Bead on an Anthill: A Lakota Childhood. 1998.

Delphine Red Shirt says that she wrote these stories “primarily for the joy of remembering what was good in my life.” These 16 stories, infused with Lakota language and ways of being in the world, are beautifully written. It is as if the reader and Red Shirt are sitting on the porch together, in rocking chairs maybe, watching the children play and remembering how it was.
hc 25.00, pb 12.00

Turtle Lung Woman’s Granddaughter. 2002.

Turtle Lung Woman’s granddaughter is Delphine Red Shirt’s mother, and this is the story she told to her daughter. Her mother’s language is used extensively throughout the story, so that one can see the beauty of the words, and how they carry meaning and connotation in a way not familiar to those who speak only English. The story is remarkable. Turtle Lung Woman, Kheglezela Chaguwi’s, long life—1851-1935—began at a time when it was still possible to live in a traditional way. She lived through changes so vast they can scarcely be comprehended. In all that time, this woman belonged to her own spirit. From Turtle Lung Woman to her granddaughter; from Wiya Isnala to her daughter, the story becomes living memory. Through Delphine Red Shirt, it comes to us, a gift, certainly for those of us who are Native, but also for all with clear sight and open hearts.
pb 15.00

Reid, Bill (Haida), and Robert Bringhurst, The Raven Steals the Light. 1984, b/w illustrations.

Beware! This is not a children’s book of watered-down “trickster tales.” The book includes, says Reid, “a good selection of bestiality, adultery, violence, thievery and assault, for those who like that sort of thing.” These tales—and Reid’s drawings—are a laugh-out-loud delight.
pb 15.00

Revard, Carter (Osage), Family Matters, Tribal Affiars. 1998.

These essays were put together because, as Carter says, “they make a community of words on Indian ground, good neighbors without fences, different and not always seeing things the same way, but cooperating when and where it matters.” Carter is a very accomplished writer, and this is as close as one can get to sitting on the porch on a well-used rocker, visiting with a friend, enjoying the sunset, talking about family, philosophizing about present, past, and future.
pb 17.00

Bone Dance: New and Selected Poems, 1965-1993. 1994.

Wendy Rose has been called “angry.” She has been called a “protest poet.” She has been called a lot of things by people who would rather not have to deal with the issues she raises. Issues of genocide, of dislocation, of what it is to be an urban Indian, of what it is to be a “halfbreed” woman in this society. Wendy Rose’s words can rip your heart out, and it’s about time she got that Pulitzer Prize.
pb 14.00

Itch Like Crazy. 2002, b/w photos.

Wendy Roses’s poems are songs of conquest and genocide, “Clan mothers, granddaughters, all those the missionaries erased,” prayers for a rattlesnake on the road and the buffalo at Yellowstone, and itching like crazy for “being born into a family that could not keep its secrets straight.” “In her native voice,” says N. Scott Momaday, “she knows precisely how to imagine and sing the world around her.”
pb 16.00

Sarris, Greg (Kashaya Pomo/Coast Miwok), The Sound of Rattles and Clappers: A Collection of New California Indian Writing. 1994.

In this excellent anthology of poetry and fiction, edited by Sarris, ten California Indian poets and storytellers (including Janice Gould, Wendy Rose, James Luna and Kathleen Smith) write about the importance of place and community for the peoples that outsiders often regard as “disappeared.”
pb 18.00

Savageau, Cheryl (Abenaki/Métis), Dirt Road Home. 1995.

In her second book of poetry, Cheryl writes of being of mixed blood, of being of the earth, of family, of racism and poverty. And it’s as if she’s sitting with you, sharing a cup of coffee. “We’re French and Indian like the war/my father said/they fought together/against the English/and though that’s true enough/it’s still a lie/French and Indian/still fighting in my blood.”
pb 13.00

Seale, Doris (Santee/Cree), Ghost Dance. 2001.

Seale dedicates this volume of new and selected poems to “Those who walk with me,/This time,/This place,/Seen and unseen.” “Doris Seale is a bear-hearted woman,” says Awiakta in her foreword, “an American Indian poet who stands her ground in the contemporary world. Unerringly, she scents the meaning of whatever confronts her—and copes with it.” These moving, lyrical poems are stories of life and songs of resistance.
pb 10.00

Silko, Leslie Marmon (Laguna), Gardens in the Dunes. 1999.

