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Blog – Posted on Friday, Feb 26

40 best native american authors to read in 2024.

 Prior to 1968, only nine novels by Native American authors had been published in the US and Canada. Thankfully, things are different now: due to the political transformations of the 60s and 70s, Indigenous voices have started reaching a far larger audience. Subsequent social changes have further catalysed waves of Indigenous writing, as Native American writers grapple with increasing urbanisation and integration into mainstream America. Most recently, the events at Standing Rock in 2016 and the tumult of the Trump era have inspired a new generation of Native American voices to pick up the baton and produce brilliant, incisive writing that confront important questions of identity.

Though the Native American experience takes many forms in writing— a testament to the variety and complexity of Indigenous realities — what does unite these authors is a resounding rejection of whitewashed stereotypes. In this list, we’ve put together the best Native American authors to give you a headstart, from renaissance titans like James Welch and N. Scott Momaday to big hitters like the current poet laureate Joy Harjo and emerging voices like Tommy Orange.

Pro-tip: the list is organized chronologically, so you can feel free to pick and mix from the eras that interest you. Let’s get started! 

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The First Wave

Beginning in 1969 with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn , the first wave of the Native American Renaissance is characterized by a struggle between two worlds for a generation existing both on and off the reservation, a devotion to the land, and a celebration of traditional customs and myths.

1. N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa Nation member, is often considered the trailblazer behind the Native American Renaissance, thanks to his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn . As a powerful voice for Native American concerns, he has spoken at the United Nations and, in 1990, founded the Buffalo Trust — to name only a few of his accomplishments. Through his own work as well as his amplification of works of other Native American authors, he ensures that conversations about Native American traditions are not submerged by the forces of modernization. 

Start with: House Made of Dawn

Considered the first Native American Renaissance novel, this book touches on the dilemma of being split between two worlds. Abel, the young protagonist, finds himself torn between the spiritual world that his father shows him and the exhilarating developments of 20th-century America. 

2. James Welch

James Welch is a member of the Blackfeet and A'aninin tribes whose literary output spans decades and has been translated into nine languages. As a champion of the Native American voice beyond the US context, he soulfully reflects on his dual Indigenous and Irish heritage and aims to ‘remember the world of his ancestors,’ capturing the poignance of the reality of life for Indigenous people living on and off of the reservation. 

Start with: Winter in the Blood

Welch’s debut novel became a seminal piece of Native American literature — so it’s definitely one to keep in your arsenal. Written at a time when Native American voices were largely unheard, it charts the story of a nameless youth from Montana who finds momentarily relief in alcohol as he struggles to find the meaning of life after a family tragedy. The tale drew nationwide attention upon publication and was turned into a film of the same name in 2014.

3. Janet Campbell Hale

Hale is of Coeur d'Alene, Kootenay, and Cree descent. Known for her sparse, economic writing style, Hale deals with topics such as poverty, colonial oppression, the female condition, and how they collide with the Indigenous identity. The Jailing of Cecelia Capture , her most notable work, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. A master of different creative writing forms, she has also ventured into Young Adult fiction with The Owl’s Song , and into poetry with her contributions to The Whispering Wind: Poetry by Young American Indians , a poetry collection published in 1972.

Start with: The Jailing of Cecelia Capture

This critically acclaimed story is the very best of Hale’s lyrical and arresting prose. It follows the title character, a mother and law student who has lost her way, and on the eve of her 30th birthday, is arrested and jailed for drunk driving. During her confinement, she reflects on her misspent childhood and teenage years.

4. Leslie Marmon Silko

Not one to bend to the temptation of quick gratification, Leslie Marmon Silko took a decade to write her 800-page epic about the multitudes of life in America, Almanac of the Dead . But her star had started rising long before then: her searing 1977 debut — Ceremony — earned her the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the Genius Grant) and led many to consider her the first female Native American novelist. Her experiences growing up in the Laguna Pueblo tribe has been the fuel to her barrier-breaking career, committed to raising awareness about ingrained forms of racism, settler colonialism, and women’s issues.

Start with: Ceremony

Following Tayo, a young soldier who finds himself alienated from society after his return to America as a prisoner of war to the Japanese in World War II, Silko’s debut asks big questions. Can a turn towards old traditions and the long-held beliefs of his people prove to be the curative ceremony Tayo needs to overcome his despair?

5. Gerald Vizenor

As a pivotal figure in the first wave of the Native American Renaissance, Vizenor — a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe — has inspired a whole generation of Native American authors and readers across the world. Alongside a lifelong dedication to activism, he has published more than 30 books which defy simple categorizations, drawing on a mixture of Native myth, research, motifs from science fiction, and personal reflections.

Start with: Bearheart

This is the way to go if you’re on the lookout for an original science fiction novel (bonus points if you enjoy trickster characters in your fiction). The story follows a motley crew of pilgrims as government agents descend on their reservation to claim their sacred cedar trees. Reversing Manifest Destiny, they travel south through a world ravaged by fossil fuel consumption, the vivid descriptions of which brings to life the terrifyingly real prospect of environmental dystopia.

6. Joseph Bruchac

Bruchac’s oeuvre contains an immense 120 books, which channel the traditions and mythologies of this Abenaki roots. Considering himself a storyteller at heart, he’s even mastered several Indigenous American instruments (the hand drum, wooden flute, and the double wooden flute, to name a few) to aid his imaginative retellings of native American mythology. He also practices various martial arts and is an educator who has developed programs for maximum security prisons — quite the polymath!

Start with: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two

A compelling novel that’s inspired by the true (and previously marginalized) story of the Navajo marines of World War II, who turned their native language into a code that proved impossible for the enemy to break.

7. Vine Deloria Jr.

Deloria Jr. was a prominent activist and writer belonging to the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. As the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and a key board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, Deloria Jr. spent most of his career tirelessly advocating for the rights of Native American peoples. This work continues in his impressive bibliography as an author, which includes a number of non-fiction titles on Native American education, religion and politics.

