Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Reading List

Happy Indigenous peoples’ day! Today, especially, is a good day to learn about Indigenous history. As we take today to honor the histories and cultures of Indigenous people, we’ve curated a reading list of some of our indigenous titles.

Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen

Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

“[A] searing account. . . . [Witgen’s] incisive and deeply researched study lays bare the mechanisms of this historical land grab.”—Publishers Weekly

“An important analysis of Indigenous resistance to U.S. colonialism in the lands that would become Michigan and Wisconsin during the first half of the nineteenth century.”—Civil War Book Review

Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States by Kevin Bruyneel

“As Black and Indigenous identities are needlessly pitted against one another within a white supremacist ideology, Bruyneel offers a way through, liberating key moments of America’s racial history from static retellings and centering Indigenous people in the nation’s present and future political life.”—Malinda Maynor Lowery, author of The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle

The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past by Douglas Hunter

“Hunter’s deeply researched, heavily detailed study raises fascinating questions about white Americans’ understandings of Native American culture as well as their own sense of identity and nation.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

The Place of Stone may finally set the public history straight.”—American Historical Review

Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook Edited by Amy E. Den Ouden, Jean M. O’Brien

“This volume deserves a wide readership among scholars, students, and community leaders interested in the political rights of indigenous people in the United States.”—American Indian Quarterly

“A real strength of this book is the inclusion of a significant number of contributions by Native scholars.”—Oregon Historical Quarterly

Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 by Susan Sleeper-Smith

Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

“Compelling . . . Offers a highly readable account of vital women’s roles in the widespread Indian settlements of the Ohio River valley.”—Journal of American History

“Clearly written, well researched, and intellectually engaging. . . . Not only does the author restore the voices of Indigenous women . . . she also challenges persuasively the master narrative that has justified the excesses of American expansion.”—Western Historical Quarterly

Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era by Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote

Finalist, 2020 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association

“This book reminds us of the importance of understanding Native Americans as distinctly modern people who survived assimilation’s assaults by aggressively navigating their way through this era.”—Clyde Ellis, Elon University