Best of
Native-Americans

2019

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story


Kevin Noble Maillard - 2019
    Fry bread is food.It is warm and delicious, piled high on a plate.Fry bread is time.It brings families together for meals and new memories.Fry bread is nation.It is shared by many, from coast to coast and beyond.Fry bread is us.It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference.

Freedom in the Mountain Wind


Misty M. Beller - 2019
     Susanna Wilkins will do anything to make her father’s final dream come true, including trek along the path Lewis and Clark explored into the untamed wilds of the Rocky Mountains. Every mile is more crucial now that lung cancer is stealing Pa’s last days faster than she can come to terms with losing him. The journey becomes harder than she ever expected, but paddling upriver through fierce rapids and fighting hungry grizzlies isn’t what terrifies her the most.Beaver Tail endured more than he can stand from the women in his Blackfoot camp, but the last disaster gave him the final shove he needed to join this band of brothers searching for one of their group who’s gone missing. The last thing he expected was to find a white woman and her sick father stranded at the base of a massive waterfall. His plan is to help them carry their oversize canoe and supplies, then leave them to their strange mission. Yet, the more he learns about the pair, the more he realizes his life is about to be derailed—again.From a USA Today bestselling author comes another epic journey through breathless landscapes and adventure so intense, lives will never be the same.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present


David Treuer - 2019
    Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Indian No More


Charlene Willing McManis - 2019
    Her biggest worry is that Sasquatch may actually exist out in the forest. But when the federal government signs a bill into law that says Regina's tribe no longer exists, Regina becomes "Indian no more" overnight--even though she was given a number by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that counted her as Indian, even though she lives with her tribe and practices tribal customs, and even though her ancestors were Indian for countless generations.With no good jobs available in Oregon, Regina's father signs the family up for the Indian Relocation program and moves them to Los Angeles. Regina finds a whole new world in her neighborhood on 58th Place. She's never met kids of other races, and they've never met a real Indian. For the first time in her life, Regina comes face to face with the viciousness of racism, personally and toward her new friends.Meanwhile, her father believes that if he works hard, their family will be treated just like white Americans. But it's not that easy. It's 1957 during the Civil Rights Era. The family struggles without their tribal community and land. At least Regina has her grandmother, Chich, and her stories. At least they are all together.In this moving middle-grade novel drawing upon Umpqua author Charlene Willing McManis's own tribal history, Regina must find out: Who is Regina Petit? Is she Indian? Is she American? And will she and her family ever be okay?

Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power


Pekka Hämäläinen - 2019
    Pekka Hämäläinen explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter-gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then—in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion—as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains. The Lakotas are imprinted in American historical memory. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. Hämäläinen’s deeply researched and engagingly written history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.

Sand Creek Serenade


Jennifer Uhlarik - 2019
    One brave who will stop at nothing to save his people. Each willing to die for their beliefs and love for one another. Will their sacrifice be enough?As a female medical doctor in 1864, Sadie Hoppner is no stranger to tragedy and loss. While she grapples with the difficulties of practicing medicine at a Colorado outpost, she learns that finding acceptance and respect proves especially difficult at Fort Lyon.Cheyenne brave Five Kills wants peace between his people and the American Army. But a chance encounter with their female doctor ignites memories from his upbringing among the whites … along with a growing fondness for the one person who seems to understand him and his people.As two cultures collide with differing beliefs of right and wrong, of what constitutes justice and savagery, blood spills on the Great Plains. When the inevitable war reaches Fort Lyon, the young couple's fledgling love is put to the test.Written for the General Market (G) (I): This story contains mild violence appropriate to depict battle scenes or other war-themed situations. This story does not contain strong language or explicit sexual content. May also contain some content of an inspirational nature.

This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving


David J. Silverman - 2019
    Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. Focusing on the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war-tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day.This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. This Land is Their Land shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.

At the Mountain's Base


Traci Sorell - 2019
    At the mountain's base sits a cabin under an old hickory tree. And in that cabin lives a family—loving, weaving, cooking, and singing. The strength in their song sustains them through trials on the ground and in the sky, as they wait for their daughter/sister/granddaughter/niece, a pilot, to return from war. With an author's note that pays homage to the true history of Native American U.S. service members like WWII pilot Ola Mildred "Millie" Rexroat.

