Indigenous Voices for Adults

To honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Happy Valley librarians have selected the following books that might serve as an introduction to a rich and diverse heritage of fiction, nonfiction, history, poetry, memoir, and more by and about Indigenous peoples in the United States.

Updated October 7, 2025
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LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County) Happy Valley Library
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Indigenous Voices for Adults

To honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Happy Valley librarians have selected the following books that might serve as an introduction to a rich and diverse heritage of fiction, nonfiction, history, poetry, memoir, and more by and about Indigenous peoples in the United States.

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Probably Ruby : a novel
Bird-Wilson, Lisa
Paper Book
An Indigenous woman adopted by white parents goes in search of her identity in this unforgettable debut novel about family, race, and history. Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award * "Engaging . . . Ruby never disappoints with her big heart and outrageous sense of...
The rediscovery of America : native peoples and the unmaking of U.S. history
Blackhawk, Ned
Paper Book
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 ...
Chaimi nu'am : native California foodways for the contemporary kitchen
Calvosa Olson, Sara
Paper Book
More than seventy delectable recipes that bring California's Indigenous cuisines into kitchens today. Finalist for the 2023 Glenn Goldman Award for Cooking, Chosen by the California Booksellers Alliance In this sumptuous cookbook, Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk) reimagines...
Flourishing kin : Indigenous wisdom for collective well-being
Celidwen, Yuria
Paper Book
From Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen comes a first-of-its-kind book about our aspiration for sustainable, collective flourishing through Indigenous wisdom, traditions, and practices that bridge Indigenous and Western knowledges and ways. How do we cultivate happiness? When...
Malinalli
Chapa, Veronica
Paper Book
Book Riot's Best New Book Releases "A vivid and unprecedented journey into the Spanish invasion of Aztec Mexico." --Luis Alberto Urrea, acclaimed author of The House of Broken Angels A "wild, unforgettable adventure" (Reyna Grande,...
Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast
Claxton, Dana
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2025 BILL DUTHIE BOOKSELLERS' CHOICE AWARD - BRITISH COLUMBIA & YUKON BOOK PRIZES An eighty-year overview of wood and argillite carving by Indigenous women artists on the Northwest Coast. Though women of the Northwest Coast have long carved poles...
Old School Indian
Curtis, Aaron John
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * INDIE NEXT PICK "[An] entrancing new voice . . . Aaron John Curtis will be your new literary obsession." --Marion Winik, The Boston Globe "An inspired novel by an author whose voice absolutely sizzles on the page." ―...
Empire of wild : a novel
Dimaline, Cherie
Paper Book
"Deftly written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!"--Margaret Atwood, From Instagram "Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive--all the while telling a...
Sabrina & Corina : stories
Fajardo-Anstine, Kali
Paper Book
Kali Fajardo-Anstine's magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Set against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado-a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite-these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives- with...
Woman of light : a novel
Fajardo-Anstine, Kali
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A "dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical" (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina  ...
Seed to plate, soil to sky : modern plant-based recipes using Native American ingredients
Frank, Lois Ellen
Paper Book
Winner of Two IACP Awards Food Issues & Matters * Health & Nutrition This enriching cookbook celebrates eight important plants Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world: corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and...
Birding while Indian : a mixed-blood memoir
Gannon, Thomas C.
Paper Book
Winner, 2024 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize "A fascinating search for personal and cultural identity." --Kirkus Thomas C. Gannon's Birding While Indian spans more than fifty years of childhood walks and adult road trips to deliver, via a...
Dog flowers : a memoir
Geller, Danielle
Paper Book
A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother's life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family's troubled history.   "A candid and achingly fractured memoir of [Geller's] mother, her family, her Navajo heritage and her own...
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...
Kuleana : A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i
Goo, Sara Kehaulani
Paper Book
Set in one of the world's most beautiful landscapes, Kuleana is the story of an award-winning journalist's effort to hold on to her family's ancestral Hawaiian lands--and find herself along the way. "A powerful story of land, belonging, loss, and survival that...
Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and...
Big chief
Hickey, Jon
Paper Book
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Washington Post, Debutiful, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and LitHub Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch for Spring 2025 "Propulsive...a masterclass...a dazzling,...
The removed : a novel
Hobson, Brandon
Paper Book
"A haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family's reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family's way home is full--in equal measure--of melancholy and love." --Tommy Orange, author of There There ...
Calling for a blanket dance : a novel
Hokeah, Oscar
Paper Book
Winner of the PEN America/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel * Finalist for the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize * Finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction   "A profound reflection on the intergenerational nature of cultural trauma....
