Highlighted Works
On Display in Kamen Gallery
Black Elk Speaks by
More than one million copies sold 2017 One Book One Nebraska selection "An American classic."--Western Historical Quarterly Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. Black Elk's searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Neihardt, have made this book a classic that crosses multiple genres. Whether appreciated as the poignant tale of a Lakota life, as a history of a Native nation, or as an enduring spiritual testament, Black Elk Speaks is unforgettable. Black Elk met the distinguished poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and asked Neihardt to share his story with the world. Neihardt understood and conveyed Black Elk's experiences in this powerful and inspirational message for all humankind. This complete edition features a new introduction by historian Philip J. Deloria and annotations of Black Elk's story by renowned Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie. Three essays by John G. Neihardt provide background on this landmark work along with pieces by Vine Deloria Jr., Raymond J. DeMallie, Alexis Petri, and Lori Utecht. Maps, original illustrations by Standing Bear, and a set of appendixes rounds out the edition.
Call Number: ebookPublication Date: 2014
Decolonizing Methodologies by
To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited third edition, this bestselling book includes a co-written introduction and features contributions from indigenous scholars on the book's continued relevance to current research. It also features a chapter with twenty-five indigenous projects and a collection of poetry.
Call Number: ebookPublication Date: 2021
Enough Is Enough by
A small group of women from a reserve called Tobique embarrassed the Canadian government in front of the world and brought the plight of Native women and Native experience to the eyes of millions. These are their stories about growing up Native and female. It is the story of a struggle to end one hundred years of legislated sexual discrimination against Native women in Canada. Their struggle started with the occupation of a band office, continued with a hundred-mile march to Ottawa, and ended up in the United Nations.
Call Number: E99.M195 E56 1987Publication Date: 1987
Firsting and Lasting by
Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England's original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. In Firsting and Lasting, Jean M. O'Brien argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O'Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness. In order to convince themselves that the Indians had vanished despite their continued presence, O'Brien finds that local historians and their readers embraced notions of racial purity rooted in the century's scientific racism and saw living Indians as "mixed" and therefore no longer truly Indian. Adaptation to modern life on the part of Indian peoples was used as further evidence of their demise. Indians did not--and have not--accepted this effacement, and O'Brien details how Indians have resisted their erasure through narratives of their own. These debates and the rich and surprising history uncovered in O'Brien's work continue to have a profound influence on discourses about race and indigenous rights.
Call Number: ebookPublication Date: 2010
For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook by
For Indigenous Minds Only features Indigenous scholars, writers, and activists who have collaborated for the creation of a sequel to For Indigenous Eyes Only (SAR Press, 2005). The title reflects an understanding that decolonizing actions must begin in the mind, and that creative, consistent decolonized thinking shapes and empowers the brain, which in turn provides a major prime for positive change. Included in this book are discussions of global collapse, what to consider in returning to a land-based existence, demilitarization for imperial purposes and re-militarization for Indigenous purposes, survival strategies for tribal prisoners, moving beyond the nation-state model, a land-based educational model, personal decolonization, decolonization strategies for youth in custody, and decolonizing gender roles. As with For Indigenous Eyes Only, the authors do not intend to provide universal solutions for problems stemming from centuries of colonialism. Rather, they hope to facilitate and encourage critical thinking skills while offering recommendations for fostering community discussions and plans for purposeful community action. For Indigenous Minds Only will serve an important need within Indigenous communities for years to come.
Call Number: E98.E85 F68 2012Publication Date: 2012
Listening to the Land by
This is a representation versus reality in Native American literary presentations of a land ethic.For better or worse, representations abound of Native Americans as a people with an innate and special connection to the earth. This study looks at the challenges faced by Native American writers who confront stereotypical representations as they assert their own ethical relationship with the earth. Lee Schweninger considers a range of genres (memoirs, novels, stories, essays) by Native writers from various parts of the United States. Contextualizing these works within the origins, evolution, and perpetuation of the ""green"" labels imposed upon Indians, Schweninger shows how writers often find themselves denying some land ethic stereotypes while seeming to embrace others.Taken together, the time periods covered in Listening to the Land span more than a hundred years, from Luther Standing Bear's description of his late-nineteenth-century life on the prairie to Linda Hogan's account of a 1999 Makah hunt of a grey whale. Two-thirds of the writers Schweninger considers, however, are well-known voices from the second half of the twentieth century, including N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Vine Deloria Jr., Gerald Vizenor, and Louis Owens.Few ecocritical studies have focused on indigenous environmental attitudes, in comparison to related work done by historians and anthropologists. ""Listening to the Land"" will narrow this gap in the scholarship; moreover, it will add individual Native American perspectives to an understanding of what, to these writers, is a genuine Native American philosophy regarding the land.
