BOOKS
AS LONG AS GRASS GROWS
Dina Gilio-Whitaker
As Long as Grass Grows is an important look at the intersectionality of indigenous environmental justice. It explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites. It also illustrates the unique struggles of Native American women and their fight for justice. This book “gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.”
Dina Gilio-Whitaker is an activist and scholar for indigenous studies. She directs policy and is a senior researcher at the Center for World Indigenous Studies, and additionally teaches at California State University. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in central Washington state.
THERE THERE
Tommy Orange
There There follows the lives of 12 characters from Native communities, all connected in ways they don’t yet realize, as they make their way to the Big Oakland Powwow in California. The novel portrays individuals in a contemporary, urban setting, as they grapple with a painful and complex indigenous history and embrace spirituality, sacrifice, and heroism.
Tommy Orange is a novelist from Oakland, California. He is best known for There There, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. He is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma.
WINTER IN THE BLOOD
James Welch
Welch’s first and most popular novel, Winter in the Blood follows the life of an unnamed 32-year-old Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. He takes a metaphorical journey to search for something that will bind him to his ancestral heritage and history, while living out more contemporary realities on a reservation. Published in 1974, the novel was adapted into a movie in 2012.
James Welch was a Native American novelist and poet, considered to be one of the founding authors of the Native American Renaissance. The Native American Renaissance recognizes the increase of published works by native writers from the 1960s onward. Welch grew up within the Blackfeet and A’aninin tribes of Montana.
LAKOTA WOMAN: SIEGE AT WOUNDED KNEE
Mary Crow Dog
Lakota Woman is the autobiography of Mary Crow Dog, who illustrates the horrifying conditions endured by Native Americans on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Describing instances of murder and cultural assimilation, as a rebellious teen Mary joins AIM, a tribal pride movement, and becomes directly involved with the struggle for native rights. Participating in the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973, Lakota Woman gives an account of Mary Crow Dog’s personal experiences of the cruelty enacted against Native Americans and their ongoing struggle for rights and justice.
SACRED SMOKES
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Sacred Smokes is a psychological fiction focused on a Native American boy grappling with urban life and gang culture in Chicago. It shines a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. It is described as a dark, compelling, hilarious novel that features a main character who will challenge the reader’s preconceived notions about Indian urban life. This revealing novel was awarded the 2018 Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing and selected for the recommended fiction book list of the 2019 “In the Margins” book award.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. is a professor and chair of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University. He is also a creative director for Transmotion which is an online journal publication for Indigenous studies. He is also the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones.
MAMASKATCH: A CREE COMING OF AGE
Darrel J. Mcleod
Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age follows the narrative of Darrel McLeod as his mother, Bertha, reveals stories of their culture in Alberta and the cruelty their family endured at the residential school. Surrounded by siblings and cousins, moose stew, and wild peppermint tea, McLeod grows to be proud of his heritage and learns how to allow the land and all its wonders to guide him through life. The story also follows McLeod through his battles with household abuse and sexual identity. It is a revelation of the generational trauma suffered by a Native American household and captures a deeply haunting history of Indigenous life in Canada.
Darrel J. McLeod is a Cree writer from Alberta, Canada. He has worked as a teacher, health care worker, and land claims negotiator and Director of Education and International Affairs for the Assembly of First Nations. His memoir, Mamaskatch, won the Governor General’s Award for English-language nonfiction and was a shortlisted finalist for the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize. His second book, Peyakow, was shortlisted for the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass, written by botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, reveals the importance of embracing a reciprocal relationship with nature. Through a series of essays and ecological studies, Kimmerer asks questions of nature and embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. This dive into ethnobotany will allow the reader to evaluate the importance of giving agency to nature and the rest of the living world.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is an associate professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forest. She is a Potawatomi and the author of numerous scientific articles, including Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.
HEART BERRIES
Terese Marie Mailhot
Heart Berries is a poetic memoir of a woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Mailhot guides the reader through a traumatic childhood and family history and her personal battles with post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder. As she repairs her relationship with her father and finds a passion for social work and activism, she also gives a deeply personal insight into mental health, heritage, and personal triumph through passionate imagery and poetry.
Terese Marie Mailhot is an author from Seabird Island Band. She currently teaches creative writing at Purdue University. Her work on Heart Berries has led her to becoming a New York Times bestselling author. She was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction.
INDIAN HORSE
Richard Wagamese
Indian Horse follows the story of character Saul Indian horse and his battle with alcoholism that has led him to a residential treatment center for alcoholics. As he comes to terms with reality, the reader is also guided through Saul’s childhood in 1960s Ontario. Here, his traumatic experience at a residential school is revealed and what the toll of racism and cultural alienation has placed upon him all these years later. It is a novel of deep importance in understanding the deep and scarred history of white-washing and Indigenous genocide that have plagued Canada’s history.
Richard Wagamese has worked as a professional Canadian writer since 1979 and is credited as being one of Canada’s foremost Native authors and storytellers. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, reporter, radio and television broadcaster, producer, documentary producer, and the author of twelve titles from major Canadian publishers. Other popular works include Medicine Walk and Ragged Company.