The Serpent and the Eagle (Tenochtitlan Trilogy)


Edward Rickford - 2019
    Strange, pale-skinned people have arrived on the coast of the One World. They hail from a far away land called Spain and fight for the mysterious Hernando Cortés. To confront Cortés’ army would be dangerous, but inaction may be even more dangerous. The Mexica are the most powerful people in all the One World and regard the uncouth interlopers with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. Keen to discover their intentions, the Mexica send an official envoy to the coast. What they learn is most troubling. The Spanish possess weapons that have no equal... and they may have designs on Tenochtitlan. The conflict that follows will tear an entire region asunder and give birth to an empire of globe-spanning proportions. Combining the rich world-building of Sharon Kay Penman with the gripping battles sequences of Conn Iggulden, this award-winning novel draws upon modern scholarship to recount an event still unique today: the epic collision of two civilizations separated for millennia. Editorial Reviews “A captivating, well-plotted, bicultural dramatization of the months prior to Motecuhzoma’s meeting with Cortés, deftly transporting the reader 500 years back into the eyes and intimate relationships of key participants—Mesoamerican and European, emperor and counselor, conqueror and slave.” —Andrew Rowen, author of Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold “The Serpent And The Eagle is expertly written and painstakingly researched…. Rickford has captured a fascinating historical moment and turned it into an absorbing story that makes the history come alive.” —Jim White, author of Borders in Paradise “The story weaves a rich tapestry of Spanish conquistadors and native Mexica – commonly known as the Aztecs—as well as the neighboring native tribes, that transports readers to the lush jungles and grand cities of pre-Hispanic Mexico. The writing is clear and easy to read, with just enough Spanish and Nahuatl to add deep flavors without slowing the pace.” —Casey Robb, author of The Devil’s Grip “Told through multiple points of view, Rickford’s words flow from the page like silk, engrossing the reader in insatiable Spanish hunger for gold and the anxiety Cortez’s conquest brings to the native Mexica.” —K.M. Pohlkamp, author of Apricots and Wolfsbane

Walking the Old Road: A People's History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe


Staci Lola Drouillard - 2019
    It helps tie us together and gives us a strong and solid place to speak from. It is my hope that the stories of Chippewa City will be heard, shared, and remembered, and that the story of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Chippewa will continue to grow. By being a part of the living narrative, Bimaadizi Aadizookaan, together we can create a new story about what was, what is, and, ultimately, what will be.” —from the Prologue   At the turn of the nineteenth century, one mile east of Grand Marais, Minnesota, you would have found Chippewa City, a village that as many as 200 Anishinaabe families called home. Today you will find only Highway 61, private lakeshore property, and the one remaining village building: St. Francis Xavier Church. In Walking the Old Road, Staci Lola Drouillard guides readers through the story of that lost community, reclaiming for history the Ojibwe voices that have for so long, and so unceremoniously, been silenced.Blending memoir, oral history, and narrative, Walking the Old Road reaches back to a time when Chippewa City, then called Nishkwakwansing (at the edge of the forest), was home to generations of Ojibwe ancestors. Drouillard, whose own family once lived in Chippewa City, draws on memories, family history, historical analysis, and testimony passed from one generation to the next to conduct us through the ages of early European contact, government land allotment, family relocation, and assimilation. Documenting a story too often told by non-Natives, whether historians or travelers, archaeologists or settlers, Walking the Old Road gives an authentic voice to the Native American history of the North Shore. This history, infused with a powerful sense of place, connects the Ojibwe of today with the traditions of their ancestors and their descendants, recreating the narrative of Chippewa City as it was—and is and forever will be—lived.

The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History


Darren Parry - 2019
    While never flinching from the realities of Latter-day Saint encroachment on Shoshone land and the racial ramifications of America’s spread westward, Parry offers messages of hope. As storyteller for his people, Parry brings the full weight of Shoshone wisdom to his tales—lessons of peace in the face of violence, of strength in the teeth of annihilation, of survival through change, and of the pliability necessary for cultural endurance. These are arresting stories told disarmingly well. What emerges from the margins of these stories is much more than a history of a massacre from the Shoshone perspective, it is a poignant meditation on the resilience of the soul of a people.--W. Paul Reeve, author of Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

Spotted Tail


David Heska Wanbli Weiden - 2019
    government. Spotted Tail is remembered for his unique leadership style and deep love for his people. Today, a university is named in his honor.

Wilma's Way Home: The Life of Wilma Mankiller


Doreen Rappaport - 2019
    But in 1956, the federal government uprooted her family and moved them to California, wrenching them from their home, friends, and traditions. Separated from her community and everything she knew, Wilma felt utterly lost until she found refuge in the Indian Center in San Francisco. There, she worked to build and develop the local Native community and championed Native political activists. She took her two children to visit tribal communities in the state, and as she introduced them to the traditions of their heritage, she felt a longing for home.Returning to Oklahoma with her daughters, Wilma took part in Cherokee government. Despite many obstacles, from resistance to female leadership to a life-threatening accident, Wilma's courageous dedication to serving her people led to her election as the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. As leader and advocate, she reinvigorated her constituency by empowering them to identify and solve community problems.This beautiful addition to the Big Words series will inspire future leaders to persevere in empathy and thoughtful problem-solving, reaching beyond themselves to help those around them. Moving prose by award-winning author Doreen Rappaport is interwoven with Wilma's own words in this expertly researched biography, illustrated with warmth and vivacity by Linda Kukuk.

Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture: Stories, Timelines, Maps, and More


Cynthia O'Brien - 2019
    From the Apache to the Zuni, readers will learn about each tribe's history, traditions, and culture, including the impact of European expansion across the land and how tribes live today. Features include maps of ancestral lands; timelines of important dates and events; fact boxes for each tribe; bios of influential American Indians such as Sitting Bull; sidebars on daily life, homes, food, clothing, jewelry, and games; Did You Know facts with photographs; and traditional Native stories. The design is compelling and colorful, packed with full-color photographs.To help give kids the lay of the land, this reference is arranged by region, and all federally recognized tribes are included. With nothing comparable available, it is sure to be a valuable resource for kids, students, librarians, and families.

God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador


Kathryn T. Long - 2019
    Two years later, two missionary women--the widow of one of the slain men and the sister of another--with the help of a Wao woman were able to establishpeaceful relations with the same people who had killed their loved ones. The highly publicized deaths of the five men and the subsequent efforts to Christianize the Waorani quickly became the defining missionary narrative for American evangelicals during the second half of the twentieth century.God in the Rainforest traces the formation of this story and shows how Protestant missionary work among the Waorani came to be one of the missions most celebrated by Evangelicals and most severely criticized by anthropologists and others who accused missionaries of destroying the indigenous culture.Kathryn T. Long offers a study of the complexities of world Christianity at the ground level for indigenous peoples and for missionaries, anthropologists, environmentalists, and other outsiders. For the first time, Long brings together these competing actors and agendas to reveal one example of anindigenous people caught in the cross-hairs of globalization.

The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community


Matthew J. Clavin - 2019
    The result was the Battle of Negro Fort, a brutal conflict among hundreds of American troops, Indian warriors, and black rebels that culminated in the death or re-enslavement of nearly all of the fort’s inhabitants. By eliminating this refuge for fugitive slaves, the United States government closed an escape valve that African Americans had utilized for generations. At the same time, it intensified the subjugation of southern Native Americans, including the Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles. Still, the battle was significant for another reason as well. During its existence, Negro Fort was a powerful symbol of black freedom that subverted the racist foundations of an expanding American slave society. Its destruction reinforced the nation’s growing commitment to slavery, while illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over the institution had disappeared since the nation’s founding. Indeed, four decades after declaring that all men were created equal, the United States destroyed a fugitive slave community in a foreign territory for the first and only time in its history, which accelerated America’s transformation into a white republic. The Battle of Negro Fort places the violent expansion of slavery where it belongs, at the center of the history of the early American republic.

America's Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics


Joel Edward Goza - 2019
    MLK challenged us to investigate the "ideational roots of race hate" and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical "trinity"--Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith--whose works collectively helped to institutionalize, imagine, and ingrain racist ideologies into the hearts and minds of the American people.As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity--and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop.

The Reluctant Storyteller


Art Coulson - 2019
    But Chooch will find out there's more than one way to tell a story.

Flow Like a River


Mark Guillerman - 2019
    Wise-cracking Sheriff Bud Thomas (a former Rough Rider and Texas Ranger) overhears the son of the town doctor telling of his chance encounter with the crime lord on the morning of his arrival at the town's train station. Following his gut instincts, the sheriff leads his deputies on a frantic manhunt for the Prince and his gang as they weave a trail of murder and arson throughout the farming community.On its surface, this novel pits the working class folk of a small Texas town against a ruthless crime lord intent on avenging the death of his grandfather. At its core, it's a novel about the spirituality of the people and of the native American culture that pre-dated their time in the land of the Sacred River.

The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles


Nicole Redvers - 2019
    Many traditional healing techniques and medicines are often assumed to be archaic, outdated, or unscientific compared to modern Western medicine. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western practices using evidence-informed indigenous healing practices from around the world - from sweat lodges and fermented foods to Ayurvedic doshas and meditation.Organized around various sciences, such as physics, genetics, and microbiology, the book explains the connection between traditional medicine and current research around epigenetics and quantum physics, for example, and includes over 600 citations. Redvers, who has traveled and worked with indigenous groups around the world, shares the knowledge and teachings of health and wellness that have been passed down through the generations, tying this knowledge with current scientific advances. Knowing that the science backs up the traditional practice allows us to have earlier and more specific interventions that integrate age-old techniques with the advances in modern medicine and technology.©2019 Nicole Redvers (P)2020 North Atlantic Books

