Native American Heritage Month - Non Fiction Booklist

"A rousing tale of frontier daring and ingenuity, better than legend on every front." -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book In his first work of narrative nonfiction, Matthew Pearl, bestselling author of acclaimed novel The Dante Club, explores the little-known true story of the kidnapping of legendary pioneer Daniel Boone's daughter and the dramatic aftermath that rippled across the nation.  On a quiet midsummer day in 1776, weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thirteen-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends Betsy and Fanny Callaway disappear near the Kentucky settlement of Boonesboro, the echoes of their faraway screams lingering on the air. A Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party has taken the girls as the latest salvo in the blood feud between American Indians and the colonial settlers who have decimated native lands and resources. Hanging Maw, the raiders' leader, recognizes one of the captives as Jemima Boone, daughter of Kentucky's most influential pioneers, and realizes she could be a valuable pawn in the battle to drive the colonists out of the contested Kentucky territory for good. With Daniel Boone and his posse in pursuit, Hanging Maw devises a plan that could ultimately bring greater peace both to the tribes and the colonists. But after the girls find clever ways to create a trail of clues, the raiding party is ambushed by Boone and the rescuers in a battle with reverberations that nobody could predict. As Matthew Pearl reveals, the exciting story of Jemima Boone's kidnapping vividly illuminates the early days of America's westward expansion, and the violent and tragic clashes across cultural lines that ensue. In this enthralling narrative in the tradition of Candice Millard and David Grann, Matthew Pearl unearths a forgotten and dramatic series of events from early in the Revolutionary War that opens a window into America's transition from colony to nation, with the heavy moral costs incurred amid shocking new alliances and betrayals.

In myriad ways, each narrator's life has been shaped by loss, injustice, and resilience--and by the struggle of how to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous.  Hear from Jasilyn Charger, one of the first five people to set up camp at Standing Rock, which kickstarted a movement of Water Protectors that roused the world; Gladys Radek, a survivor of sexual violence whose niece disappeared along Canada's Highway of Tears, who became a family advocate for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; and Marian Naranjo, herself the subject of a secret radiation test while in high school, who went on to drive Santa Clara Pueblo toward compiling an environmental impact statement on the consequences of living next to Los Alamos National Laboratory. Theirs are stories shaped by loss, injustice, resilience, and the struggle to share space with settler nations.

The 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. With clarity and a fine eye for detail, Kate Buford traces the pivotal moments of Thorpe’s incomparable career: growing up in the tumultuous Indian Territory of Oklahoma; leading the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team, coached by the renowned “Pop” Warner, to victories against the country’s finest college teams; winning gold medals in the 1912 Olympics pentathlon and decathlon; defining the burgeoning sport of professional football and helping to create what would become the National Football League; and playing long, often successful—and previously unexamined—years in professional baseball. But, at the same time, Buford vividly depicts the difficulties Thorpe faced as a Native American—and a Native American celebrity at that—early in the twentieth century. We also see the infamous loss of his Olympic medals, stripped from him because he had previously played professional baseball, an event that would haunt Thorpe for the rest of his life. We see his struggles with alcoholism and personal misfortune, losing his first child and moving from one failed marriage to the next, coming to distrust many of the hands extended to him. Finally, we learn the details of his vigorous advocacy for Native American rights while he chased a Hollywood career, and the truth behind the supposed reinstatement of his Olympic record in 1982. Here is the story—long overdue and brilliantly told—of a complex, iconoclastic, profoundly talented man whose life encompassed both tragic limitations and truly extraordinary achievements.

A necessary reckoning with America's troubled history of injustice to Indigenous people After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. In this timely and urgent book, settler historian Margaret Jacobs tells the stories of the individuals and communities who are working together to heal historical wounds--and reveals how much we have to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it. Jacobs traces the brutal legacy of systemic racial injustice to Indigenous people that has endured since the nation's founding. Explaining how early attempts at reconciliation succeeded only in robbing tribal nations of their land and forcing their children into abusive boarding schools, she shows that true reconciliation must emerge through Indigenous leadership and sustained relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people that are rooted in specific places and histories. In the absence of an official apology and a federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ordinary people are creating a movement for transformative reconciliation that puts Indigenous land rights, sovereignty, and values at the forefront. With historical sensitivity and an eye to the future, Jacobs urges us to face our past and learn from it, and once we have done so, to redress past abuses. Drawing on dozens of interviews, After One Hundred Winters reveals how Indigenous people and settlers in America today, despite their troubled history, are finding unexpected gifts in reconciliation.

In this collection of illuminating conversations, renowned historian of world religions Huston Smith invites ten influential American Indian spiritual and political leaders to talk about their five-hundred-year struggle for religious freedom. Their intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. With remarkable erudition and curiosity--and respectfully framing his questions in light of the revelation that his discovery of Native American religion helped him round out his views of the world's religions--Smith skillfully helps reveal the depth of the speakers' knowledge and experience. American Indian leaders Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Winona LaDuke (Anishshinaabeg), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlotte Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Douglas George-Kanentiio (Mohawk-Iroquois), Lenny Foster (Dine/Navajo), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga), Anthony Guy Lopez (Lakota-Sioux), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) provide an impressive overview of the critical issues facing the Native American community today. Their ideas about spirituality, politics, relations with the U.S. government, their place in American society, and the continuing vitality of their communities give voice to a population that is all too often ignored in contemporary discourse. The culture they describe is not a relic of the past, nor a historical curiosity, but a living tradition that continues to shape Native American lives.

From the author of How the World Moves--the classic collection of more than 500 years of Native American History In a series of powerful and moving documents, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history of Native American and white relations as seen though Indian eyes and told through Indian voices. Beginning with the Indians' first encounters with European explorers, traders, missionaries, settlers, and soldiers to the challenges confronting Native American culture today, Native American Testimony spans five hundred years of interchange between the two peoples. Drawing from a wide range of sources--traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, government transcripts, firsthand interviews, and more--Nabokov has assembled a remarkably rich and vivid collection, representing nothing less than an alternate history of North America.

The most authoritative anthology of Native American wisdom published in years! Native American peoples share a love and reverence for nature, as well as a belief in both a supreme being and a spirit world that interacts with humanity. This engaging collection contains moving quotations from leading American Indians, including chiefs and medicine men, along with poems, songs, prose, speeches, and stories past and present. Organized alphabetically, the spiritual insights gathered here are grouped by the main Native American Nations, from Apache to Zuni--including the Sioux, Eskimo, Cherokee, and many more.  

At the turn of the twentieth century, an age of booming technology and a rapid reduction of the outdoors, wildlife enthusiast Ernest Thompson Seton called for a renewed interest in outdoor living. If the nation was in need of a dose of nature then, we could certainly benefit from Seton's expert guidance today. With this book, you'll learn to: * Build a campfire, dam, or birch basket * Recognize animal tracks, constellations, and all manner of forestry * Spot the differences between poisonous plants and edible berries * Remedy everything from common cuts and wounds to life-threatening snakebites * And much more! Combining scientific knowledge with Native American wisdom and practices, this guide is essential for Boy Scouts, their pack leaders, and any guides leading outdoor treks. It's also a great read for any outdoors lover who is looking for a fuller experience of nature. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for hunters and firearms enthusiasts. We publish books about shotguns, rifles, handguns, target shooting, gun collecting, self-defense, archery, ammunition, knives, gunsmithing, gun repair, and wilderness survival. We publish books on deer hunting, big game hunting, small game hunting, wing shooting, turkey hunting, deer stands, duck blinds, bowhunting, wing shooting, hunting dogs, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

In Indian Voices, Alison Owings takes readers on a fresh journey across America, east to west, north to south, and around again. Owings's most recent oral history--engagingly written in a style that entertains and informs--documents what Native Americans say about themselves, their daily lives, and the world around them. Young and old from many tribal nations speak with candor, insight, and (unknown to many non-Natives) humor about what it is like to be a Native American in the twenty-first century. Through intimate interviews many also express their thoughts about the sometimes staggeringly ignorant, if often well-meaning, non-Natives they encounter--some who do not realize Native Americans still exist, much less that they speak English, have cell phones, use the Internet, and might attend powwows and power lunches. Indian Voices, an inspiring and important contribution to the literature about the original Americans, will make every reader rethink the past--and present--of the United States.

This book of hauntingly beautiful Native American portraits reflects the tragic history of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee, Cherokee, and other groups whose leaders traveled to Washington in the mid-nineteenth-century to negotiate treaties with the US government. As compelling as the famous photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis, these unique images provide a close-up, unromanticized record of Native American life at a critical time in the history of relations between the US government and Native Americans, just after the Civil War and at the beginning of the great westward expansion of US territories. The images form the core of the Smithsonian's extensive collection of Native American photographs and of important collections in many other major museums around the world. Paula Fleming recounts the history of this collection, which was the Smithsonian's--and perhaps the country's--first photographic exhibit. A succint biography of A. Zeno Shindler, the photographer, is followed by a thoughtful examination of the key events surrounding the Indian delegations in Washington, providing for the first time a comprehensive picture of a poignant moment in history.

"A powerful, illuminating book." --LOUISE ERDRICH, author ofThe Night Watchman Native young people and elders pray in sweat lodges at the Océti Sakówin camp, the North Dakota landscape outside blanketed in snow. In Oregon, white men and women in army surplus and western gear, some draped in the American flag, gather in the buildings of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The world witnessed two standoffs in 2016: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's protest against an oil pipeline in North Dakota and the armed takeover of Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge led by the Bundy family. These events unfolded in vastly different ways, from media coverage to the reactions of law enforcement. InStandoff, Jacqueline Keeler examines these episodes as two sides of the same story that created America and its deep-rooted cultural conflicts.

Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as: "Columbus Discovered America" "Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims" "Indians Were Savage and Warlike" "Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians" "The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide" "Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans" "Most Indians Are on Government Welfare" "Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich" "Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol" Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, "All the Real Indians Died Off" challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.

