Top 100 books by Indigenous Masters

Everyone loves a good list but finding lists that reflect the intelligence of experts in a given field can sometimes be tricky.  Consider, if you will, books about American Indians for the kiddos.  I can’t tell you how many summer reading lists I see every year that have The Indian in the Cupboard, The Matchlock Gun, or even Rifles for Watie on them.  Just once it would be nice to see a Top 100 list of books that could serve as guidelines for folks searching for good books about indigenous peoples.

You can imagine my interest, then, when Debbie Reese mentioned on the ccbc-net listserv that she had contributed to a list called “Top One Hundred Books by Indigenous Writers.”  She also said that if anyone was interested in seeing this list, they could contact her and she’d pass it on.  But with a list this good, it begs to be shared.  I asked Debbie and her fellow experts in the field if it would be all right to post the list on this site and they agreed.

Here’s is some background, from Debbie, about the books:

As we worked on the list, we limited ourselves on # of books per author so that we could be as inclusive as possible. The list is a combination of our personal favorites and recommendations from peers.

We did not delineate or mark those that are in the children/YA category. We feel strongly that those who wish to write for adults or children/YA would benefit from reading what we’re calling masters. And, we think that those who wish to strengthen their ability to select/review books about American Indians would benefit from reading the books, too. So many authors who give talks and workshops tell people that in order to write, they have to read.

I have linked some of the children’s and YA titles to reviews and records.  If I have missed any, please let me know.

Thank you Debbie, Susan, Teresa, and Tim for passing this along.  I am very pleased and moved to host it here.

A Work in Progress: Top One Hundred Books by Indigenous Writers

Compiled for ATALM [1] 2012, by

Susan Hanks, Debbie Reese, Teresa Runnels, and Tim Tingle [2]

Updated on February 24, 2014

 

After a year of informal surveys and queries, we offer a list of over 100 books that every museum and library should have on their shelves. Written by tribal members, these books are the foundation of our literature as Indigenous people. Just as Western culture promotes Shakespeare as a prerequisite to grasping the essence of Western word arts, we promote N. Scott Momaday, D’Arcy McNickle, and many, many others to insure that our future writers reference, in images and ideas, our Indigenous masters.

 

Among our list are books written for children and young adults. Though often seen as “less than” because of their intended reader, we believe books for children are as important—if not more important—than books for adults. The future of our Nations will be in the hands of our children. Books that reflect them and their nations are crucial to the well being of all our Nations.

 

Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene)

• The Business of Fancydancing

• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

• Reservation Blues

 

Rilla Askew (Choctaw)

• Mercy Seat

 

Beverly Blacksheep (Navajo)

• Baby Learns about Colors

• Baby’s First Laugh

 

Kimberly Blaeser (White Earth Ojibwe)

• Absentee Indians and Other Poems

 

Joseph Boyden (Metis/Micmac)

• Three Day Road

 

Jim Bruchac and Joe Bruchac (Abenaki)

• Native American Games & Stories

 

Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki)

• Children of the Longhouse

• The Heart of a Chief

• Hidden Roots

• Skeleton Man

 

Ignatia Broker (Ojibwe)

• Night Flying Woman

 

Emily Ivanoff Brown (Native Village of Unalakleet)

• The Longest Story Ever Told: Qayak, The Magical Man

 

Nicola Campbell (Interior Salish)

• Shi-shi-etko

• Shin-chi’s Canoe

 

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

• Beaver Steals Fire: A Salish Coyote Story

 

Robert Conley (Cherokee)

• Medicine War

• The Witch of Going Snake

 

Ella Deloria (Yankton Sioux)

• Waterlily

 

Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Lakota)

• Custer Died For Your Sins

• Red Earth, White Lies

 

Jennifer Denetdale (Dine)

• The Long Walk: The Forced Navajo Exile

• Reclaiming Dine History

 

Echo-Hawk, Roger C. and Walter C. Echo-Hawk (Pawnee)

• Battlefields and Burial Grounds: The Indian Struggle to Protect Ancestral Graves in the United States

 

Walter C. Echo-Hawk (Pawnee)

• In the Courts of the Conqueror: the 10 Worst Law Cases Ever Decided

 

Heid Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

• Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems

 

Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

• The Beet Queen

• The Birchbark House

• The Game of Silence

• The Last Report on the Miracles at No Horse

           

Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan Delaware)

• Only Approved Indians: Stories

• Red Blood

• Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples

 

Eric Gansworth (Onondaga)

• A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function

• Extra Indians

• If I Ever Get Out of Here

• Mending Skins

 

Diane Glancy (Cherokee)

• Pushing the Bear

 

Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek)

• For a Girl Becoming

• The Good Luck Cat

• In Mad Love and War

• Reinventing the Enemies Language

 

Tomson Highway (Cree)

• Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

• Kiss of the Fur Queen

 

Geary Hobson (Cherokee, Quapaw)

• The Last of the Ofos

• The Remembered Earth

 

Linda Hogan (Chickasaw)

• Mean Spirit

• Red Clay: Poems & Stories

• Solar Storms

• The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

 

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw)

• Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story

• Shell Shaker

 

Hershman John (Navajo)

• I Swallow Turquoise for Courage

 

Thomas King (Cherokee)

• A Coyote Columbus Story

• Medicine River

• One Good Story, That One

 

Michael Lacapa (Apache/Hopi)

• Antelope Woman

• Less than Half, More Than Whole

 

Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe/Chippewa/Anishinabe)

• All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

 

Adrian Louis (Paiute)

• Among the Dog Eaters

• Shedding Skins

• Skin

• Wild Indians and Other Creatures

 

Larry Loyie (Cree)

• As Long as the Rivers Flow: A Last Summer Before Residential School

 

Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee) and Michael Wallace

• A Chief and Her People

 

Joseph Marshall III (Lakota Sioux)

• The Journey of Crazy Horse

• The Lakota Way

 

John Joseph Matthews (Osage)

• Sundown

 

Janet McAdams (Creek)

• After Removal (with Geary Hobson and Kathryn Walkiewicz)

• The Island of Lost Luggage

• The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing

• Red Weather

 

Joseph Medicine Crow (Crow)

• Counting Coup

 

Carla Messinger (Lenape)

• When the Shadbush Blooms

 

N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa)

• House Made of Dawn

• The Way to Rainey Mountain

 

D’Arcy McNickle (Cree)

• The Hawk is Hungry

• Runner in the Sun

• The Surrounded

• Wind from an Enemy Sky

 

Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo)

• Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay

 

Jim Northrup (Ojibwe)

• Walking the Rez Road                                   

 

Simon Ortiz (Acoma)

• The Good Rainbow Road/Rawa ‘Kashtyaa’tsi  Hiyaani

• Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories

• The People Shall Continue

• From Sand Creek

 

Louis Owens (Choctaw)

• The Bone Game

• Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place

• The Sharpest Sight

• Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel

 

Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe/Lakota)

• Prison Writings

• My Life is My Sun Dance

 

William Penn (Nez Perce/Osage)

• All My Sins Are Relatives

 

Susan Power (Sioux)

• The Grass Dancer

 

Marcie Rendon (Anishinabe)

• Pow Wow Summer

 

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo)

• Almanac of the Dead

• Ceremony

• Laguna Women: Poems

• Storyteller

 

Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki)

• Muskrat Will Be Swimming

 

Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek)

• Jingle Dancer

• Indian Shoes

• Rain Is Not My Indian Name

 

Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche)

• Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong

 

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Lakota Sioux)

• The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood

• High Elk’s Treasure

 

Allen J. Sockabasin (Passamaquoddy)

• Thanks to the Animals

 

Shirley Sterling (Salish)

• My Name is Seepeetza

 

Chief Jake Swamp (Mohawk)

• Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message

 

Luci Tapahonso (Dine)

• A Breeze Swept Through: Poetry

• Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories

• Songs of Shiprock Fair

 

Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake Ojibwe)

• The Night Wanderer

 

Tim Tingle (Choctaw)

• Crossing Bok Chitto

• House of Purple Cedar

• How I Became A Ghost

• Saltypie

 

Laura Tohe (Navajo)

• No Parole Today

 

Richard Van Camp (Dogrib)

• The Lesser Blessed

• The Moon of Letting Go: and Other Stories

• Path of the Warrior

• What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know about Horses?

 

Jan Bourdeau Waboose (Ojibway)

• Morning on the Lake

• SkySisters

 

Velma Wallis (Athabascan)

• Two Old Women:  An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival

 

Anna Lee Walters (Pawnee/Otoe)

• Ghost Singer

 

James Welch (Blackfoot/Gros Ventre)

• Fool’s Crow

• Heartsong of Charging Elk

• Indian Lawyer

• Winter in the Blood

 

Bernelda Wheeler (Cree/Assiniboine/Saulteaux)

• I Can’t Have Bannock but the Beaver Has a Dam

• Where Did You Get Your Moccasins?

 

Robert A. Williams (Lumbee)

• Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the History of Racism in America

 

Daniel H. Wilson (Cherokee)

• Robopocalypse

 

Craig Womack (Creek)

• Drowning in Fire

• Red On Red: Native American Literary Separatism

For further information and titles, contact Susan Hanks at Susan.Hanks@library.ca.gov, Debbie Reese at dreese.nambe@gmail.com, Teresa Runnels at trunnel@tulsalibrary.org, or Tim Tingle at timtingle@hotmail.com.

Filed under: Top 100