Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures. It is celebrated across the United States on the second Monday in October (October 14 this year), and is an official city and state holiday in various localities.
On that very day at 7pm, join us for a lecture on Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter of mixed European and indigenous heritage. Her father was of Hungarian-German descent, and her mother’s parents were Spanish on one side and had ties to the Indigenous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a region in the state of Oaxaca on the other. Her paintings illustrate the anguish and passion of a fascinating, complicated personal and artistic life.
In Frida Kahlo: Dreams, Demons, and Devotion speaker Janet Mandel will analyze the astonishing works of this Mexican and feminist icon through the lens of her ethnicity, disabilities, and political activism, especially emphasizing her engagement with the natural world.
Here are some recently published books of fiction and nonfiction by and about Indigenous peoples available with your Livingston Library card that highlight their rich and diverse stories and heritage.
Fiction
The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones
The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror novels picks up four years after Don’t Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for him. It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
A Council of Dolls by Susan Power
From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried….quietly devastating, and ultimately hopeful, shining a light on the echoing damage wrought by Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people.
Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband. The winter trading season passes peacefully. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota–despite Farwell’s efforts to stop them. Mary, hiding from the hail of bullets, sees the murderers, including Stiller, take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that brings out the worst and best in the cast of unforgettable characters and pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
Consumed by a long-held secret about his daughter across the river on the Penobscot Reservation, Charles Lamosway grapples with his past, a lost love and the burdens of family as he searches for redemption. as he searches for redemption.
Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina
When the facts surrounding her boyfriend Roddy’s apparent suicide don’t add up, Noemi, suspecting something sinister is stalking their tribal lands, relies on help from her uncle, who has returned to the reservation, bringing with him secrets, horror and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death.
Lost Birds by Anne Hillerman
Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp, honed by his work as a private detective. His experience will be essential to solve a compelling new case: finding the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagáana family but believes she is Diné based on one solid clue, an old photograph with a classic Navajo child’s blanket. Leaphorn discovers that his client’s adoption was questionable, and her adoptive family not what they seem. His quest for answers takes him to an old trading post and leads him to a deadly cache of long-buried family secrets.
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. This is a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.
Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
When a community of Anishinabe people, with their natural resources dwindling, needs to find a new home, Evan Whitesky leads a dangerous mission back to their ancestral home in the Great Lakes region, during which they encounter other survivors, some who thrive on violence.
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear-and even follow you home. These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.
1666 by Lora Chilton
The survival story of the Patawomeck Tribe of Virginia has been remembered within the tribe for generations, but the massacre of Patawomeck men and the enslavement of women and children by land hungry colonists in 1666 has been mostly unknown outside of the tribe until now. Author Lora Chilton, a member of the tribe through the lineage of her father, has created this powerful fictional retelling. Told in first person point of view through the imagined lives of two women, Chilton tells the harrowing stories of Ah’SaWei WaTaPaAnTam (Golden Fawn) and NePa’WeXo (Shining Moon), members of the surviving Patawomeck tribe, who after the slaughter of their men were sold and transported to Barbados via slave ship. Separated and bought by different sugar plantations, they endured, each plotting their escapes before finally making their way back to Virginia to be reunited with the few members of the tribe that remained. It is because of these women that the tribe is in existence to this day.
The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava
Ember Lee Cardinal, a Chickasaw woman who can’t catch a break, serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more. When a scheming colleague catches her in a compromising position with Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy, on a work trip, and blackmails Ember, she must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Tracing the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 to the aftermath of Orvil Red Feather’s shooting, Opal tries to hold her family together while Orvil becomes emotionally reliant on prescription medications, and his younger brother, suffering from PTSD, secretly enacts blood rituals to connect to his Cheyenne heritage.
Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon
Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring. When she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them.
Nonfiction and Memoirs
Birding While Indian : A Mixed-Blood Memoir by Thomas C. Gannon
Catalogs a lifetime of bird sightings to explore the part-Lakota author’s search for identity and his reckoning with colonialism’s violence against Indigenous humans, animals, and land.
By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle
A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.
Indigenous Continent : The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hamalainen
Author Hämäläinen overturns the traditional, Eurocentric narrative, demonstrating that, far from being weak and helpless “victims” of European colonialism, Indigenous peoples controlled North America well into the 19th century. From the Iroquois and Pueblos to the Lakotas and Comanches, Native empires frequently decimated white newcomers in battle, forcing them to accept and even adopt Native ways. Even as the white population skyrocketed and colonists’ land greed become ever more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and flexible leadership structures. As Hämäläinen ultimately contends, instead of “colonial America” we should speak of an “Indigenous America” that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial.
Indigenous Firsts : A History of Native American Achievements and Events by Yvonne Wakim Dennis
Recognizes and honors 2,000 barrier-breaking trailblazers and history-making events in multiple fields-arts, entertainment, business, sovereignty, education, government, religion, science, sports, music, and more.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal
In this magisterial history of the continent, DuVal traces the power of Native nations from the rise of ancient cities more than 1000 years ago to the present. She reframes North American history, noting significantly that Indigenous civilizations did not come to a halt when a few wandering explorers or hungry settlers arrived, even when the strangers came well-armed.
On the National Language : The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues by B. A. Van Sise
Through art photography and prose, this book addresses the fragility, beauty, and cultural value of preserving endangered languages.
Rediscovery of America : Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History by Ned Blackhawk
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.
Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa
A memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and the frictions between being raised to strive towards the American dream while also coming into an understanding of how the narratives of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo heritages have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of America.
—Archana Chiplunkar, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian