Indigenous Native American

On a winter morning in 1990, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: Foster home children beaten - and nobody's helping. Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was distressed. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara and her grandfather. They became friends. Then she disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again.

Drawing on archaeology, historical evidence, oral traditions, and linguistics, this audiobook provides a view of Iroquois life from the prehistoric period and Owasco sites through the establishment of the Five Nations/

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 August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

Now that Clara is almost in third grade, she’s finally old enough to spend her first summer away from home visiting her grandma, Unci, and her cousin at their home in Standing Rock Reservation. To welcome her visit, Uncle Louie brings an extra-special surprise in his pickup truck: the tipi that’s been passed down through their family for generations. The girls learn how to stack the poles and wrap the canvas covering around them, how to paint spirit pictures on its walls, and how the circle of the tipi tells its own story, reminding us to how to live in the great Circle of Life.

The Chippewa shaman No-Eyes shares her wisdom and perspective on life. No-Eyes sits in her humble Colorado cabin, offering startling but compelling visions of the future, including some upheavals on the horizon. Listening intently to her teacher and new friend, Summer Rain learns about the unique relationship between the Earth Mother and the many creatures in her domain.

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna’s, but Savanna’s body would not be found for days. The horrifying crime sent shock waves far beyond Fargo, North Dakota, where it occurred, and helped expose the sexual and physical violence Native American women and girls have endured since the country’s colonization.

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath - known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwigara - has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. Salmon teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths.

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and US development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves.

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

Searching through the annals of North American history uncovers the diverse and astounding contributions by the Natives of the Americas who formed the world we know today.

She was named Omakakiins, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. Omakakiins and her family live on an island in Lake Superior. Though there are growing numbers of white people encroaching on their land, life continues much as it always has. But the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever—but that will eventually lead Omakakiins to discover her calling.

What is truth in the eyes of Native Americans? What does it mean to be Indian? Do American Indians have a sense of humor? How does their religion differ from other spiritualities? Listen to what Tecumseh, Red Jacket and other chiefs have to say, as well as contemporary elders like Two White Feathers and Donald Panther-Yates. Enjoy the humor of American Indian Movement leaders like Russell Means and Dennis Banks in this miscellany published on the anniversary of a groundbreaking website from the 90s. You will never think of American Indian writers and activists the same way.

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the 17th century, Native peoples - Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others - formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous.

Charles Eastman is unique among Indian writers, whether storytellers or oral historians. He was raised traditionally, as a Woodland Sioux, by his grandmother, from 1858 to 1874, until he was 15. He thus gained a thorough first-hand knowledge of the lifeways, language, culture, and oral history. His father (thought to have been hanged at Mankato, Minnesota) reappeared and insisted he receive the white man's education.

In Living in the Tall Grass: Poems of Reconciliation, Chief Stacey Laforme gives a history of his people through stories and poetry to allow us to see through the eyes of indigenous people. In it, he hits hard on matters of residential schools, the environment, suicide among indigenous youth, domestic abuse, and so on, but also writes poems of love and hope. Chief Laforme’s universal message is, “We should not have to change to fit into society, the world should adapt to embrace our uniqueness.”

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.

After a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children's Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building.

A creature of myth and magic emerging from the mist-shrouded forests of the Northwest, Coyote appears as a creator, messenger, hero, trickster, fool, or shapeshifter. Always on the lookout for fun, mischief, or the opportunity to help humans, Coyote’s encounters with gods, demons and the supernatural bring to life the rich cultural traditions of the Northwest peoples.