American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month: Books

Francis Paul Prucha, a leading authority on the history of American Indian affairs, argues that the treaties were a political anomaly from the very beginning. The term "treaty" implies a contract between sovereign independent nations, yet Indians were always in a position of inequality and dependence as negotiators, a fact that complicates their current attempts to regain their rights and tribal sovereignty.

Prucha's impeccably researched book, based on a close analysis of every treaty, makes possible a thorough understanding of a legal dilemma whose legacy is so palpably felt today.

Like the figures in the ancient oral literature of Native Americans, children who lived through the American Indian boarding school experience became heroes, bravely facing a monster not of their own making. Sometimes the monster swallowed them up. More often, though, the children fought the monster and grew stronger. This volume draws on the full breadth of this experience in showing how American Indian boarding schools provided both positive and negative influences for Native American children.

Bringing together a pageant of fascinating characters including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of other military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud, The Earth is Weeping--lauded by Booklist as "a beautifully written work of understanding and compassion"--is the fullest account to date of how the West was won...and lost. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the encroachment experienced by the tribes and the tribal conflicts over whether to fight or make peace, and explores the squalid lives of soldiers posted to the frontier and the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies.

The Earth Shall Weep is a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed history of the Native American peoples. Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures.

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions.

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

In Masters of Empire, the historian Michael A. McDonnell reveals the vital role played by the native peoples of the Great Lakes in the history of North America. Though less well known than the Iroquois or Sioux, the Anishinaabeg, who lived across Lakes Michigan and Huron, were equally influential. Masters of Empire charts the story of one group, the Odawa, who settled at the straits between those two lakes, a hub for trade and diplomacy throughout the vast country west of Montreal known as the pays d'en haut.

"Children cry and many men cry, and all look sad like when friends die, but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go west." This vivid, disturbing account is one of the many compelling descriptions found in this history of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. An abundance of excerpts from original source documents and first-person narratives reveal the thoughts, actions, and feelings of both those of the Cherokee Nation and of the U.S. government during the forced exile of the Cherokee from their homeland.

The 1996 discovery, near Kennewick, Washington, of a 9,000-year-old Caucasoid skeleton brought more to the surface than bones. The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal reparation law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories.In this new work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archeologists’ deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building cooperation between the two sides.

In this ambitious text that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and eastern California, Ned Blackhawk places native peoples squarely at the centre of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

"Novelist, poet, short story writer, film writer, artist, and essayist, Leslie Marmon Silko turns her cleansing fury, her sharp, clear vision, her eloquent voice, and her very special sensibility on a broad range of concerns, from the role rocks play in Native American culture to the injustices Native Americans face when confronting the Anglo-american legal system." "Steeped in Native American lore, religion, culture, and history (especially that of her own Laguna Pueblo heritage), she examines diverse subjects in such varied essays as "Interior and Exterior Landscapes: The Pueblo Migration Stories," "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit," "Tribal Councils: Puppets of the U.S. Government," "Notes on Almanac of the Dead," "The Border Patrol State," "The Indian with a Camera," and "An Essay on Rocks."" "Whether she is exploring Pueblo Indian languages and literature, explaining why the people and the land are inseparable, grieving over the destruction of the magnificent Mayan and Aztec folding books, or expressing her outrage over the unflattering portrayal of Native American life by non-Indians as part of what she terms "a campaign of cultural genocide," her essays have a power, that, like her fiction, "burns at an apocalyptic pitch," and make this book must reading for anybody interested in, or curious about, the true state and the soul of Native Americans still trying to exist as themselves in a hostile culture - and trying to come to terms with their own world while protecting their people."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved