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Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. 1995, b/w photos.

Education for Extinction is a heartbreaking book. Here, Adams chronicles the U.S. government’s policy of education as warfare in its relentless effort to subjugate the Indian nations through the children. Beginning with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, thousands of Indian children were forcibly removed from their lands, cultures, families and communities; deprived of their languages and everything they knew, and indoctrinated in the cruelest ways. Here are the drills, the chores the military uniforms, and the daily humiliations, large and small. Here are the guardhouses for children who were punished and worse for not knowing what was expected of them. Here are the children’s cemeteries behind many of the schools. But despite all the attempts to “kill the Indian and save the man,” Adams’ first-person accounts demonstrate that the children were anything but passive recipients of forced “civilization.”
pb 18.00

The Business of Fancydancing. 1992.

Question: What do you do if you want a jam sandwich and two slices of bread are all you have? Answer: You take the two slices of bread and jam them together. Here, in Alexie’s first book of poems and stories about the reservation and border town realities of eastern Washington, readers will find, as Adrian C. Louis writes, “painfully honest visions of our beautiful and brutal lives.” Among visions of racist cops and fancydancers, commodity cheese and frybread, Crazy Horse dreams and Custer realities, HUD houses and one-eyed Fords, readers who are familiar with Alexie’s subsequent works will also find Lester FallsApart, Big Mom, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, and, of course, Junior.
hc 25.00, pb 16.00

First Indian on the Moon. 1993.

Here, Alexie effortlessly moves from poetry to prose and back again, talking story, making myth. His sequential works are perfect, each verse picking up on the last line of the one before; and his love poems—“After 500 years of continues lies/I would still sign treaties for you”—are dazzling in their complexity. Many of Alexie’s stories are full of pain and grief, some are filled with fury, some are achingly beautiful, most contain a good dose of irony and some are very, very funny.  Alexie dedicates a section of poems having to do with fire—which he calls “A Reservation Table of the Elements”—to his sister, Mary, who burned to death in a horrible accident. This prompted one reviewer to note that “fire is a central metaphor” in his poetry, prompting Alexie to retort elsewhere, “This ain’t no metaphor. This is my life.”
hc 20.00, pb 14.00

Indian Killer. 1996.

Indian babies kidnapped and adopted out and an Indian man driven mad by not knowing who he is, a hate-filled radio talk show host and a celebrated white mystery writer, an Introduction to American Indian Literature course taught by an Indian wannabe professor, a young Indian college-student activist and patronizing white liberals, white men being stalked, murdered and scalped in Seattle and vengeance-seeking white thugs. Is the serial murderer terrorizing the city—dubbed "Indian killer"—a killer who is Indian or the forces that have been and continue to be killing Indians? Readers won't know until the last page of this horrifying and eminently readable novel by a truly gifted writer.
hc 22.00, pb 15.00

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 1993.

Alexie’s writing tends to bring white readers face-to-face with things they would probably not prefer to have thrust in their faces. With wrenching pain and wry humor, a poignancy that underlies his nearly apocalyptic vision, Alexie presents contemporary life on the Spokane Reservation. The usual suspects are here: Victor, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Big Mom, Lester FallsApart, and a Junior here and there. The characters come straight out of life as it is for far too many Indian people—poverty, alcoholism, despair and defeat—but they never become clichés: “People can do things completely against their nature, completely. It’s like some tiny earthquake comes roaring through your body and soul, and it’s the only earthquake you’ll ever feel. But it damages so much, cracks the foundations of your life forever.”
pb 14.00

Old Shirts & New Skins. 1993, b/w illustrations by Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs/Wasco/Diné).

In his third published book of poems and prose in a year, Alexie’s dazzling poems capture his embattled reservation’s strong sense of community and tenacity. Here are HUD houses and commodity foods, “generations of need,” bars and basketball tourneys, the trappings of Manifest Destiny and the ghosts of Columbus and Cotton Mather and Andrew Jackson and Custer and, ever and always, Crazy Horse. And this: “[L]ike water meeting other water, like a small stone rolling down to strike a larger stone, rolling down to strike a boulder, bringing down a mountain. There is nothing we cannot survive.” Simon Ortiz says of Old Shirts & New Skins, “His vision is an amazing celebration of endurance, intimacy, love and creative insight...it is a victory that can be known only by a people who refuse to submit to the thieves, liars, and killers that have made them suffer tremendous loss and pain.”
pb 12.00

Reservation Blues. 1995.