Call Number: PS153.I52 S38 2008Publication Date: 2008
Nothing but the Truth by
This anthology includes some of the best works of Native American Literature -- with a good representation of major authors, geographic dispersion, gender balance, and a variety of genres. Its illustrative and popular material promote a deeper appreciation of different themes and approaches. Complete works that have become classics in the field, combined with ones from the modern era, make this collection rich in historical and theoretical context. KEY TOPICS: Selections of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and drama, include works by Paula Gunn Allen, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Carter Revard, Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, Kimberly Blaeser, Peter Blue Cloud, Louise Erdrich, Scott N. Momaday, Simon Ortiz, and many more. An effective introduction to Native American Literature for readers interested in this area of writing.
Call Number: PS508.I5 N67 2001Publication Date: 2000
Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. "This book is too important to miss. It is a vast, sprawling look at who we are as Indigenous people in these United States."-Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho), author of There There Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states-from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)-to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people-all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more. A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.
Call Number: E77.5 .W55 2023Publication Date: 2023
Red Earth, White Lies by
"In this latest work by the prominent historian, Deloria turns his audacious intellect and fiery indignation to an examination of modern science as it relates to Native American oral history and exposes the myth of scientific fact, defending Indian mythology as the more truthful account of the history of the earth." "Deloria grew up in South Dakota, in a small border town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There he was in a position to absorb the culture and traditions of Western Europeans, as well as of the native Sioux people. Much of the formal education he received about science, including how the earth and its people had formed and developed over time, came from the white, Western world; he and his fellow students accepted it as gospel, even though this information often contradicted the ancient teachings of the Native American peoples." "As an adult, though, Deloria saw how some of these scientific "facts," once readily accepted as the truth, now began to run against common sense as well as the teachings of his people. For example, the question of why certain peoples had lighter or darker skins posed an especially thorny problem - one that mainstream journals and books failed to answer in a way that was satisfactory to this budding skeptic. When he began to reexamine other previously irrefutable theories - of the earth's creation, of the evolution of people, of the acceptance of the notion that the Indians themselves had been responsible for slaughtering and wiping out certain large animals from their habitat over time - he also began to reconsider the value of myth and religion in an explanation of the world's history and, in the process, to document and record traditional knowledge of Indian tribes as offered by the tribal elders."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Call Number: E98.F6 D35 1995Publication Date: 1995
Shared Visions by
Shared Visions, from an exhibition prepared by the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, presents the work of seventy Native American painters and sculptors. With fascinating essays by the exhibition organizers, Margaret Archuleta and Rennard Strickland, by Joy L. Gritton and W. Jackson Rushing, and more than 130 reproductions--seventy-six in color--Shared Visions is an excellent introduction to one of America's most important art movements.
Call Number: N6538.A4 A7 1993Publication Date: 1993
The Toughest Indian in the World by
A beloved American writer whose books are championed by critics and readers alike, Sherman Alexie has been hailed by Time as "one of the better new novelists, Indian or otherwise". Now his acclaimed new collection, The Toughest Indian in the World, which received universal praise in hardcover, is available in paperback. In these stories, we meet the kind of American Indians we rarely see in literature -- the kind who pay their bills, hold down jobs, fall in and out of love. A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. A Spokane son waits for his diabetic father to come home from the hospital, tossing out the Hershey Kisses the father has hidden all over the house. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with $42 and an overweight Indian he dubs Salmon Boy. Sherman Alexie's voice is one of remarkable passion, and these stories are love stories -- between parents and children, white people and Indians, movie stars and ordinary people. Witty, tender, and fierce, The Toughest Indian in the World is a virtuoso performance by one of the country's finest writers.
Call Number: PS3551.L35774 T68 2000Publication Date: 2000
The Trickster Shift by
Over the last 15 years, a select group of professionally trained andpolitically astute Canadian artists of Native ancestry has produced acompelling body of work that owes much of its power to a wry and ironicsense of humour rooted firmly in the oral tradition. More than acritical/political strategy, such humour reflects a widespread culturaland communal sensibility embodied in the mythical Native AmericanTrickster. This book explores the influence of this comic spirit on thepractice of various artists through the presentation of a'Trickster discourse,' that is, a body of overlapping andinterrelated verbal and visual narratives by tricksters and abouttrickster practice.
