DEI Reading Lists

Ho'onani: Hula Warrior by Heather Gale Based on a true story, Ho'onani: Hula Warrior is a celebration of Hawaiian culture and an empowering story of a girl who learns to lead and learns to accept who she really is - and in doing so, gains the respect of all those around her.

My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith; Julie Flett (Illustrator) Key Selling Points My Heart Fills With Happinesswon the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize in 2017. Author Monique Gray Smith has also written the bestselling picture book You Hold Me Upand the middle-grade nonfiction book Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation. This book features a beautiful array of Indigenous children and multigenerational families. The dual-language English/Plains Cree edition of this bookwas selected for the 2019 TD Grade One Book Giveaway. Monique Gray Smith dedicated this book to the former Indian Residential School students and their families. My Heart Fills With Happinesshas been translated into French, Spanish, Plains Cree and Anishinaabemowin.

Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard; Juana Martinez-Neal (Illustrator) Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal A 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner "A wonderful and sweet book . . . Lovely stuff." --The New York Times Book Review Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpre Award winner and Caldecott Honoree Juana Martinez-Neal. 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. A 2020 Charlotte Huck Recommended Book A Publishers Weekly Best Picture Book of 2019 A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of 2019 A School Library Journal Best Picture Book of 2019 A Booklist 2019 Editor's Choice A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book of 2019 A Goodreads Choice Award 2019 Semifinalist A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of 2019 A National Public Radio (NPR) Best Book of 2019 An NCTE Notable Poetry Book A 2020 NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People A 2020 ALA Notable Children's Book A 2020 ILA Notable Book for a Global Society 2020 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Books of the Year List One of NPR's 100 Favorite Books for Young Readers Nominee, Pennsylvania Young Readers Choice Award 2022-2022 Nominee, Illinois Monarch Award 2022

Grandpa's Girls by Nicola Campbell; Kim Lafave (Illustrator) A finalist for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize A young girl delights in a visit to her grandpa's farm. She and her cousins run through the fields, explore the root cellar where the salmon and jars of fruit are stored, swing on a rope out the barn loft window, visit the Appaloosa in the corral and tease the neighbor's pig. The visit is also an opportunity for this child to ask Grandpa what her grandmother,Yayah, was like, and explore the "secret room,"with its old wooden trunk of ribbons, medals and photos of Grandpa in uniform. There is a wonderful blend of fun and family history in this visit to a grandparent, but also the realization that there can be some things about the people we know and love that will always remain a mystery.

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell; Frane Lessac (Illustrator) The Cherokee community is grateful for the blessings and challenges that each season brings. This is modern Native American life as told by best-selling Cherokee author Traci Sorell. This award-winning seasonal picture book is for 3-7-year-olds interested in contemporary Indigenous stories that are both accessible and universal for all kid readers. The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the new year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. Written by best-selling and award-winning Cherokee author Traci Sorell, this look into the Cherokee community is appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah. 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book 2019 Sibert Honor Book 2019 Orbis Pictus Honor Book 2019 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book 2019 Reading the West Picture Book Award NPR's Guide To 2018's Great Reads 2018 Book Launch Award (SCBWI) Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018 School Library Journal Best Books of 2018 2018 JLG selection "A gracious, warm, and loving celebration of community and gratitude"-Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW "The book underscores the importance of traditions and carrying on a Cherokee way of life"-Horn Book Magazine, STARRED REVIEW "This informative and authentic introduction to a thriving ancestral and ceremonial way of life is perfect for holiday and family sharing"-School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW "An elegant representation"-Shelf Awareness, STARRED REVIEW

Bowwow Powwow by Brenda J. Child; Jonathan Thunder (Illustrator); Gordon Jourdain (Translator) Windy Girl is blessed with a vivid imagination. From Uncle she gathers stories of long-ago traditions, about dances and sharing and gratitude. Windy can tell such stories herself-about her dog, Itchy Boy, and the way he dances to request a treat and how he wriggles with joy in response to, well, just about everything. When Uncle and Windy Girl and Itchy Boy attend a powwow, Windy watches the dancers in their jingle dresses and listens to the singers. She eats tasty food and joins family and friends around the campfire. Later, Windy falls asleep under the stars. Now Uncle's stories inspire other visions in her head: a bowwow powwow, where all the dancers are dogs. In these magical scenes, Windy sees veterans in a Grand Entry, and a visiting drum group, and traditional dancers, grass dancers, and jingle-dress dancers-all with telltale ears and paws and tails. All celebrating in song and dance. All attesting to the wonder of the powwow. This playful story by Brenda Child is accompanied by a companion retelling in Ojibwe by Gordon Jourdain and brought to life by Jonathan Thunder's vibrant dreamscapes. The result is a powwow tale for the ages.