In 1931, it is said, a Black guitarist named Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Although he recorded only 29 songs before being murdered in 1938, Johnson became a posthumous blues legend. Here, Johnson reappears, this time at the Spokane reservation, where he passes his magical guitar to nerdy storyteller Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Winner of an American Book Award, Alexie’s first novel, about the rise and fall of Coyote Springs, an all-Indian Catholic rock-and-roll band, skillfully blends narrative, visions, songs, and dreams to confront the serious issues confronting the Indian communities, historically and contemporaneously. Alexie’s characters—Big Mom, Thomas, Victor, Junior, and Checkers and Chess Warm Water—are real people, and Reservation Blues is a wild ride. It will make you laugh and break your heart—sometimes in the same sentence.
pb 13.00

Smoke Signals. 1998.

The Summer of Black Widows. 1996.

Here are “totem sonnets” to Pablo Neruda and Muhammad Ali, Anna Mae Aquash and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Wovoka and Ishi, insulin and hypodermic. Here are spiders carrying stories in their stomachs, Walt Whitman dreaming of a jump shot, uranium trucks dropping hot dust on Indian children, tears building a new bridge across the Bering Strait, beer cans sounding like oceans of betrayal when held to the ear, Fred Astaire owl dancing at a powwow, a prison worker reverently preparing the last meal for a condemned man, Indian women singing for Marilyn Monroe’s health, and people dying in stupid ways. Here are, over and over, visions of a dying sister in every fire, and fire, fire, and more fire. Readers will find much here for contemplation: “On the top of Wellpinit Mountain, I watch for fires, listen to a radio powered by the ghosts of 1,000 horses, shot by the United States Cavalry a century ago, last week, yesterday.” Amazing. 
hc 22.00, pb 15.00

American Indian Contemporary Arts, Indian Humor. 1995, color photos and paintings.

In AICA’s catalog of a national touring exhibition are the works of 38 Native artists depicting their interpretation of Indian humor. Here is Coyote dressed in red, white and blue, cane in hand and wearing a top hat and sneakers, dancing on a vaudeville stage. The painting is framed by images of running buffalo, and artist Harry Fonseca (Maidu) calls it “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.” Here is “Buenos Dias, Juan Valdez,” Peter Jones’ (Onondaga) idea of what a truthful advertisement for coffee might look like. Here is a nude reclining clay woman holding up a metal cylinder with string attached. Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo) calls it “Rosita Fished With a Metal Rod During Electrical Storms Because Grandma Taught Her That Strong Spiritual Conduct Was Essential to Pueblo Living.” Here are stinging installations such as “Land O’Plenty” by Jean LaMarr (Paiute/Pit River) that use dehumanizing postcard images of Native women to call attention to racism. As AICA executive director Janeen Antoine (Sicangu Lakota) writes, “Humor gives us a cosmic fix and takes us out of our center of the universe, enabling us to laugh at ourselves.”
pb 20.00

Archuleta, Margaret L. (Pueblo), Brenda J. Child (Ojibwe), and K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Hopi), eds., Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000. 2000, color and b/w photos.

“Beginning in 1879, tens of thousands of Native (children) left or were taken from their tribal homes to attend Indian boarding schools, often long distances away. Some struggled bitterly. Some suffered in silence. Some succumbed to tuberculosis or influenza and lost their lives. Others flourished and built a new sense of self within a wider world, while preserving Indianness in their hearts. This book is dedicated to them all.” This beautiful book—a gathering of many voices—ought to be required reading for all teachers of American history, and for all students whose textbooks fail to discuss this shameful part of the U.S. war against the Indian peoples.
pb 30.00

Awiakta, Marilou (Cherokee), Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom. 1993, b/w illustrations by Mary Adair (Cherokee).

Rooted in the old stories of Selu, the Cherokee Corn Mother, Kanati the first hunter, and Awi Usdi (Little Deer), the teacher of hunters, Awiakta’s double-wove basket is filled with poems, stories, essays and drawings, and suggests ways that the ancient wisdoms apply to contemporary issues. From the controversy surrounding the Tellico Dam to nuclear power to governmental politics to a frank and sometimes hilarious discussion of gender and sex, there is much teaching to contemplate here. With great respect and a twinkle in her eye, Awiakta (the teacher), Awiakta (the philosopher) and Awiakta (the great and good friend) generously shares her wisdom in a way that will resonate with teens and adults who don’t especially like to read—and with those who do. Of Awiakta’s poems, “Out of Ashes, Peace Will Rise” is something to be read over and over. Today more than ever.
pb 17.00

Not Far Away: The Real-life Adventures of Ima Pipiig. 2007.

