Books by Indigenous Authors

Updated October 11, 2023
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The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller--over one million copies sold!   A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling and award winning author Sherman Alexie tells the hearbreaking yet funny story about a boy...
Flight a novel
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager -- a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father -- who learns the true meaning of terror....
The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-two interlinked tales are narrated by...
Ten little Indians stories
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
Sherman Alexie is one of our most acclaimed and popular writers today. With Ten Little Indians, he offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic,...
You don't have to say you love me [electronic resource] A Memoir.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Ebook
Thunder Boy Jr.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966- author.
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Sherman Alexie and Caldecott Honor winning Yuyi Morales comes a striking and beautifully illustrated picture book celebrating the special relationship between father and son. Thunder Boy Jr. wants a normal name...one that's all his...
The sacred hoop : recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions : with a new preface
Allen, Paula Gunn
Paper Book
This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.
The sacred hoop recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions
Allen, Paula Gunn.
Paper Book
This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.
American Indians, American justice
Deloria, Vine
Paper Book
Baffled by the stereotypes presented by Hollywood and much historical fiction, many other Americans find the contemporary American Indian an enigma. Compounding their confusion is the highly publicized struggle of the contemporary Indian for self-determination, lost land, cultural preservation,...
Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties an Indian declaration of independence
Deloria, Vine.
Paper Book
Originally published in 1974, just as the Wounded Knee occupation was coming to an end, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties raises disturbing questions about the status of American Indians within the American and international political landscapes. Analyzing the history of Indian treaty...
God is red : a native view of religion
Deloria, Vine
Paper Book
First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn...
The nations within the past and future of American Indian sovereignty
Deloria, Vine.
Paper Book
"Those of us who try to understand what is happening in North American Indian communities have learned to see Vine Deloria, Jr., both as an influential actor in the ongoing drama and also as its most knowledgeable interpreter. This new book on Indian self-rule is the most informative that I have...
Four souls [a novel]
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes a haunting novel that continues the rich and enthralling Ojibwe saga begun in her novel Tracks. After taking her mother's name, Four Souls, for strength, the strange and compelling Fleur Pillager walks from her Ojibwe reservation...
The game of silence
Erdrich, Louise
Paper Book
Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Game of Silence is the second novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.  Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a...
The last report on the miracles at Little No Horse
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable Book "Stunning. . . a moving meditation. . . infused with mystery and wonder." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels, acclaimed author Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and...
Love medicine
Erdrich, Louise
Paper Book
"The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power." -- Toni Morrison Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine--the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich--is an epic story...
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, a profound and enchanting new novel: a richly imagined world "where butchers sing like angels." Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant...
The painted drum : a novel
Erdrich, Louise
Paper Book
"Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see--to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves--and...
The plague of doves
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Plague of Doves--the first part of a loose trilogy that includes the National Book Award-winning The Round House and LaRose--is a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being...
The porcupine year
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
The third novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich. Omakayas was a dreamer who did not yet know her limits. When Omakayas is twelve winters old, she and her family set off on a harrowing journey in search of a new...
Tracks
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
"[Erdrich] captures the passions, fears, myths, and doom of a living people, and she does so with an ease that leaves the reader breathless."--The New Yorker From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes an arresting, lyrical novel set in North Dakota at a time...
The good luck cat
Harjo, Joy.
Paper Book
Some cats are good luck. You pet them and good things happen. Woogie is one of those cats. But as Woogie gets into one mishap after another, everyone starts to worry. Can a good luck cat's good luck run out? The first children's book from an acclaimed poet whose honors include the...
Where the dead sit talking
Hobson, Brandon
Paper Book
With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a 15-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface - that is,...
Braiding sweetgrass : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member...
The truth about stories : a native narrative
King, Thomas
Paper Book
"Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous." In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to...
The way to Rainy Mountain
Momaday, N. Scott
Paper Book
First published in paperback by UNM Press in 1976, The Way to Rainy Mountain has sold over 200,000 copies. "The paperback edition of The Way to Rainy Mountain was first published twenty-five years ago. One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital,...
There there [electronic resource] a novel
Orange, Tommy, 1982-
Ebook
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. A contemporary classic, this...
A good journey
Ortiz, Simon J., 1941-
Paper Book
Powwow summer : a family celebrates the circle of life
Rendon, Marcie R.
Paper Book
Every weekend, all summer long, there is a powwow being celebrated someplace, somewhere. Like many other Anishinabe families, Sharyl and Windy Downwind and their children, including a number of foster children, love to go on the powwow trail every summer. In Powwow Summer, author Marcie R. Rendon...
Black sun
Roanhorse, Rebecca
Paper Book
NOMINATED FOR THE 2021 HUGO AWARDS AND THE 2020 NEBULA AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian...
Ceremony
Silko, Leslie Marmon, 1948-
Paper Book
Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy...
Jingle dancer
Smith, Cynthia Leitich.
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith's lyrical text is paired with the warm, evocative watercolors of Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu in this affirming story of a contemporary Native American girl who turns to her family and community. The cone-shaped jingles sewn...
Rain is not my Indian name
Smith, Cynthia Leitich.
Paper Book
In a voice that resonates with insight and humor, New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith tells the story of a teenage girl who must face down her grief and reclaim her place in the world with the help of her intertribal community. It's been six months since Cassidy Rain...
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...
Rez life an Indian's journey through reservation life
Treuer, David.
Paper Book
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...
Fools crow
Welch, James
Paper Book
The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major...
Killing Custer : the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the fate of the Plains Indians
Welch, James
Paper Book
The classic account of Custer's Last Stand that shattered the myth of the Little Bighorn and rewrote history books. Custer's ill-fated attack on June 25, 1876, has gone down as the American military's most catastrophic defeat. This historic and personal work tells the Native...

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