Books by Indigenous Authors

Updated October 11, 2023
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The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
A New York Times bestseller--over one 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-
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-
Sherman Alexie's darkly humorous story collection weaves memory, fantasy, and stark reality to powerfully evoke life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The twenty-four linked tales in Alexie's debut collection--an instant classic--paint an unforgettable portrait of life on...
Ten little Indians stories
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist: A "stellar collection" of stories about navigating life off the reservation, filled with laughter and heartbreak (People). In these lyrical, affectionate tales from the author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part...
You don't have to say you love me [electronic resource] A Memoir.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
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.
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...
American Indians, American justice
Deloria, Vine.
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.
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.
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.
Four souls [a novel]
Erdrich, Louise.
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.
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 hop, and she lives on...
The last report on the miracles at Little No Horse
Erdrich, Louise.
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.
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.
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
Erdrich, Louise.
"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.
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.
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.
"[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.
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.
2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FICTION FINALIST Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a stunning and lyrical Native American coming-of-age story. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy,...
Braiding sweetgrass
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
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 way to rainy mountain [electronic resource]
Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-
The Way to Rainy Mountain recalls the journey of Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, and of Tai-me's people in three unique voices: the legendary, the historical, and the contemporary. It is also the personal journey of N. Scott Momaday, who on a pilgrimage to the grave of his Kiowa grandmother...
There there [electronic resource] a novel
Orange, Tommy, 1982-
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...
Powwow summer [electronic resource] a family celebrates the circle of life
Rendon, Marcie R.
 Life is a circle, just like the seasons, from youth through old age. The circle of the year brings seasonal rituals: a winter of preparation followed by a summer of powwows. Sharyl and Windy Downwind and their children travel from their home on the Red Lake Reservation in...
Black sun [electronic resource]
Roanhorse, Rebecca.
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-
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.
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...
The heartbeat of Wounded Knee native America from 1890 to the present
Treuer, David
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.
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, 1940-2003.
The 25th-anniversary edition of "a novel that in the sweep and inevitability of its events...is a major contribution to Native American literature." (Wallace Stegner) In the Two Medicine Territory of Montana, the Lone Eaters, a small band of Blackfeet Indians, are living their...
The heartsong of Charging Elk a novel
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
From the award-winning author of the Native American classic Fools Crow, James Welch gives us a richly crafted novel of cultural crossing that is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination. Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show...
Killing Custer the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the fate of the Plains Indians
Welch, James, 1940-2003.
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...

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