Moctu and the Mammoth People:: An Ice Age Story of Love, Life, and Survival


Neil Bockoven - 2019
    Additionally, Moctu has confrontations with the “Pale Ones”, a fierce group of Neanderthals also called the People Eaters, as the two cultures interact in Paleolithic Italy 45,000 years ago. Besides having dangerous encounters with mammoths, wolves, and saber-tooth tigers, Moctu has to deal with his older rival, Jabil, who fights and undermines him at every opportunity. After Jabil murders several elders who go against him, he deftly shifts blame onto the Pale Ones. He takes over as the tribe’s leader and makes Moctu’s life miserable. On a hunting trip, Moctu is captured and enslaved by the Pale Ones. While with them, Moctu is shocked to discover that, although these primitive people know little about spear-throwers or making clothes, they can make fire, and he learns the skill. He meets the blond and fair-skinned Effie and over time, he recognizes that his hate for the Pale Ones was misplaced. Realizing that Nuri by now has been mated to Jabil, Moctu falls in love with Effie and has a child. But when he uncovers evidence that Jabil murdered his tribesmen, Moctu knows he must return home and mount a challenge. In the interim, Nuri has had to deal with emotional and physical adversities including coming of age and being mated to a man she despises. When Moctu returns, can he overcome Jabil? How will Nuri react? The interspecies conflict may also get Moctu or Effie killed.

Essays on American Indian and Mormon History


P. Jane Hafen - 2019
    American Indians have long played a central role in Mormon history and its narratives. Their roles, however, have often been cast in support of traditional Mormon beliefs and as a reaffirmation of colonial discourses. This collection of essays, many the result of a seminar hosted by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, explores the historical and cultural complexities of this narrative from a decolonizing perspective. Essays cover the historical construction of the “Lamanite,” settler colonialism and the Book of Mormon, and connections between the Seneca leader Handsome Lake and Joseph Smith. Authors also address American Indian Mormon tribal identities, Navajo and Mormon participation at the dedication of Glen Canyon Dam, the impact of Mormon Polynesian missionaries in Diné Bikéyah, the ISPP, and other topics. Prominent American Indian Mormon voices lend their creative work and personal experiences to the book. With the aim of avoiding familiar narrative patterns of settler colonialism, contributors seek to make American Indians the subjects rather than the objects of discussion in relation to Mormons, presenting new ways to explore and reframe these relationships.

America’s Forgotten Slaves: The History of Native American Slavery in the New World and the United States


Charles River Editors - 2019
    Columbus’ contact with the New World, alongside European maritime contact with the Far East, transformed human history, and in particular the history of Africa. It was the sail that linked the continents of Africa and America, and thus it was also the sail that facilitated the greatest involuntary human migration of all time. The African slave trade is a complex and deeply divisive subject that has had a tendency to evolve according the political requirements of any given age, and is often touchable only with the correct distribution of culpability. It has for many years, therefore, been deemed singularly unpalatable to implicate Africans themselves in the perpetration of the institution, and only in recent years has the large-scale African involvement in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Slave Trades come to be an accepted fact. There can, however, be no doubt that even though large numbers of indigenous Africans were liable, it was European ingenuity and greed that fundamentally drove the industrialization of the Transatlantic slave trade in response to massive new market demands created by their equally ruthless exploitation of the Americas. What far less people are familiar with are the other forms of slavery in America, and the victims who were enslaved. Sizable numbers of Native Americans were enslaved, with some of them working alongside African slaves in the fields and others shipped off to the sugar islands. The total number of natives enslaved over the whole colonial period for both American continents is estimated at somewhere between 2.4 and 4.9 million, while estimates for North America north of Mexico are 141,000 to 340,000. These estimates do not seem to include slaves held by the native peoples themselves, nor do they include the serf-like status still a bit short of slavery that was imposed on millions of others. Prior to the European colonization of what is now the United States, native groups themselves took captives. Men were often killed, and children were incorporated into their captors’ tribe, but there were hundreds of tribal peoples and many variants on the fate of captives. In the Pacific Northwest, slaves were killed in rituals, including being ritually cannibalized. After the arrival of the Europeans, the number of captives increased, and their fates became intertwined with the colonists and their African slaves. In the Southwest, there was a slave trade in New Mexico and northern Mexico involving captives for use as domestic servants and sales to the silver mines in Mexico. The formidable Comanches were just another nomadic group until they were exposed to horses (probably from stock released during the Pueblo rebellion of 1680 in New Mexico). They formed a new culture and became an almost imperial force, which involved conducting raids for slaves. Afro-Tejano slaves in Spanish Texas had different social circumstances than slaves held in the later Texas Republic. In the Southeast, slave raiding and trading involved the colonies of the English, Spanish and French. Moreover, several thousand free African Americans owned slaves and slavery in the United States did not end with freeing slaves in the South in 1865.

The Dancers


Thomas Love Peacock - 2019
    A story of wisdom and triumph, of being strong, and of dancing with your heart.