Start with: Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

Pivotal in drawing attention to Native American socio-political issues alongside the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement, this book implores white people to challenge the racist stereotypes they hold about Indigenous peoples. It also proposes a new framework for better understanding the history of colonialism in the United States.

The Second Wave

While the second round of Native American Renaissance still grappled with the question of identity, this next generation of Native American authors promoted a more integrated experience in which the reservation and the outside world can coexist.

8. nila northSun

nila northSun, of Shoshone and Chippewa heritage, is one of the principal figures of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. Her poetry deftly applies irony and humor to difficult, emotional topics like alienation, oppression, violence, and the difficulties of life on and off the reservation — though she doesn’t stop there. In red flags yellow flags , a poem about womanhood and dating in the modern era, she quips, “i don't feel like being bored / so i court disaster.”. It’s not hard to see how she’s been able to attract a wide following since her 1977 debut, Diet pepsi and nacho cheese, and was the recipient of the Indigenous Heritage Award in Literature in 2004.

Start with: Love at Gunpoint

Her latest collection is a testament to a writing style which remains fresh and still attracts the adulation of critics and readers alike, decades after her debut. Indeed, her skills have only been sharpened through years of practice and reflection.

9. David Treuer 

David Treuer is an Ojibwe Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, and an acclaimed author with an impressive body of work spanning fiction, non-fiction, and literary criticism. Throughout his stories and essays, Treuer strives to map the multidimensionality of the Indigenous experience. His debut novel, Little , written alongside a PhD in anthropology, was published in 1995 to great acclaim.

Start with: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

Fusing personal experience with a scholarly framework to map out the history of the Native American people, Treuer’s creation is a masterful, intelligent portrait of resilience and survival. If you don’t want to just take our word for it, take Barack Obama’s: this New York Times Bestseller was among his favorites in 2019 .

10. Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen, a stalwart in Native American scholarship, was much beloved by those who studied under her at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and a number of other schools. Beyond her research, Allen’s impressive literary oeuvre also includes poetry, short- and long-form prose, many titles of which draw inspiration from the Pueblo mythology of her ancestors, like the Corn Maiden and Grandmother Spider. Her mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese heritage has also led to introspective pieces about the nuances and struggles of belonging to multiple minorities, such as The Woman Who Owned The Shadows .

Start with: The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

A seminal feminist text within the currents of Indigenous political writing, Allen’s research is a reclaiming of voices for the marginalized. Applying an anthropological framework, she argues that the dominance of Western thought has misinterpreted Native society and obscured the prominence of women within it.

11. Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is the current US poet laureate and became, with her 2019 election, the first Indigenous writer to ever hold that title. Her eloquent verses have been featured in the best poetry books of all time, winning her multiple literary awards. She’s also ventured into other literary forms, producing several plays, two children’s books, and a transcendent, haunting memoir that all draw on First Nation myths, symbols and values, as well as poetic traditions within feminism and social justice.

Fun fact: Harjo is also an accomplished saxophonist, though she chose to pursue poetry upon encountering other Native poets during the renaissance of the 1960s and 70s.

Start with: An American Sunrise: Poems

Harjo’s 2019 acclaimed poetry collection follows her return to her family’s lands, where she confronts its history of forcible removals to remember and celebrate the healing that can come after crisis and brokenness. The title poem sets up the central motifs of remembrance and connection to a generational pain caused by injustice: 

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We

were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike. 

As a bonus, because Harjo is so exquisite that we can’t just recommend one of her books, consider picking up For a Girl Becoming as well. It’s a children’s book , but the ode to the cyclical nature of birth, innocent youth, and blooming adulthood, completed with stunning illustrations, can be appreciated by readers of all ages.

12. Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan is a poet, essayist and — as of this publication date — the Chickasaw Nation’s Writer in Residence. We could write a whole post dedicated to her accomplishments, but here are a few standouts: her debut novel, Mean Spirit , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Literature; she was nominated for the International Impact Award twice ; and her  Solar Storms  was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Beyond amplifying the hidden voices of women and Native Americans, Hogan's work actively engages in questions concerning the destruction and preservation of our environment.

Start with: A History of Kindness

If you want to meditate on the relationship between humans and the environment, let this gentle collection of poetry be a reminder of our inextricable connection to the land we walk on. Take it as an invitation to kindness and living in harmony with the world around us.

13. Simon J. Ortiz

Simon J. Ortiz is a prominent Acoma Kerese Pueblo author committed to promoting and retaining the culture and mythology of his people. Even as a child, his solemn enthusiasm for the stories of his elders earned him the nickname “The Reporter”. Carrying this earnestness and a strong sense of awareness into his career, Ortiz combines a confident, expressive writing style with a focus on the politically marginalized voices and stories of Native American peoples.

Start with: From Sand Creek Rising in This Heart Which Is Our America

This collection of poems recounts Ortiz's modern-day experiences at a veterans recovery center, weaving them into America's history of violence against Plains Native Americans. Originally a small-press publication in 1981, its powerful reflections on American colonialism inside and outside the continent called for large-scale reprint in 2000.

14. Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is one of most prolific and best-known contemporary novelists on this list. She’s an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe Nation (Chippewa), and much of her writing reflects the mixed heritage of her German-American father and half-Ojibwe, half-French mother. She often writes of romance, filial ties, and the complexities of interpersonal relationships. As you make your way through her body of work, keep an eye out for her postmodernist writing style and use of multiple narrators within one story: they’re considered trademarks of her work.

Start with: Love Medicine

Erdrich’s first novel is part of a trilogy which follows the intertwining fates of the Kashpaw and Lamartine families. An epic family drama akin to E. M. Forster’s Howards End , it blends dark humor with betrayal, loyalty, and a touch of magic on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation.

15. LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her experiences growing up on a reservation and listening to her grandmother’s stories, she once said in a short film , set her on a path towards a career as a playwright, a poet, and a novelist. Speaking of the challenges that Indigenous writers face, she has pointed to a ‘tribalography’ — a rhetorical space in which overlooked perspectives and stories get their time to shine.

Start with: Shell Shaker

Immerse yourself in the parallel tales of two Choctaw leaders separated by over 200 years. As much as it’s about the perceived reality of this Native culture, Shell Shaker is also about the abuse of power and its consequences, which is a relevant concern for readers of any background. That said, for a taste of Howe’s skill as a critic and editor, check out Seeing Red — Hollywood’s Pixeled Skin . It’s an accessible anthropology of movie reviews that critically assesses the cinematic representations of Indigenous peoples.

16. Susan Power 

Susan Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Tribe of the Dakotas and a descendant of Sioux Chief Mato Nupa. A Harvard alumna, Power first started out in the legal profession. She quickly veered to an editing and technical writing career path, in which creative writing was only enthusiastically pursued outside of work hours. But what began as a hobby soon became a lifelong calling, as she found a national audience for her short stories , which were featured in a number of prestigious literary magazines, from The Paris Review to Atlantic Monthly .

Start with: The Grass Dancer

Power’s debut novel is a tour-de-force of historical fiction with a twinge of magical realism . Set between 1864 and 1986, this multilayered work follows four generations of Native Americans as they each struggle with the cultural and familial legacies they are given — as well as the ones they leave behind. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction in 1995, and is the perfect read for those who enjoyed Yaa Gyasi’s recent African American hit, Homegoing.

17. Thomas King

Thomas King is an author of Cherokee descent, whose writing career has been devoted to the representation and rights of North American Natives in both Canada and the US. Much of his career is devoted to the representation and protection of the rights of North American Natives in both countries. Through his novels and children's books, he has strived to portray Canadian Natives in a more nuanced light, sharply criticizing the place that has been mindlessly assigned to them in literature and fiction. For this activism and his humorous and poignant writing, he's been made a Member of the Order of Canada, and was twice nominated for the Governor General's Award.

Start with: The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Watch King candidly unpick what it meant throughout history to be “Indian” in North America. This richly subversive book centers the issue around land, using knowledge gleaned from film, pop culture, and King’s own experiences as an activist as evidence to support this core factor. 

18. Eddie Chuculate

Eddie Chuculate is an American fiction writer of Cherokee descent who’s enrolled in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He found his beginnings as a sports journalist and editor before deciding to dedicate his lucid and forthright prose to a flourishing literary career. It's not just us that love his work —commenting on “Galveston Bay, 1826,” the short story that won him the PEN/O. Henry Award in 2007, novelist and panelist Ursula Le Guin wrote :

‘Galveston Bay, 1826’ won me first, and last, by surprising me: every sentence unexpected, yet infallible. On rereading, both qualities remain. The calm, beautiful, unexplaining accuracy of description carries us right through the madness of the final adventure.

Start with: Cheyenne Madonna

This is Chuculate’s first work of published fiction, and according to poet laureate Joy Harjo, it’s the work that helped him “emerge as an important new talent in his generation of storytellers.” It tells the story of a Cherokee (Creek) man who writes a series of letters to his father throughout his journeys across the Southwest. The book serves as a moving investigation of the transformation from boyhood to manhood, from hopeful expectations to a return to ancestral roots.

19. Heid E. Erdrich

If you think “Erdrich” looks familiar, you’re not mistaken — she's the sister of Louise Erdrich. An accomplished poet and writer in her own right, Heid E. Erdrich has published several volumes of poetry and contributed to various anthologies of Native American writing. Going beyond written authorship, Erdrich is also a pioneer when it comes to using video poetry as a means of self-expression. Her recent efforts have involved collaborations with other Native American digital media artists and poets on politically and socially imperative projects like the Idle No More movement.

Start with: New Poets of Native Nations

Erdrich’s poetry is truly stunning, though the essence of her work lies in the support she lends to others. Which is why we recommend you check out the latest poetry anthology that she edited, where she champions a diverse assortment of Native writing by the young authors of the 21st century.

Contemporary

The turn of the 21st century marked the advent of a literary scene more explicitly focused on the realms of the intimate and the personal. Writers discussed life on and off ‘the rez’, and grappled with the intertwinement of Indigenous identity, class, gender and sexuality.

20. Natalie Diaz

In her poem ‘The First Water Is the Body,’ Natalie Diaz writes:

Let me tell you a story about water: / Once upon a time there was us. / America’s thirst tried to drink us away. / And here we still are.

Addressing the scorched terrain of American race relations, the writing of this decorated poet and MacArthur Foundation fellow disrupts the white gaze and put the Native experience front and center. As a Mojave enrolled in the Gila River Indian Tribe, Diaz pens incisive lines on Native culture and mythos with a strong personal voice, irrigating the land with her words.

Start with: When My Brother Was an Aztec

Diaz’s 2012 award-winning debut collection deals with a host of issues, namely her brother’s meth addiction, the complexities of family ties, and queer romance — all in the context of the Mojave life. In this memoir, the violence directed towards Native bodies is never far away — but nor is the ability to reclaim what the colonizers have taken.

21. Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos’s Native American heritage remained a mystery until she got to visit her father’s people, the Wampanoag tribe, as a teenager. Then, she started learning about a group of people that had — until that point — been far removed from her own understanding of family and identity. Combined with her love of literature and the creative arts, she has used this eye-opening journey to produce lyrical nonfiction books that reflect on the development of contemporary identities.

Start with: Whip Smart

Febos’s first memoir, which brings to life her time as a student and a professional dominatrix struggling with substance abuse in New York City. If you like her engaging and pacy prose as much as we do, keep an eye out for her latest publication, Girlhood !

