Native American Heritage Month Reading List
In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we’re proud to highlight a selection of books that explore the rich histories, cultures, and contemporary experiences of Native American communities. Whether you’re looking to deepen your understanding of Native American history, explore Indigenous culture, or learn more about ongoing social and political issues, our curated collection includes important contributions from Native authors and scholars. Join us in recognizing and honoring Native American heritage through these powerful and thought-provoking works. And be sure to browse our full catalog of Native American/Indigenous Studies books.
Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen
Finalist, 2023 Pulitzer Prize in History
2023 James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians
2023 Caughey Western History Prize, Western History Association
2023 State History Award in the Books: University & Commercial Press Category, Historical Society of Michigan
“[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
The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle by Malinda Maynor Lowery
“Ideal for American history buffs, this rich history explores familiar American periods of turmoil through the singular experience of the Lumbee Indian community.”—Publishers Weekly
“This book is Maynor Lowery’s ode to the Lumbee people and her reconciliation of what it means to be American and Lumbee concurrently. She contends that the two do not exist in contradistinction to each other, nor do they exist copacetically. She writes in a way that is accessible to the reader, palatable for non-Natives, and her book is a decidedly and incontrovertibly Lumbee work by and for Lumbee people.”—American Indian Quarterly
On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice by Ryan Emanuel
“Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee Tribe and a hydrologist at Duke University, is uniquely positioned to tell this story. . . . [On the Swamp illuminate[s] cyclical patterns of environmental injustice, rendered through deeply personal storytelling and vivid locality—down to the color of the water in seemingly every last rivulet in the county.”—Sierra
“In writing that’s both affectionate and candid, On the Swamp is a warning about, and a celebration of, eastern North Carolina.”—Grist
What Side Are You On?: A Tohono O’odham Life across Borders by Michael Steven Wilson , José Antonio Lucero
“Brilliant, moving, and wholly unique…. Wilson and Lucero have produced a groundbreaking book that mixes memoir, testimonio, political science, and history to tell the complex story of an Indigenous man’s journey through the civil rights era, the Cold War, and America’s war on undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border.”—Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
“Mike Wilson’s life history and varied experiences reveal that Native lives are complex, adaptive, and entirely modern. Wilson and Lucero’s unique dual-story approach is extremely effective. I can’t think of another book quite like this one.”—K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Arizona State University
Vital Relations: How the Osage Nation Moves Indigenous Nationhood into the Future by Jean Dennison
“Dennison’s book takes an important place among Indigenous and institutional ethnography, showing the fine details and complex negotiations of tribal governance as they unfold in both ordinary and official settings. Dennison paints a highly contoured and complex picture of the Osage Nation as a site of struggle, contestation, cooperation, and care.”—Clint Carroll, University of Colorado
“In this intimately observed ethnography, Dennison engages with the history of colonization, its many legacies, and attempts to rebuild relationships of respect within colonial structures to provide much-needed care for Indigenous people. Her work here should be a model for other Indigenous studies scholars.”—Darren Ranco, University of Maine
Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent by John William Nelson
2024 W. Turrentine-Jackson Prize, Western History Association
2024 Superior Achievement Award, Illinois State Historical Society
Honorable Mention, 2024 Jon Gjerde Book Award, Midwestern History Association
Shortlist Award Recipient, 2024 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award, The Newberry
David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History
“This groundbreaking study brings to light the importance of Indigenous space at a crossroads of the Great Lakes and the Great Plains.”—Western Writers of America’s Roundup Magazine
“Muddy Ground is a brilliant synthesis of Indigenous and environmental history, illuminating the importance of Chicago as a crossroads linking the Great Lakes and the Great Plains. Nelson provides a compelling narrative showing how first Indigenous people, and subsequently the American settler state, mastered space and mobility in order to make this muddy space a gateway to the west.”—Michael J. Witgen, author of Pulitzer Prize–finalist Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America
Indiscipline: Reading Collaboratively Written Native American Autobiography by Alicia Carroll
“Carroll addresses the long history of collaborative Native-white life writing texts while deftly moving beyond them to center Hopi voices and knowledge production.”—Stephanie Fitzgerald, Arizona State University
Inscribing Sovereignties: Writing Community in Native North America by Phillip H. Round
“The scope of Round’s book is impressive, and the prose is engaging, with moments of real poetry and inspiration. But its biggest payoff is to advance the comparative study of Indigenous languages and orthographies across the Western Hemisphere and around the world. Round’s narrative of the history of Indigenous media can help lead researchers and Indigenous communities themselves not just to obscured histories but to inspirations for transformative practices.”—Matt Cohen, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
“Round reveals how Native North Americans put material literacy practices to decolonizing ends, sustaining culture, building community, asserting tribal authority, and expressing individual experience. This book puts to rest any lingering narratives of a divide between oral and written culture as it traces a number of ways in which Indigenous peoples brought spoken languages and linguistic practices into writing and back out again, sustaining living, vibrant vernacular languages.”—Laura Mielke, University of Kansas