“We did not come over here on the Mayflower,” Ima Pipiig writes. “We did not come up the Cumberland Gap. We did not follow Daniel Boone or De Soto or a black-robed priest. We came from the tops of tall trees that softly bent down and laid their boughs upon the earth so that she would not be lonesome. We came from the clouds, life-giving mist and sky. We came from the soil itself, from crevices that opened up and gifted us to the open air. We came from the rich mud at the bottom of the waters to mingle with the other life forms and make them complete.” Told in alternating voices—Beardslee’s and that of her semi-fictional protagonist, Ima Pipiig—Not Far Away deals with the issues of racism and poverty, as well as access to public lands, jobs, education, and even social comfort. Here, Beardslee and Pipiig unflinchingly point their fingers directly at the educational system that willingly participates in the racist practices of America’s heartland. Lois Beardslee and Ima Pipiig are strong Indian women whose stories, songs and poems are at once achingly beautiful and painfully honest.
pb 28.00

For a full review click HERE.

The Women’s Warrior Society.

“They are reaching out and touching one another, nurturing one another, strengthening one another. They are making each other stronger. They are making each other bolder.” They are the ogitchidaakweyag, da wimen warriors. These women are invisible, no, they are at the forefront, readying for battle; they are underpaid factory workers, no, they are wolves, readying for the hunt; they walk into a bar, no, a library, no, a sweatlodge, and they make magic and they survive. Whether staggering from exhaustion, confronting baby stealers by design or indifference, taking on white privilege and Manifest Destiny, combing their daughters’ hair, battling racist textbooks and the teachers who hold them dear, ridiculing clueless wannabes and their endless quest for secrets, or showing by example the many ways we love our children and try to keep them safe, these ogitchidaakweyag—despite the best intentions of the dominant society—are not going away. And someone really ought to give Lois Beardslee that Pulitzer.
hc 30.00, pb 17.00

For a full review click HERE.

Belin, Esther G. (Navajo), From the Belly of My Beauty. 1999.

In this tough, bold, in-your-face collection of poems and autobiographical essay, Esther Belin writes of being “raised on a mixture of traditional knowledge and urban life.” Sometimes furious, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Belin bears witness to the sacrifice and endurance of all of her relatives. “To tell or retell our story,” she writes, “is not pleasant. And it is not short. It did not begin with the civil rights movement. It is not as simple as the word genocide....It is mixedblood, crossblood, fullblood, urban, rez, relocated, terminated, non-status, tribally enrolled, federally recognized, non-federally recognized, alcoholic, battered, uranium-infested...”
pb 16.00

Bird, Gloria (Spokane), Full Moon on the Reservation. 1993.

In Bird’s first collection of poetry and prose, there are medicine women and pool sharks, mythic trains and scattered bones, hunters and anti-heroines, crucifixes and sweetgrass, deer nesting in blue snow and road-killed coyotes, women waiting for birth and preparing for death, fragile memories and crashing dreams, “internalized oppression and stupid show-offy pride.” Grounded both in the past and the present, the personal and the communal, Bird’s stories of survival are, as Joy Hargo writes, “a gift of bright integrity of earned from walking through the nightmare of American diaspora. These burning poems are astute songs, necessary for the journey.”
pb 10.00

Blue Cloud, Peter/Aroniawenrate (Mohawk), Elderberry Flute Song: Contemporary Coyote Tales. 2002, b/w illustrations by the author.

In these 56 poems and stories, Coyote the comic, Coyote the amoral, Coyote the obscene—well, you know, Coyote—creates daylight with his howling cry and convinces Wolf to chase the moon, farts a landslide and loses what means the most to him, goes on a trip to England and exposes anthropologists, discusses relativity and does some things with a certain part of his body (the part he is famous for) that some might think impossible. The black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings—practically each one shows Coyote with a full-toothed grin (or is it a sneer?)—are perfect. Each story is to be savored and some are to be deeply contemplated, especially the searingly beautiful title poem.
pb 15.00

Brant, Beth (Mohawk), I’ll sing ’til the day I die: Conversations with Tyendinaga Elders. 1995, b/w photos.

I'll sing "til the day I die is a series of interviews with 15 elders from the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory near Belleville, Ontario, Brant’s home reserve. Brant went home for six months to conduct the interviews as writer-in-residence at the Ka:nhiote Library there. In editing, she writes, it was her responsibility to convey to readers “the sense of orality and how Tyendinaga Mohawks have always recorded the way things are and used to be.” In a section called “Tracing the Roots,” she writes, “This is our history as passed down from generation to generation by the Elders. Our Elders are walking history books. They have acquired lifetimes of knowledge during their stay on Mother Earth...it is the way we have recorded our story since our existence—long before Columbus, or the coming of Cartier.”
pb 12.00

Bullchild, Percy (Blackfeet), The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It. (1985), 2005.