22. Cherie Dimaline

Cherie Dimaline made waves with the publication of her YA title, The Marrow Thieves , in 2017. The combining of Indigenous knowledge with science fiction to create an apocalyptic world not too different from our own proved to be a bestselling combination that allowed this debut to climb the ranks as one of the best YA books . In her novels, this writer and activist from the Georgian Bay Métiz Nation in Canada brings to light the dark history of forced removals of children from their families along with assimilation policies in Canada and the US. At the heart of it all, despite the hardship, storytelling, oral traditions, family, and hope are championed.

Start with: The Marrow Thieves

Set in a climate-dystopia where most of the population have lost their ability to dream, and Indigenous people are being hunted for their bone-marrow, the alleged cure for ‘dreamlessness’. Fear of this precarious situation drives fifteen-year-old Frenchie and his companions into flight — but one of them may carry a secret that can help defeat the marrow thieves.

23. Brandon Hobson

Brandon Hobson is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma with a knack for eerie, contemporary fiction punctuated by acerbic social commentary. His novels are haunted by the ghosts of genocide and violence directed towards Native American peoples throughout history and today. In 2018, he was a finalist for the National Book Award with his novel Where the Dead Sit Talking and the winner of the Reading the West Award.

Start with: The Removed

Hobson’s 2021 release explores historical and contemporary government-sanctioned violence against Cherokee teens. The trauma of the Trail of Tears is relived through the pages of this novel via the contemporary fatal police shooting of fifteen-year-old Ray-Ray Echota. Blending the realms of the real and the spiritual, this text is a potent meditation on generational grief and the power of storytelling.

24. Rebecca Roanhorse

Roanhorse is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and African American heritage — an identity she described as “pretty limiting… in 1970s Fort Worth.” But it became a catalyst for a childhood spent using science fiction as a means of escapism. Years later, she became a science fiction writer herself — the popular novels Trail of Lightning and Black Sun are just two in a diverse collection of published work. She has even contributed to the Marvel universe, writing a one shot for the character of ECHO .

In an interview with the New York Times , Roanhorse said much of her early works were “Tolkien knockoffs about white farm boys going on journeys,” before she started writing stories inspired by First Nation traditions and mythologies, centering queer characters and plotlines. Paving the way for a reimagination of indigenous narratives has characterised Roanhorse’s career — her fiction flies in the face of the traditionally white, Eurocentric sci-fi genre and has redrawn the margins of epic fantasy as we know it.

Start with: Black Sun

Roanhorse’s latest release and the first in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy. This epic fantasy is set in the magical city of Tova, during the onset of a solar eclipse which threatens to disrupt the harmony of an entire civilization. Let Roanhorse’s suspenseful writing immerse you in a brand new world.

25. Stephen Graham Jones

With 15 novels and over 300 published short stories to his name, there’s no shortage of material to choose from when it comes to reading Stephen Graham Jones. A master of the horror and science fiction genres, he has wooed readers the world over with his highly original, technically accomplished style. As a Blackfeet Native American, he is known to pay homage to writers of the Native American Renaissance like Gerald Vizenor, who heralded an era of increased Native American representation in writing.

Start with: The Only Good Indians

One of the two novels Jones published in 2020 (because someone’s got to be productive), The Only Good Indians features four American Indian men who find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival, after a disturbing event from their past comes back to haunt them. In this suspenseful revenge-tale, the culture and traditions they had once abandoned catch up with the group in a series of violent and unanticipated ways.

26. Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, as well as bestselling non-fiction author. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she combines her Indigenous heritage with a passion for the natural world. Drawing on ancient knowledge curated by Native peoples, she turns a factual approach to science writing into its own kind of poetry, as a means to honor the reciprocal relationships of the living world.

Start with: Braiding Sweetgrass

A piece of ecological nonfiction in which she heartbreakingly writes: 

"What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Wouldn't your every movement tell the story? In time you would be so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green lives."

27. Layli Long Soldier 

Layli Long Soldier is an Oglala Lakota poet and writer who champions feminist and political themes in her work. Her poetry primarily aims to uncover the injustices and oppressions against Native American peoples through "prob[ing at] the unreliable relationships between language and meaning," most notably in her attack of the US government's apology to Native American peoples in 2009. An artful combination of arresting Indigenous imagery with social history is what makes her poetry sing: 

“ Whereas I could’ve but didn’t broach the subject of “genocide” the absence of this term from the Apology and its rephrasing as “conflict” for example; / Whereas since the moment had passed I accept what’s done and the knife of my conscience pierces with bone-clean self-honesty ;”

Start with: Whereas

Long Soldier’s 2017 poetry collection which won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for its brilliant, elegantly radical takedown of the government's official apology to Native Americans in 2009.

28. Eden Robinson

Eden Robinson has a penchant for high drama — perhaps this was written in the stars for somebody who was born in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, as she recalls in this Granta interview . A member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations, Robinson writes gothic page-turners set on and around Canadian reservations in coastal British Columbia. With many short stories under her belt, her writing has experimented with a host of themes, from psychological thriller to post-colonial reflection. What runs like a thread through her work is her trademark dark humor, and a knack for granting special significance to the happenings of everyday life in Indigenous communities.

Start with: Monkey Beach

Robinson’s first stand-alone novel that follows a young teenage girl as she searches for answers about her little brother’s disappearance at sea. In this midst of this, Robinson’s protagonist attempts to reconcile her Haisla heritage with Western ways of living — a struggle which reveals a supernatural power she never knew of. 

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a new YA series to pick up, check out Son of a Trickster ! This wildly imaginative novel builds on the traditional symbolism of the Trickster ( Wee’git ) — a character that teaches children protocol ( nuyum ) by constantly breaking all the rules.

29. Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq is perhaps best-known for her Inuk throat singing and her “Polar Punk,” larger-than-life personality, but you should also know her as an accomplished writer. Bringing her fusion of traditional techniques with the avant-garde to the written word, she produces electrifying stories, abundant with musicality. Having come from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, her writing on the Inuk way of life is deeply personal and informed by a strong political ethos.

