Join us in celebrating uniqueness! Choose from this curated selection of physical titles within Pfeiffer Library that feature explore Native American heritage, all readily available on our display case:
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Call Number: PS3555.R42 N54 2020 CCU
ISBN: 9780062671189
Publication Date: 2020-03-03
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, AMAZON, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
Call Number: PS3615.R32 T48 2019 CCU
ISBN: 9780525436140
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A wondrous and shattering 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. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.
Seneca Possessed by Matthew Dennis
Call Number: E99S3 D466 2010
ISBN: 9780812242263
Publication Date: 2010-01-25
Seneca Possessed examines the ordeal of a Native people in the wake of the American Revolution. As part of the once-formidable Iroquois Six Nations in western New York, Senecas occupied a significant if ambivalent place within the newly established United States. They found themselves the object of missionaries' conversion efforts while also confronting land speculators, poachers, squatters, timber-cutters, and officials from state and federal governments. In response, Seneca communities sought to preserve their territories and culture amid a maelstrom of economic, social, religious, and political change. They succeeded through a remarkable course of cultural innovation and conservation, skillful calculation and luck, and the guidance of both a Native prophet and unusual Quakers. Through the prophecies of Handsome Lake and the message of Quaker missionaries, this process advanced fitfully, incorporating elements of Christianity and white society and economy, along with older Seneca ideas and practices. But cultural reinvention did not come easily. Episodes of Seneca witch-hunting reflected the wider crises the Senecas were experiencing. Ironically, as with so much of their experience in this period, such episodes also allowed for the preservation of Seneca sovereignty, as in the case of Tommy Jemmy, a Seneca chief tried by New York in 1821 for executing a Seneca "witch." Here Senecas improbably but successfully defended their right to self-government. Through the stories of Tommy Jemmy, Handsome Lake, and others, Seneca Possessed explores how the Seneca people and their homeland were "possessed"--culturally, spiritually, materially, and legally--in the era of early American independence.
Native Vote by Susan M. Olson; Jennifer L. Robinson; Daniel McCool
Call Number: E91.M25 2007
ISBN: 9780521839839
Publication Date: 2007-03-19
The right to vote is the foundation of democratic government; all other policies are derived from it. The history of voting rights in America has been characterized by a gradual expansion of the franchise. American Indians are an important part of that story but have faced a prolonged battle to gain the franchise. One of the most important tools wielded by advocates of minority voting rights has been the Voting Rights Act. This book explains the history and expansion of Indian voting rights, with an emphasis on seventy cases based on the Voting Rights Act and/or the Equal Protection Clause. The authors describe the struggle to obtain Indian citizenship and the basic right to vote, then analyze the cases brought under the Voting Rights Act, including three case studies. The final two chapters assess the political impact of these cases and the role of American Indians in contemporary politics.
The Dispossessed by Parker M. Nielson
Call Number: E99.U8 N54 1998
ISBN: 9780806130439
Publication Date: 1998-07-01
A Utah lawyer, Nielson recounts how he represented the mixed-blood Utes in their 1972 suit against the US government, which ended with the Supreme Court determining that they had been defrauded but declining to restore their property.
Code Talker Stories by Laura Tohe
Call Number: D810.C88 T64 2012
ISBN: 9781933855745
Publication Date: 2012-08-01
On these pages, the Navajo Code Talkers speak, in English and Navajo, about past and present. Laura Tohe, daughter of a Code Talker, interviewed many of the remaining Code Talkers, some of whom have since passed on. The Navajo language helped win World War II, and it lives on in this book, as the veterans truly share from their hearts, providing not only more battlefield details, but also revealing how their war experiences affected themselves and the following generations. Their children and grandchildren also speak about what it means to them today. Beautiful portraits accompany their words.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner) by Sherman Alexie
ISBN: 9780316013680
Publication Date: 2007-09-12
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.
ISBN: 0385239548
Publication Date: 1997-09-22
A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail. The Cherokee are a proud, ancient civilization. For hundreds of years they believed themselves to be the "Principle People" residing at the center of the earth. But by the 18th century, some of their leaders believed it was necessary to adapt to European ways in order to survive. Those chiefs sealed the fate of their tribes in 1875 when they signed a treaty relinquishing their land east of the Mississippi in return for promises of wealth and better land. The U.S. government used the treaty to justify the eviction of the Cherokee nation in an exodus that the Cherokee will forever remember as the "trail where they cried." The heroism and nobility of the Cherokee shine through this intricate story of American politics, ambition, and greed.
ISBN: 0140150773
Publication Date: 1977-10-27
The Portable North American Indian Reader compiles myths, tales, poetry, and oratory from the Iroquois, Cherokee, Winnebago, Sioux, Blackfeet, Hopi, and many other tribes. In addition, Frederick Turner includes a number of "culture contact" selections-explorers' accounts, captives' narratives, and Indian autobiographies-as well as a section on the conflicting popular images of the Indian in white literature and, finally, contemporary reassessments by such writers as Luther Standing Bear, N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, Jr., James Welch, Simon Ortiz, and Gary Snyder.
The Other Trail of Tears by Mary Stockwell
ISBN: 9781594162589
Publication Date: 2016-03-18
The Story of the Longest and Largest Forced Migration of Native Americans in American History The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the culmination of the United States' policy to force native populations to relocate west of the Mississippi River. The most well-known episode in the eviction of American Indians in the East was the notorious "Trail of Tears" along which Southeastern Indians were driven from their homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to reservations in present-day Oklahoma. But the struggle in the South was part of a wider story that reaches back in time to the closing months of the War of 1812, back through many states--most notably Ohio--and into the lives of so many tribes, including the Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, Ottawa, and Wyandot (Huron). They, too, were forced to depart from their homes in the Ohio Country to Kansas and Oklahoma. The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians by award-winning historian Mary Stockwell tells the story of this region's historic tribes as they struggled following the death of Tecumseh and the unraveling of his tribal confederacy in 1813. At the peace negotiations in Ghent in 1814, Great Britain was unable to secure a permanent homeland for the tribes in Ohio setting the stage for further treaties with the United States and encroachment by settlers. Over the course of three decades the Ohio Indians were forced to move to the West, with the Wyandot people ceding their last remaining lands in Ohio to the U.S. Government in the early 1850s. The book chronicles the history of Ohio's Indians and their interactions with settlers and U.S. agents in the years leading up to their official removal, and sheds light on the complexities of the process, with both individual tribes and the United States taking advantage of opportunities at different times. It is also the story of how the native tribes tried to come to terms with the fast pace of change on America's western frontier and the inevitable loss of their traditional homelands. While the tribes often disagreed with one another, they attempted to move toward the best possible future for all their people against the relentless press of settlers and limited time.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
ISBN: 0871135485
Publication Date: 1993-11-01
"Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves characters, themes, and language as he evokes the complex density of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation, an existence filled with pain, anger, and bitterness but also, more importantly, with forgiveness and resilient hope. While Alexie writes with brutal honesty, his voice also resonates with humor and irony." "What is explored here is the distance between people: between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and, most poetically, between modern Indians and the traditional figures from their past. Alexie chronicles life on his own Spokane Indian Reservation: the alcohol, car accidents, basketball games, and romances. But at the heart of it all, Alexie writes with affection, grace, and, most of all, passion. He is a modern mythmaker, with a razor-sharp eye for the ironies of modern Indian life, recording the estrangement between Indians and the rest of the world, while affirming the continuing power of his tribe's cultural history and language."
There There by Tommy Orange
Trail of Tears by John Ehle
The Portable North American Indian Reader by Frederick W. Turner (Editor); Frederick W. Turner (Editor)
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