Armstrong, Jeannette (Okanagan), Slash. (1985), 2007.

Through the fictionalized memoir of young Okanagan activist-by-chance Tommy Kelasket—aka “Slash”—Amstrong puts a human face on the aboriginal struggle for land, culture and community. From British Columbia to Washington, DC, to Wounded Knee, Tommy/Slash, an average person from the Okanagan Reserve, moves in and out of the period of upheaval marking Canadian and U.S. Indian-federal relations from the 1960s through 1982, when Canada relented and half-heartedly recognized Aboriginal rights. “Our rights” Tommy says, “empty words on paper that had no compassion for what is human on the land.” Armstrong is a wonderful writer, and Slash is a very real person, on a journey that is at once heartbreaking and healing.
pb 22.00

Awiakta, Marilou (Cherokee), Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet. (1986), 2006.

Combining her Cherokee/Appalachian heritage with the experience of growing up on the atomic frontier in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Awiakta’s poetry follows the trail of Awi Usdi, Little Deer, through the saga of the Trail of Tears, through her own childhood, and into the heart of the atom itself.
pb 15.00

Beardslee, Lois (Ojibwe), Lies to Live By. 2003, b/w illustrations by the author.

Like the great trickster-hero Manaboozhou, Lois Beardslee’s stories ignore all boundaries of time and space, and celebrate real Indian lives. Delving into the sacred aspects of sweetgrass and a well-used pair of scissors, of flying pigs, fried eggs and WD-40, these are not the ubiquitous Indian “myths and legends” that white people love to retell—they’re real stories about real people, Manaboozhou’s relatives.
pb 20.00

Blue Cloud, Peter/Aroniawenrate (Mohawk), Clans of Many Nations. 1995.

These poems, spanning 25 years in the life of one of the major literary voices of Native people, speak of New York City’s high steel construction and quiet mountains, of Alcatraz Island and “this bit of Mohawk territory encircled/by cities, towns, freeway and seaway” that “cannot be what my ancestors dreamed.” His writing is beautiful.
pb 14.00

Bruchac, Joseph (Abenaki), No Borders. 1999.

Although Joe Bruchac is an accomplished storyteller he is, first of all, a poet. This volume of new and selected poems is dedicated “for all those who see this earth without maps.” It is beautiful, and will encourage youngsters to look around and see things with a new awareness—and maybe even write their own poems.
pb 13.00

Carlson, Lori Marie, ed.; Moccasin Thunder: American Indian Stories for Today. 2005.

All of the narrators in these ten short stories are contemporary young Indian people, shakily standing on the precipice of adulthood, trying to figure out their place in the world, trying to figure out what truths the stories hold.

Amid poor choices and alcohol in an Indian boarding school, a young woman dreams about getting to the planet Venus. A lonely young man comes to know the need that he and his absent father have for each other. A “real-live blond Cherokee” who works in a funky costume shop has to confront stereotypes at every turn. A young drug dealer who dreams of becoming a teacher tries to turn his life around. A determined grandma refuses to be shamed by a wealthy white woman. A high school student learns from an elderly uncle that “all we can do is just the best we can.” A young man, overtaken by anger, lust and shame, finds a way to make amends. A crazy old auntie’s stories about poison circling around come to fruition. An elder models for her grandson that there’s more than one way to help someone learn. A child who feels unloved longs for “the moment of possible magic” when she will be reunited with her parents.

The young lives portrayed in these stories—by Sherman Alexie, Joseph Bruchac, Louise Erdrich, Lee Francis, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Susan Power, Greg Sarris, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Richard Van Camp—will appeal to Indian readers in middle school and beyond, and just might teach non-Indian readers what they won’t find in textbooks.
hc 17.00

Conley, Robert J. (Cherokee), Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears. 1992.

In weaving together song, legend, and historical documents, Conley tells the love story of two ordinary people caught up in the removal from their traditional lands and brings to life the suffering and endurance of the Cherokee people.
pb 17.00

Dauenhauer, Nora Marks (Tlingit), Life Woven with Song. 2000, b/w photos.

The writing in this book is as beautiful as the painting on the cover. Norma Marks Dauenhauer is one of the elders of our writings and she lives the spirit. Poetry and essays out of her life comprise the contents of this volume.
pb 18.00

Deloria, Ella Cara (Yankton), Waterlily. 1990.