Jingle Dancer by Cynthia L. Smith; Cornelius Van Wright (Illustrator); Ying-Hwa Hu (Illustrator) 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 to Grandma Wolfe's dress sing tink, tink, tink, tink... Jenna loves the tradition of jingle dancing that has been shared over generations in her family and intertribal community. She hopes to dance at the next powwow. But with the day quickly approaching, she has a problem--how will her dress sing if it has no jingles? A terrific read-aloud pick, perfect to share with a family member! In partnership with We Need Diverse Books

All Around Us by Adriana M. Garcia (Illustrator); Xelena González American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor - American Indian Library Association Pura Belpré Illustrator Award Honor - American Library Association (ALA) This gorgeous picture book -- winner of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor and American Indian Youth Literature Award Picture Book Honor -- celebrates the circles that surround us, in the sky, the earth, our neighborhoods, ourselves... if we just dare to look for them. Grandpa says circles are all around us. He points to the rainbow that rises high in the sky after a thundercloud has come. "Can you see? That's only half of the circle. That rest of it is down below, in the earth." He and his granddaughter meditate on gardens and seeds, on circles seen and unseen, inside and outside us, on where our bodies come from and where they return to. They share and create family traditions in this stunning exploration of the cycles of life and nature. This mind-bending, heart-opening book marked the impressive debut of Xelena González and Adriana M. Garcia as picture-book creators.

Moonshot by Hope Nicholson (Editor)

The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities, are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected, from their culture and each other, and struggle to fit in at school and at their new home until they find a secret portal to another reality. They meet Ochek, the only hunter supporting his starving community who teaches the kids traditional ways to survive.

When We Are Kind by Monique Gray Smith; Nicole Neidhardt (Illustrator) "Notably centering Indigenous families and characters of color in personal and communal activities--and encouraging readers to evaluate their actions toward others."--Publishers Weekly When We Are Kindcelebrates simple acts of everyday kindness and encourages children to explore how they feel when they initiate and receive acts of kindness in their lives. Celebrated author Monique Gray Smith has written many books on the topics of resilience and reconciliation and communicates an important message through carefully chosen words for readers of all ages. Beautifully illustrated by artist Nicole Neidhardt, this book encourages children to be kind to others and to themselves. Orca Book Publishers is pleased to offer When We Are Kindin two accessible editions. The audiobook features alternate text descriptions of images, including the cover. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

You Hold Me up / Gimanaadenim by Monique Gray Smith; Danielle Daniel (Illustrator); Angela Mesic (Translator); Margaret Noodin (Translator) Key Selling Points Simple but powerful text shows us the different ways we can respect and be kind to one another in this moving picture book. The author is well-known for her board and picture books. Her title My Heart Fills with Happiness was selected for the 2019 TD Grade One Book Giveaway. Danielle Daniel's book Sometimes I Feel Like a Foxwas the winner of the 2016 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award (CCBC), a finalist for the First Nation Communities Read Award and the 2017 Blue Spruce Award, and was named one of NY Public Library's Most Notable Titles in 2015. You Hold Me Up has been translated into French, Plains Cree and now Anishinaabemowin.

Berry Song by Michaela Goade On an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea, a girl and her grandmother gather gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, and in the forest, a world of berries. Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry. Huckleberry, Snowberry, Strawberry, Crowberry. Through the seasons, they sing to the land as the land sings to them. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before, joining in the song that connects us all. Michaela Goade's luminous rendering of water and forest, berries and jams glows with her love of the land and offers an invitation to readers to deepen their own relationship with the earth.

