Native American Heritage Month
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The Toughest Indian in the World by Call Number: FICTION ALEIn these stories, we meet the kind of American Indians we rarely see in literature -- the kind who pay their bills, hold down jobs, fall in and out of love. A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with $42 and an overweight Indian he dubs Salmon Boy. Sherman Alexie's voice is one of remarkable passion, and these stories are love stories -- between parents and children, white people and Indians, movie stars and ordinary people. -
Reservation Blues by Call Number: FICTION ALESherman's first novel, coming after the successful story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven follows the humorous adventures of a reservation rock band as they make the circuit from the Northeast to New York. -
Moon of Bitter Cold by Call Number: FICTION CHIAVENTAfter the Civil War, strife continues in the West between Native American tribes, encroaching settlers, and the U.S. Army, as Red Cloud, a Lakota Sioux war leader, unites the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Crow in order to preserve their territory. -
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Call Number: FICTION DORRISMoving backward in time, Dorris's critically acclaimed debut novel is a lyrical saga of three generations of Native American women beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets. Best Books for Senior High Readers. A stirring novel dealing with 3 generations of females in an American Indian family, beginning in the present and moving back. -
Larose by Call Number: FICTION ERDRICHLandreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence -- but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty. Horrified at what he's done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition -- the sweat lodge -- for guidance, and finds a way forward. -
The Round House by Call Number: FICTION ERDRICHWhen his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family. -
People of the Longhouse by Call Number: FICTION GEARCaptured as slaves when their village is attacked, Odion and his little sister are pursued by their tribe's war chief and other rescuers who are unaware that an evil witch-woman is responsible for the abductions. -
Rock with Wings by Call Number: MYSTERY HILLERMANavajo Tribal cops Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, and their mentor, the legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, investigate two perplexing cases involving a missing woman and a drug bust gone bad. -
The First Eagle by Call Number: MYSTERY HILLERMAThey very plague that decimated Europe in the fourteenth century lurks today in the high, dry land of the American Southwest. But Navajo Tribal policeman Jim Chee and his mentor, Joe Leaphorn, discover an even deadlier killer stalking the reservation in the most chilling and beautifully crafted novel yet from the beloved and bestselling master of Southwestern suspense. -
As the Crow Flies by Call Number: MYSTERY JOHNSONWhen the site of his daughter's upcoming wedding burns down, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire and his friend, Henry Standing Bear, witness the falling death of a young Crow woman and are recruited into an investigation that incites the wrath of the bride-to-be. -
Black Thunder by Call Number: MYSTERY THURLOA construction crew found the first body. The cops found three more, in a cluster that lay on both sides of the border of the Navajo Reservation.Because some of the bodies were buried outside the Rez, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah and her team must work a delicate joint investigation with the New Mexico police. Identifying the dead isn't easy-some had been buried for years-and at first the cases look to be nothing but dead ends. Then one of the bodies turns out to be that of a missing man who was believed to have embezzled funds from his construction firm and suspicions focus on the man's partner.With no obvious links between any of the corpses and the anniversary of their deaths fast approaching, Ella feels frustrated by the investigation's lack of progress. Unless they can find what connects these victims, someone else may soon be killed
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In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Call Number: 305.897073 MATMatthiessen's chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists in 1975. -
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Call Number: 306.362 RESENDEZReveal the massive enslavement of tens of thousands of Native Americans from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, describing how kidnapping and forced labor played a key role in the decimations of Indian populations across North America. -
Face by Call Number: 811.54 ALEXIEPoetry. Fiction. Native American Studies. In this first full collection in nine years, Alexie's poems and prose show his celebrated passion and wit while also exploring new directions. -
Native American Almanac by Call Number: 970.0049 DENNISFrom ancient rock drawings to todays urban living, the Native American Almanac: More than 50,000 Years of the Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples traces the rich heritage of indigenous people. It is a fascinating mix of biography, pre-contact and post-contact history, current events, Tribal Nations histories, enlightening insights on environmental and land issues, arts, treaties, languages, education, movements, and more. -
Native American Testimony by Call Number: 970.0049 NATFrom the author of the classic Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior, this collection of documents, drawn from North American Indian oral culture and from government transcripts, reservation newspapers, and autobiographies, spans 500 years of interchange between Indians and whites. -
Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans by Call Number: 970.0049 OWINGSA contemporary oral history documenting what Native Americans from 16 different tribal nations say about themselves and the world around them. -
The Rise and Fall of North America's Indians: From Prehistory through Geronimo by Call Number: 970.00497 BRANDONWho were the first settlers in North America? Where did they come from? How did they survive? In this expansive one-volume account of the native peoples of North America, eminent historian William Brandon who devoted much of his life to examining this subject presents this revelatory history of the development and culture of the native peoples of North America, from their incipience through the late nineteenth century. -
Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America by Call Number: 970.00497 RICHTERIn the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people centre-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States. -
How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family by Call Number: 973.0497 NABOKOVA compelling portrait of cultural transition and assimilation via the saga of one Acoma Pueblo Indian family. Born in 1861 in New Mexico's Acoma Pueblo, Edward Proctor Hunt lived a tribal life almost unchanged for centuries. But after attending government schools he broke with his people's ancient codes to become a shopkeeper and controversial broker between Indian and white worlds. As a Wild West Show Indian he traveled in Europe with his family, and saw his sons become silversmiths, painters, and consultants on Indian Lore. In 1928, in a life-culminating experience, he recited his version of the origin myth of Acoma Pueblo to Smithsonian Institution scholars. -
The Wild Frontier: Atrocities During the American Indian War from Jamestown Colony to Wounded Knee by Call Number: 973.0497 OSBThe real story of the ordeal experienced by both settlers and Indians during the Europeans' great migration west across America, from the colonies to California, has been almost completely eliminated from the histories we now read. In truth, it was a horrifying and appalling experience. Nothing like it had ever happened anywhere else in the world. In The Wild Frontier, William M. Osborn discusses the changing settler attitude toward the Indians over several centuries, as well as Indian and settler characteristics and the settlers' irresistible desire for the land occupied by the Indians. -
In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians by Call Number: 973.0497 PAGEThe story of the American Indians has, until now, been told as a 500-year tragedy, a story of violent and fatal encounters with Europeans and their diseases, followed by steady retreat, defeat, and diminishment. Yet the true story begins much earlier, and its final recent chapter adds a major twist. Jake Page, one of the Southwest's most distinguished writers and a longtime student of Indian history and culture, tells a radically new story, thanks to an explosion of recent archaeological findings, the latest scholarship, and an exploration of Indian legends. -
Eyewitness at Wounded Knee by Call Number: 973.86 JENOn a wintry day in December 1890, near a creek named Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the Seventh Cavalry of the U. S. Army opened fire on an encampment of Sioux Indians led by Big Foot. Coming two weeks after the killing of Sitting Bull, in a tense atmosphere of suspicion and misunderstanding, the careless discharge of one gun set off a massacre that claimed more than 250 lives, including those of many Indian women and children. The tragedy at Wounded Knee, which is generally considered the last episode of the Indian Wars, has often been written about but the existing photographs have received little attention until now. -
Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by Call Number: 975.0049 EHLEhle tells the searing story of the betrayal and brutal dispossession of the Cherokee Nation. The book covers the entire sweep of Cherokee history, from the coming of the white man to the infamous Trail of Tears. -
Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Call Number: 975.6175 MILLERDrawing on extensive knowledge of Native American history, the author searches for the truth about the four-hundred-year-old disappearance of England's first colony in North America and the fate of Roanoke's doomed settlers. -
Killers of the Flower Moon by Call Number: 976.6004 GRANNPresents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. -
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Call Number: 978.0049 BROWNBury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. -
The Killing of Crazy Horse by Call Number: 978.0049 POWERSInvestigates the enigmatic Native American figure, assessing critical battles attributed to his leadership within the context of the Great Sioux Wars, exploring the relationships between the Lakota Sioux and other tribes, and analyzing the subjugation of North Plains Native Americans. -
The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West by Call Number: 978.02 COZZENSA history of the struggle between white forces and Native Americans over the fate of the post-Civil War West details the deconstruction of tribal culture, the conditions endured by frontier soldiers, and the ethical quandaries of military officials. -
Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes by Call Number: 978.02 LEWISFor the first time in the two hundred years since Lewis and Clark led their expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific, we hear the other side of the story—as we listen to nine descendants of the Indians whose homelands were traversed. -
Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War by Call Number: 979.5004 SHARFSTERecreating the Nez Perce War through the voices of its survivors, Daniel J. Sharfstein's visionary history of the West casts Howard's turn away from civil rights alongside the nation's rejection of racial equality and embrace of empire. The conflict becomes a pivotal struggle over who gets to claim the American dream: a battle of ideas about the meaning of freedom and equality, the mechanics of American power, and the limits of what the government can and should do for its people. The war that Howard and Joseph fought is one that Americans continue to fight today. -
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Call Number: B ALEFamily relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother Lillian was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She selflessly cared for strangers, but was often incapable of showering her children with the affection that they so desperately craved. It's these contradictions that made Lillian Alexie a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated, and very human woman. When she passed away, the incongruities that defined his mother shook Sherman and his remembrance of her. Grappling with the haunting ghosts of the past, he responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. -
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Call Number: B CUREdward Curtis was dashing, charismatic, a passionate mountaineer, a famous photographer--the Annie Liebowitz of his time. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his great idea: He would try to capture on film the Native American nation before it disappeared. At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Curtis's iconic photographs, following him throughout Indian country from desert to rainforest as he struggled to document the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. -
Crazy Brave by Call Number: B HARA memoir from the Native American poet describes her youth with an abusive stepfather, becoming a single teen mom, and how she struggled to finally find inner peace and her creative voice. -
Tecumseh: A Life by Call Number: B TECIf Sitting Bull is the most famous Indian, Tecumseh is the most revered. Although Tecumseh literature exceeds that devoted to any other Native American, this is the first reliable biography - thirty years in the making - of the shadowy figure who created a loose confederacy of diverse Indian tribes that exted from the Ohio territory northeast to New York, south into the Florida peninsula, westward to Nebraska, and north into Canada. -
Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe by Call Number: B THOThe first comprehensive biography of the legendary figure who defined excellence in American sports: Jim Thorpe, arguably the greatest all-around athlete the United States has ever seen.
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Call Number: TEEN ALEXIEBudding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. -
Sorrow's Knot by Call Number: TEEN BOWOtter is a girl of the Shadowed People, a tribe of women, and she is born to be a binder, a woman whose power it is to tie the knots that bind the dead--but she is also destined to remake her world. -
Brothers of the Buffalo by Call Number: TEEN BRUCHACIn 1874, the U.S. Army sent troops to subdue and move the Native Americans of the southern plains to Indian reservations, and this chronicles the brief and brutal war that followed. Told from the viewpoint of two youths from opposite sides of the fight, this is a tale of conflict and unlikely friendship in the Wild West. -
My Name Is Not Easy by Call Number: TEEN EDWARDSOAlaskans Luke, Chickie, Sonny, Donna, and Amiq relate their experiences in the early 1960s when they are forced to attend a Catholic boarding school where, despite different tribal affiliations, they come to find a sort of family and home. -
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Call Number: TEEN GANSWORTSeventh-grader Lewis "Shoe" Blake from the Tuscarora Reservation has a new friend, George Haddonfield from the local Air Force base, but in 1975 upstate New York there is a lot of tension and hatred between Native Americans and Whites--and Lewis is not sure that he can rely on friendship. -
The Smell of Other People's Houses by Call Number: TEEN HITCHCOCGrowing up in Alaska in the 1970s isn't like growing up anywhere else: Don't think life is going to be easy. Know your place. And never talk about yourself. Four vivid voices tell intertwining stories of hardship, tragedy, wild luck, and salvation. -
Target by Call Number: TEEN JONESWhen seventeen-year-old Frankie Skinaway's incarcerated father and cousins try to get him involved in the First Nations Mafia, even after his mother enrolls Frankie in an alternative high school to keep him safe, Frankie has a hard choice to make. -
Played by Call Number: YA FICTION FICHERASam Tracy likes to stay under the radar and hang out with his friends from the Rez. When he saves rich suburban princess Riley Berenger from falling off a mountain, she decides promises to help Sam win the heart of the girl he can't get over. Suddenly Sam is mad popular and on everyone's hot list... except that Riley's trying out some brand-new bad-girl moves... and turning both of their lives upside down. -
The Love That Split the World by Call Number: YA FICTION HENRYAt the beginning of her last summer in Kentucky before leaving for college, Natalie is once again visited by the apparition she calls "Grandmother" and meets a new boy, Beau, who changes her life.