Call Number: N6549.5 A54 R92 1999Publication Date: 1999
The Turn to the Native by
The Turn to the Native is a timely account of Native American literature and the critical writings that have grown up around it. Arnold Krupat considers racial and cultural "essentialism," the ambiguous position of non-Native critics in the field, cultural "sovereignty" and "property," and the place of Native American culture in a so-called multicultural era. Chapters follow on the relationship of Native American culture to postcolonial writing and postmodernism. Krupat comments on the recent work of numerous Native writers. The final chapter, "A Nice Jewish Boy among the Indians," presents the author's effort to balance his Jewish and working-class heritage, his adherence to Western "critical" ideals, and his ongoing loyalty to the values of Native cultures.
Call Number: PS153.I52 K77 1996Publication Date: 1996
About This List
The titles below represent only a selection of books related to Native American and Indigenous Studies. To discover more books, search the Library Catalog.
Books: Many Suggested by the Indigenous and Native American Employee Resource Group
1491 by
... Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.
Call Number: Leyburn E61 .M266 2005ISBN: 9781400040063Publication Date: 2005
American Indians by
"Professor Mihesuah goes beyond simply providing responses to common stereotypes. She provides the reader with assistance in efforts to improve understanding of her peoples... a valuable contribution in bringing greater clarity to important issues." Alejandro Garcia, Journal of Multicultural Social Work
Call Number: Leyburn E98.P99 M54 1996ISBN: 0932863221Publication Date: 2015
American Indian Stories by
American Indian Stories, first published in 1921, is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fiction, and an essay. One of the most famous Sioux writers and activists of the modern era, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) recalled legends and tales from oral tradition and used experiences from her life and community to educate others about the Yankton Sioux...
Call Number: E99.Y25 Z57 2003ISBN: 0803299176Publication Date: 2003-09-01
Anti-Indianism in Modern America by
Addressing Native American studies past, present, and future, the essays in New Indians, Old Wars tackle the discipline head-on, presenting a radical revision of the popular view of the American West in the process...
Call Number: Leyburn E93 .C76 2001ISBN: 0252026624Publication Date: 2001-07-25
Bad Indians by
This beautiful and devastating book--part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir--should be required reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
Call Number: Leyburn E78.C15 M6 2013ISBN: 9781597142014Publication Date: 2013
Beyond Hawai'i by
... Bridging American, Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai'i is the first book to argue that indigenous labor--more than the movement of ships and spread of diseases--unified the Pacific World.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780520967960Publication Date: 2018
Cahokia by
About one thousand years ago, Native Americans built hundreds of earthen platform mounds, plazas, residential areas, and other types of monuments in the vicinity of present-day St. Louis. This sprawling complex, known to archaeologists as Cahokia, was the dominant cultural, ceremonial, and trade center north of Mexico for centuries. This stimulating collection of essays casts new light on the remarkable accomplishments of Cahokia.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 0803237081Publication Date: 1997
Coacoochee's Bones by
To Americans he was "Wild Cat," to Mexicans, "Gato del Monte." But to his own people he was Coacoochee, a warrior and diplomat who led the Seminole resistance to American injustice in their home territory of Florida and through the Spanish borderlands of North America. In the first in-depth study of this dramatic figure, Susan A. Miller, a historian and a Seminole, sorts out discrepancies between American history--where Coacoochee remains in the background--and Seminole tradition--where he stands as a great leader...
Call Number: Leyburn E99.S28 C595 2003ISBN: 0700611959Publication Date: 2003
Custer died for your sins; an Indian manifesto by
Includes 11 essays: "Indians Today: The Real and the Unreal," "Laws and Treaties," "The Disastrous Policy of Termination," "Anthropologists and Other Friends," "Missionaries and the Religious Vacuum," "Government Agencies," "Indian Humor," "The Red and the Black," "The Problem of Indian Leadership," "Indians and Modern Society," and "A Redefinition of Indian Affairs."
Call Number: Leyburn E93 .D36Publication Date: 1969
Dwellings by
A first collection of essays by a Chickasaw poet and novelist considers such subjects as bats, bees, porcupines, wolves, and caves while regarding the earth as humankind's universal home.
Call Number: Leyburn BD581 .H573 1995ISBN: 0393037843Publication Date: 1995
Genocide of the Mind by
... compelling collection of essays that brings the Native American experience into the twenty-first century. Contributors include: Paula Gunn Allen, Simon Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Maurice Kenny, as well as emerging writers from different Indian nations.