“I do not have a good education in the whiteman language,” Bullchild says in his preface, and, at the age of 67, he set out to put into writing the traditional Blackfeet stories his elders told him—“to write the Indian version of our own true ways in our history and legends.” “The sun came down,” he writes, “and abided with his children in many instances to talk with them, to teach them certain things they must learn to use or do, and to give advice to them of how to survive the many treacherous things in the world he created for them.” This amazing work is not a book for children, but an oral history put down by a Blackfeet elder that illustrates the breadth and scope of a creation story as oral history in print.
pb 23.00

Cardinal, Douglas (Métis), and Jeannette Armstrong (Okanagan), The Native Creative Process: A Collaborative Discourse between Douglas Cardinal and Jeannette Armstrong. 1991, color photographs by Greg Young-Ing (Okanagan).

What began as a discussion between architect Douglas Cardinal and poet, educator and activist Jeannette Armstrong evolved into a series of conversations taped over two years. It is from those conversations —about the nature of balance and the connectedness of all things, about living cooperatively within the natural world, about the definition of “warrior” as being “burdened with peace,” about living a life of commitment and integrity, about a vision of a world that is non-adversarial and in which all life is cherished—that this book was produced. Together with Greg Young-Ing’s awesome photos, The Native Creative Process will leave high-school students—and their teachers—with a lot to ponder.
pb 25.00

Child, Brenda J. (Ojibwe), Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. 1998, b/w photos.

Boarding School Seasons is a study of the residential school experience from the perspective of the Indian students who lived at the Haskell Institute in Kansas and the Flandreau Indian Boarding School in South Dakota. At the heart of this book are the hundreds of previously unpublished archival letters between the Indian children and their parents, documenting the emotional impact of this “noble experiment”: homesickness, disease, rebellion, and the institutional programs aimed at assimilation. As a reviewer for Native Peoples writes, Child’s “willingness to let the letter writers tell their own stories allows the complexities and paradoxes of boarding school life to emerge unfettered by historical preconceptions or stereotypes.” As is Education for Extinction, this book is excellent for teachers and upper-grade students.
pb 15.00

Culleton, Beatrice (Métis), April Raintree. 1984.

In the best possible way, April Raintree can be hard to read because it comes from a hard place and reflects it, because the characters and their experiences live on its pages, and because it asks questions without flinching or holding back. The story is of two Métis sisters who are taken from their parents as young children and reared in separate foster homes—doing all they can to maintain the ties between them and trying in different ways to live in a society that rejects and abuses them. To varying degrees both sisters struggle with learned shame, and, in a narrative unsweetened by sentiment or apology, how one of them summons the strength to face her demons is the story of them both. Culleton’s compelling writing will pull readers in to this story that offers no false comfort but embraces moments of joy and awakening.
pb 19.00

Indians in Unexpected Places. 2004, b/w archival photos.

Why do white expectations of Indians remain frozen in time? What’s ironic about Red Cloud Woman, in full regalia, sitting under a hair dryer? What’s strange about Geronimo’s wearing a top hat, sitting in a Cadillac? Focusing mainly on the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Deloria shows how popular culture interpreted (and continues to interpret) images of Indians, while Indian communities were engaging in the same kinds of modernization that were enveloping white society. In bringing together these images with the realities of power and place, continuity and change, tradition and modernity, Deloria tells some achingly beautiful stories of the kinds of lives his own relatives managed to carve out in the face of these expectations. For the Indian communities at the turn of the 20th Century, US colonialism manifested itself in shrunken land bases, forced acculturation “devastating legal decisions, political helplessness, grinding poverty, white racist antipathy—all of these combined to place Native peoples in a truly desperate state.” With Indians in Unexpected Places following his Playing Indian, Deloria’s trenchant work in identity representation is eminently readable, and touches a nerve besides.
hc 25.00, pb 18.00

Playing Indian. 1998, archival b/w photos and drawings.

Ever since the advent of colonialism in the “new world,” even before the Boston Tea Party, white people have been “playing Indian.” Here, Deloria chronicles and analyzes the history of the “wannabe” movement: white people who imagined and acted out Indian societies in literature, in secret societies such as Tammany and Cayuga-Wolf all-white “tribes,” public societies such as the Boy Scouts of America, within the hippie movement, Deadheads, and modern New Agers who continue to appropriate Indian cultures and spiritual practices. Cultural historian Deloria is nothing if he’s not provocative, and he’s inherited from his father a razor-sharp wit and a gift for telling a good story. And some of the black-and-white photos, like Frank Hamilton Cushing in Zuni garb, are priceless.
pb 17.00

Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths. 2002.

