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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
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An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
Native American Clothing: An Illustrated History
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More than five centuries of native peoples' artistry. Native Americans crafted beautiful clothing out of skins, pigment, quills and sinew. The collection of photographs in this outstanding reference celebrates this decorative genius. Many of the 300 photographs from more than 60 leading museums and private collections have never been published previously. The book describes the clothing in fascinating detail, from moccasins and tunics to sashes, bags and ceremonial and burial costumes. Theodore Brasser explains who made what and how, as well as the meanings of the different kinds of decoration, such as beadwork, embroidery, appliqué, patchwork, weaving and dyeing. There are also many examples of native pottery and other historic artifacts that depict themes used in the clothes. Native American Clothing provides a thorough historical background of the many influences on this clothing, including: Mythology Social status Political standing Wealth Climate Geography Contact with European settlers. The book covers the entire North American continent and is organized by tribal groups and regions: Southeast Northern east coast Eastern Great Lakes Eastern sub-Arctic Great Lakes Plains Southwest Plateau/desert California Northwest coast Western sub-Arctic Arctic. Numerous maps show the ranges of the tribes and convey how trade and travel spread cultural themes. With authoritative text and art-quality color reproductions, Native American Clothing will be important to collectors and historians and will also appeal to general readers.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
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A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their won words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Native Universe: Voices of Native America
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The Smithsonian's new National Museum of the American Indian will be the last museum to be built on the National Mall and its opening will be a major, national media event. To commemorate the opening, the National Geographic Society has collaborated with the museum's curators and advisers to produce a lavishly illustrated, comprehensive volume based on major themes relevant to American Indian peoples. Written by a distinguished group of Native American scholars, poets, activists, and tribal leaders, the book will offer its non-Indian readers a closer understanding of Native perspectives, beliefs, and histories. The real power of this volume rests with its power to communicate firsthand the experiences, observations, and intellectual concepts of the hemisphere's indigenous peoples, who demonstrate that their ancient philosophies and folkways are integral, valuable, and still apply in modern times.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask
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"I had a profoundly well-educated Princetonian ask me, 'Where is your tomahawk?' I had a beautiful woman approach me in the college gymnasium and exclaim, 'You have the most beautiful red skin.' I took a friend to see Dances with Wolves and was told, 'Your people have a beautiful culture.' . . . I made many lifelong friends at college, and they supported but also challenged me with questions like, 'Why should Indians have reservations?' " What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you think you should already know the answers--or suspect that your questions may be offensive? In matterof-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway. * What is the real story of Thanksgiving? * Why are tribal languages important? * What do you think of that incident where people died in a sweat lodge? White/Indian relations are often characterized by guilt and anger. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask cuts through the emotion and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action. Anton Treuer, author of The Assassination of Hole in the Day and many other books on Ojibwe history and language, received an Ambassador Award in 2011 from Facing Race: We're All in This Together, an initiative of the St. Paul Foundation. All around Minnesota, Treuer has given scores of public lectures and been asked hundreds of questions--many like the ones in this book.
The Tribal Moment in American Politics: The Struggle for Native American Sovereignty
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In the "tribal moment in American politics," which occurred from the 1950s to the mid- to late-1970s, American Indians waged civil disobedience for tribal self-determination and fought from within the U.S. legal and political systems. The U.S. government responded characteristically, overall wielding its authority in incremental, frequently double-edged ways that simultaneously opened and restricted tribal options. The actions of Native Americans and public officials brought about a new era of tribal-American relations in which tribal sovereignty has become a central issue, underpinning self-determination, and involving the tribes, states, and federal government in intergovernmental cooperative activities as well as jurisdictional skirmishes. American Indian tribes struggle still with the impacts of a capitalist economy on their traditional ways of life. Most rely heavily on federal support. Yet they have also called on tribal sovereignty to protect themselves. Asking how and why the United States is willing to accept tribal sovereignty, this book examines the development of the "order" of Indian affairs. Beginning with the nation's founding, it brings to light the hidden assumptions in that order. It examines the underlying deep contradictions that have existed in the relationship between the United States and the tribes as the order has evolved, up to and into the "tribal moment."
Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World
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This valuable book provides a succinct, readable account of an oft-neglected topic in the historiography of the American Revolution: the role of Native Americans in the Revolution's outbreak, progress, and conclusion. There has not been an all-encompassing narrative of the Native American experience during the American Revolutionary War period_until now. Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World fills that gap in the literature, provides full coverage of the Revolution's effects on Native Americans, and details how Native Americans were critical to the Revolution's outbreak, its progress, and its conclusion. The work covers the experiences of specific Native American groups such as the Abenaki, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois, Seminole, and Shawnee peoples with information presented by chronological period and geographic area. The first part of the book examines the effects of the Imperial Crisis of the 1760s and early 1770s on Native peoples in the Northern colonies, Southern colonies, and Ohio Valley respectively. The second section focuses on the effects of the Revolutionary War itself on these three regions during the years of ongoing conflict, and the final section concentrates on the postwar years. Adds the Native American perspective to the reader's understanding of the American Revolution, a critical aspect of this period in history that is rarely covered Supplies a synthesis of the best current and past work on the topic of Native Americans in the American Revolution that will be accessible to general readers as well as undergraduate and graduate-level students Shows how the struggle over the definition and utilization of Native American identity_an issue that was initiated with the American Revolution_is still ongoing for American Indians
"All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans
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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.
Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation
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A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail. The Cherokee are a proud, ancient civilization. For hundreds of years they believed themselves to be the "Principle People" residing at the center of the earth. But by the 18th century, some of their leaders believed it was necessary to adapt to European ways in order to survive. Those chiefs sealed the fate of their tribes in 1875 when they signed a treaty relinquishing their land east of the Mississippi in return for promises of wealth and better land. The U.S. government used the treaty to justify the eviction of the Cherokee nation in an exodus that the Cherokee will forever remember as the "trail where they cried." The heroism and nobility of the Cherokee shine through this intricate story of American politics, ambition, and greed. B & W photographs
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter
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Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. In considering the connections between literature and lived experience, this book contemplates four key questions at the heart of Indigenous kinship traditions: How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? Blending personal narrative and broader historical and cultural analysis with close readings of key creative and critical texts, Justice argues that Indigenous writers engage with these questions in part to challenge settler-colonial policies and practices that have targeted Indigenous connections to land, history, family, and self. More importantly, Indigenous writers imaginatively engage the many ways that communities and individuals have sought to nurture these relationships and project them into the future. This provocative volume challenges readers to critically consider and rethink their assumptions about Indigenous literature, history, and politics while never forgetting the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the power of story to effect personal and social change. Written with a generalist reader firmly in mind, but addressing issues of interest to specialists in the field, this book welcomes new audiences to Indigenous literary studies while offering more seasoned readers a renewed appreciation for these transformative literary traditions. Awarded the NAISA Award Best Subsequent Book, 2018, PROSE Award, 2019, and shortlisted for ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism, 2018.
Essential Art: Native Basketry from the California Indian Heritage Center
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A treasury of selected pieces from the California Indian Heritage Center, this collection reflects the scale and scope of baskets created by nearly every weaving tradition in Cali-fornia over the last century . This book conveys the dual nature of beauty and practicality that baskets presented as a part of daily life and as a growing example of unique art - a careful selection of the best, beautifully presented.
When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California
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When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California features contemporary art by First Californians and other American Indian artists with strong ties to the state. Spanning the past five decades, the exhibition includes more than sixty-five works in various media, from painting, sculpture, prints, and photography, to installation and video. More than forty artists are represented, among them pioneers such as Rick Bartow, George Blake, Dalbert Castro, Frank Day, Harry Fonseca, Frank LaPena, Jean LaMarr, James Luna, Karen Noble, Fritz Scholder, Brian Tripp, and Franklin Tuttle, as well as emerging and mid-career artists. Taking cues from their forebears, members of the younger generation often combine art and activism, embracing issues of identity, politics, and injustice to produce innovative--and frequently enlightening--work. The exhibition, along with the accompanying catalogue, transcends borders, with some California artists working outside the state, and several artists of non-California tribes living and creating within its boundaries. Diverse cultural influences coupled with the extraordinary dissemination of images made possible by technology have led to new forms of expression, making When I Remember I See Red a richly layered experience. Published in association with the Crocker Art Museum Exhibition dates: Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento: October 20, 2019-January 26, 2020 Institute of American Indian Arts, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe: August 14, 2020-January 3, 2021 Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles: July 18, 2021-February 27, 2022
The Fine Art of California Indian Basketry
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Presents over sixty examples of beautiful California Indian basketry, with commentary upon each basket by native basketweavers, scholars, and California Indian artists in other media.
We Are the Land: A History of Native California
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"A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White's California Exposures."--Kirkus Reviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as "California," there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood--paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today's casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.
California Through Native Eyes
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Bauer tells California history strictly through Native perspectives. Most California histories begin with the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in the late eighteenth century and conveniently skip to the Gold Rush of 1849. Noticeably absent from these stories are the perspectives and experiences of the people who lived on the land long before European settlers arrived. Historian William Bauer seeks to correct that oversight through an innovative approach that tells California history strictly through Native perspectives. Using oral histories of Concow, Pomo, and Paiute workers, taken as part of a New Deal federal works project, Bauer reveals how Native peoples have experienced and interpreted the history of the land we now call California. Combining these oral histories with creation myths and other oral traditions, he demonstrates the importance of sacred landscapes and animals and other nonhuman actors to the formation of place and identity. He also examines tribal stories of ancestors who prophesied the coming of white settlers and uses their recollections of the California Indian Wars to push back against popular narratives that seek to downplay Native resistance. The result both challenges the "California story" and enriches it with new voices and important points of view, serving as a model for understanding Native historical perspectives in other regions.
Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band
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Experience the riveting, powerful story of the Native American civil rights movement and the resulting struggle for identity told through the high-flying career of West Coast rock 'n' roll pioneers Redbone. You've heard the hit song "Come and Get Your Love" in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, but the story of the band behind it is one of cultural, political, and social importance. Brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas were talented Native American rock musicians that took the 1960s Sunset Strip by storm. They influenced The Doors and jammed with Jimmy Hendrix before he was "Jimi," and the idea of a band made up of all Native Americans soon followed. Determined to control their creative vision and maintain their cultural identity, they eventually signed a deal with Epic Records in 1969. But as the American Indian Movement gained momentum the band took a stand, choosing pride in their ancestry over continued commercial reward. Created in cooperation of the Vegas family, authors Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni with artist Thibault Balahy take painstaking steps to ensure the historical accuracy of this important and often overlooked story of America's past. Part biography and part research journalism, Redbone tells a vivid story about this neglected chapter of American history.
Native American Women Leaders
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There is insufficient recognition given to Native American women, many of whom have made enormous contributions to their respective tribal nations and to the broader United States. The 14 stories in this book are representative of the countless Native American women who have excelled as leaders (including Debra Haaland and her history-making role as Secretary of the Interior). They come from across the centuries and from a range of tribal nations, and represent a wide range of society, including politics, the arts, health care, business, education, wellness, feminism, environmentalism, and social activism. Most of these women have made their mark in more than one area. Each chapter includes personal biographical and public life information. Some of the women have given us much in writing, including memoirs, while others have left behind little or nothing written. Even in the absence of their own words, though, their actions still speak eloquently.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
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New York Times Bestseller Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck Recipient of the American Book Award The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them." Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
Ceremony
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Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremny that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair.
The Night Watchman
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WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
Trickster
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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.
House Made of Dawn
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Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature
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Two-Spirit people, identified by many different tribally specific names and standings within their communities, have been living, loving, and creating art since time immemorial. It wasn't until the 1970s, however, that contemporary queer Native literature gained any public notice. Even now, only a handful of books address it specifically, most notably the 1988 collection Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Since that book's publication twenty-three years ago, there has not been another collection published that focuses explicitly on the writing and art of Indigenous Two-Spirit and Queer people. This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of identities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the work of established writers and talented new voices, this anthology spans genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essay) and themes (memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship, family, love, and loss) and represents a watershed moment in Native American and Indigenous literatures, Queer studies, and the intersections between the two. Collaboratively, the pieces in Sovereign Erotics demonstrate not only the radical diversity among the voices of today's Indigenous GLBTQ2 writers but also the beauty, strength, and resilience of Indigenous GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century. Contributors: Indira Allegra, Louise Esme Cruz, Paula Gunn Allen, Qwo-Li Driskill, Laura Furlan, Janice Gould, Carrie House, Daniel Heath Justice, Maurice Kenny, Michael Koby, M. Carmen Lane, Jaynie Lara, Chip Livingston, Luna Maia, Janet McAdams, Deborah Miranda, Daniel David Moses, D. M. O'Brien, Malea Powell, Cheryl Savageau, Kim Shuck, Sarah Tsigeyu Sharp, James Thomas Stevens, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, William Raymond Taylor, Joel Waters, and Craig Womack
Reservation Blues
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In the 111-year life of the Spokane Indian reservation, not one person has arrived by accident-until the day the black stranger appears with nothing more than the suit he wears and the guitar slung over his back. The man happens to be the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, in flight from the devil and presumed long dead. And when he passes his enchanted instrument to young Thomas-Builds-the-Fire-storyteller, misfit, and musician-a magical odyssey begins. From reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan, Thomas and his Coyote Springs bandmates careen through ancestral nightmares and rock-and-roll dreams, sounding chords of celebration and survival as timeless as their tribe. From Sherman Alexie, the Granta Award-winning author whose work has been hailed as "spare, disturbing...with stark lyric power" by the New York Times, comes a fresh, luxuriantly comic tale of power, tragedy, and redemption among today's generation of First Americans.
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
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United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into one momentous volume. This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from the massive libraries of oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Dinéh poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Natalie Diaz, Tommy Pico, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. In When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, Harjo offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature.