Minnesota Native American Lives: Ella Cara Deloria by Eden Bart (Editor) Ella Cara Deloria loved to listen to her family tell stories in the Dakota language. She recorded many American Indian peoples' stories and languages and shared them with everyone. She helped protect her people's language for future generations. She also wrote many stories of her own. Her story is a Minnesota Native American life. The Minnesota Native American Lives Series includes biographies of Charles Albert Bender, Ella Cara Deloria, and Peggy Flanagan. Read all three to learn about Minnesota Native American lives

Trickster by Matt Dembicki (Editor) 2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner - Children's folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee.   All cultures have tales of the trickster - a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics.   In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture. 

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger; Rovina Cai (Illustrator) Locus Award Winner--Best First Novel A National Indie Bestseller Nebula Award Finalist Lodestar Award Finalist Ignyte Award Finalist TIME's Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time NPR Best of the Year Booklist's Top 10 First Novels for Youth A BookPage Best of the Year Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best" PNBA Bestseller Publishers Weekly Best of the Year Buzzfeed's Best YA SFF of the Year Shelf-Awareness Best of the Year AICL Best YA of the Year NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection NEIBA Award Finalist Tor Best of the Year Kirkus Best YA of the Year Publishers Weekly Flying Start American Indian Youth Literature Award Finalist "Groundbreaking."--TIME "Deeply enjoyable from start to finish."--NPR "Utterly magical."--SyFyWire "Atmospheric and lyrical...a gorgeous work of art."--BuzzFeed "One of the best YA debuts of 2020. Read it."--Marieke Nijkamp ★ "A fresh voice and perspective."--Booklist, starred review ★ "A unique and powerful Native American voice."--BookPage, starred review ★ "A brilliant, engaging debut."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review ★ "A fast-paced murder mystery."--Publishers Weekly, starred review ★ "A Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set."--Shelf-Awareness, starred review A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin's ghost and vows to unmask the murderer. Elatsoe--Ellie for short--lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals--most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered. Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started? A breathtaking debut novel featuring an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, fantasy elements, and is one of the most-talked about debuts of the year.

The House of Purple Cedar by Tim Tingle "The hour has come to speak of troubled times. It is time we spoke of Skullyville." Thus begins Rose Goode's story of her growing up in Indian Territory in pre-statehood Oklahoma. Skullyville, a once-thriving Choctaw community, was destroyed by land-grabbers, culminating in the arson on New Year's Eve, 1896, of New Hope Academy for Girls. Twenty Choctaw girls died, but Rose escaped. She is blessed by the presence of her grandmother Pokoni and her grandfather Amafo, both respected elders who understand the old ways. Soon after the fire, the white sheriff beats Amafo in front of the town's people, humiliating him. Instead of asking the Choctaw community to avenge the beating, her grandfather decides to follow the path of forgiveness. And so unwinds this tale of mystery, Indian-style magical realism, and deep wisdom. It's a world where backwoods spiritualism and Bible-thumping Christianity mix with bad guys; a one-legged woman shop-keeper, her oaf of a husband, herbal potions, and shape-shifting panthers rendering justice. Tim Tingle--a scholar of his nation's language, culture, and spirituality--tells Rose's story of good and evil with understanding and even laugh-out-loud Choctaw humor. Tim Tingle, responding to a scarcity of Choctaw literature, began interviewing tribal elders in the early '90s. His collectionWalking the Choctaw Road was the Oklahoma Book of the Year. Tingle's children's book,Crossing Bok Chitto, garnered over twenty state and national awards, including Best Children's Book from the American Indian Library Association, and was an Editor's Choice in theNew York Times Book Review.

To Be a Water Protector by Winona LaDuke Winona LaDuke is a leader in cultural-based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, sustainable food systems and Indigenous rights. Her new book, To Be a Water Protector: Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers, is an expansive, provocative engagement with issues that have been central to her many years of activism. LaDuke honours Mother Earth and her teachings while detailing global, Indigenous-led opposition to the enslavement and exploitation of the land and water. She discusses several elements of a New Green Economy and outlines the lessons we can take from activists outside the US and Canada. In her unique way of storytelling, Winona LaDuke is inspiring, always a teacher and an utterly fearless activist, writer and speaker. Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. She is executive director of Honor the Earth, a national Native advocacy and environmental organization. Her work at the White Earth Land Recovery Project spans thirty years of legal, policy and community development work, including the creation of one of the first tribal land trusts in the country. LaDuke has testified at the United Nations, US Congress and state hearings and is an expert witness on economics and the environment. She is the author of numerous acclaimed articles and books.