In his earlier book, Red Earth, White Lies, Vine Deloria adroitly debunked the “myth of scientific fact.” Here, he takes on both the evolutionists and religious fundamentalists, giving the reader a critical analysis of flaws and anomalies in each side’s arguments. “The views of both are passé,” he says, “and represent only a quarrel within the Western belief system, not an accurate rendering of Earth history.” “When the smoke clears and we mall the proper adjustments in our thinking,” he says, “we will come to understand that quite possibly we are not the first humanoid species to live on this planet; that there is a rough repeating pattern in the Earth’s history in which the planet is transformed and new biospheres come into existence through processes of which we have not yet dreamed.” This traditional tribal worldview, he writes, “may turn out to be our only glimpse of the real planetary past.”
pb 19.00

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. (1973), 2003.

First published 30 years ago, God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native spiritual beliefs, arguing that Christianity, grounded in a particular time, has failed today’s society and reminding us to learn “that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world.” Coming from a family of traditional healers and Episcopal ministers, Deloria was an intellectual force to be reckoned with. He clearly and compellingly challenged the moral and ethical superiority of the religious institution of inherited Christianity as it was foisted on Indian peoples. Here, for instance, is this: "The Spanish, in slaughtering the Indians, would have a priest standing by with Holy Water available as they disemboweled pregnant Indian women." Deloria’s thought-provoking arguments—for balance in the face of hypocrisy, responsibility in the face of blame, and acknowledgment of the relationship of all things—are at least as important now as they were three decades ago.
pb 22.00         

Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. 1997.

Here, Deloria masterfully challenges—no, battles—the fiction of generally accepted “scientific” theories of evolution promulgated by anthros trying to hold up, as he says, the “tottering bastions of Western knowledge.” Among others, theories that fall by the wayside include the Bering Land Bridge migration hoax (“Low Bridge, Everybody Cross”), radiocarbon dating techniques and the extinction of the wooly mammoths and other megafauna by overhunting (“Pleistocine Hit Men”). Deloria says that of all his books, this was the “most pleasant to write and the most fun to defend.” We’d add “the most fun to read.”
pb 20.00

Spirit & Reason. 1999.

The essays in this “Vine Deloria, Jr., reader” include pieces from his most remembered books, some of his lesser-known articles, and ten new pieces. Exploring some of the most important issues in the last three decades, Deloria’s arguments challenge and provoke with insight, honesty, wit, and great good humor. With topics ranging from ethnic studies to film clichés to the Bering Strait migration hoax to “a flock of anthros,” readers will come away with an understanding of how traditional Native peoples look at all things—that we are all relatives—as compared to the objectified and segmented ways that scientists view the universe.
pb 19.00

We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf. (1970), 2007.

Originally published in 1970, Deloria’s second book (following Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto) provides more insights into the workings of the dominant society. “A century ago,” Deloria writes, “whites broke the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux so they could march into the Black Hills and dig gold out of the ground. Then they took the gold out of the Black Hills, carried it to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and buried it in the ground.” In challenging the legacy of feudalism, imperialism, capitalism, genocide, and self-defeating liberalism, Deloria’s scathing analysis is as applicable now as it was 37 years ago.
pb 20.00

Deloria, Vine Jr. (Lakota), and Daniel Wildcat (Muscogee), Power and Place: Indian Education in America. 2001.

The 15 essays in Power and Place look at the complex issues facing Native students, from preschool through college, a journey spanning two distinct worldviews and value systems. Beginning with an essay on American Indian metaphysics and ending with a call for fundamental changes in—no less than indigenization of—the way we educate our Indian children, this volume constitutes, as Wildcat writes, “a declaration of American Indian intellectual sovereignty and self-determination.” As such, it’s a must reference for anyone involved or interested in Indian education.
pb 18.00

Dubin, Margaret ed., The Dirt is Red Here. 2002, color photos, color paintings.

This gorgeous anthology brings together established poets and visual artists from the California Indian communities, as well as previously unpublished new voices. Each poem is a song, each painting is a story. There is passion here, and pain and blood, running through Harry Fonseca’s “The Discovery of Gold in California #27” to Deborah Miranda’s “Deer” and “Baskets” to Wendy Rose’s “Is it crazy to want to unravel.” There is great good humor and not a little irony in James Luna’s performance/installation, “High-Tech Peace Pipe” and L. Frank’s “Coyote Paints Erotica Whilst Wearing Pajamas” and Judith Lowry’s “Roadkill Warrior: Last of His Tribe.” And there is intricate beauty in Linda Yamane’s and Linda Aguilar’s baskets and Bradley Marshall’s abalone necklace. Together, all these voices and more, in ways that are different and the same, are saying, “Despite the worst intentions of the dominant society, here we are. We are still here.”
pb 17.00

Dunn, Anne (Ojibwe), Uncombed Hair. 2005.