Waterlily, finished in 1947 and not published during Deloria’s life, is a novel, a life story of the Dakota people, as their lives were beginning to be disrupted by the wasichu. Told from a woman’s viewpoint, it emphasizes the traditional network of obligations and relationships that formed cultural unity. It’s a good story, and woven into it are the solidly-based facts of actual plains life: “Teton children loved to give. As far back as they could remember they had been made to give or their elders gave in their name, honoring them, until they learned to feel a responsibility to do so. Furthermore, they found it pleasant to be thanked graciously and have their ceremonial names spoken aloud. For giving was basic to Dakota life. The idea behind it was this: if everyone gives, then everyone gets; it is inevitable. And so old men and women preached continuously: Be hospitable. Be generous. Nothing is too good for giving away. The children grew up hearing that, until it was a fixed notion.”
pb 13.00

Dumont, Marilyn (Cree/Métis), A Really Good Brown Girl. 1996.

With sly wit and determination (and very good writing), Dumont challenges the boundaries imposed on Indian people by white society. Watch out—Dumont is a really good brown girl with an attitude!
pb 14.00

Durham, Jimmie (Cherokee), Columbus Day. 1983, b/w illustrations by the author.

Jimmie Durham’s rigorous and disciplined poetry is written with passion, about real things, real people. The truths in this book are “as eloquent as the sound of a rattlesnake...as direct as the strike of a rattlesnake...as conclusive as the bite of a beautiful red and black coral snake.”
pb 9.00

Charles A. Eastman/Ohiyesa (Dakota), From the Deep Woods to Civilization. (1916), 1977 b/w illustrations.

In this second part of his autobiography, Ohiyesa tells of his abrupt entry into the whitepeople world in 1873 at the age of 15. From his first job as physician at Pine Ridge Agency, where he witnessed the events that led up to the Wounded Knee massacre, Ohiyesa devoted his life to his people.
pb 14.00

Heisey, Adriel and Kenji Kawano, In the Fifth World: Portrait of the Navajo Nation. 2001, color, b/w photos.

Two gifted photographers working for the Navajo Nation team up here to produce an awesome collection of photographs that together tell a pictorial story of the land and the people. Heisey’s aerial color portraits of the land pair with Kawano’s black-and-white portraits of the people—often, one of each on a two-page spread—to show, in a sense, the Diné belief that the land and her people will never be separated. From the foreword by Peterson Zah: “The Earth is our Mother. Our skin is the same as the soil from the Mother Earth, our blood flows as the rivers that flow from the mountains, and our voices are like thunder. The Great Spirit is inside each of us. We are all part of Creation.”
pb 22.00

Mean Spirit. 1990, Osage

In the 1920s, the discovery of oil in Oklahoma on land belonging to Indian people spurs a vicious campaign of fraud, intimidation, and murder by white businessmen, officers of the law, and their henchmen. Rooted in a true episode of greed, violence, and tragedy, Hogan has carved out a story of a people’s will to resist.
pb 8.00

Red Clay: Poems and Stories. 1991.

“These poems,” Hogan says, “grew out of the Oklahoma terrain resonant with the calls of frogs, my grandfather’s horse and wagon, my grandmother’s uncut braids wrapped about her head in the traditional Chickasaw manner, the firefly-lit nights we sat outside and heard stories, including the one of the gunstocks made from our stolen black walnut trees. In these poems live red land and light.”
pb 10.00

Savings. 1988.

These early poems of extraordinary strength and grace lift off the page so easily that one could think Hogan is with the reader, visiting, sharing ideas and images over a cup of coffee.
pb 11.00

Solar Storms. 1995.

A hurt and rebellious teenager, scarred in face and spirit, sets out to search for her birth family, her mother, and herself. Reunited with her great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, and the woman who adopted her mother, this family of women sets off by canoe on a journey to their ancestral homeland in the far North, where a hydroelectric dam project threatens the existence of two indigenous nations.
pb 14.00

Hungry Wolf, Beverly (Blackfoot), The Ways of My Grandmothers. 1980, b/w photos.

Beverly Hungry Wolf writes about the lives of Native women as experienced by her people during the recent past. A lot of nonsense has been written about the women of Native America, past and present. The Ways of My Grandmothers is an antidote.
pb 14.00