Trail of lightning

by Rebecca Roanhorse

Roanhorse, a Pueblo author and the first and only Native American to win a Hugo Award, takes Diné stories to a new, vibrant level with her novel about Maggie Hoskie, a monster slayer whose skills are needed after the Big Water, when old gods come back to help, and hurt, the living. Her love, Neizgháni, who saved her from death, has abandoned her, but she must face him — and her own inner demons — on a quest to find out more about a witch behind a series of killings, all while trying to figure out if she can trust the man who has been sent along with her.

Cherokee America

by Margaret Verble

Cherokee citizens are kicking butt and taking names in the fiction world, and Verble, a Pulitzer finalist, is no exception, with her sweeping historical drama set in Cherokee territory before the removal. Check, in many ways the central character, has a fascinating personal history: Her father is both a slave owner and a well-known soldier; her husband is an abolitionist. Check determines to solve, and avenge, a series of crimes all while history marches forward, threatening to tear her nation — and her family, apart. Refreshingly honest about slave ownership in Cherokee territory, this novel takes us through the Civil War and shows us the consequences that this part of American history has had on a people — and their right to self-determination.

There there

by Tommy Orange

With an introduction and interlude that speak to Native American history in this country in beautiful lyric essay form and a culminating shootout at a powwow in Oakland, it’s clear why Orange’s novel delivered a one-two punch in the literary landscape. The novel features 12 Native characters. Some of them have intertwined histories that meet in the past, with the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, and some of them only have Oakland, and a tragic outcome, in common.

Where the dead sit talking

by Brandon Hobson

Shortlisted for the 2018 National Book Awards, this searing novel by Hobson, about a Cherokee teenager caught in the social work system after his mother ends up in prison, will linger in your mind. Sequoyah is a troubled, quiet kid who ends up in the home of a well-meaning but largely naïve white couple. When he meets Rosemary — also Native (Ponca), he can’t figure out whether he loves her or wants to be her, culminating in the kind of climax that leaves you breathless.

Perma Red

by Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red is a book of complications, poisons, medicines, snakes, and men’s violent desires they call love; the widespread violence against Indigenous women has largely been ignored in U.S. society, and while the statistics are appalling, the deep interior of fiction seems more potent as a force of disturbance.

Winter Counts

by David Weiden

Winter Counts is the story of a local Native American enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation who becomes obsessed with finding and stopping the dealer who is bringing increasingly dangerous drugs into his community. It’s a Native thriller, an examination of the broken criminal justice system on reservations, and a meditation on Native identity. 

People of the Morning Star : a novel of North America's forgotten past

by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear 

A religious miracle: the Cahokians believed that the divine hero Morning Star had been resurrected in the flesh. But not all is fine and stable in glorious Cahokia. To the astonishment of the ruling clan, an attempt is made on the living god's life. Now it is up to Morning Star's aunt, Matron Blue Heron, to keep it quiet until she can uncover the plot and bring the culprits to justice. If she fails, Cahokia will be torn asunder in warfare, rage, and blood as civil war consumes them all. 

Moon of the Crusted Snow

by Waubgeshig Rice

A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice. With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.

Quiet until the thaw : a novel

by Alexandra Fuller

A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw grapples with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected. As Fuller writes, "The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly.” 

The beadworkers : stories

by Beth Piatote

Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world. 

Love medicine

by Louise Erdrich

Filled with humor, magic, injustice and betrayal, Erdrich blends family love and loyalty in a stunning work of dramatic fiction. 

Abandon me : memoirs

by Melissa Febos

Febos’s magnificent memoir-in-essays deals with her attempt to recover and reconnect with her father, and in attempting to do so, she fearlessly combs through memories of her past along with ancient and modern cultural myths in an attempt to find footing.

Empire of the summer moon : Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history

by S.C. Gwynne

S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

American Indians and the law

by N. Bruce Duthu

Professor N. Bruce Duthu, J.D., is an internationally recognized scholar on Native American issues. In American Indians and the Law, he highlights the major events, the differing principles, and the evolving perspectives that have governed relations among the Indian tribes, the federal government, and the states. 

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West 

by Dee Brown

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. 

The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

By Bob Drury And Tom Clavin

The untold story of the great Ogala Sioux chief Red Cloud, the most powerful Indian commander of the Plains who witnessed the opening of the West and forced the American government to sue for peace in a conflict named for him.

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans And the Road To Indian Territory

By Claudio Saunt

A masterful and unsettling history of “Indian Removal,” the forced migration of Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s and the state-sponsored theft of their lands. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the voluminous records produced by the federal government, Saunt’s deeply researched book argues that Indian Removal, as advocates of the policy called it, was not an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent. Rather, it was a fiercely contested political act designed to secure new lands for the expansion of slavery and to consolidate the power of the southern states. In telling this gripping story, Saunt shows how the politics and economics of white supremacy lay at the heart of the expulsion of Native Americans; how corruption, greed, and administrative indifference and incompetence contributed to the debacle of its implementation; and how the consequences still resonate today.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

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 U.S. settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Roxanne 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 and in the highest offices of government and the military. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes U.S. history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid To Ask

Anton Treuer

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 matter-of-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.

In the courts of the conqueror : the ten worst Indian law cases ever decided

Walter R. Echo-Hawk

Echo-Hawk reveals the troubling fact that American law has rendered legal the destruction of Native Americans and their culture. He analyzes ten cases that embody or expose the roots of injustice and highlight the use of nefarious legal doctrines.

