Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day by diving into these book recommendations
Have you noticed that your shelves are lacking books about Indigenous people? In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 14, here are a few books to help you learn about Indigenous lives and culture.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s nonfiction book challenges the founding myth of the United States and powerfully reframes its history. It exposes the colonialist policy that seized the original inhabitants’ land and displaced or eliminated them.
Split Tooth
By Tanya Tagaq
Tanya Tagaq won the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English for Split Tooth. The book weaves fiction, memoir, poetry and Inuit folklore as it follows an Inuk heroine growing up in 1970s Canada. She feels love and joy along with the power of nature and the sometimes-disturbing realities of life. Kirkus Reviews describes the book as a “raw, powerful voice” that “breathes fresh air into traditional Inuit folklore to create a modern tale of mythological proportions.”
House Made of Dawn
By N. Scott Momaday
N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for this novel. Abel, a young Indigenous man, has come home from war to find himself torn between two worlds. His father’s world follows the rhythm of the seasons and respects the harsh beauty of the land, the ancient rites and his people’s traditions. The industrial world pulls him away, seeking his full devotion to what he finds to be a destructive, depraved realm.
Love Medicine
By Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, published in 1984 and updated twice, details the lives of three Indigenous families on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation. Erdrich uses multiple narrators with varied attitudes to convey the Indigenous experience. She won the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for the novel.
Mankiller: A Chief and Her People
By Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis
Wilma Mankiller was the first woman to be principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. In this autobiography, she tells the story of her youth to her success and struggles in leading her people. Cherokee history and the birth of the Indigenous people’s civil rights struggle are folded in the story. Mankiller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.
When We Were Alone
By David Alexander Robertson
In this children’s book, a girl starts to notice things about her grandmother that make her stand out, such as her long braided hair, her multicolored clothing and the other language she speaks. The grandmother tells the heartbreaking story of being sent as a child to a residential school, where she was treated cruelly and had her culture taken from her. The book inspires by showing the power of the human spirit.
Picture at top: Some book titles to help you learn more about Indigenous lives and culture. Indigenous Peoples Day is celebrated on Oct. 14. (Credit: SPLC)