Start with: Split Tooth

Straddling the line between fact and fiction, Split Tooth takes heavy inference from Tagaq’s own childhood with the story of a girl growing up in Nunavut, Canada. As our protagonist goes through the grandeur and mundanity of life and navigates the demands of her arctic town, she knows the ravages of alcohol, violence at the hands of trusted ones, and the power of the animal as well as the spirit world. When she becomes pregnant, boundaries and binaries lose their meaning as only the guiding power of love remains. We think you’ll particularly enjoy this unique book in its celebrated audiobook format.

30. Terese Marie Mailhot

Mailhot is a First Nation writer and journalist form Seabird Island who grew up with her mother — a healer, social worker, poet, and radical activist — and alcoholic father. In her debut memoir Heart Berries, she writes candidly about an upbringing marred by sexual abuse, neglect, and substance abuse. Diagnosed with Bipolar II, she started writing as a means to unpack her dysfunctional and traumatic childhood. The result is a raw and deeply moving ode to her mother and a record of her own reconciliation with her father after his murder.

Start with: Heart Berries: A Memoir

This book became a sensation in online literary spheres when it was released three years ago. It follows Mailhot’s coming of age on Seabird Island, her traumatic childhood, and how she faces a dual diagnosis of PTSD and Bipolar II. With unique and often unsettling narration, Mailhot melds imagination and memory and takes control of her own story, reestablishing her place in the world as she ‘ gives herself to the page .’

Emerging Voices

Representing a younger generation who are finding their voice at the intersection of political and social debate sparked by the Trump administration’s divisive policy making and the political action at Standing Rock. With just a handful of publications to their names, these young writers are just out of the starting blocks — but we’re sure they will be setting the tone for years to come with writing which ruptures boundaries and questions what a future for Native American people will look like.

31. Tommy Orange

Orange is an enrolled citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, and grew up in Oakland, California. If there is such a thing as old-school and new-school Native American authors, he would certainly be said to represent the latter. Wary of tokenistic representations of his people in media and popular culture, he seeks to present the view of the contemporary, city-dwelling generation of Native Americans that are coming-of-age amongst the tumult of the Trump era.

Start with: There There

Orange’s 2018 debut made the rounds on social media platforms as one of the most talked-about novels of the year . It follows 12 individuals travelling to the big Oakland Powwow, and — reminiscent of Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other — demonstrates the sometimes contradicting and often highly individualized ways that cultural inheritance expresses itself in modern life.

32. Billy-Ray Belcourt

Billy-Ray Belcourt is a poet, essayist, and academic of the Driftpile Cree Nation. Born in Alberta, this young writer broke the mould as Canada’s first First Nation’s Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. His debut poetry collection This Wound is a World made him the youngest winner of the Griffin Prize and the recipient of the 2019 Indspire Award in the First Nation’s Youth Category — a high honor in the Indigenous community. His striking work is an intermingling of queerness, intimacy, and grief, paying respect to and building upon currents of decolonial love established in Indigenous women’s grassroots resistance movements.

Start with: A History of My Brief Body

Belcourt’s 2020 autobiographical essay collection, in which he draws on personal experiences to reconcile two worlds: the world he was born into and the world that could be. Lending credence to seminal queer texts, he charts a path across the terrains of colonial violence and resilient joy, of first loves — and of shame. 

33. David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Heska Wanbli Weiden is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. His debut has been nominated for the 2021 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and is also a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, so you can be sure there are promising things to come from this young writer. Having majored in Political Sciences, Weiden has a sustained interest in criminal justice issues in Native communities, and this penchant for social critique pervades his acerbic, intelligent writing.

Start with: Winter Counts

This book straddles the line between noir fiction and classic mystery , and tells the story of a Native American enforcer who’s working to find and stop a drug dealer from bringing increasingly dangerous substances into his community. Weiden himself describes it as “an examination of the broken criminal justice system on reservations, and a meditation on Native identity.”

34. Elissa Washuta

Elissa Washuta hails from the Cowlitz people of Washington state and is one of the newest and most impressive young Indigenous writers on the scene. Her writing career began with essay publications in a variety of prestigious literary magazines. Her first published release, the candid and honest My Body is A Book of Rules, is an autobiographical recounting of Washuta’s experiences of manic depression as a young Indigenous woman, and an immense contribution to the increasingly popular auto-fictional genre.

Start with: Starvation Mode

The best place to start is Washuta’s shortest piece of autobiographical, Starvation Mode , which comes in at under 100 pages. In this book, she discusses her personal battle with eating disorders and body dysmorphia, presenting a deep dive into her psyche during this time.

35. Jake Skeets 

Jake Skeets is Diné (of the Navajo people) from New Mexico, and is no doubt an Indigenous poet du jour . Despite his youth, Skeets has been making waves in the Native American literary scene and beyond. His work experiments with literary convention and novel ways to tell stories with expression and feeling. Reminiscent of recent literary sensation Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous , Skeets’s writing is as provoking to the heart and mind as it is soothing to the ears. If you’re looking for the next literary hit, look no further.

Start with: Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers

A National Poetry Series award-winner, this poetry collection discusses queerness, Skeets’s Diné heritage, violence, destruction — and the cyclical, colliding nature of all these things — with verve and eloquence.

36. Kali Fajardo-Anstine

With roots both in the Latinx and Indigenous communities, Kalo Fajardo-Anstine became a writer to see her own people better represented in fiction. Often situated in Colorado and the American West, her work features both Latina and Native American women, seeking to challenge the way the American West has been claimed in literature by white and male storytellers.

Start with: Sabrina & Corina

A short story collection inspired by Faulkner’s fictional location of Yoknapatawpha County, many of the stories in this collection take place in Saguarita, a fictitious town based on San Luis Valley. As Fajardo-Anstine describes it in an interview , her writing is based on a feminine view of place, influenced by her ancient heritage.  

