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Books Celebrating Native American Heritage

By Doug J. & Isaac R.
November 16, 2022

Here are some recommended titles selected to celebrate Native American Heritage Month and indigenous lives.

Click on any book cover to go to the catalog to find the books and to place holds.

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Catching the Light by Joy Harjo 

United States Poet Laureate and winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award Joy Harjo examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing. 

White Magic: Essays by Elissa Washuta

In this collection of intertwined essays, Washuta writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life. 

Dream Drawings: Configurations of a Timeless Kind by N. Scott Momaday 

The Pulitzer prize-winning, internationally renowned poet, novelist, artist, teacher and storyteller presents 100 sketches with accompanying poetry that explores nature, animals, Native American warriors and hunters, love, loss and mortality.

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle Mays

This first history of the intersection of the Black and Native American struggles for freedom examines pre-Revolutionary America to today’s Black Lives Matter movement and indigenous activism against the use of Native American imagery in culture and sports.

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Shutter by Ramona Emerson 

A forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force, Rita Todacheene, who sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues the other investigators overlook, is caught in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels when a furious ghost sets her on a path of vengeance.

When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky by Margaret Verble 

After disaster strikes during one of her shows, Two Feathers, a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan to Glendale Park Zoo from a Wild West show, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries with the help of an eclectic cast of characters. 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich 

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author presents an unusual novel in which a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. 

The Removed by Brandon Hobson 

Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, The Removed seamlessly blends the real and spiritual to excavate the deep reverberations of trauma, a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.