Deep snow and buffalo spirits, uncombed hair and canned milk, aching feet and dancing geese, the stench of cruelty and the bitterness of grief, metastasizing hatred and corporate empires built on forgotten bones and young children finding a moment of joy in the fantasy of safety in a burned-out bus in Nasiriyah. And let us not forget the Indian residential school where a little girl bravely refuses to speak English. This raging grannie is no pushover; she dreams dreams and does not suffer abuse, war or racism passively: “We must gather the last great army./We must proclaim the final agenda/And reclaim the soul of justice.” ‘Chi Miigwech, Anne.
pb 12.00

Dunn, Carolyn (Cherokee/Choctaw/Muscogee/Seminole), and Carol Comfort (Cherokee/Choctaw), eds., Through the Eye of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers. 1999.

This outstanding anthology of poetry and fiction features the voices of a range of Indian women such as Mourning Dove and Ella Cara Deloria who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, established contemporary women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Beth Brant, Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdrich and Linda Hogan, and their younger and no less talented sisters such as Shaunna McCovey, Linda Boyden, MariJo Moore, Deborah Miranda, and Inés Hernández-Ávila. Grouped into four broad thematic categories—“Stories of Birth and Creation,” “Women’s Rites of Passage: Power and Knowledge,” “Women’s Rituals: Men, Women, Family, and Kinship,” and “Women’s Mysteries: Regeneration”—the more than 50 poems and stories here follow the cycles of women’s lives.
pb 17.00

Fawcett, Melissa Jayne (Mohegan), Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon. 2000, b/w photos.

Despite James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans—which concludes with the young Mohegan sachem Uncas jumping off a precipice to his death, leaving no offspring—the Mohegan people are alive and well, the 13th generation of the descendants of the real Uncas, who was born in the late 1500s and lived well into his 80s. Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon, beloved elder, traditional healer and ninth-generation granddaughter of Uncas, was 100 years old when her grand-niece, Melissa Jane Fawcett Tantaquidgeon Zobel, helped her put together her story. Gathered from Fawcett’s taped recordings, written notes, and recollections of conversations with Gladys, Medicine Trail is autobiography, history and traditional knowledge, and as such, it’s an amazing book about an amazing woman’s life. But most importantly, Medicine Trail is about a people’s cultural survival, continuity, commitment and renewal.
pb 18.00

Fife, Connie (Cree), Beneath the Naked Sun. 1992.

From her vantage point on the margins of what’s generally called “mainstream society,” lesbian Cree poet Connie Fife writes “from the place most people would like me to stay.” Described as “baldly polemic” by one reviewer, Fife’s words are so fierce and strong that readers will see her, standing with her fists clenched, defiantly spitting out an answer to Merriam Webster’s definition of the word “savage.” Here, she writes, “I am the one whose death was intended/ and didn’t die.” Beth Brant writes that Fife’s first book of poetry sings “songs of sorrow, of celebration, of anger, of love, of giving and receiving. Connie Fife has made music out of the chaos and pain of being indigenous and lesbian in a culture that respects neither.” The cover photo of a Kootenai elder woman dragging on a cigarette is a perfect match to Fife’s spare and honest poems.
pb 9.00

Fife, Connie (Cree), ed., The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women. 1993.

This amazing anthology—more than 70 pieces of poems, stories and essays by Aboriginal women in Canada and the US—speaks to pain, tragedy, grief, heartbreak and turmoil, but also to the great love and courage and the collective memory that is the color of resistance. Fife writes that this anthology “is a testament to our lives, a re-invention of our survival. In this book, Native women proclaim that ‘settler’ literature is no longer acceptable as representative of our own creative process, nor does its confines do justice to our journey through the history of colonialism in our homeland.” Despite the best intentions of the dominant society to silence Indian women’s voices, “they emerge clearly here, and louder than ever before.”
pb 18.00

Flood, Renée Sansom, Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota. 1995.