37. Tommy Pico

Tommy Pico — poet, screenwriter, and podcast host — is from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay Nation, but now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. His debut epic poem, IRL , is a nearly-100-page poem in the form of a long text message, following a character called Teebs. Fun fact: Teebs is also what Tommy Pico nicknames himself, so it wouldn’t be that far-fetched to read this poem about a “reservation-born, queer NDN weirdo, trying to figure out his impulses/desires/history in the midst of Brooklyn rooftops” as somewhat autobiographical. 

Start with: IRL

There’s no better place to get a taste of Pico’s unique style. Let that whet your appetite, and then check out his latest release, Feed , for the 4th installment of the Teebs suite — an exploration of personal nourishment, written as an epistolary recipe. (You can see that Pico likes to experiment with form!)

38. Darcie Little Badger

Darcie Little Badger is a rising Lipan Apache writer who has recently burst onto the YA scene. As a member of a tribe that has been granted no official homeland by the state of Texas, Little Badger was keen to provide further representation to Lipan people in literature, especially for children, as she recalls not reading any indigenous fiction growing up. Her debut novel, Elatsoe , published in 2019, received great critical acclaim and was featured in TIME Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy novels of all time, as well as one of the top books of 2020 by Publishers Weekly .

Start with: Elatsoe

Of course! This work of speculative fiction, which was nominated for the Golden Kite Award for Young Adult Fiction, follows a young girl and her dog as they investigate the murder of her cousin. In doing so, they threaten to reveal the dark secrets of their small town, Willowbee.

39. Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead —  a Canadian novelist, poet, and academic — writes about Indigenous queer experiences and is an Oji-Cree member of the Peguis First Nation. Whitehead is Two-Spirit: an umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans for Native people who hold a traditional, third-gender ceremonial and social role in their cultures. In 2018, he was nominated for a Lambda Award for Transgender Poetry with his explosive debut collection Full-Metal Indigiqueer , but withdrew the nomination on account of it being misrepresentative of his identity.

Start with: Jonny Appleseed

Whitehead’s debut novel about titular character Jonny, who identifies as Two-Spirit or Indigiqueer. Navigating the newness of city life, Jonny finds his own ways to thrive and survive without losing himself — but when his stepfather dies, with a week to prepare for his journey back to his homeland, he can run away from his roots no longer.

40. Dennis E. Staples

Dennis E. Staples is an Ojibwe writer from Bemidji, Minnesota, whose bold work has been featured on numerous ‘most anticipated’ LGBT literature lists. If you're looking for books that meditate on the pull of home and the push toward a search for something more in life, Staples is your author. In discussing these themes, he once said , “when I got older and someone asked me if I hated small-town life, I realized I actually love this place. I feel something really powerful for it.” It is this reconciliation that many young Native people struggle with in an internal battle that Staples so deftly put into words.

Start with: This Town Sleeps

To cap the list off, here’s genre-defying and innovative work of fiction that combines queer love, murder-mystery and supernatural horror. It has been described as being “elegant and gritty, angry and funny... emotional without being sentimental.”

Looking for more inspiring and diverse writing to inhabit your shelves? Check out our list of children's books about diversity to kickstart the conversation with your young ones.

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Native American Literature Characteristics, Authors and Their Works

Table of Contents

Native American literature is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of Indigenous communities, which have been passed down through generations. These customs, which store Indigenous knowledge, values, and spiritual beliefs, include myths, tales, creation stories, songs, and ceremonies. The cultural legacy of Indigenous peoples has been vitally preserved and transmitted by Native American literature in the face of colonization, forced assimilation, and cultural erasure.

Historical Context and Origins

Native American literature has a long and complex history, with roots dating back thousands of years. It predates the arrival of European colonizers and the written word, existing primarily in the form of oral storytelling and artistic expressions. Some key points in its historical context include:

• Oral Tradition : Native American literature has been primarily oral, passed down through generations via storytelling, songs, and ceremonies. These traditions were essential for sharing knowledge, preserving cultural identity, and transmitting sacred narratives.
• Pre-Columbian Period : Prior to European contact, Indigenous nations in North America had rich oral traditions that encompassed a wide range of genres. These included origin stories, creation myths, legends, and songs, each unique to specific tribes and regions.
• Colonization and Cultural Suppression : With the arrival of European colonizers, Native American communities faced cultural suppression and forced assimilation. The imposition of Christianity, loss of ancestral lands, and the disruption of traditional lifeways had a profound impact on Indigenous cultures.
• Written Record : Native American literature in its written form began to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often recorded and translated by anthropologists, missionaries, or sympathetic individuals who recognized the importance of preserving these traditions.

Themes and Characteristics of Native American Literature

Native American literature explores a variety of themes, reflecting the diversity of Indigenous cultures, experiences, and worldviews. Some recurring themes and characteristics include:

• Oral Tradition : A fundamental aspect of Native American literature is its reliance on oral tradition. Stories and teachings are passed down through spoken words and are often performed in communal settings.
• Connection to Land and Nature : Many Native American stories and poems emphasize the deep connection between Indigenous peoples and the land. The natural world is often seen as sacred and imbued with spiritual significance.
• Cultural Identity : Native American literature reflects the enduring importance of cultural identity. Stories, myths, and songs serve as a means of preserving and reaffirming Indigenous identity in the face of cultural assimilation and displacement.
• Spirituality and Mythology : Native American literature often explores spiritual and mythological themes. Stories about the origins of the world, the cosmos, and the spirits that inhabit it are central to many Indigenous cultures.
• Community and Family : The importance of community and family is a recurring theme. Stories often highlight the interdependence of individuals within the community and the value of collective well-being.
• Resistance and Resilience : Many Native American texts convey narratives of resistance and resilience in the face of colonization, oppression, and forced relocation. These stories celebrate acts of survival and resistance against adversity.

