Native American Heritage Month
November 2022
For Children
We are water protectors
by Carole Lindstrom

When a black snake threatens to destroy the earth, one young water protector takes a stand to defend the planet's water, in a tale inspired by the many indigenous-led conservation movements across North America
All around us
by Xelena Gonzalez

Finding circles everywhere, a grandfather and his granddaughter meditate on the cycles of life and nature
Bowwow powwow : bagosenjige-niimi?idim
by Brenda J. Child

"When Uncle and Windy Girl attend a powwow, Windy watches the dancers and listens to the singers. She eats tasty food and joins family and friends around the campfire. Later, Windy falls asleep under the stars. Uncle's stories inspire visions in her head: a bowwow powwow, where all the dancers are dogs. In these magical scenes, Windy sees veterans in a Grand Entry, and a visiting drum group, and traditional dancers, grass dancers, and jingle-dress dancers--all with telltale ears and paws and tails. All celebrating in song and dance. All attesting to the wonder of the powwow."--Provided by publisher
Fry bread : a Native American family story
by Kevin Noble Maillard

As children help a Native American grandmother make fry bread, delves into the history, social ways, foodways, and politics of America's 573 recognized Indian tribes
You hold me up = : Gimanaadenim
by Monique Gray Smith

Diverse families and friends help to hold one another up by being kind, sharing, learning, playing, laughing, and doing other supportive things together
Fall in line, Holden!
by Daniel W. Vandever

At a very strict school in Indigenous Nation, everyone but Holden stays in line until they reach the door at the end of the school day
For Middle Grade readers
Race to the sun
by Rebecca Roanhorse

Guided by her Navajo ancestors, seventh-grader Nizhoni Begay discovers she is descended from a holy woman and destined to become a monsterslayer, starting with the evil businessman who kidnapped her father. Includes glossary of Navajo terms
Ancestor approved : intertribal stories for kids
by Cynthia Leitich Smith

A volume of interconnected stories and poems set at a Native American Dance for Mother Earth Powwow celebration in Ann Arbor, Michigan, includes contributions by such new and veteran writers as Joseph Bruchac, Dawn Quigley, and Traci Sorell
Healer of the water monster
by Brian Young

A debut novel inspired by Native-American culture follows the experiences of a boy whose summer at his grandmothers reservation home is shaped by his uncles addictions and an encounter with a sacred being from the Navajo Creation Story. 35,000 first printing. Simultaneous eBook.
Two roads
by Joseph Bruchac

"It's 1932, and twelve-year-old Cal Black and his pop have been riding the rails for a year after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Cal likes being a "knight of the road" with Pop, even if they're broke. But then Pop has to go to Washington, D.C.--and Cal can't go with him. So Pop tells Cal something he never knew before: He's a Creek Indian, which means Cal is, too. And Pop has decided to send Cal to Challagi Indian School, a government boarding school for Native Americans in Oklahoma. At Challagi, the other Creek boys quickly take Cal under their wing. Even in the harsh, miserable conditions of the school, Cal begins to learn his people's history and heritage, language, and customs. And most of all, he learns how to find strength in a group offriends who have only one another"--Page [4] of cover
My name is Seepeetza
by Shirley Sterling

A young Native American girl, Seepeetza finds herself caught between cultures and confused by painful feelings of alienation and isolation as she spends months at an Indian residential school, where her name is changed to Martha Stone.
Show me a sign
by Ann Clare LeZotte

The Deaf librarian and author of T4 draws on the true history of a thriving 19th-century Deaf community on Marthas Vineyard in the story of a girl whose proud lineage is threatened by land disputes with the Wampanoag and a ruthlessly ambitious scientist. Simultaneous eBook.
For Young Adults
The firekeeper's daughter
by Angeline Boulley

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths
Surviving the city
by Tasha Spillett

Indigenous teens Miikwan and Dez are best friends that navigate living in the city together, but when Dez's grandmother gets sick, Dez runs away instead of going to a group home, leaving Miikwan and the community to try and find her
The marrow thieves
by Cherie Dimaline

In a world where most people have lost the ability to dream, a fifteen-year-old Indigenous boy who is still able to dream struggles for survival against an army of "recruiters" who seek to steal his marrow and return dreams to the rest of the world
A snake falls to Earth
by Darcie Little Badger

"Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart"
An indigenous peoples' history of the United States for young people
by Debbie Reese

"Going beyond the story of America as a country "discovered" by a few brave men in the "New World," Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity. The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history"
Fiction
Night of the living rez
by Morgan Talty

"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. In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty-with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight-breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, whichsets into motion his family's unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's projects the past onto her grandson; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs. A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction"
The removed : a novel
by Brandon Hobson

A Cherokee family takes in a remarkable foster child on the eve of the Cherokee National Holiday and anniversary of a loved one’s death. By the National Book Award-winning author of Where the Dead Sit Talking. 75,000 first printing.
The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author presents this 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. 150,000 first printing.
Empire of wild : a novel
by Cherie Dimaline

A story inspired by the Canadian Métis legend of the Rogarou finds a woman reconnecting with her heritage when her missing husband reappears in the form of a charismatic preacher who does not recognize her
There there
by Tommy Orange

A novel which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans and a plague of addiction, abuse and suicidefollows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Reprint. A New York Times best-seller. AB. K. LJ. NYT. PW.
My heart is a chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones

Protected by horror movies—especially the ones where the masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them—Jade Daniels, an angry, half-Indian outcast, pulls us into her dark mind when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian lake. 100,000 first printing.
Non-Fiction
We had a little real estate problem : The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy
by Kliph Nesteroff

An acclaimed comedy historian explores how Native Americans have influenced and advanced the entertainment industry, tracing the achievements of performers ranging from Will Rogers and Adrianne Chalepah to Hill and the 1491s. 50,000 first printing. Illustrations.
The sea-ringed world : sacred stories of the Americas
by María García Esperón

Presents a collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents, the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it, from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska
Heart berries : a memoir
by Terese Marie Mailhot

"Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father-an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist-who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world."
Eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers
by Jake Skeets

[If] Jake Skeets’s collection is an unflinching portrait of the actual west, it is also a fierce reclamation of a living place—full of beauty as well as brutality, whose shadows are equally capable of protecting encounters between boys learning to become, and to love, men. Its landscapes are ravaged, but they are also startlingly lush with cacti, yarrow, larkspur, sagebrush. And even their scars are made newly tender when mapped onto the lover’s body: A spine becomes a railroad. “Veins burst oil, elk black.” And “becoming a man / means knowing how to become charcoal.” Rooted in Navajo history and thought, these poems show what has been brewing in an often forgotten part of the American literary landscape, an important language, beautiful and bone dense.
Postcolonial Love Poem
by Natalie Diaz

Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz's brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages-bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers-be touched and held as beloveds.