Shapeshifting : transformations in Native American art

by Karen Kramer Russell

Public perception of Native American art and culture has often been derived from misunderstandings and misinterpretations, and from images promulgated by popular culture. Typically, Native Americans are grouped as a whole and their art and culture considered part of the past rather than widely present. Shapeshifting challenges these assumptions by focusing on the objects as art rather than cultural or anthropological artifacts and on the multivalent creativity of Native American artists.

Migrations : new directions in Native American art

edited by Marjorie Devon

This exhibition included close to fifty works by six different Native American artists from six different cultures from across the U.S. The six are artists who, in their work, migrate between Native American cultures, traditional and contemporary aesthetics, and media, to represent the Native American experience. The aim of the exhibit was to support innovative, emerging Native American artists.

In the spirit of Mother Earth : nature in Native American art

by Jeremy Schmidt

To Native Americans, nature and art are undeniably intertwined. Creating a work of art - or even a tool or weapon - meant paying reverence to the cosmic forces of the Earth's spirit. With over 100 color photographs, In The Spirit Of Mother Earth shows how nature has influenced the exquisite handiwork of Native American people through the ages.

Seeing America : native artists of North America

by Adriana Greci Green, Tricia Laughlin Bloom

This book includes original art and artifacts from the distant past as well as modern work by Native American artists from a vast array of tribes — including Cherokee, Delaware, Iroquois, Mohawk, Cheyenne, Lakota, Zuni, Pueblo, Yup’ik, Huron, Ojibwa, Arapaho, and Nez Perce. Works included are clothing (such as robes, shoes, and hats), everyday items (such as blankets, pots, jugs, and baskets) and artwork (such as paintings on animal hide and colorful figurines). 

Hearts of our people : Native women artists

by Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Teri Greeves

Women have long been the creative force behind Native art. Presented in close cooperation with top Native women artists and scholars, this first major exhibition of artwork by Native women honors the achievements of over 115 artists from the United States and Canada spanning over 1,000 years. Their triumphs—from pottery, textiles, and painting, to photographic portraits, to a gleaming El Camino—show astonishing innovation and technical mastery. 

Jeffrey Gibson : like a hammer

edited by John P. Lukavic

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer will reveal how the artist draws upon his heritage and remixes his older works to create a distinct visual vocabulary in artworks that explore his multi-faceted identity and the history of modernism. Gibson’s abstract works take inspiration from his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, pan-Native American visual culture, alternative subcultures and the artist’s experiences living abroad as well as popular culture. 

No reservations : Native American history and culture in contemporary art

curated by Richard Klein

This collection of work by both Native and non-Native artists speaks of the complexity of Native American historical and cultural influences in contemporary culture. Rather than focusing on artists who attempt to maintain strict cultural practices, it brings together a group of artists who engage the larger contemporary art world and are not afraid to step beyond the bounds of tradition.

When I remember I see red : American Indian art and activism in California

edited by Frank LaPena and Mark Dean Johnson

This exhibition highlights some of the recurring themes explored by Native artists over the past few decades: history, tradition, and spirituality; identity and beauty; human impact on the environment; social justice; and the inevitable intersection of Native cultures with contemporary American culture. Some of the works are explicitly political in content. However, most aim to reverse erasure and invisibility, while reasserting Native philosophy and sovereignty.

Brian Honyouti : Hopi carver

by Zena Pearlstone 

Although Hopi carver Brian Honyouti (1947-2016) was deeply embedded in his culture and produced ritual artworks throughout his life, he nevertheless also created unique commercial artworks. The latter, the focus of this volume, increasingly diverged from the world view embodied in Hopi art, ceremony, and philosophy to become a new form of storytelling. It was his hope that having made his intentions public for the first time, his work would be seen as a window into Hopi life as well as a reflection of contemporary mainstream American society. 

Jeffrey Gibson : this is the day

curated by Tracy L. Adler  

Through painting, sculpture, installation, and film, Jeffrey Gibson brings together overlapping and conflicting cultures, histories, and aesthetics. Most recently he has explored notions of cultural and personal identity as they are communicated through aspects of adornment and dress. his volume offers fresh insight into Gibson's approach, which melds the artist's Native American heritage with popular culture.

Art for an undivided earth : the American Indian Movement generation

by Jessica L. Horton

In Art for an Undivided Earth Jessica L. Horton reveals how the spatial philosophies underlying the American Indian Movement (AIM) were refigured by a generation of artists searching for new places to stand. Upending the assumption that Jimmie Durham, James Luna, Kay WalkingStick, Robert Houle, and others were primarily concerned with identity politics, she joins them in remapping the coordinates of a widely shared yet deeply contested modernity that is defined in great part by the colonization of the Americas. 

Edgar Heap of Birds

by Bill Anthes 

For over three decades, contemporary Native American artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has pursued a disciplined practice in multiple media, having shown his paintings, drawings, prints, and text-based conceptual art throughout numerous national and international galleries and public spaces. In the first book-length study of this important artist, Bill Anthes analyzes Heap of Birds's art and politics in relation to the international contemporary art scene, Native American history, and settler colonialism.

Native fashion now : North American Indian style

by Karen Kramer

Celebrating Native American design as an important force in the world of contemporary fashion, this book features beautiful, innovative, and surprising looks from Native American artists. Divided into sections according to the designers' personal styles, the book showcases the work of dozens of fashion designers, from Virgil Ortiz to Patricia Michaels to Jamie Okuma. 

Dark light : the ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse

by Christine Nofchissey McHorse 

Working from traditional materials and techniques, Christine Nofchissey McHorse’s vessel-based art blends the boundaries of pottery and sculpture, erasing the line between function and form. As the Navajo artist’s first traveling exhibition, the show exhibits the unadorned sophistication of the sultry curves, black satiny surfaces, and modern forms of her Dark Light series, created from 1997 to present.