Indigenous America

Darrell Dennis is a stereotype-busting, politically incorrect Native American/Aboriginal/Shuswap. With a large dose of humour and irreverence, he untangles some of the truths and myths about First Nations: Why do people think Natives get free trucks, and why didn’t he ever get one? Why does the length of your hair determine whether you’re good or bad? By what ratio does the amount of rain in a year depend on the amount of cactus liquor you consume? In addition to answering these burning questions, Dennis tackles some tougher subjects.

On October 12, 1492, one of the most important “first contacts” of the modern era was made when three ships of Spanish origin approached the island archipelago now known as the Bahamas, cautiously dropping anchor as the captain of the fleet gazed across to what he assumed was the coast of India. According to the popular version of the story, amazed at the sight of ships and men of such unfamiliar appearance, the native people of the island plunged into the clear waters of the western Atlantic, expertly swimming or aboard dugout canoes, and came out to greet the strangers.

The autobiography of the famous Apache war chief, Geronimo. A shout of "Geronimo!!!" is still evoked to show courage. Hear, in his own words, the war story of Geronimo and his Chiricahua band of Apache Indians.

Weaving together more than a hundred interviews with Davis's bandmates, family members, friends, and peers, this book powerfully reconstructs Davis's extraordinary life and career. Washita Love Child thoroughly and finally restores the "red dirt boogie brother" to his rightful place in rock history, cementing his legacy for generations to come.

This carefully researched exploration of Native American culture investigates the complex, often misunderstood histories of hundreds of indigenous peoples. Author James Wilson has drawn from ethnographic and archaeological studies, historical texts, and the rich written and oral traditions of Native Americans to complete this important work.

Baffled by the stereotypes presented by Hollywood and much historical fiction, many other Americans find the contemporary American Indian an enigma. Compounding their confusion is the highly publicized struggle of the contemporary Indian for self-determination, lost land, cultural preservation, and fundamental human rights - a struggle dramatized both by public acts of protest and by precedent-setting legal actions. American Indians, American Justice explores the complexities of the present Indian situation, particularly with regard to legal and political rights.

At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, Canada and the United States had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had made an expansive international border that restricted movement.

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma’s Indian Country, these tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land. Journalist and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County.

For over 50,000 years, the Great Hunt has shaped human existence, creating a vital spiritual reality where people, animals, and the land share intimate bonds. Author Larry Frolick takes the listener deep into one of the last refuges of hunting societies: Canada’s far north. Based on his experiences travelling with First Nations Elders in remote communities across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, this vivid narrative combines accounts of daily life, unpublished archival records, First Nations' stories and Traditional Knowledge with personal observation....

Call them Native Americans, American Indians, indigenous peoples, or first nations - a vast and diverse array of nations, tribes, and cultures populated every corner of North America long before Columbus arrived. Native American History for Dummies reveals what is known about their pre-Columbian history and shows how their presence, customs, and beliefs influenced everything that was to follow. This straightforward guide breaks down their 10,000-plus year history and explores their influence on European settlement of the continent.

Pervasive myths of European domination and indigenous submission in the Americas receive an overdue corrective in this far-reaching revisionary work. Within the indigenous borderlands of the Americas, as this volume shows, Native peoples exercised considerable power, often retaining control of the land, and remaining paramount agents of historical transformation after the European incursion. Conversely, European conquest and colonialism were typically slow and incomplete, as the newcomers struggled to assert their authority.

Brilliant, listenable, and raw. Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

The conquest of the American West through violence and corrupt treaties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed the global balance of power. It was an upheaval on a grand scale, but acclaimed author Peter Stark shows us its fundamental conflicts through the clash between two men—Shawnee chief and warrior Tecumseh and Indiana governor William Henry Harrison.

Wizard of the Upper Amazon is an extraordinary document of the life among a tribe of South American Indians at the beginning of the 20th century. For many listeners, the most compelling sections of the audiobook will be the descriptions of the use of Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca of the Amazon forests. This powerful hallucinogen has long been credited with the ability to transport human beings to realms of experience where telepathy and clairvoyance are commonplace. Manual Córdova, the narrator of these adventures, is well-known as a healer in Peru.

Despite what major media sources say, violence against Native women is not an epidemic. An epidemic is biological and blameless. Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer's work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on - and ending it. The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse.

Eagle Voice Remembers is John Neihardt's mature and reflective interpretation of the old Sioux way of life. He served as a translator of the Sioux past, whose audience has proved not to be limited by space or time. Through his writings, Black Elk, Eagle Elk, and other old men who were of that last generation of Sioux to have participated in the old buffalo-hunting life and the disorienting period of strife with the U.S. Army found a literary voice.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Euro-American citizenry of California carried out mass genocide against the Native population of their state, using the processes and mechanisms of democracy to secure land and resources for themselves and their private interests. The murder, rape, and enslavement of thousands of Native people were legitimized by notions of democracy - in this case mob rule.

In this fascinating work, Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and Red Lake Ojibwe Nation member Brenda J. Child spotlights the remarkable women of the Ojibwe Nation. A stunning look at a seldom explored subject in history, Holding Our World Together shows how American Indian women have profoundly influenced Native American life - from the days of the European fur trade to the present - in activism, community, and beyond.

Capture the beauty, power, and wisdom of the Native American oral tradition with this superlative collection of readings taken from the writings and speeches of people from many different tribes. The collection offers insights into Native American ways of living, learning, and dying, and helps us to feel a reconnection with the land and ourselves. The words of Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Ohiyesa, Black Elk, and others create a powerful listening experience.