Adult Nonfiction: Indigenous Stories

Updated October 15, 2025
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"All the real Indians died off" : and 20 other myths about Native Americans
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
Paper Book
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed...
"The chiefs now in this city" : Indians and the urban frontier in early America
Calloway, Colin G.
Ebook
1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus
Mann, Charles C.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492--from "a remarkably engaging writer" (The New York Times Book Review).   Contrary to what...
An American sunrise : poems
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo...
Arts & crafts of the Native American tribes
Johnson, Michael
Paper Book
Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes is the authoritative illustrated reference that has been carefully created to be a companion to Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America. It examines in detail how Native American culture evolved and considers the regional...
As long as grass grows : the indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock
Gilio-Whitaker, Dina
Paper Book
The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and...
Becoming Kin : An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future
Krawec, Patty/ Estes, Nick (FRW)
Ebook
Included in the Lakota People's Law Project Decolonized Reading List for 2025 We find our way forward by going back. The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and...
Becoming rooted : one hundred days of reconnecting with sacred earth
Woodley, Randy
Ebook
What does it mean to become rooted in the land? How can we become better relatives to our greatest teacher, the Earth? Becoming Rootedinvites us to live out a deeply spiritual relationship with the whole community of creation and with Creator. Through meditations and ideas for...
Beneath the backbone of the world : Blackfoot people and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877
Hall, Ryan
Ebook
For the better part of two centuries, between 1720 and 1877, the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people controlled a vast region of what is now the U.S. and Canadian Great Plains. As one of the most expansive and powerful Indigenous groups on the continent, they dominated the northern imperial borderlands of...
Blood moon : an American epic of war and splendor in the Cherokee Nation
Sedgwick, John
Paper Book
"Riveting...Engrossing...Mr. Sedgwick's subtitle calls the Cherokee story an 'American Epic,' and indeed it is." --H. W. Brands, The Wall Street Journal An astonishing untold story from America's past--a sweeping, powerful, and necessary work of history that reads like...
The blue jay's dance : a birth year
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
"[Louise ] Erdrich holds up an articulate strength. Moving, memorable... [The Blue Jay's Dance is] a book that breaks ground."--Boston Sunday Globe Fifteen years after its initial publication, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich's beloved memoir The Blue Jay's Dance is...
Braiding sweetgrass : [indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants]
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Ebook
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...
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West
Brown, Dee
Paper Book
Doumented account of the decimation of Native Americans in the last half of the 19th century, told from the Indian viewpoint.
The Dakota way of life
Deloria, Ella Cara
Ebook
Winner of the 2023 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award Bronze Medal for the 2023 Will Rogers Medallion Award Ella Cara Deloria devoted much of her life to the study of the language and culture of the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota). The Dakota Way of Life...
Do all Indians live in tipis? : questions and answers from the National Museum of the American Indian
Paper Book
If you've ever wondered about where Native Americans came from, whether they really used smoke signals, or if they wore socks, this book has the answers. From clothing, food, origins, ceremonies, and language to love, marriage, art, music, and casinos, DO ALL INDIANS LIVE IN TIPIS? debunks...
Everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask
Treuer, Anton
Paper Book
"I had a profoundly well-educated Princetonian ask me, 'Where is your tomahawk?' I had a beautiful woman approach me in the college gymnasium and exclaim, 'You have the most beautiful red skin.' I took a friend to see Dances with Wolves and was told, 'Your people have a beautiful culture.'...
From the ashes : my story of being M
Thistle, Jesse
Paper Book
*#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER *Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction *Winner, Indigenous Voices Awards *Winner, High Plains Book Awards *Finalist, CBC Canada Reads *A Globe and Mail Book of the Year *An Indigo Book of the...
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...
Honouring Our Ancestors : Takatapui, Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQI+ Well-Being
Pihama, Leonie.
Ebook
In these rigorous and challenging essays, writers from Aotearoa and Turtle Island (Canada and the United States of America) explore the well-being of takatapui, two-spirit, and Maori and Indigenous LGBTQI+ communities. Themes include resistance, reclamation, empowerment, transformation and healing....
INDIGENOUS CONTINENT: THE EPIC CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA
PEKKA HAMALAINEN
Paper Book
There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus "discovers" a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing "New World" as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they...
An indigenous peoples' history of the United States
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
Ebook
New York Times Bestseller This American Book Award winning title about Native American struggle and resistance radically reframes more than 400 years of US history A New York Times Bestseller and the basis for the HBO docu-series Exterminate All the Brutes,...
Indigiqueerness: A Conversation about Storytelling
Paper Book
Beginning with memories of his childhood writing and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This tender, eclectic reflection celebrates Indigenous writers and creators...
Invisible no more : voices from Native America
Foxworth, Raymond
Ebook
For too long, Native American people in the United States have been stereotyped as vestiges of the past, invisible citizens in their own land obliged to remind others, "We are still here!" Yet today, Native leaders are at the center of social change, challenging philanthropic organizations that have...
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Ebook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New York...
Mamaskatch : a Cree coming of age
McLeod, Darrel J.
Paper Book
Growing up in the tiny village of Smith, Alberta, Darrel J. McLeod was surrounded by his Cree family's history. In shifting and unpredictable stories, his mother, Bertha, shared narratives of their culture, their family and the cruelty that she and her sisters endured in residential school....
Notable native people : 50 indigenous leaders, dreamers, and changemakers from past and present
Keene, Adrienne
Paper Book
An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people, from NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota to Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation An American Indian...
The other slavery : the uncovered story of Indian enslavement in America
Res
Paper Book
A landmark history -- the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early 20th century Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet,...
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...
Reclaiming Two-Spirits : sexuality, spiritual renewal, and sovereignty in Native America
Smithers, Gregory D.
Paper Book
Winner of the 2023 Prose Award in Cultural Anthropology and SociologyFinalist for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism,...
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Blackhawk, Ned
Ebook
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 Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles
Redvers, Nicole
Paper Book
Indigenous naturopathic doctor Nicole Redvers pairs evidence-based research with traditional healing modalities, addressing modern health problems and medical processes Modern medical science has finally caught up to what traditional healing systems have known for centuries. Many...
The Sioux Chef's indigenous kitchen
Sherman, Sean
Ebook
2018 James Beard Award Winner: Best American Cookbook Named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2017 by NPR, The Village Voice, Smithsonian Magazine, UPROXX, New York Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Mpls. St....
Thinning blood : 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...
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter
Justice, Daniel Heath
Ebook
Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. ...

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