Hunting by Stars (a Marrow Thieves Novel) by Cherie Dimaline From the acclaimed author of The Marrow Thieves comes a thrilling new story about hope and survival that New York Times bestselling author Angeline Boulley called "a revelatory must-read."   A 2022 American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Young Adult Honor Book   Years ago, when plagues and natural disasters killed millions of people, much of the world stopped dreaming. Without dreams, people are haunted, sick, mad, unable to rebuild. The government soon finds that the Indigenous people of North America have retained their dreams, an ability rumored to be housed in the very marrow of their bones. Soon, residential schools pop up--or are reopened--across the land to bring in the dreamers and harvest their dreams.   Seventeen-year-old French lost his family to these schools and has spent the years since heading north with his newfound family: a group of other dreamers, who, like him, are trying to build and thrive as a community. But then French wakes up in a pitch-black room, locked in and alone for the first time in years, and he knows immediately where he is--and what it will take to escape.   Meanwhile, out in the world, his found family searches for him and dodges new dangers--school Recruiters, a blood cult, even the land itself. When their paths finally collide, French must decide how far he is willing to go--and how many loved ones is he willing to betray--in order to survive.   Hunting by Stars is an engrossing, action-packed, deftly drawn novel that expands on the world of Cherie Dimaline's award-winning The Marrow Thieves, and it will haunt readers long after they've turned the final page.

Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes Winner of the Oakland "Blue Collar" PEN Award A work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance that shows how two centuries of Indigenous struggle created the movement proclaiming "Water is Life" In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi"--Water is Life--was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.

The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko A highly original and poetic self-portrait from one of America's most acclaimed writers. Leslie Marmon Silko's new book, her first in ten years, combines memoir with family history and reflections on the creatures and beings that command her attention and inform her vision of the world, taking readers along on her daily walks through the arroyos and ledges of the Sonoran desert in Arizona. Silko weaves tales from her family's past into her observations, using the turquoise stones she finds on the walks to unite the strands of her stories, while the beauty and symbolism of the landscape around her, and of the snakes, birds, dogs, and other animals that share her life and form part of her family, figure prominently in her memories. Strongly influenced by Native American storytelling traditions, The Turquoise Ledge becomes a moving and deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world-of what these creatures and landscapes can communicate to us, and how they are all linked. The book is Silko's first extended work of nonfiction, and its ambitious scope, clear prose, and inventive structure are captivating. The Turquoise Ledge will delight loyal fans and new readers alike, and it marks the return of the unique voice and vision of a gifted storyteller.

Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria In his new preface to this paperback edition, the author observes, "The Indian world has changed so substantially since the first publication of this book that some things contained in it seem new again." Indeed, it seems that each generation of whites and Indians will have to read and reread Vine Deloria’s Manifesto for some time to come, before we absorb his special, ironic Indian point of view and what he tells us, with a great deal of humor, about U.S. race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists. This book continues to be required reading for all Americans, whatever their special interest.

Dark. Sweet by Linda Hogan Dark. Sweet. offers readers the sweep of LindaHogan's work--environmental and spiritual concerns, her Chickasaw heritage--in spare, elemental, visionary language. From "Those Who Thunder": Those who thunder have dark hair and red throw rugs. They burn paper in bathroom sinks. Their voices refuse to suffer and their silences know the way straight to the heart; it's bus route number eight. Linda Hogan is the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award. She is also a recipient of the 2016 PEN New England Henry David Thoreau Prize. Her poetry has received an American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination.

Ancient Light by Kimberly Blaeser Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time. With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser's poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser's innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota. The collection invites readers to see with a new intimacy the worlds they inhabit. Blaeser brings readers to the brink, immerses them in the darkest regions of the Anthropocene, in the dangerous fallacies of capitalism, and then seeds hope. Ultimately, as the poems enact survivance, they reclaim Indigenous stories and lifeways.

The Maybe-Bird by Jennifer Elise Foerster THE MAYBE-BIRD by Jennifer Elise Foerster THE MAYBE-BIRD marks Jennifer Elise Foerster as a visionary voice in contemporary poetry. Through a spiraling sequence of lyric poems, a cast of voices--oracles, ghosts, water--speaks to a long history of genocide, displacement, and ecological devastation. Foerster uses new poetic forms and a highly conceptual framework to build these poems from myth, memory, and historical document, resurfacing Mvskoke language and story on the palimpsest of Southeastern U.S. history. Foerster leads us on a journey through the visible and invisible landscapes of our human story, through what feels like multiple lifetimes, where we hear the language of the shifting weather, and stand on the haunted edge of the world. Poetry. Native American Studies.

