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 1 million copies sold!   A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the...
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
Ten little Indians stories
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
Sherman Alexie is one of today's most captivating and popular writers -- The Nation has called him "a master of language, writing beautifully, unsparingly, and straight to the heart." Now with Ten Little Indians he offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who,...
You don't have to say you love me [electronic resource] A Memoir.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Paper Book
A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, loss, and forgiveness from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond...
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...
Grandmothers of the light [electronic resource] a medicine woman's sourcebook
Allen, Paula Gunn.
Paper Book
Allen (English, UCLA) is a Laguna Pueblo/Sioux Indian and an authority on Native American literature and spirituality. She retells and interprets 21 stories from civilizations spanning North America, including Chippewa, Okonagon, Iroquois, and Lakota--stories that have, for centuries, guided...
Off the reservation [electronic resource] reflections on boundary-busting border-crossing loose canons
Allen, Paula Gunn.
Paper Book
Presents essays, literary criticism, and personal reflections on Native American life and culture.
The sacred hoop [electronic resource] 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.
Deloria, Vine.
Paper Book
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
*The Game of Silence will be featured in the HarperCollins booth at major institutional conferences, including TLA, IRA, ALA and NCTE *A finished book will be sent to a list of 550 large school and public library systems and influential...
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
This series of four luminescent novels of contemporary Native American and Midwestern life have been repackaged to unify HarperFlamingo's Louise Erdrich fiction list and bring this incomparable author's timeless works to a whole new audience. From the release of her first novel, Love Medicine,...
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries Eva, the pregnant fiancée of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North Dakota, he...
The painted drum
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
* Online Teacher's Guide (including first two books in series) * Big Mouth Mailing * Teachers & Libarians website feature (Sep-08) * Teachers & Librarians e-newsletter feature (Oct-08) * Advertising: Booklist...
Tracks
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
Set in the early 1900s, Tracks follows a North Dakota Indian tribe and its struggle to keep their land out of the hands of an encroaching white society.
The jailing of Cecelia Capture [electronic resource]
Hale, Janet Campbell.
Paper Book
A novel of urban Indian life.
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 [electronic resource].
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,...
Solar storms a novel
Hogan, Linda.
Paper Book
Angela's search for her birth family takes her to a remote region of the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnesota. Her she finds Bush who raised her during her early years. Angela's exultation is short-lived as she is caught in a fierce battle with developers, a battle which threatens everyone.
Braiding sweetgrass
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, 1943-
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 social...
The way to rainy mountain [electronic resource]
Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-
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-
Paper Book
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 [electronic resource] 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 [electronic resource]
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...
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...
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
A prize-winning writer offers "an affecting portrait of his childhood home, Leech Lake Indian Reservation, and his people, the Ojibwe" (The New York Times). A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, David Treuer grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, but was educated in...
Dead voices natural agonies in the new world
Vizenor, Gerald Robert, 1934-
Paper Book
"Gerald Vizenor gives life to traditional tribal stories by presenting them in a new perspective: he challenges the idyllic perception of rural life, offering in its stead an unusual vision of survival in the cities--the sanctuaries for humans and animals. It is a tribal vision, a quest for...
Him Standing [electronic resource]
Wagamese, Richard
Paper Book
When Lucas Smoke learns the Ojibway art of carving from his grandfather, he proves to be a natural. He can literally make people come to life in wood. Then Lucas's growing reputation attracts a mysterious stranger, who offers him a large advance to carve a spirit mask. This mask is to...
Him Standing [electronic resource]
Wagamese, Richard
Paper Book
When Lucas Smoke learns the Ojibway art of carving from his grandfather, he proves to be a natural. He can literally make people come to life in wood. Then Lucas's growing reputation attracts a mysterious stranger, who offers him a large advance to carve a spirit mask. This mask is to...
Fools crow
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
Paper Book
The heartsong of Charging Elk a novel
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
Paper Book
Inspired by actual historical fact, James Welch's  tells the story of an Oglala Sioux who travels the extraordinary geographical and cultural distance from tribal life in the Black Hills of South Dakota to existence on the streets of Marseille. As a young boy, Charging Elk witnessed his people's...
The Indian lawyer
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
Paper Book
His shiny Saab and his finely tailored suits make Sylvester Yellow Calf's childhood unimaginable. Abandoned by his parents, he was raised in poverty on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana. Now a prominent lawyer, Sylvester moves between two worlds, feeling slightly out of place in each. In the city...
Killing Custer the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the fate of the Plains Indians
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
Paper Book
General George Custer's ill-fated attack on a huge encampment of Plains Indians on 25th June, 1876, has gone down as one of the most disastrouos defeats in American military history. Much less understood is how disastroous the encounter was for the victors, the Sioux and the Cheyenne under the...
Art as performance, story as criticism reflections on native literary aesthetics
Womack, Craig S.
Paper Book
Pick up a work of typical literary criticism and you know what to expect: prose that is dry, pedantic, well-meaning but tedious--slow-going and essentially humorless. But why should that be so? Why can't more literary criticism have a political edge and be engaging and fast-paced? Why can't...

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