Call Number: Leyburn E98.E85 G46 2003ISBN: 1560255110Publication Date: 2003
The Inconvenient Indian by
...Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada-U.S. border, King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands...
Call Number: Leyburn E77 .K566 2013ISBN: 9780816689767Publication Date: 2013
Indigenizing the Academy by Call Number: Leyburn E97 .I464 2004ISBN: 0803232292Publication Date: 2004Print (Leyburn)
Indigenomics by
...Indigenomics calls for a new model of development, one that advances Indigenous self-determination, collective well-being, and reconciliation. This is vital reading for business leaders and entrepreneurs, Indigenous organizations and nations, governments and policymakers, and economists.
Call Number: E98.B87 H55 2021ISBN: 9780865719408Publication Date: 2021
Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, empowerment, activism by Call Number: Leyburn E98.W8 M54 2003ISBN: 0803232276Publication Date: 2003Print (Leyburn)
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by
"Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe’s long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world." --Penguin Random House
Call Number: Leyburn E93 .M46 1983ISBN: 0670397024Publication Date: 1983
Mountain Windsong by Call Number: S3553.O494 M68 1992ISBN: 0806124520Publication Date: 1992Print (Leyburn)
Native Historians Write Back by Call Number: Leyburn E76.8 .N35 2011ISBN: 9780896727328Publication Date: 2011Print (Leyburn)
New Indians, Old Wars by Call Number: Leyburn E76.8 .C66 2007ISBN: 9780252031663Publication Date: 2007Leyburn (Print)
Peace, Power, Righteousness by Call Number: Leyburn E98.T77 A43 1999ISBN: 0195412168Publication Date: 1999Print (Leyburn)
The Politics of Hallowed Ground by Call Number: Leyburn E99.T34 G65 1999ISBN: 0252066693Publication Date: 1998Pring (Leyburn)
Repatriation Reader: Who owns American Indian remains? by Call Number: Leyburn E98.M34 R46 2000ISBN: 0803282648Publication Date: 2000Print (Leyburn)
A Separate Country by
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn takes academia to task for its much-touted notion that "postcoloniality" is the current condition of Indian communities in the United States. She finds the argument neither believable nor useful--at best an ivory-tower initiative on the part of influential scholars, at worst a cruel joke. In this fin de career retrospective, Cook-Lynn gathers evidence that American Indians remain among the most colonized people in the modern world, mired in poverty and disenfranchised both socially and politically. Despite Native-initiated efforts toward seeking First Nationhood status in the U. S., Cook-Lynn posits, Indian lands remain in the grip of a centuries-old English colonial system--a renewable source of conflict and discrimination. She argues that proportionately in the last century, government-supported development of casinos and tourism--peddled as an answer to poverty--probably cost Indians more treaty-protected land than they lost in the entire nineteenth century. Using land issues and third-world theory to look at the historiography of the American Plains Indian experience, she examines colonization's continuing assault on Indigenous peoples.
Call Number: Leyburn E78.W5 C575 2012ISBN: 9780896727342Publication Date: 2011
The Truth about Stories by
"Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous." In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to social injustices, racist propaganda to works of contemporary Native literature, King probes Native culture's deep ties to storytelling. With wry humor, King deftly weaves events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a wide-ranging discussion of stories told by and about Indians...
Call Number: Leyburn PR9199.3.K4422 Z477 2005ISBN: 0816646279Publication Date: 2008
Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973, in the words of the participants
"In the winter of 1890, U.S. Government forces massacred nearly 300 Indian people, mainly women and children, after they had surrendered all but one of their weapons. The site of the massacre was Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the winter of 1973, several hundred Oglala Sioux and their supporters from other tribes returned to Wounded Knee to make a stand ... This stand on Indian land for Indian rights were met by the U.S. Government with armored personnel carriers, helicopters, automatic rifles, and other Viet Nam era weapons. But for 71 days no Federal law enforcement personnel or Bureau of Indian Affairs officials had any authority in Wounded Knee. For 71 days, through countless battles and negotiating sessions, and despite the Government's blockade of food, fuel, and medical supplies, a self-governing community was built. This book is a documentary about the occupation."--Editor's Introduction.
Call Number: Leyburn E99.O3 V64ISBN: 9780914838012Publication Date: 1974
Where White Men Fear to Tread by
The Native American activist recounts his struggle for Indian self-determination, his periods in prison, and his spiritual awakening.
Call Number: Leyburn E99.O3 M386 1995ISBN: 0312136218Publication Date: 1995-09-01