Arts & Crafts of the Native American Tribes is an authoritative illustrated reference that has been carefully created to be a companion to Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America, not a competitive title. It examines in detail how Native American culture evolved and considers the regional similarities and differences of the arts and crafts created by tribes across the continent. Contemporary and modern photographs, fine line illustrations and step-by-step reconstructions (including a Plains Indian warrior dress with headdress, war bonnet, shirt and leggings) show the techniques of manufacture and display the skill and artistry of the crafters. The book opens with concise coverage of the main cultural areas of North America and a survey of styles by region and over time. A major section on the living structures - huts, tipis, igloos, etc. - is followed by an analysis of individual crafts. These include: Baskets - plaiting, twining, coiling; Bone, antler and horn - implements, tools, pins, fishhooks; Decorative arts - beadwork, porcupine quillwork; Featherwork - bonnets and headdresses; Metalwork - copper, silver, iron, gold; Pottery; Shellwork; Skinwork - rawhide, leather, furs; Stonework - arrowheads, pipes, art; Textiles - spinning, weaving; Woodwork - totems, figures, masks, utensils, working with bark. Arts & Crafts of the Native American Tribes is destined to be a primary reference used by ethnographers, historians and collectors for years to come. It is essential for any library serving academic patrons. AUTHOR: Michael G. Johnson has published a number of books, including Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America, the second edition of which won the Denali Press Award. He is a former associate editor of Pow-Wow Trails and American Indian Crafts and Culture, a contributing editor to Whispering Winds magazine and an advisor to Indian Artifact magazine. Bill Yenne is the author of over three dozen books on historical topics, including The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Tribes and Sitting Bull, which was number 14 on Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2008. He has appeared on the National Geographic Channel and served as a consultant for the History Channel's Command Decision program covering the Battle of the Little Bighorn. ILLUSTRATIONS: Full colour photos and drawings Maps

They are still the forgotten people of America, their victories little noticed, their problems overshadowed by the larger groups around them. But the Native American tribes of the South and the East are writing new chapters in their people's history, and in that history every tribe is different. Each has its own story, its own intermingling of triumph and struggle and difficult problems that remain to be solved. This book is a collection of these stories, a record of a great coming together, ancient enemies who are finding common ground. The Cherokees, Catawbas, Choctaws, Creeks, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Seminoles, Oneidas, Mohawks, Penobscots, Tuscaroras, Pequots, Coushatas, Pamunkeys, Chippewas, and Tunica-Biloxi are just some of the tribes whose histories, current status, and future aspirations are covered in As Long As the Waters Flow.

Fort Meade was the home of the famous Seventh Cavalry after its ignominious defeat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Troops from Fort Meade played a pivotal role in the events that led to the tragedy at Wounded Knee in 1890. It was the scene of imprisonment of Ute Indians who made the mistake of interpreting their new citizenship status as freedom from government control. The fort survived the mechanization of the horse cavalry, aided the record-breaking Stratosphere Balloon flight of 1935, and became a training site for the nation's first airborne troops.   Fort Meade existed for sixty-six years, from 1878 to 1944. Robert Lee examines the strategic importance of its location on the northern edge of the Black Hills and the role it played in the settlement of the region, as well as the role played by the citizens of Sturgis in keeping it alive. One of the chief delights of Fort Meade and the Black Hills is a gallery of characters including the unfortunate Major Marcus Reno, the beautiful and fatal Ella Sturgis, and the cigar-smoking Poker Alice Tubbs. They, and events scaled to their larger-than-life size, are part of this long overdue story of Fort Meade.

This fully updated reference explores more than 200 North American tribes, prehistoric peoples, and civilizations. Arranged alphabetically by tribe or group, this comprehensive work offers 60 new entries on tribes not covered in the previous editions. The accessible text summarizes the historical record and includes present-day tribal affairs and issues. The book also covers diet, housing, tools, clothing, art, rituals, and more.

A chronicle of 22,000 years of Native American history and culture. Hundreds of informative sidebars lend more detail-from short biographies to individual tribal histories and customs, to writings, speeches, treaties, and folk stories.

Native American art has a timeless appeal that fascinates anyone who appreciates quality craft and design. The projects selected here are modern interpretations of traditional Native American patterns and techniques--they adopt methods, supplies, and tools that are accessible to any crafter, while encouraging an appreciation for the historical significance of this unique culture. Leather working principles are demonstrated step-by-step and used to make moccasins, pouches, and vests, and patterns are also included for more complex garments such as a Southwest Rosette Shirt and a Chippewa Inspired Beaded Jacket. Many jewelry items are also featured--from a Turtle Fetish Necklace to a Zig-Zag Ankle Bracelet. While the inspiration for these designs may be centuries old, they still remain hugely fashionable!

The earliest Native American writers wrote tribal histories or autobiographical accounts. Today, Native American writing is steeped in the oral traditions of many peoples and reflects a facility with language that is equally at home in prose or poetry. Native American Literatures is a sourcebook that can enhance any reader's appreciation of both the writers and their works. Cross referencing allows readers to move easily among the listings, guiding them to other examples of an author's works and from character to character within a given novel. Cross referencing allows readers to move easily among the listings, guiding them to other examples of an author's work and from character to character within a given novel