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Native American Heritage Month Reads November 2021
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Firekeeper's daughter
by Angeline Boulley, Saulte Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians F YA BOU
Treated like an outsider in both her hometown and on the Ojibwe reservation, a half-Native American science geek and star hockey player places her dreams on hold in the wake of a family tragedy.
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Empire of wild : a novel
by Cherie Dimaline, Metis F DIM
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.
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The night watchman : a novel
by Louise Erdrich F ERD Fiction
Traces the experiences of a Chippewa Council night watchman in mid-nineteenth-century rural North Dakota who fights Congress to enforce Native American treaty rights, as well as a young woman desperate to leave her reservation for the big city of Minneapolis
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The sentence : a novel
by Louise Erdrich, Ojibwe F ERD
The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author presents an 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.
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The removed : a novel
by Brandon Hobson, Cherokee Nation F HOB
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.
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Where the dead sit talking
by Brandon Hobson, Cherokee Nation F HOB
After his mother is jailed, a young Cherokee boy, Sequoyah, bonds with another Native American, Rosemary, in the foster home where they both have been placed and experienced deepening feelings for each other while dealing with the scars of their pasts.
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The only good Indians : a novel
by Stephen Graham Jones, Blackfeet F JON
Four American Indian men, who shared a disturbing event during their youth, are hunted down years later by an entity bent on revenge that forces them to revisit the culture and traditions they left behind.
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My heart is a chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones, Blackfeet Bram Stoker Award
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.
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There there
by Tommy Orange, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma F ORA
A novel that grapples with the complex history and identity of Native Americans follows twelve characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.
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Indian horse : a novel
by Richard Wagamese, Ojibwe F WAG
After losing his entire family, Saul Indian Horse, alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, turns to hockey, a sport in which he has a real shot at a professional career, to escape from the indignities, taunts, racism and hatred in a world that will never welcome him.
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Winter counts : a novel
by David Heska Wanbli Weiden F WEI Best First Novel
Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity.
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The seed keeper : a novel
by Diane Wilson, Dakota F WIL
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
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Little big bully
by Heid E. Erdrich, Ojibwe 811.54 ERD
Poet, artist, filmmaker, and curator Heid E. Erdrich explores the indigenous experience in multifaceted ways-personal, familial, biological, cultural. These poems, written from the perspective of an Ojibwe woman, reveal what sustained harassment does to people, especially to women, children, and Native and Indigenous people, how it can lead to the oppression of others and even ourselves.
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Original fire : selected and new poems
by Louise Erdrich, Ojibwe 811.54 ERD
“These molten poems radiate with the ferocity of desire, and in them Erdrich does not spin verse so much as tell tales—of betrayal and revenge, of hunting and being hunted.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Adult Nonfiction and Biography
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Girlhood : essays
by Melissa Febos, Wampanoag 814.6 FEB
The acclaimed author looks back on her experiences growing up as a female and how the values that she and other women learned in girlhood failed to prioritize their personal safety, happiness and freedom.
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The heartbeat of Wounded Knee : Native America from 1890 to the present
by David Treuer, Ojibwe 970.00497 TRE
An anthropologist's chronicle of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present traces the unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention of distinct tribe cultures that assimilated into mainstream life to preserve Native identity.
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Poet warrior : a memoir
by Joy Harjo, Muscogee B HARJO
Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. 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. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.
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Heart berries : a memoir
by Terese Marie Mailhot, Sea Bird Island First Nation B 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.
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