Celebrate Native and Indigenous Heritage Month with these books by native and indigenous authors

To help you celebrate Native and Indigenous Heritage Month this year, we’ve put together a list of 10 books by native and indigenous authors available to borrow through UMD Libraries. Then check out the programing for the university’s Native and Indigenous Heritage Month planned by the Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy (MICA) with the theme “Back to Our Roots,” a theme highlighting the deep significance of community building in Native and Indigenous spaces and the lasting strength of community ties.

1. “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
   As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

   Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return. (From Milkweed Editions)

2. “Indigiqueerness” by Joshua Whitehead
   Evolving from a conversation between author Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and traveling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. Indigiqueerness is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres. (From The University of Chicago Press)
    
3. “Perma Red” by Debra Magpie Earling
   On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her family—but three persistent men have other plans. (From Milkweed Editions)
    
4. “Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States” Edited by Devon A. Mihesuah and Elizabeth Hoover
   Centuries of colonization and other factors have disrupted indigenous communities’ ability to control their own food systems. This volume explores the meaning and importance of food sovereignty for Native peoples in the United States, and asks whether and how it might be achieved and sustained. Unprecedented in its focus and scope, this collection addresses nearly every aspect of indigenous food sovereignty, from revitalizing ancestral gardens and traditional ways of hunting, gathering, and seed saving to the difficult realities of racism, treaty abrogation, tribal sociopolitical factionalism, and the entrenched beliefs that processed foods are superior to traditional tribal fare. (From the University of Oklahoma Press)
    
5. “I am where I come from: native American college students and graduates tell their life stories” Edited by Andrew C. Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Melanie Benson Taylor
   I Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students. Twenty years ago, Cornell University Press published First Person, First Peoples: Native American College Graduates Tell Their Life Stories, also about the experiences of Native American students at Dartmouth College. I Am Where I Come From addresses similar themes and experiences, but it is very much a new book for a new generation of college students. (From Cornell University Press)

6. “Hawaiian legends of dreams” by Caren Loebel-Fried
   Moe‘uhane, the Hawaiian word for dream, means “soul sleep.” Hawaiians of old believed they communicated with ‘auma-kua, their ancestral guardians, while sleeping, and this important relationship was sustained through dreaming. During “soul sleep,” people received messages of guidance from the gods; romantic relationships blossomed; prophecies were made; cures were revealed. Dreams provided inspiration, conveying songs and dances that were remembered and performed upon waking. Specialists interpreted dreams, which were referred to and analyzed whenever important decisions were to be made.

   Having no written language, Hawaiians passed their history and life lessons down in the form of legends, which were committed to memory and told and retold. And within these stories are a multitude of dreams–as in a famous legend of the goddess Pele, who travels in a dream to meet and entrance the high chief Lohi‘au. Dreams continue to play an important role in modern Hawaiian culture and are considered by some to have as powerful an influence today as in ancient times. In this companion volume to her award-winning Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian Spirits, artist Caren Loebel-Fried retells and illuminates nine dream stories from Hawai‘i's past that are sure to please readers young and old, kama‘aina and malihini, alike. (From University of Hawai’i Press)

7. “Bad Cree” by Jessica Johns
   Mackenzie, a young Cree woman, continues to have dreams that return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: A weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite. But when the waking world starts closing in, too, she returns to her rural hometown in Alberta, finding her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. And still, her dreams intensify, ultimately forcing her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community, and the land they call home. (From Penguin Random House)
    
8. “Woman of Light” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
   Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion. (From Penguin Random House)
    
9. “Never Whistle at Night” Edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
   Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night, which can cause evil spirits to appear — and even follow you home. These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. These stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon. (From Penguin Random House)
    
10. “To Shape a Dragon’s Breath” by Moniquill Blackgoose
    The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations — until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, but unfortunately for Anequs, the Anglish conquerors of her land have different opinions. With reluctance they allow Anequs to enroll in a proper Anglish dragon school. If she cannot succeed there, her dragon will be killed … Anequs and her dragon may be coming of age, but they’re also coming to power, and that brings an important realization: The world needs changing — and they might just be the ones to do it. (From Penguin Random House)

Land Acknowledgement - Honoring Native Peoples and Lands

Every community owes its existence and strength to the generations before them, around the world, who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy into making the history that led to this moment.

Truth and acknowledgment are critical in building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage and difference.

So, we acknowledge the truth that is often buried: We are on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People, who are the ancestral stewards of this sacred land. It is their historical responsibility to advocate for the four-legged, the winged, those that crawl and those that swim. They remind us that clean air and pristine waterways are essential to all life.

This Land Acknowledgement is a vocal reminder for each of us as two-leggeds to ensure our physical environment is in better condition than what we inherited, for the health and prosperity of future generations.

To learn more about the Piscataway Conoy Tribe and the lands that UMD inhabits, please explore the Native Americans in Maryland: A Resource Guide and the Indigenous Maryland resource page.