On December 29, 1890, at a place called Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, an attack by the Seventh Cavalry killed some 300 unarmed Lakota women, men and children. Four days after the Wounded Knee Massacre, as a blizzard swept over the area, a burial detail heard the cries of an infant. Adopted by Brigadier General Leonard R. Colby as a “living curio” of the massacre and brought home to his wife, suffragist Clara Colby, Zintkala Nuni—Lost Bird—lived a short life marred by racism, abuse and poverty. This is the story of the little girl who came to symbolize all of the “lost birds” adopted away from their tribes.
pb 18.00. Also available: DVD documentary based on this book, 25.00

Four Worlds Development Project, The Sacred Tree: Reflections on Native American Spirituality. 1984, b/w illustrations

Directed by tribal elders, spiritual leaders and Native professionals and originally produced by the Four Worlds Development Project for use in health and healing programs to eliminate drug and alcohol abuse in the Native communities—this is a clearly written, beautifully illustrated and complex teaching of traditional Native values as a transformative way to bring individuals and communities back to the path that the elders have prophesied. “For all the people of the earth,” The Sacred Tree begins, “the Creator has planted a Sacred Tree under which they may gather, and there find healing, power, wisdom, and security. The roots of this tree spread deep into the body of Mother Earth. Its branches reach upward like hands praying to Father Sky. The fruits of this tree are the good things the Creator has given to the people: teachings that show the path to love, compassion, generosity, patience, wisdom, justice, courage, respect, humility and many other wonderful gifts.”
pb 11.00

Harjo, Joy (Muscogee) and Gloria Bird (Spokane), eds., Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America. 1997.

When Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird first began talking about this project, its working title was “Reinventing Ourselves in the Enemy’s Language.” Somewhere along the way, in one of the many kitchen-table conversations among the many Indian activists and writers, grannies, moms, aunties, daughters, and sisters who helped plan or contributed to this project, someone probably asked, “Do we want to reinvent ourselves? Or do we want to reinvent the language?” The result is a strong anthology featuring prayer, poetry, fiction and personal narrative that together reflect the complexities of using language as a weapon of resistance. Among the contributions from more than 80 Native women writers and activists representing more than 50 Indian nations are recognizable names such as Linda Hogan, Winona LaDuke, Wilma Mankiller, Bea Medicine, Leslie Marmon Silko, Luci Tapahonso; others are published here for the first time. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language is a rare collection that speaks truth to power.
pb 19.00

Dog Road Woman. 1997.

In her first collection of poems, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke tells contemporary stories about surviving the Indian holocaust, domestic violence, racism, and of the toughness and fragility of life under occupation. From a matter-of-fact description of the backbreaking work of chopping and curing tobacco in the summer heat, to a hair-raising story of a young mother’s desperation as she kills rats to save her babies, to a frustrated explanation (one more time) that a “simple matter of blood and culture” is not for sale, to a tale of a friend’s suicide “accepting new road death/ rather than selling/ ghosts to hosts/ claiming new age obligations,” to a search for warriors and strong women, “accomplished and respected,” to parent the “rez children” so that strength and wisdom and justice can be reclaimed, Hedge Coke has proven herself  a woman of courage and strength, and an immense talent besides.
pb 13.00

Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival. 2004.

“Our world was thick with green, everything swallowed and devoured with greenness, the blanket of flora pocked by daisies. Come fall the leaves would redden and yellow, the moisture draining back into the trunk, brittling them as they fell, the branches brittling as well and tumbling down to dirt paths, blocking the way home—except for willows. The willows would simply sway in the colder breeze, retaining their own suppleness, lithe, with endurance and strength far surpassing the heavy oak branches or apple limbs.” Like a willow bending in a bad wind, Hedge Coke writes about her life with resilience and courage. As she bears witness to the alcoholism, insanity, rape and domestic violence within and outside of her family, Hedge Coke walks unashamed, connecting her personal suffering with the struggle of Indian people to survive the diaspora that continues today. This is an awful and beautiful book by a brilliant writer—and survivor.
hc 25.00

The Book of Medicines. 1993.

Hogan’s spare, direct and evocative poems here reflect a concern for the earth  (“This is the world without end/ where forests have been cut away from their trees"), for earth’s creatures (“This is the land/ where whales were mountains”) and for all things ("I want the world to be kinder. / I am a woman./ I am afraid"). Here is an homage to a chambered nautilus (“the curve of sea lives in it”), to hollow bamboo (“a darkened forest/ of sisters who grow quickly/ in moving water”), to salt (“the rich world/ that skirts all bodies/ of land and skin”). The poems in The Book of Medicines together become a prayer for healing—of self, between people, and for the earth—and rebirth.
pb 15.00

Power. 1998.

What happens when one people’s power is another people’s broken law? How does a person who is witness to a power that is simultaneously “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” endure? That person is Omishto, a teenager who watches her Aunt Ama track, shoot, and kill a sacred golden panther in what is left of their Florida homeland. In the context of ecological, environmental, political, tribal and personal power, Hogan’s novel expresses the risks tribal peoples face when they access power after centuries of colonization. The excruciating questions traced in one girl’s mind—and the pathways opened for readers to explore on their own—make Power critical and essential reading for high school-age readers.
hc 23.00, pb 14.00

The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir. 2001.

“Self-telling is rare for a Native woman,” Linda Hogan writes; yet, when she works with young people on reservations, they want to know how she survived her life. So she put down these stories of her life, each word carefully placed, and delicate as the broken clay statue of the woman for whom her book is named. There is great pain here. And throughout, there is great beauty, and compassion, and wisdom, and hope. “What is a human being? I still ask myself each day. What is the self that, as a young woman, I had wanted to destroy it even though I would tenderly pick up an insect and move it, give it water, allow the wasps to live in my ceiling, and let in every stray or hurt animal? Why did I place more importance on their lives than on my own?…. I could see, even then, the full scope of the world that held so much suffering when it didn’t have to.”
hc 25.00

Johnston, Basil (Ojibwe), Ojibway Tales. 1978.

In these 22 hilarious stories set on the fictional Moose Meat Point Indian Reserve, connected by a dirt road to the town of Blunder Bay, six hunters learn that it’s probably not a good idea to humiliate a moose you’re about to kill. To untutored white (tourist) eyes, three men fending off a bee attack could appear to be “blood-thirsty savages” killing each other. Two Indian war veterans who really want some beer have to pretend to be of another ethnicity in order to be served. A recalcitrant priest finds out that bologna is to meat what sawdust is to wood. Sometimes potatoes fall off the face of the earth. From beginning to end, Ojibway Tales will have high school readers laughing out loud.
pb 17.00

From Thomas King (Cherokee)

Green Grass, Running Water. 1993.

Treaties supposed to last “as long as the grass grows and the water flows” are not worth the paper they were written on, but the water still flows. It puddles up around the tires of a red Pinto. It waits for First Woman to plunge from the Sky World. It overflows the women’s room toilet at the Dead Dog Café. It rocks a small boat of men who beg to be rescued. It soaks through clothing, squishes inside shoes, soothes a world-weary Native Studies professor as she sinks down into a bath. Throughout, things happen that nobody expects. But when the stories are all told, when the tributaries run together, we look back and see with crystal clarity where the border crossings, the interwoven conversations, the tour bus and the John Wayne videos have been carrying us. And Coyote, let’s not forget Coyote. On the final page, we are invited to begin again, to find more humor, more heartache, more layers, more mystery, more Coyote dreams. And of course more water.
pb 16.00

Medicine River. 1989.

When Will returns to Medicine River, a small town near the Blackfoot reserve in Western Canada, to attend his mother’s funeral, he doesn’t count on his eccentric friend Harlen Bigbear’s unique brand of “general maintenance” and community planning. Harlan’s well-meaning, convoluted schemes involve getting into everybody’s business, including persuading over-40 and physically unfit Will to play in the all-Native basketball team and to court pregnant and fiercely independent accountant Louise Heavyman. With warmth and deadpan humor, King’s intricately woven novel entertains while deftly slipping his compelling insights and serious messages about culture, community and Indian-white relations into the reader’s consciousness.
pb 15.00

Truth & Bright Water. 1999.

Like King’s earlier books, Green Grass, Running Water and Medicine River, this novel is one that readers will want to read more than once. Within the story of the coming of age of Tecumseh and Lum is the mystery of a child’s skull they find on a bluff overlooking the river that separates sister towns in Montana and on a reserve in Alberta. There are other questions, such as why Tecumseh’s Auntie Cassie is home to stay this time and why she’s brought a suitcase full of baby clothes; why no one protects Lum from his father’s rage; why Monroe Swimmer plants iron buffalo and disappears a church; and why those buckskin-clad Germans keep showing up at Indian Days. Truth & Bright Water is a deeply moving, richly layered, and funny-in-places story of tragedy, reconciliation, and love.
pb 13.00

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. 2003.

“The truth about stories,” Tom King says, “is that that’s all we are.” It’s a known fact that stories can be our greatest teachers—when they’re well told, when their lessons remain unstated, when we can ponder their many nuances. Stories can be strong enough to make magic. Stories are medicine: they can heal or kill. Once told, they remain in the universe forever. Once heard, they can inform our choices and our lives. They can be given, sold, traded, or stolen. Sometimes a good story is the only defense against colonialism, against genocide, against appropriation. Tom King is nothing if he’s not direct and honest. In this series of lectures that read like told stories, he confront white privilege, class privilege, and the social construct called “race.”
pb 20.00