Native / Indigenous Authors: Nonfiction

Memoirs, poetry, and more from authors with Native or Indigenous heritage

Updated October 29, 2025
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Code talker
Nez, Chester.
Audiobook
In the 1920s, growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation wasn't easy. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. The New Mexico summers were hot and the winters harsh. But the beautiful mesas provided bountiful land on which to raise sheep and goats, and the Navajo celebrated...
Heart berries : a memoir
Mailhot, Terese Marie
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest--"an illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience...
Poet warrior : a memoir
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of...
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...
Weaving sundown in a scarlet light : fifty poems for fifty years
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
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 timeless source of compassion for all" (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining...
Whereas
Long Soldier, Layli
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language...

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