My Life : Growing Up Native in America
Illuminative (EDT)
Paper Book
A moving collection of twenty powerful essays, poems, and more that capture and celebrate the modern Native American experience, featuring entries by Angeline Boulley, Madison Hammond, Kara Roselle Smith, and many more. With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty...
Bad Cree : a novel
Johns, Jessica
Paper Book
In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home. "A mystery and a horror story about...
The angel of Indian Lake
Jones, Stephen Graham
Paper Book
A National Bestseller The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror novels picks up four years after Don't Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice--only to find the Lake Witch is...
This is paradise : stories
Kahakauwila, Kristiana.
Paper Book
Elegant, brutal, and profound-this magnificent debut captures the grit and glory of modern Hawai'i with breathtaking force and accuracy. In a stunning collection that announces the arrival of an incredible talent, Kristiana Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai'i,...
Crossings : a doctor-soldier's story
Kerstetter, Jon
Paper Book
In Iraq, as a medic and officer, Jon Kerstetter balanced two impossibly conflicting imperatives--to heal and to kill. When he suffered an injury and then a stroke during his third tour, he wound up back home in Iowa, no longer able to be either a doctor or a soldier. In this gorgeous memoir that...
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...
Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds
Krawec, Patty
Paper Book
"A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives." --Booklist,starred review In this powerful reframing of the stories that make us, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, and...
The things she's seen
Kwaymullina, Ambelin
Paper Book
This brilliantly written thriller explores the lives--and deaths--of two girls, and what they will do to win justice. Sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year! Nothing's been the same for Beth Teller since the day she died. Her dad is drowning in...
Nothing more of this land : community, power, and the search for Indigenous identity
Lee, Joseph
Paper Book
From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, a sweeping, personal exploration of Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world. Before Martha's Vineyard became one of the most iconic vacation destinations in the country, it was home to the...
Too much lip : a novel
Lucashenko, Melissa
Paper Book
A gritty and darkly hilarious novel quaking with life--winner of Australia's Miles Franklin Award--that follows a queer, First Nations Australian woman as she returns home to face her family and protect the land of their ancestors. Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent her adulthood...
The journey of Crazy Horse : a Lakota history
Marshall, Joseph
Paper Book
Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who—with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership—fought for his people’s...
The Lakota way : stories and lessons for living
Marshall, Joseph
Paper Book
A member of the Sicunga Lakota Sioux and a descendant of the legendary warrior Crazy Horse, Joseph Marshall has dedicated his entire life to spiritual fulfillment and teaching to others the essence of the Lakota wisdom. As a child, he learned from his grandfather: "Insults can hurt, but only if you...
Wandering stars
Orange, Tommy
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into...
Waiting for the long night moon : stories
Peters, Amanda
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of The Berry Pickers In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place--from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of...
Canyon dreams : a basketball season on the Navajo Nation
Powell, Michael
Paper Book
The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native Americans living on reservations.   Deep in the heart of northern Arizona,...
To the moon and back : a novel
Ramage, Eliana
Paper Book
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK: "A breathtaking debut about family, identity, and love across generations." --REESE WITHERSPOON "Eliana Ramage will break your heart and take you to the stars. From painfully accurate depictions of adolescence to effortless jumps through time...
The Indian card : who gets to be native in America
Schuettpelz, Carrie Lowry
Paper Book
A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States "A genre-bending work of reportage, memoir, and history" --The New Yorker "Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough...
A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices
Sinclair, Sara
Drawing on the wisdom and personal experience of its esteemed contributors, this first-of-its-kind anthology tackles complex questions of our times to provide a rich tapestry of Indigenous life, past, present, and future. The letters explore the histories that have brought us to this moment, the...
Night of the living rez
Talty, Morgan
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection New England Book Award Winner, Fiction A Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, The Story Prize, B&N Discover Book Prize A New York...
The heartbeat of Wounded Knee : life in Native America
Treuer, David
Paper Book
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is a story of Native American resilience and reinvention, adapted for young adults from the adult nonfiction book of the same name. Since the late 1800s, it has been believed that Native American civilization has been wiped from the...
White magic : essays
Washuta, Elissa
Paper Book
Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for...
Winter in the blood
Welch, James
Paper Book
A contemporary classic from a major writer of the Native American renaissance -- "Brilliant, brutal and, in my opinion, Welch's best work." --Tommy Orange, The Washington Post One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years ...
Find this list online: https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/798.1161/list/1997

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