Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum and The New York Society Library are pleased to announce a new multi-year series of special events and reading recommendations celebrating Indigenous American writers. This project will highlight both historical indigenous writers in the libraries’ collections and the diversity and vibrancy of indigenous writers being published in many genres today.
Located on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish people, Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is America’s youngest Athenaeum providing a community space for reading, writing, dialogue and learning. Folio is home to a Northwest Indigenous American art and history collection and a growing collection of books in all genres by indigenous writers.
New York City’s oldest cultural institution, the New York Society Library has been collecting books related to Indigenous American history and culture since the 1780s and has actively sought out books by writers from indigenous backgrounds for almost a century.
Folio and the New York Society Library are excited to honor and promote indigenous authors past and present and to help others increase their knowledge and enjoyment of these essential contributions to American literature.
To launch our project and observe Indigenous Peoples Day 2024, here are samples of recommended reading across the vast scope of indigenous writing past and present.
Learn, revisit a beloved book or discover a new favorite!
Nonfiction >> | Fiction >> | Children & YA >> | Poetry >> | Folklore >> | Reference >>
Nonfiction
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria Jr. (1969)
Standing Rock Sioux activist, professor, and attorney Vine Deloria, Jr., shares his thoughts about U.S. race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists in a collection of eleven eye-opening essays infused with humor.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2015)
Recipient of the American Book Award, this is the first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
"All the Real Indians Died Off": and 20 Other Myths about Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2016)
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 and misconceptions.
As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)
The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism.
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice (2018)
Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today.
Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present by Adrienne Keene, illustrated by Ciara Sana (2021)
An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people, from NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota to Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2022)
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land by N. Scott Momaday (2020)
A magnificent testament to the earth, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday. "Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose." — Esquire
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez (2016)
A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century. A National Book Award finalist and winner of the Bancroft Prize.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer (2019)
A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. "Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPR
The Orange Shirt Story by Phyllis Webstad, illustrated by Brock Nicol (2018) and Beyond the Orange Shirt Story by Phyllis Webstad (2021)
The Orange Shirt Story is the true story of Phyllis and her orange shirt, and also the true story of Orange Shirt Day (an important day of remembrance for First Nations and non-First Nations peoples). Beyond the Orange Shirt Story is a unique collection of truths that articulate the lives and experiences of some Residential School Survivors and their families.
Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur
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.
Fiction
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead (2020)
A Lambda Literary Award winner, 2021. This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories.
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (2022)
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. A winner of numerous awards including the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing, as a battered veteran returns home to heal his mind and spirit. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years.
There, There: A Novel by Tommy Orange (2018)
A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. One of the Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Children’s & Young Adult Literature
Powwow Day by Traci Sorell, illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight (2022)
River is recovering from illness and can't dance at the powwow this year. Will she ever dance again? A heartwarming and hopeful contemporary picture book about traditions, community, and healing, written and illustrated by Indigenous creators.
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal (2019)
Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpre Award winner and Caldecott Honoree Juana Martinez-Neal. “A wonderful and sweet book . . . Lovely stuff.” —The New York Times Book Review
We Still Belong by Christine Day (2024)
A thoughtful and heartfelt middle grade novel by American Indian Youth Literature Honor–winning author Christine Day (Upper Skagit), about a girl whose hopeful plans for Indigenous Peoples’ Day (and plans to ask her crush to the school dance) go all wrong—until she finds herself surrounded by the love of her Indigenous family and community at an intertribal powwow.
We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom, illustrated by Michaela Goade (2020)
A Caldecott Medal-winning picture book that honors Indigenous-led movements across the world. Powerfully written and gorgeously illustrated, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption—inviting young readers everywhere to join the fight.
Poetry
Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry (2021)
A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry.
Folklore
A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World by Robert Bringhurst (2011)
The Haida world is a misty archipelago a hundred stormy miles off the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska. For a thousand years and more before the Europeans came, a great culture flourished in these islands. The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians from the fall of 1900 through the summer of 1901. Poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves--one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the globe.
Reference
The Cambridge Companion To Native American Literature, edited by Joy Porter and Kenneth M. Roemer (2005)
An informative and wide-ranging overview of literature of many genres in English by American Indians from the 1770s to the present day. In addition to the seventeen chapters written by respected experts--Native and non-Native; American, British and European scholars - it includes bio-bibliographies of forty authors, maps, suggestions for further reading, and a timeline which details major works of Native American and mainstream American literature, as well as significant social, cultural and historical events.
