Books by Indigenous Authors (Nonfiction)

Updated July 3, 2025
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Living resistance : an indigenous vision for seeking wholeness every day
Curtice, Kaitlin B.
Paper Book
In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin B. Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday...
Heart berries : a memoir
Mailhot, Terese Marie
Paper Book
*Canada Reads 2019 Longlist *National Bestseller *New York Times Bestseller *Finalist for the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction *Finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Awards *Longlisted for the 2019 RBC Taylor...
The serviceberry : abundance and reciprocity in the natural world
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Paper Book
An Instant New York Times Bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world....

*

We had a little real estate problem : the unheralded story of Native Americans in comedy
Nesteroff, Kliph
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Esquire From Kliph Nesteroff, "the human encyclopedia of comedy" (VICE), comes the important and underappreciated story of Native Americans and comedy. It was one of the most reliable jokes in Charlie Hill's...
Weaving sundown in a scarlet light : fifty poems for fifty years
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's fifty years as a poet. Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her "warm, oracular voice" (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks "from a deep and...
Postcolonial love poem
Diaz, Natalie
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Natalie Diaz's highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an...
Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and...

*

Earth keeper : reflections on the American land
Momaday, N. Scott
Paper Book
"Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered...
Making love with the land : essays
Whitehead, Joshua (Writer)
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Much-anticipated non-fiction from the author of the Giller-longlisted, GG-shortlisted and Canada Reads-winning novel Jonny Appleseed. "Thrillingly cerebral....

*

Abandon me : memoirs
Febos, Melissa
Paper Book
Named One of the Best Books of the year by:Esquire, Refinery29, LitHub, BookRiot, Medium, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Largehearted Boy, The Coil and The Cut.Winner of the Lambda Literary Jeanne...
The rediscovery of America : native peoples and the unmaking of U.S. history
Blackhawk, Ned
Paper Book
National Bestseller Winner of the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction * Finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Award in History * Winner of 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction * Winner of the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize ...

*

The heartbeat of Wounded Knee : native America from 1890 to the present
Treuer, David
Paper Book
Beginning with the tribes' devastating loss of land and the forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools, he shows how the period of greatest adversity also helped to incubate a unifying Native identity. He traces how conscription in the US military and the pull of urban...
We are the middle of forever : Indigenous voices from Turtle Island on the changing Earth
Jamail, Dahr
Paper Book
Project 562 : changing the way we see Native America
Wilbur, Matika
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. ...

*

Thinning blood : a memoir of family, myth, and identity
Myers, Leah
Paper Book
Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great...

*

Come home, Indio : a memoir
Terry, Jim (Artist)
Paper Book
"a tour de force of comics" --Ed Park, The New York Times One of the Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2020, as chosen by the American Library Association One of the Best Books of 2020, as chosen by Publishers Weekly "Fortunately for readers of...
Dog flowers : a memoir
Geller, Danielle
Paper Book
A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother's life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family's troubled history.   "A candid and achingly fractured memoir of [Geller's] mother, her family, her Navajo heritage and her own...
Becoming Little Shell : a landless Indian's journey home
La Tray, Chris
Paper Book
Winner of the Reading the West Book Award Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award A People Best Memoir of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of the Year Selection A Book Riot Best Book of the Year<...

*

Ira Hayes : the Akimel O'odham Warrior, World War II, and the price of heroism
Holm, Tom
Paper Book
The gripping, forgotten tale of Ira Hayes--a Native American icon and World War II legend who famously helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima but spent the latter half of his life haunted by being a war hero. IRA HAYES tells the story of Ira...
Whiskey tender : a memoir
Taffa, Deborah Jackson
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Award Longlisted for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence Winner of the Southwest Book Award A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, Esquire, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Publishers Weekly An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting...

*

A mind spread out on the ground
Elliott, Alicia
Paper Book
In her raw, unflinching memoir . . . she tells the impassioned, wrenching story of the mental health crisis within her own family and community . . . A searing cry. --New York Times Book Review The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to a mind spread out on the...
The cost of free land : Jews, Lakota, and an American inheritance
Clarren, Rebecca
Paper Book
Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction Winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Nonfiction Finalist for The Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Shortlisted for The William Saroyan International Prize A Kirkus Reviews...

*

By the fire we carry : the generations-long fight for justice on native land
Nagle, Rebecca
Paper Book
"No part of the judiciary exposes the chasm between American ideals and institutional practice like federal Indian law. In By the Fire We Carry, Nagle, a Cherokee journalist, turns a case most Americans haven't heard of into a legal thriller." --New York Times Book Review NATIONAL...

*

Carry : a memoir of survival on stolen land
Jensen, Toni
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * 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. Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize * Goop Book Club Pick *...
We will be jaguars : a memoir of my people
Nenquimo, Nemonte
Paper Book
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year by Library Journal "An unforgettable memoir about fighting for your home and your heart." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club November '24 Pick) ...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.