Native American Heritage Month

A primer on the Native American experience, presenting the rich history and continuing legacy of the indigenous and tribal nations. Fascinating biographies, insightful quotes, detailed data and absorbing narratives bring the stories of indigenous people to life, bringing unique insight into the American nation.

This powerful collection of documents illumines the experiences of the original people of the United States during American Indian removal, offering readers a unique standpoint from which to understand American identity and the historical processes that have shaped it. The Indian Removal Act transformed the Native North American continent and precipitated the development of a national identity based on a narrative of vanishing American Indians. This volume is a probing look into a chapter in American history that, while difficult, cannot be ignored. Sweeping in its coverage of history, it includes deeply personal accounts of American Indian removal from which readers may discern the degree to which the new national identity of the United States was influenced by bigotry and dependence on the corporate economy. The book is organized into six sections that collectively provide the full scope of American Indian removal policies that began with the founding of the United States. The sections trace the evolution of federal government policies; the rhetoric of Indian removal in public debates; removal experiences; ethnic cleansing through overtly racist laws; responses to removals; and the question that reigned in the aftermath: Who owned the land? The chronological organization allows readers both to approach Indian removal through the framework of ongoing injustice in the colonial system that existed for the first 150 years of the United States, from the 1770s through the 1920s, and to draw connections from this legacy to the seizures of Indian lands and resources that continue today. Deepens understanding of historical events by providing primary sources including archival material, removal journals, treaties, public speeches, and firsthand accounts of the responses of tribal members who faced removal and the whites who witnessed it Provides context for documents through introductions and chronological organization that together clarify how the land sales of confiscated Indian homelands built the economic base of the United States Gives readers an intimate and provocative look at the larger story of a racially and economically changing nation through tribal voices and those of their white supporters and foes Offers a compelling view of the struggle for a segregated non-native political and social structure in the founding of the United States

There are billions of dollars available to Native American undergraduate and graduate students (from accounting to zoology). This money can be used to pay for tuition, fees, books, research projects, creative activities, and other educational expenses. How can you find out about these opportunities? In the past, it was next to impossible! Neither print directories nor online sources covered more than a small portion of the available funding. That's why this new edition of Financial Aid for Native Americans is so important. Here, in just one place, you'll be able to find completely updated information on hundreds of the biggest and best scholarships, fellowships, grants, loans, awards, and other funding opportunities available specifically to support Native American students interested in working on an undergraduate or graduate degree at a public or private college or university. Finally, there's an answer to the #1 question asked by Native American students: "How am I going to pay for my undergraduate or graduate degree?" The focus of Financial Aid for Native Americans is on portable programs aimed at undergraduate and graduate students just like you. Finding money to help you reach your academic goals has never been easier. Using this book, you can tell in seconds if an opportunity is right for you, by scanning the purpose, eligibility, money granted, duration, special features, number awarded, and deadline information. Plus, the book is organized so you can search for aid not only by educational level, but by program title, sponsoring organization, where you live, where the money can be spent, and even deadline.

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. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. 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.

ANTHONY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL THRILLER AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL "Winter Counts is a marvel. It's a thriller with a beating heart and jagged teeth."  --Tommy Orange, author of There There A Best Book of 2020: NPR * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * CrimeReads * Goodreads * Sun Sentinel * SheReads * MysteryPeople   A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.  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. They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost. Winter Counts is a tour-de-force of crime fiction, a bracingly honest look at a long-ignored part of American life, and a twisting, turning story that's as deeply rendered as it is thrilling. Winner, Spur Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel * Winner, Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel * Shortlisted, Best First Novel, Bouchercon Anthony Awards * Shortlisted, Best First Novel, International Thriller Writers * Shortlisted, Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, International Association of Crime Writers * Longlisted, VCU Cabell First Novel Award * Shortlisted, Barry Award for Best First Novel * Shortlisted, Reading the West Award * Shortlisted, Colorado Book Award (Thriller)

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST  NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A wondrous and shattering award-winning 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. A contemporary classic, this "astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale) "places Native American voices front and center before readers' eyes" (NPR/Fresh Air). 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. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and 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 A book with "so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation" (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down--full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

In his first new fiction since winning the National Book Award forThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, best-selling author Sherman Alexie delivers a virtuoso collection of tender, witty, and soulful stories that expertly capture modern relationships from the most diverse angles.War Dances brims with Alexie's poetic and revolutionary prose, and reminds us once again why he ranks as one of our country's finest writers. With bright insight into the minds of artists, entrepreneurs, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with average men on the brink of exceptional change: In the title story, a son recalls his father's "natural Indian death" from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor; "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless," dissects a vintage clothing store owner's failing marriage and courtship of a Puma-clad stranger inairports across the country; and "Breaking and Entering" recounts a film editor's fateful confrontation with an thieving adolescent. Brazen and wiseWar Dances takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. The new beginnings, successes, mistakes, and regrets that make up our daily lives are laid bare in this wide-ranging new work that is quintessential

Legends of the Northern Paiute shares and preserves twenty-one original and previously unpublished Northern Paiute legends, as told by Wilson Wewa, a spiritual leader and oral historian of the Warm Springs Paiute. These legends were originally told around the fires of Paiute camps and villages during the "story-telling season" of winter in the Great Basin of the American West. They were shared with Paiute communities as a way to pass on tribal visions of the "animal people" and the "human people," their origins and values, their spiritual and natural environment, and their culture and daily lives.    The legends in this volume were recorded, transcribed, reviewed, and edited by Wilson Wewa and James Gardner. Each legend was recorded, then read and edited out loud, to respect the creativity, warmth, and flow of Paiute storytelling. The stories selected for inclusion include familiar characters from native legends, such as Coyote, as well as intriguing characters unique to the Northern Paiute, such as the creature embodied in the Smith Rock pinnacle, now known as Monkey Face, but known to the Paiutes in Central Oregon as Nuwuzoho the Cannibal.   Wewa's apprenticeship to Northern Paiute culture began when he was about six years old. These legends were passed on to him by his grandmother and other tribal elders. They are now made available to future generations of tribal members, and to students, scholars, and readers interested in Wewa's fresh and authentic voice. These legends are best read and appreciated as they were told--out loud, shared with others, and delivered with all of the verve, cadence, creativity, and humor of original Paiute storytellers on those clear, cold winter nights in the high desert.