Red Indian Road West:Native American Poetry from California
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Poetry. California Interest. Native American Studies. Containing the work of 31 poets from 29 tribes, Red Indian Road West is the first poetry anthology encompassing the entire range of Native American experience in California. With more than 720,000 Native Americans, California has by far the largest Native American population of any state and perhaps the most diverse. There are currently more than one hundred American Indian tribes indigenous to California, as well as many Native Americans from tribes nationwide now residing in the state. Contributors: Indira Allegra, Judi Brannan Armbruster, J.P. Dancing Bear, Nanette Bradley Deetz, E.K. Cooper, Roberta Reyes Cordero, Lucille Lang Day, Natalie Diaz, Carolyn Dunn, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Jewelle Gomez, Janice Gould, Alison Hart, John Hershman, Senna Heyatawin, Dave Holt, Frank LaPena, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, James Luna, Sal Martinez, Shaunna Oteka McCovey, Stephen Meadows, Deborah A. Miranda, Manny Moreno, Catherine Nelson-Rodriguez, Linda Noel, Wendy Rose, Sylvia Ross, Kurt Schweigman, Marlon Sherman, Kim Shuck, Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "RED INDIAN ROAD WEST is an assertion and a statement saying, 'We have always been here. You will never forget us. You cannot do so.' Indigenous people and their insistent passion. Traveling from inland hills to seashores. Their experiences in hot desert and hard mountain. Vital moments to viral moments like no other, but always within the present one. Karuk. Wintu. Konkow. Pomo. Miwok. Mohave. Chumash. Costanoan Esselen. Ohlone. And more. And more than we can name but which will always be remembered. And later on, the Lakota, Dakota, Cherokee, Wampanoag, and others, so our indigenous essence will always be momentous. Read, listen, hear, and be assured. Know again and always!"--Simon J. Ortiz "An anthology is a community, each voice telling its story in this tribal gathering. RED INDIAN ROAD WEST is a pow wow of sorts. It takes many voices to tell the story of the Native spirit and experience. The voices often are uprooted, yet find place within language. There is camaraderie, wounding, anger, defiance, celebration and disclosure in these wolf songs of the heart."--Diane Glancy
Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First People Poetry
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A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project--including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others--to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship." In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.
Wandering Stars
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. "For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you." --Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There--warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts--asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange's monumental gifts.
The Tachi-Yokuts, Indians of the San Joaquin Valley
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1. THE TACHI-YOKUTS, INDIANS OF THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CA, THEIR LIVES, SONGS, & STORIES is now recommended for supplementary reading by the Social-Science Committee of the State Department of Education. This entertaining & informative book is the result of materials gathered in 1940 by author Marjorie W. Cummins. 2. HOW COYOTE STOLE THE SUN, by the same author, (ISBN 0-9633692-0-2) is a book about the Yokuts, their Culture, Myths, Songs, Basketry, Dance, Rock Painting, Religion & History. Myth told to J.P. Harrington in 1916. For use in schools, libraries, & for the general public. A Yokuts medicine man sings for A.L. Kroeber 1903. 3. We have a kit, composed of the two books as above, a video (ISBN 0-9633692-1-0) & a cassette tape (0-9633692-0-3) of songs, $70, tax included. The video tells the story of the myth as told by Tachi Tom to J.P. Harrington, Smithsonian Scholar. These are materials about the Yokuts Indians of the Central interior valley of California. Cassette tape now copyrighted & professionally edited for background noise. Side 1 gives the songs sung by the Tachi-Yokuts in 1940; side 2 sung by the Yaudanchi-Yokuts medicine man in 1903. The song uses a 5 tone scale. Write for flyers: Marjorie W. Cummins, 2064 Carter Way, Hanford, CA 93230. (209) 584-7576 after 1 p.m. Pac. Time.
Yokuts and Paiute Songs and Culture
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Our nations first folk songs were those of the native inhabitants. This is an attempt to resurrect the early remnants of the California Native American songs which reveal them to be a people with rich feelings and imagination. Very little infomation existed prior to 1949 when the author began to make friends with the remaining elders and then have them sing some of the songs they still remmbered which he recorded and set to music. Twenty-five of these songs are given in this book.
How Coyote Stole the Sun: The Myth, the Music, and Other Features of the Yokuts culture
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Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769-1849
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Assigning Indians their rightful place in the history of California before the Gold Rush, Phillips portrays these people not as passive refugees plying the margins of the Spanish mission system but as active members of independent, evolving societies. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, O
Two Bear Cubs: A Miwok Legend from California's Central Valley
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Retells the Miwok Indian legend in which a little measuring worm saves two bear cubs stranded at the top of the rock known as El Capitan.
Legends of the Yosemite Miwok
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Read about the greed of His'-sik the Skunk, about how Ah-ha'-le the coyote created humans, and about the quarreling couple who became Half Dome and North Dome. For centuries these stories have instructed and entertained the Indians of Yosemite. Presented here in a form that represents, as closely as possible, the way they were traditionally told--and beautifully illustrated with the artwork of Maidu Indian Harry Fonseca--these stories offer an alternative, older way of understanding a beloved American landscape.