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 one million copies sold!   A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling and award winning author Sherman Alexie tells the hearbreaking yet funny story about a boy...
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 our most acclaimed and popular writers today. With Ten Little Indians, he offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic,...
You don't have to say you love me [electronic resource] A Memoir.
Alexie, Sherman, 1966-
Ebook
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...
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
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, this classic work reminds us to learn...
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
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.
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
"The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power." -- Toni Morrison Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine--the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich--is an epic story...
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
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.
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
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.
Paper Book
"[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 jailing of Cecelia Capture [electronic resource]
Hale, Janet Campbell.
Paper Book
Cecelia Capture Welles, an Indian law student and mother of two, is jailed on her thirtieth birthday for drunk driving. Held on an old welfare fraud charge, she reflects back on her life on the reservation in Idaho, her days as an unwed mother in San Francisco, her marriage to a white liberal,...
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.
Ebook
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,...
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
An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. As a botanist...
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-
Ebook
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.
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.
Ebook
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the "engrossing and vibrant" (Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Riot Baby) first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a...
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 cone-shaped jingles sewn...
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 since Cassidy Rain...
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
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.
Paper Book
The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major...
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...

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