Native Myth

In this beautifully reimagined story by NSK Neustadt Laureate and New York Times best-selling author Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), Native American Lily and English Wendy embark on a high-flying journey of magic, adventure, and courage to a fairy-tale island known as Neverland....

In the 1930s, Chief William Berens shared with anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell a remarkable history of his life, as well as many personal and dream experiences that held special significance for him. Most of this material has never been published. Because the elderly chief wanted his visitor to understand the Ojibwe world, and because Hallowell was deeply interested in his subject matter and was such a good listener, Berens freely related his dreams and other stories about encounters with powerful beings.

Tiger Lily and her community, the Indigenous people of Neverland, possess a unique ability: they can choose to grow up. But for now, Tiger Lily is enjoying being thirteen, spending time with her grandmother and exploring alongside her horse and her friends. Then Tiger Lily uncovers a plot by two of Captain Hook's pirates, who are searching for a mysterious, powerful treasure. Determined to protect Neverland, Tiger Lily sets out on a very grown-up mission.

Leslie Marmon Silko's groundbreaking book Storyteller, first published in 1981, blends original short stories and poetry influenced by the traditional oral tales that she heard growing up on the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico with autobiographical passages, folktales, family memories, and photographs. As she mixes traditional and Western literary genres, Silko examines themes of memory, alienation, power, and identity; communicates Native American notions regarding time, nature, and spirituality; and explores how stories and storytelling shape people and communities.

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.

One of the most well-known constellations in the night sky, the Big Dipper, traces its origins to a Native American legend. Many animals attempted to break through Sky in order to spread light and warmth onto the Earth. Only one of them, a Great Bear—also known as Ursa Major—succeeds. How does Great Spirit reward him?

The First People had only four lights to illuminate the world. The First People asked First Man and First Woman to give them more daylight. In this traditional Navajo story, learn how First Man and First Woman created the sun, moon, and stars to give light to the First People.

White Rabbit, an Ojibwe Native American, helplessly watches as her village begins to suffer from a deadly winter disease. When her brother Running Wolf falls ill, she plans to bring back more healing herbs from a neighboring village. When White Rabbit races through the snow, she ends up leaving behind a new flower that appears in the spring.

In this story from the Abenaki people, the Native Americans who lives in New England long ago, you’ll learn how one starving man learned to grow a new crop to feed himself.

In this story from the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, you’ll learn how the trickster raven brings light back to the world from a greedy chief.

Tâpwê can’t wait to spend a week with his cousins on the other side of the Cree reserve—especially since Kokhom, his grandma, has given him the most amazing gift: a Magic Hat with bluebirds and grass snakes that come to life! Tâpwê is so excited that he soon forgets Kokhom’s advice: Watch out for tricksters! Tâpwê’s adventure is everything he imagined. He meets his cousins, takes part in a powwow, and sleeps in a tipi. But soon he’s reminded of Kokhom’s words. Is his new friend Wâpos leading him astray with mischief?

The humans are freezing during a cold winter and have no fire to warm themselves. They ask Coyote for help! Under the leadership of a Coyote, all the animals of the forest band together to steal fire from three wicked sisters and deliver it to humans in this tale from the Pacific Northwest. Can he defeat the skookums or will they continue to keep the fire all to themselves?

Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has been writing and performing her music for decades. She was the first Indigenous person to win an Academy Award (for an original song), the first person to breastfeed on TV (on her recurring role on Sesame Street), and is widely recognized for her activism on Indigenous rights and her powerful folk ballads.

Studies have shown that developing an “atomic habit”—just doing a few minutes a day of whatever skill or habit you want to take on—can be more than enough to engrain it into our lives. Therefore, we have transformed timeless legendary stories into 10-minute bite-size chunks long enough to entertain, enthrall, and even educate the listener, but short enough to be enjoyed quickly at bedtime or any other point in our busy modern days.

The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans. Thomas Jefferson’s pioneering archaeology concluded that the earthen mounds were the work of Native Americans. In the 1894 report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cyrus Thomas concurred, drawing on two decades of research. But in the century in between, the lie took hold, with presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln adding their approval.

As fans of Tony Hillerman's detective novels know, he is a skilled interpreter of southwestern Indian cultures. In this book, first published in 1972, he recounts a Zuni myth first recorded a century ago by the anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing. Hillerman's version of the story, written to be listened to by children ten years old and up, will have equal appeal for adults with an interest in Native American culture.

Explore the enchanting world of Polynesian folklore in this beautiful collection of traditional stories. A woman falls in love with the king of the sharks. Two powerful sorcerers compete in a battle of magical wits. The king of Maui's fastest messenger races to bring a young woman back from the dead. In these traditional tales, the borders blur between life and death, reality and magic, and land and sea.

On an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea, a girl and her grandmother gather gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, and in the forest, a world of berries. Through the seasons, they sing to the land as the land sings to them. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before, joining in the song that connects us all.

Many of us don’t know much about mythological stories from these regions, and it is my pleasure and privilege to educate you on the intricate details that lie within them. That’s why I have also provided some fascinating facts and historical background about each of these peoples. Creation myths, legacies, the sacrificing of children, the empires, and their wars are all mentioned and touched on in this book.

A treasury of imaginative tales including: the Algonquin story of how Glooskap conquered the Great Bull-Frog; "The Meeting of the Wild Animals", a Tsimshian myth; "The Bear Man", a Cherokee legend; and more.