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Natalie Diaz's highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz's brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages--bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers--be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: "Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden." In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: "I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible." Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope--in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.

In the Night of Memory by Linda LeGarde Grover Winner: Northeastern Minnesota Book Award - Fiction Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association U.P. Notable Book Award​ Two lost sisters find family, and themselves, among the voices of an Ojibwe reservation  When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country's long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched--and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover's previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home. After a string of foster placements, from cold to kind to cruel, the girls find their way back to their extended Mozhay family, and a new set of challenges, and stories, unfolds. Deftly, Grover conjures a chorus of women's voices (sensible, sensitive Azure's first among them) to fill in the sorrows and joys, the loves and the losses that have brought the girls and their people to this moment. Though reconciliation is possible, some ruptures simply cannot be repaired; they can only be lived through, or lived with. In the Night of Memory creates a nuanced, moving, often humorous picture of two Ojibwe girls becoming women in light of this lesson learned in the long, sharply etched shadow of Native American history.

The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich "A fiercely imagined tale of love and loss, a story that manages to transform tragedy into comic redemption, sorrow into heroic survival."--New York Times "[A] beguiling family saga....A captivating jigsaw puzzle of longing and loss whose pieces form an unforgettable image of contemporary Native American life."--People A New York Times bestselling author, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and winner of the National Book Award, Louise Erdrich is a renowned chronicler of life and love, mystery and magic, within the Native American community. A hauntingly beautiful story of a mysterious woman who enters the lives of two families and changes them forever, Erdrich's classic novel, The Antelope Wife, has enthralled readers for more than a decade with its powerful themes of fate and ancestry, tragedy and salvation. Now the acclaimed author of The Plague of Doves and The Round House has radically revised this already masterful work, adding a new richness to the characters and story while bringing its major themes into sharper focus, as it ingeniously illuminates the effect of history on families and cultures, Ojibwe and white.  

Night Train by Lise Erdrich What does it mean to be a "fully processed" Indian in America today? InNight Train, Lise Erdrich offers a sharp-humored and powerful primer. Largely set in the small towns and reservations of northwestern Minnesota and western North Dakota, her literary snapshots capture the characters' lives playing out against a backdrop of emergency rooms, supermarket aisles, backwoods parties, family breakfast tables, booze-soaked taverns, and sterile, but emotionally fraught offices. Taken at the very moment when the pressures of daily life collide with the insidiousness of history, these stories reveal the personal struggle and small triumphs of people facing the absurdities of bureaucracy, cycles of poverty and addiction, and out-sized notions of Indian legends and culture. It takes love, fortitude, and no small amount of humor to survive the sun-starved winters of the Great Plains, where finding reasons to keep going (and keep growing) can be the most profound accomplishment. Erdrich's flashbulb-quick stories provide it all in cathartic doses and within the many voices of her tales, all the crazy starts to make sense. Lise Erdrich has worked in the fields of Indian health and education since the 1980s and is currently a school health officer at the Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Her stories have received a number of awards, including theMinnesota Monthly Tamarack Award, theMany Mountains Moving Flash Fiction Contest, and Best of Show at the North Dakota State Fair.Night Train is her highly anticipated first collection.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer 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 life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of their self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is an essential, intimate history - and counter-narrative - of a resilient people in a transformative era.

If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth "A heart-healing, mocs-on-the-ground story of music, family and friendship." -- Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of Tantalize and Rain is Not My Indian Name.Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him -- people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan's side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis's home -- will he still be his friend? Acclaimed adult author Eric Gansworth makes his YA debut with this wry and powerful novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock 'n' roll.

Thinning Blood by Leah Myers Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family's totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her "culture is being bleached out," offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds: her naïve childhood love for Pocahontas, her struggles with the Klallam language, the violence she faced at the hands of a close White friend as a teenager. Crisp and powerful, Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of one woman's identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family, and what it means to belong.

Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone by Kimberly Blaeser (Editor)