Finding Books & eBooks
When searching for books on Indigenous Peoples, you will find a variety of different headings and words are used.
- First Nations (used in Canada)
- Indigenous peoples
- Inuit
- Métis (used in Canada)
- Native peoples
- Indian
- American Indian
- Native American
Historically, the bulk of materials in these areas were catalogued under the subject heading of Indians of North America, but this has been changing as some libraries have been decolonizing some of their subject headings for items.
You can also search for tribal affiliation names, but be aware that some of these have multiple names and spellings. The Native Americans of Puget Sound have been known as Puget Salish and Southern Coast Salish, and by various spellings of tribes and reservations such as Duwamish, Nisqually, Skagit, and Snoqualmie. Conversely, they are sometimes called the Lushootseed peoples. Lushootseed comes from two words, one meaning "salt water" and the other meaning "language," and refers to the common language, made up of many local dialects, that was spoken throughout the region.
To see rough and overlapping indigenous territories and historical lands, see https://native-land.ca/. It has maps of indigenous historical lands from around the world, and is being updated all the time.
Books
As We Have Always Done by ISBN: 9781452956015Publication Date: 2017-10-17In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking. Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
God Is Red by ISBN: 1555918816Publication Date: 2016-12-01First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate.
A History of My Brief Body by ISBN: 9781937512934Publication Date: 2020-07-14A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness. Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.
The Inconvenient Indian by ISBN: 9781452940298Publication Date: 2013-09-01Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian-White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada-U.S. border, King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by ISBN: 9780807000403Publication Date: 2014-09-16The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
Native Hubs by ISBN: 9780822340065Publication Date: 2007-07-09Ramirez describes "hub-making" activities in Silicon Valley, including sweat lodge ceremonies, powwows, and American Indian Alliance meetings, gatherings at which urban Indians reinforce bonds of social belonging and forge intertribal alliances. A unique and important exploration of diaspora, transnationalism, identity, belonging, and community, Native Hubs is intended for scholars and activists alike.
Native Seattle: Histories of the Crossing Over Place by ISBN: 0295988126Publication Date: 2008-04-01In Native Seattle, Coll Thrush explodes the commonly accepted notion that Natives and cities-and thus Native and urban histories-are mutually exclusive, that Indians and cities cannot coexist, and that one must necessarily be eclipsed by the other. Native people and places played a vital part in the founding of Seattle and in what the city is today, just as urban changes transformed what it meant to be Native.- Real Indians - Identity and the Survival of Native America by ISBN: 9780520213104Publication Date: 2003-07-31At the dawn of the twenty-first century, America finds itself on the brink of a new racial consciousness. The old, unquestioned confidence with which individuals can be classified (as embodied, for instance, in previous U.S. census categories) has been eroded. In its place are shifting paradigms and new norms for racial identity. Eva Marie Garroutte examines the changing processes of racial identification and their implications by looking specifically at the case of American Indians.
There There by ISBN: 9780525520375Publication Date: 2018-06-05As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and loss.
Tulalip, from My Heart: An Autobiographical Account of a Reservation Community by Publication Date: 1904-1991. 2015In Tulalip, From My Heart, Harriette Shelton Dover describes her life on the Tulalip Reservation and recounts the myriad problems tribes faced after resettlement. Born in 1904, Dover grew up hearing the elders of her tribe tell of the hardships involved in moving from their villages to the reservation on Tulalip Bay: inadequate supplies of food and water, harsh economic conditions, and religious persecution outlawing potlatch houses and other ceremonial practices.
Red Skin, White Masks by ISBN: 9780816679645Publication Date: 2014-09-07In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics--one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a "place-based" modification of Karl Marx's theory of "primitive accumulation" throws light on Indigenous-state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon's critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power.
Independent Bookstores
- Birchbark BooksBirchbark Books is operated by a spirited collection of people who believe in the power of good writing, the beauty of handmade art, the strength of Native culture, and the importance of small and intimate bookstores. Our books are lovingly chosen. Our store is tended with care.
- Red Planet BooksThe only Native owned comic book shop in the world!
- Strong Nation BooksStrong Nations is an online retailer and a publishing house located in Nanaimo, BC, specializing in Indigenous literature and art.
- Massy BooksLocated in Vancouver, Canada, Massy Books has books ranging from rare, off-beat and out-of-print books to familiar titles and current-day best sellers. Room Magazine and Massy Books have partnered to create Indigenous Brilliance, a quarterly reading series for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit writers to showcase their work.
- Good Minds BooksGoodMinds is in Brantford, Ontario, (Canada) and is a First Nations family owned business who is passionate about Indigenous education.
- Birch Bark BooksLocated in Minneapolis, Birch Bark Books is indigenous owned, selling books and art.
- Native Books Hawai'iA native owned bookstore in Hawai'i selling books about every aspect of Hawai'i
- Books & BurrowLocated in Pittsburg, Kansas, this shop opened in November of 2020. They strive to offer a diverse collection, especially highlighting Indigenous authors and stories.
- Bird Cage Bookstore & MercantileBird Cage Book Store and Mercantile is located in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. Native American owned and operated, Bird Cage specializes in Native American, multicultural, Indigenous literature and good trade products.
