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Grandmother's grandchild: my Crow Indian life (American Indian lives)
By Alma Hogan Snell, Becky Matthews. 2000
The story of Alma Hogan Snell, a Crow woman brought up by her grandmother, the famous medicine woman Pretty Shield.…
Snell grew up during the 1920s and 1930s, part of the second generation of Crows to be born into reservation life, experiencing poverty, personal hardships, prejudice, and leaving home to attend federal Indian schools. Some descriptions of violence and some descriptions of sex. c2000.Have a little faith: a true story
By Mitch Albom. 2009
The book begins with an unusual request: an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from Albom's old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy.…
Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he'd left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor--a reformed drug dealer and convict--who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof. Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival. 2009.Heart berries: a memoir
By Sherman Alexie, Terese Marie Mailhot, Joan Naviyuk Kane. 2018
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. Mailhot trusts us to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, re-establishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world. Bestseller. 2018.Dreaming the dawn: conversations with native artists and activists (American Indian lives)
By E. K Caldwell. 1999
Interviews with Native American artists, activists, and writers. Topics range from singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie's consideration of the uses of computer…
technology for tribal people, to activist Dino Butler's reflections on his personal and political evolution from hatred toward healing. Also discusses the appropriation of spiritual objects and beliefs by New Age practitioners. Some strong language. 1999.Counting coup: becoming a Crow chief on the Reservation and beyond
By Joseph Medicine Crow, Herman J Viola. 2006
The last traditional Crow chief, Joseph Medicine Crow (born 1913), recalls growing up on a Montana reservation and relates some…
of his experiences after leaving it. He describes the four coups - war deeds - that he accomplished in Germany during World War II that entitled him to be chief. Grades 4-7. 2006.Crow Dog: four generations of Sioux medicine men
By Richard Erdoes, Leonard Crow Dog. 1995
Family history of the Brulé Native American clan named Crow Dog. Leonard Crow Dog, spiritual leader of the American Indian…
Movement at the second siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, traces his lineage to the first Crow Dog, Jerome -- a leader of the Ghost Dance of 1889 and comrade of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Crow Dog also describes Lakota rituals and ceremonies. 1995.Bobbi Lee, Indian rebel: Indian Rebel
By Lee Maracle. 1990
The majority of this book, originally published in the 1970s, is an account of the author's early years as a…
native woman in Vancouver, California and Toronto. Filled with anger, pain and apathy, she found the strength to turn her life around.Big Bear: the end of freedom
By Hugh A Dempsey. 1984
Examines the life and troubled times of a Plains Cree chief and holy man. Branded by Canadian authorities as a…
troublesome Indian, Big Bear was, in fact, committed to finding political solutions to Indian-White tensions. 1984.Bowman's store: a journey to myself
By Joseph Bruchac. 1997
An autobiography detailing the author's earliest childhood memories through age twenty-eight, when his grandfather Bowman died in 1970. Bowman raised…
Bruchac without ever admitting his Abenaki heritage, yet in these reminiscences, Bruchac traces the evidence of Native American customs in his grandfather's behaviour. Senior high and older readers. c1997.Choteau Creek: a Sioux reminiscence
By Joseph Iron Eye Dudley. 1992
A Methodist minister remembers his childhood on a Native American reservation in South Dakota where his maternal grandparents raised him…
in the 1940s and 1950s. In spite of their poverty, they taught him the social, cultural, and spiritual values that have enriched his life. 1992.Big Bear (Extraordinary Canadians)
By Rudy Wiebe. 2008
Big Bear was a Plains Cree chief in Saskatchewan at a time when aboriginals were confronted with the disappearance of…
the buffalo and waves of European settlers that seemed destined to destroy the Indian way of life. In 1876 he refused to sign Treaty No. 6, until 1882, when his people were starving. Big Bear advocated negotiation over violence, but when the federal government refused to negotiate with aboriginal leaders, some of his followers killed 9 people at Frog Lake in 1885. Big Bear himself was arrested and imprisoned. 2008.As long as the rivers flow
By Oskiniko Larry Loyie, Connie Brissenden. 2005
It is Larry Loyie's last summer before entering residential school, a time of learning and adventure. He cares for an…
abandoned baby owl, watches his grandmother make winter moccasins, helps the family prepare for a hunting and gathering trip. But soon, a truck comes to forcibly take Lawrence and his siblings away to their new school, which would try to erase their traditional language and culture. Grades 3-6. 2002.Back on the rez: finding the way home
By Brian Maracle. 1996
Forty years after moving away to the city, Mohawk writer Brian Maracle returned to the Six Nations Grand River Territory…
where he grew up. He writes about his first year "back on the rez," and the challenges of adapting to a way of life he had not known for decades. He tells of the search for his cultural and spiritual roots, and of the problems in a deeply divided community. c1996.Ada Blackjack: a true story of survival in the Atlantic
By Jennifer Niven. 2003
Ada Blackjack was an unskilled 23-year-old Inuit woman from Nome, Alaska, who signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret…
expedition to the far North, to colonize desolate Wrangel Island. When the expedition went wrong, Ada was left on her own but managed to return home, only to be tricked, exploited and hounded by journalists and others. A true story of a woman who survived a terrible time in the wild only to face a different ordeal in civilization. 2003.A two-spirit journey: the autobiography of a lesbian Ojibwa-Cree elder (Critical studies in Native history ; #18)
By Ma-Nee Chacaby, Mary Louisa Plummer. 2016
As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills…
from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and in her teen years became alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay. Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humour, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people. 2016.A stranger at home: a true story
By Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton. 2011
10-year-old Margaret Pokiak can hardly contain her excitement - it's been two years since her parents delivered her to the…
school run by the dark-cloaked nuns and brothers. But Margaret soon realizes that she's an outsider in the Arctic - she's forgotten the language and stories of her people, and she can't even stomach the food her mother prepares. As she struggles to reclaim her way of life, she discovers how important it is to remain true to the ways of her people - and to herself. Sequel to "Fatty legs". Grades 4-7. 2011.A boy called Slow: the true story of Sitting Bull
By Joseph Bruchac. 1994
In the 1830s, parents in the Lakota Sioux tribe gave their children childhood names like Runny Nose and Hungry Mouth.…
Later when the child had grown and proven himself, he earned a new name. Returns Again named his boy Slow because he never did anything quickly. Slow hated his name and tried hard to earn a better one. At fourteen, Slow had a chance to show his bravery. Grades K-3. 1998, c1994.The reason you walk: a memoir
By Wab Kinew. 2015
When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a…
year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who’d raised him. “The Reason You Walk” spans that 2012 year, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. Bestseller. Winner of the 2016 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. 2015.Walking in the woods: a Métis journey
By Herb Belcourt. 2006
Belcourt traces his ancestry directly to a French-Canadian voyageur and his Cree-Métis wife who lived in Ruperts Land after 1800.…
The eldest of ten children, Belcourt grew up in a small log home near Lac Ste. Anne during the Depression. When Belcourt left home at 15 to become a labourer in coal mines and sawmills, his father told him to save his money so he could work for himself, and over the next three decades, Belcourt began a number of small Alberta businesses that prospered and eventually enabled him to make significant contributions to the Métis community. 2006.These tales of bravery, courage, and decisive action in times of terrible conflict are the stories of heroes. Although the…
lives of the Native chiefs and famous Métis were often tinged with sadness and loss, they were also an inspiration. Jam-packed with adventures and battles, these tales ultimately tell of the negotiations, broken promises, and harsh realities of the changing face of the West. 2003.