Gardens in the Dunes is a breathtaking novel about gardens, and land, and culture, and family, and a displaced Indian youngster’s indomitable strength of spirit. As Silko skillfully counterposes the aristocratic Victorian culture of indulgence with the Indian value of stewardship of the land, the reader can easily visualize Indigo, a boarding school escapee, traveling with her well-meaning white caretakers through the lush aristocratic gardens of Europe and the U.S., all the while carefully collecting seeds she will plant when she goes home to her family and her own desert gardens in the dunes.
pb 14.00

Singer, Beverly R. (Santa Clara), Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. 2001, b/w photos.

This very readable book is the culmination of Singer’s work as a filmmaker, educator, historian and, most of all, a Native woman engaged with Native media as part of a larger struggle for cultural sovereignty. Singer’s work is that of a cultural activist—seeing Native filmmaking with Indian people both in front of and behind the camera as a way of healing the devastation—and it is very personal. Here, she traces the history of Native people as subjects, actors and creators, critically reviews a number of Indian-produced films (and introduces one of her own), and challenges the inequities of the dominant society’s film industry.
pb 19.00

Slapin, Beverly, and Annie Esposito, 10 Little Whitepeople. 1995, b/w illustrations.

From the people who brought you the Basic Skills Caucasian Americans Workbook, here is a hilarious sendup of that beloved-by-some counting rhyme. “Teachers looking for picture books that cut across the curriculum will find this a good way to combine a unit on Whitepeople with counting,” says a review in something called “Bookmark.”
pb 5.00

Slapin, Beverly and Annie Esposito, Basic Skills Caucasian Americans Workbook. 1994, b/w illustrations.

This “retaliatory anthropology,” in the guise of a workbook, complete with word puzzles and research questions, takes us into the mysterious world of the Caucasian Americans, who, long ago, roamed our land.
pb 13.00

Slipperjack, Ruby (Ojibwe), Honour the Sun. 1987.

This is the diary of a carefree child, who grows into womanhood and experiences despair as she sees her mother and her friends succumb to alcohol. As a 16-year-old, she returns home for a summer visit, and realizes her mother’s words will always guide her.
pb 14.00

South and Meso American Indian Information Center (SAIIC), Daughters of Abya Yala. 1992, b/w photos.

Native women organizing throughout the hemisphere tell of their lives and struggles. Abya Yala, “continent of life” in the language of the Kuna people of Panama and Colombia, is an important work.
pb 8.00

Tapahonso, Luci (Diné), Sáanii Dahataal/The Women are Singing. 1993.

This cycle of poetry and stories is a celebration of birth, partings, and reunions. Within each story is a poem; within each poem is a story.
pb 13.00

From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i. (1993), 1999, b/w photos.

“No matter what Americans believe,” Trask says, “most of us in the colonies do not feel grateful that our country was stolen, along with our citizenship, our lands, and our independent place among the family of nations. We are not happy Natives.” This collection of essays from an activist in the Hawai’ian sovereignty movement is important reading.
pb 19.00

Light in the Crevice Never Seen. 1994.

Poems about a Native woman’s love for her land, the grief and rage that come from its destruction, and the necessity of fighting back.
pb 14.00

Urrea, Luis Alberto (Chicano), Vatos. 2000, b/w photos by José Galvez (Chicano).

Luis Alberto Urrea’s “hymn to vatos who will never be in a poem” is the perfect verbal accompaniment to José Galvez’s imagery. The mix of poverty, racism, despair, courage, absurdity and beauty, arrogance and self-mockery can be found in many cultures of the oppressed. But people of Mexican origin grown in the United States seem to have a claim to collective uniqueness that has usually been romanticized or ignored. This book commits neither sin. It is simply rich and powerful in the reality it presents. “Vatos” is street slang for dudes, guys, pals.
pb 20.00

Vickers, Roy Henry (Tsimshian/Kwakiutl/Haida), Spirit Transformed: A Journey from Tree to Totem. 1996, color photos.

