Research Guides: Native American Heritage Month: Books and eBooks

Books in the SCC Library

The following are just a few of the many Native American and Alaska Native books in the SCC Library. Search the SCC Library website to find more.

Blood struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations by Charles F. Wilkinson
Call Number: 323.1197 WILKINS 2005
Blood Struggle explores how indigenous tribes took their hard-earned sovereignty and put it to work for Native peoples and the perpetuation of culture.
Carry: Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Land by Toni Jensen
Call Number: SCC Peace Studies 978.4004 JENSEN 2020
A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author's encounters with gun violence.
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria
Call Number: 973.0497 DELORIA 1988
The author speaks for his people in this witty confutation of almost everything the white man "knows" about Native Americans.
Haboo: Native American Stories from Puget Sound by Vi Hilbert
Call Number: 979.004 HILBERT 2020
(Both print & ebook available)
The stories and legends of the Lushootseed-speaking people of Puget Sound. Characters like Wolf, Salmon, Raven, and Coyote populate humorous stories that reflect foibles of human nature, convey serious moral instruction, and detail the unfortunate, even disastrous consequences of breaking taboos.
Healing the Soul Wound : trauma-informed counseling for indigenous communities by Eduardo Duran
Call Number: 616.89 DURAN 2019
Guidance to counselors working with Native Peoples and other vulnerable populations.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
Call Number: 305.8009 TREUER 2019
This account of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is an intimate story of a resilient people who because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence, has spawned a new generation of resistance.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
Call Number: 813.54 MOMADAY
Publication Date: 1989
The story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Hamalainen, Pekka
Call Number: 978.0049 HAMALAI 2019
"This account of the Lakota Indians traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty-first century ... [and shows] an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations.
Native Americans of New England by Christoph Strobel
Call Number: 974.0049 STROBEL 2020
Through case studies, anecdotes, stories, and biographies, this book emphasizes Native Americans' efforts to preserve the integrity and viability of their dynamic and self-directed societies and cultures in New England.
Poet Warrior : A Memoir by Joy Harjo
Call Number: 818.5403 HARJO 2021
"In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road."
Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha LaPointe
Call Number: 979.7004 LAPOINT 2022
Publication Date: 2022
Written by a regional Washington author, this book has been selected to represent Washington state at the 2022 National Book Festival.
The River of Life by Michael E. Marchand
Call Number: 970.00497 MARCHAN 2014
This book looks at sustainability from the Native Americans' perspective. It introduces ideas on how to link nature and society to make sustainable choices, and how to change destructive behaviors and to integrate indigenous culture into thinking and decision processes.
A Sacred People: Indigenous Governance, Traditional Leadership, and the Warriors of the Cheyenne Nation by Leo Killsback
Call Number: 978.0049 KILLSBA 2020
"An examination of the pre-contact oral tradition of the Native American Cheyenne Nation, from a Cheyenne perspective."
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers by Elissa Washuta & Theresa Warburton (Editors)
Call Number: 814.0098 WASHUTA 2019
An anthology of essays by Native writers on the formal art of basket weaving. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories.
There There by Tommy Orange
Call Number: 813.6 ORANGE 2018
"A multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people."
Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival by Wallis, Velma
Call Number: 398.208997 WALLIS 2004
"... this is the tragic and shocking story (with an unexpected upbeat ending) of two elderly women who are abandoned by a migrating band facing starvation because of unusually harsh Arctic weather and a shortage of fish and game."
Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt
Call Number: 323.1197 SAUNT 2020
A history of the forced migration of 80,000 Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s.
The Wake of the Unseen Object: Among the Native Cultures of Bush Alaska by Tom Kizzia
Call Number: 979.8004 KIZZIA 1991
Kizzia’s account of his travels off the Alaska road system has endured with a sterling reputation for its thoughtful, poetic, unflinching engagement with the complexity of Alaska’s rural communities.
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry by Joy Harjo (Editor)
Call Number: 811.008 NORTON 2020
This first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology contains the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations.
Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson
Call Number: 813.6 HOBSON 2018
A Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s.

eBooks and eAudiobooks

To find and checkout eBooks and audiobooks, go to the SCC Library Databases A-Z page. Sign in to a database with your student or faculty email and password. Library eBook and Audiobook databases include:

Boundless This link opens in a new window
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Ebook Central This link opens in a new window

Example eBooks and audiobooks:

Again the Far Morning by N. Scott Momaday
Publication Date: 2011
Although highly regarded as a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and drama, N. Scott Momaday considers himself primarily a poet. This first book of his poems to be published in over a decade, Again the Far Morning comprises a varied selection of new work along with the best from his four earlier books of poems: Angle of Geese (1974), The Gourd Dancer (1976), In the Presence of the Sun (1992), and In the Bear's House (1999).
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Read by)
Publication Date: 2021
e-audiobook (One borrower at a time)
Conversations with Remarkable Native Americans by Joëlle Rostkowski
Publication Date: 2012
Prominent native writers, artists, journalists, activists, lawyers, and museum administrators each have made remarkable contributions towards the transformation of old stereotypes, the fight against discrimination, and the sharing of their heritage.
Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas by Céline Carayon
Publication Date: 2021
French explorers and colonists in the sixteenth century noticed that Indigenous peoples ... used signs to communicate. The French quickly embraced the nonverbal as a means to overcome cultural and language barriers.
Flight by Sherman Alexie
Publication Date: Blackstone Audio. 2008
Audiobook of Flight, a hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a search for his true identity.
Great Plains Literature by Linda Ray Pratt
Publication Date: 2018
An exploration of influential literature of the Plains region in both the United States and Canada... N. Scott Momaday, and others are included in this collection.
I Am Where I Come From: Native American College Students and Graduates Tell Their Life Stories by Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny and Melanie Benson Taylor
Publication Date: 2012
Autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College. Issues include native identity, adjustment to the college environment, cultural and familial influences, and academic and career aspirations.
Indigenous Communalism: Belonging, Healthy Communities, and Decolonizing the Collective by Carolyn Smith-Morris
Publication Date: Rutgers U, 2019
Told in vibrant detail, the book conveys the importance of communalism as a value system present in all human groups and one at the center of Indigenous survival.
That Dream Shall Have a Name by David L. Moore
Publication Date: 2014
Moore examines the works of five well-known Native American writers and their efforts, beginning in the colonial period, to redefine an “America” and “American identity” that includes Native Americans.
Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold by Charles A. Eastman et al.
Publication Date: 1990
A Sioux Toa told in prose by Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), who is considered the first Native American author to write American history from the Native American point of view.

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