritual practices and traditions of Native Americans. While the majority of those practices are well documented, the relationship between entheogens and Native Americans of the Southeast has gone largely unexplored.

Quinny's father lay on the frozen, snow-covered ground, bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to his neck. Hours earlier, the storm passed over the White Mountains of East Central Arizona, heading toward New Mexico. With no clouds in the sky, the cold was biting, cutting. Every labored breath froze his lungs. Even the pathetic fire struggled for life. She slowly approached him. The beating sound of a helicopter's blades drew his attention away from the woman for just a moment. A spotlight from the helicopter locked on as troops encircled him. When he looked back, she was gone.