Spirit Transformed is the artist’s account of the carving of the Salmon totem for Saamich Commonwealth Place in Victoria, for the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Vickers tells us that this pole is carved in the style that is traditional for the Salish people. Text and large, full-color photographs cover the work, from commission through choosing the tree, the carving, and the raising of the pole. For Vickers, this was clearly a journey to insight and self-knowledge as it was to the Salmon Totem, a return, a reconnecting, to a past that is not, after all, beyond recall. Simply written, this can be used with high school students, as well as with upper elementary grades.
hc 10.00

Wallace, Paul, White Roots of Peace: The Iroquois Book of Life. 1994, b/w illustrations.

The story of the teachings and vision of the Peacemaker, Deganawidah, and how they live today in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy.
hc 20.00, pb 13.00

Walters, Anna Lee (Pawnee/Otoe), Ghost Singer. 1988; Diné.

Human ears strung like beads on a cord, scalps, infant bones, whole corpses—these “items” in the Smithsonian’s collection will not allow the Indian souls to rest; the ghosts torment and murder the researchers as they themselves are tormented. This suspense novel just might make the reader’s hair stand up on end.
pb 20.00

Wheeler, Jordan (Cree/Ojibwe), Brothers in Arms. 1989.

Each of these three short stories is about brothers and their lives, struggles and victories, which, on and off the reserve, are reality for Native people everywhere.
pb 8.00

Whirlwind Soldier, Lydia (Sicangu Lakota), Memory Songs. 1999, b/w illustrations by Keli Shangreaux (Lakota).

These are songs of painted parfleches and gatling guns, buffalo hide homes and pestilent covered wagons, boarding schools and grandchildren, beloved bones finally brought home, and a strong Unci who “don’t need validation.”
pb 14.00

White Roots of Peace, Mohawk Nation, Kaianerekowa Hotinonsionne/The Great Law of Peace of the Longhouse People. 1999, b/w illustrations.

The Great Law of Peace was given to the People of the Longhouse many centuries—perhaps a thousand years—ago. It unified Nations who did not speak the same language into a United Nations—an alliance of peace. Still today, the Longhouse People govern themselves according to this Great Law. The Constitution of the United States owes many debts to the Great Law of Peace. Unfortunately, both the United States and Canada have forgotten where their “freedom” came from and refuse to recognize this great contribution of the Longhouse (“Iroquois”) Nations. This book can be used to compare the Great Law with the U.S. Constitution, and to help students think critically—very critically—about U.S. history.
pb 10.00

Wilson, Darryl “Babe” (Atsugewe/Acho'mawi), The Morning the Sun Went Down. 1998.

Wilson was in the second grade the morning the sun went down. That was the morning that his mother and baby brother, stopped on the highway because their car had run out of gas, were killed by a speeding lumber truck. That was the morning of his father’s descent into the hell called alcoholism, and the morning that, “at seven years old, my life withered and turned a silent gray, like an old-time photograph of Indians in feathers and Buffalo Bill in buckskin. A photograph curled up at the edges, sun-cracked and moisture-warped. I had to escape. So, as the Elders of my tribe advised, ‘Just Dream.’ I dreamed...” The Morning the Sun Went Down is Wilson’s autobiography and the history of a people. It’s about material poverty and richness of spirit, about taming rattlesnakes and daring to dream, about the nightmares of white foster homes and boarding schools, and about the human responsibility for life upon earth.
pb 14.00

Woody, Elizabeth (Warm Springs/Wasco/Diné), Luminaries of the Humble. 1994.

With complex and exquisite precision, Woody tells how it is now for Native people, and out of what past that came to be, for us and the Earth with whom we still try to live in the proper way. Her writing can be, although not always, dense with imagery and layered with meaning, so you have to pay attention. Those meanings may not be what you had first supposed. In many ways, Luminaries is a sorrow song, for loss, the death of a river; loss of life, of land—even our very words—our languages; for the “stress and grief over the irreversible change on the surface of the land.” Identity, how we have been written off. “[C]ancer collects in the downwinders of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The difficult colloquies of a people who are marked as expendables.” At the same time, Woody gives us ways of seeing ordinary things—the “humble”—that we may never have imagined: “Rolling sand fizzles” is exactly the sound made when the surf rolls in and then pulls back. It fizzles. In the moment of reading those three words, you can hear that sound, although you may be a thousand miles from the nearest ocean. This is not a book to read quickly, or only once. The more you read, the more you will know. And, “[i]t is all right to cry, because you have a heart, and the tears stop it from having the pressure build from forgetting to care.”
pb 18.00