Modern American Poetry Characteristics, Movements And Works

Modern American Drama Movements, Styles and Impact on Society

Fireside Poets Background ,Works and Impacts

Prominent Authors and Their Works

• Zitkala-Sa was a Yankton Dakota Sioux writer, musician, and activist. She is known for her influential works, including “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and “The School Days of an Indian Girl.” Her writing sheds light on the challenges faced by Native American children sent to boarding schools and the loss of cultural identity.
• John Joseph Mathews was a Osage writer and historian. His novel “Sundown” is a significant work that explores the impact of oil discoveries on the Osage Nation and the loss of their traditional way of life. Mathews also contributed to preserving Osage history and culture.
• N. Scott Momaday is a Kiowa-Cherokee writer, poet, and artist. His novel “House Made of Dawn” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, making him one of the most celebrated Native American authors. His works explore the intersection of Native American heritage and the modern world.
• Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo author, is known for her novel “Ceremony.” Her work weaves together traditional Native American stories with contemporary themes and issues. Silko’s writing highlights the importance of storytelling in preserving cultural identity.
• Louise Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, is a prolific author known for works like “Love Medicine” and “The Round House.” Her novels explore the lives of Indigenous people in the United States and the challenges they face.
• Tomson Highway is a Canadian playwright and novelist of Cree descent. His play “The Rez Sisters” is a groundbreaking work that focuses on the lives of Indigenous women on a reservation. Highway’s writing addresses issues of isolation, longing, and the search for identity.
• Sherman Alexie, a Spokane-Coeur d’Alene writer, is known for his works, including “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” His writing humorously and poignantly explores the contemporary experiences of Indigenous people, particularly the youth.

Impact and Legacy of Native American Literature

Native American literature has had a profound impact on American literature and society. Its legacy includes:

• Cultural Preservation : Native American literature has played a vital role in preserving Indigenous languages, stories, and cultural traditions. It has been instrumental in ensuring the continuity of Indigenous cultures and identities.
• Education and Awareness : Native American literature has raised awareness about the historical and ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples. It has been used in educational settings to challenge stereotypes, foster empathy, and promote understanding.
• Political Activism : Many Native American authors and activists have used their writing as a tool for political activism, advocating for Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and environmental protection.
• Empowering Indigenous Voices : Native American literature has empowered Indigenous writers to share their perspectives and experiences. It has provided a platform for Indigenous voices to be heard and recognized on a global scale.
• Cross-Cultural Understanding : The literature has contributed to cross-cultural understanding, fostering dialogue and collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
• Inspiring Future Generations : Native American literature has inspired new generations of writers, helping to expand the tradition and ensure its continued relevance and vitality.

The complex and varied tapestry of oral histories, poetry, and narrative that makes up Native American literature has developed over thousands of years. It covers a wide range of themes, such as the strong bond with land and nature, cultural identity, spirituality, community, resistance, and resilience. It is rooted in the oral traditions of Indigenous groups. Native American literature has been essential to the preservation of Indigenous traditions, the education of the general public, and the empowerment of Indigenous voices—despite the difficulties posed by colonization and cultural suppression. Renowned writers who tackle timeless and contemporary topics, such Zitkala-Sa, N. Scott Momaday, and Louise Erdrich, have made noteworthy additions to this literary heritage.

What is Native American literature?

Native American literature encompasses the cultural and artistic expressions of Indigenous nations in North America. It includes storytelling, poetry, songs, and oral traditions that have been passed down through generations. These traditions serve as a repository of Indigenous knowledge, values, and spiritual beliefs.

What are some common themes in Native American literature?

Common themes in Native American literature include the deep connection to land and nature, cultural identity, spirituality, community, resistance, and resilience. These themes reflect the diversity of Indigenous cultures and experiences.

Who are some prominent authors in Native American literature?

Prominent authors in Native American literature include Zitkala-Sa, John Joseph Mathews, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Tomson Highway, and Sherman Alexie. These authors have made significant contributions to the tradition and have addressed a wide range of themes and issues.

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Native American and Indigenous History & Culture; with Memoirs, Essays, and Poetry

A selection of books about Native American and Indigenous history and culture, with emphasis on books by Native American and Indigenous authors. For more books and resources on Racial Equity and Social Justice, see the resource guide  Racial Equity Resources . For more reading suggestions check out the Madison Public Library Insider newsletter--  History .

History | Memoirs and Essays | Poetry

We Are Still Here: A Photographic History of the American Indian Movement

The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to 1981. Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images.

Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History

Blackhawk's retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

Available to download: eBook

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

Available to download: eBook Audio  

"All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors show how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

Black Elk Speaks

Black Elk Speaks , the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. Black Elk's searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Neihardt, have made this book a classic that crosses multiple genres. Whether appreciated as the poignant tale of a Lakota life, a history of a Native nation, or an enduring spiritual testament, Black Elk Speaks is unforgettable.

Available to download: Audio  

Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. In this work, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.

Available to download: eBook Audio

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. 

Available to download: Audio

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the Nineteenth-Century United States

Steven Kantrowitz explores the transformations of American citizenship in the Civil War era through the history of the Ho-Chunk people. Kantrowitz has had opportunity to work closely with members of the Ho-Chunk tribe, whose home territory centers around Madison, and this work grows out of his interest in their particular struggles for citizenship and recognition.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Thomas 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.

Available to download: eBook  

The Story of Act 31: How Native History Came to Wisconsin Classrooms

Since its passage in 1989, a state law known as Act 31 requires that all students in Wisconsin learn about the history, culture, and tribal sovereignty of Wisconsin's federally recognized tribes. The Story of Act 31 tells the story of the law's inception, tracing its origins to a court decision in 1983 that affirmed American Indian hunting and fishing treaty rights in Wisconsin, and to the violent public outcry that followed the court's decision. Author J P Leary paints a picture of controversy stemming from past policy decisions that denied generations of Wisconsin students the opportunity to learn about tribal history. Despite its uneven implementation, Act 31 stands as an important example of how American Indians worked through the policy system to pursue positive change.

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

A landmark history: the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early 20th century.

Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender and sexuality that decolonizes North America's past and reveals how Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask

Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, answers the most commonly asked questions about American Indians, both historical and modern. He gives a frank, funny, and personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present

An essential, intimate history - and counter-narrative - of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Memoirs and Essays

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir

A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, loss, and forgiveness from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian .

Spirit Run: A 6,000-mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land

The son of working-class Mexican immigrants flees a life of labor in fruit-packing plants to run in a Native American marathon from Canada to Guatemala in this "stunning memoir that moves to the rhythm of feet, labor, and the many landscapes of the Americas.

A History of My Brief Body

A profound meditation on queerness and indigeneity from the youngest ever winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Black Indian

Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker's The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony--only, this isn't fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, alcoholism, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan's memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family's legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society's ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance. Black Indian doesn't have answers, nor does it aim to represent every American's multi-ethnic experience. Instead, it digs as far down into this one family's history as it can go--sometimes, with a bit of discomfort. But every family has its own truth, and Buchanan's search for hers will resonate with anyone who has wondered "maybe there's more than what I'm being told."

Warrior Princesses Strike Back: How Lakota Twins Fight Oppression and Heal through Connectedness

In Warrior Princesses Strike Back , Lakhota twin sisters Sarah Eagle Heart and Emma Eagle Heart-White recount growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and overcoming odds throughout their personal and professional lives. Woven throughout are self-help strategies centering women of color, that combine marginalized histories, psychological research on trauma, perspectives on "decolonial therapy," and explorations on the possibility of healing intergenerational and personal trauma.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation, and in the process makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political.

Birding while Indian

Birding has always been Gannon's escape and solace. He later found similar solace in literature, particularly by Native authors. He draws on both throughout this expansive, hilarious, and humane memoir. An acerbic observer-of birds, of the aftershocks of history, and of human nature-Gannon navigates his obsession with the ostensibly objective avocation of birding and his own mixed-blood subjectivity, searching for that elusive Snowy Owl and his own identity. The result is a rich reflection not only on one man's life but on the transformative power of building a deeper relationship with the natural world.

Poet Warrior

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land

A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author's encounters with gun violence.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In this collection of essays, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation."

Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to 'unforget' our history.

Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography

Exploring what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art while offering an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas as well as the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples, Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience and above all the ability to heal that chronicles Sasha's struggles navigating a collapsing marriage while answering the call to greater purpose. Set against a backdrop of tour vans and the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk-an ethos that challenges us to reclaim what's rightfully ours: our histories, our power, our traditions, and our truths-Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to heal while fighting for our right to a place to call home.

Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land

A magnificent testament to the earth, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday.

Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising

A wildfire of a debut memoir by internationally recognized French/Cree/Iroquois journalist Brandi Morin set to transform the narrative around Indigenous Peoples. Brandi Morin is known for her clear-eyed and empathetic reporting on Indigenous oppression in North America. She is also a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis and uses her experience to tell the stories of those who did not survive the rampant violence. From her time as a foster kid and runaway who fell victim to predatory men and an oppressive system to her career as an internationally acclaimed journalist, Our Voice of Fire chronicles Morin's journey to overcome enormous adversity and find her purpose, and her power, through journalism.

Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by The Millions a vibrant new voice blends Native folklore and the search for identity in a fierce debut work of personal history. Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family.

Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana

From journalist Abe Streep, the story of coming of age on a reservation in the American West and a team uniting a community March 11, 2017, was a night to remember: in front of the hopeful eyes of thousands of friends, family members, and fans, the Arlee Warriors would finally bring the high school basketball state championship title home to the Flathead Indian Reservation. The game would become the stuff of legend, with the boys revered as local heroes. The team's place in Montana history was now cemented, but for starters Will Mesteth, Jr. and Phillip Malatare, life would keep moving on-senior year was only just beginning. In Brothers on Three, we follow Phil and Will, along with their teammates, coaches, and families, as they balance the pressures of adolescence, shoulder the dreams of their community, and chart their own individual courses for the future. Brothers on Three is not simply a story about high school basketball, about state championships and a winning team. It is a book about community, and it is about boys on the cusp of adulthood, finding their way through the intersecting worlds they inhabit and forging their own paths to personhood.

Doom Guy: Life in First Person

John Romero, gaming's original rock star, is the cocreator of DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3-D, some of the biggest video games of all time. Considered the godfather of the first-person shooter, a genre that continues to dominate the market today, he holds a unique place in gaming history. In DOOM Guy: Life in First Person, Romero chronicles, for the first time, his difficult childhood and storied career, beginning with his early days submitting Apple II game code to computer magazines and sneaking computers out the back door of his day job to write code at night. 

Drawing upon Navajo history and enduring tradition, Sherwin Bitsui leads us on a treacherous, otherworldly passage through the American Southwest. Fluidly shape-shifting and captured by language that functions like a moving camera, Dissolve is urban and rural, past and present in the haze of the reservation. Bitsui proves himself to be one of this century's most haunting, raw, and uncompromising voices.

How to be an Indian in the 21st Century

In deceptively simple prose and verse, Louis V. "Two Shoes" Clark III shares his life story, from childhood on the Rez, through school and into the working world, and ultimately as an elder, grandfather, and published poet. 

New Poets of Native Nations

A landmark anthology celebrating twenty-one Native poets first published in the twenty-first century.

Aurum: Poems

In Aurum , poet Santee Frazier attempts to discuss various subtle forms of oppression that Indigenous people are exposed to on a daily basis, using strong imagery to carry readers through wide-open plains and imposing cities as seen through the eyes of a Cherokee poet.  

Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light

A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's fifty years as a poet.

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry

With work from Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, among others, Living Nations, Living Words showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "poetry [that] emerges from the soul of a community, the heart and lands of the people. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than 500 living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

Through an array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created an innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations.

Dream Drawings: Configurations of a Timeless Kind

From Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated American master N. Scott Momaday, a collection of 100 new prose poems, rooted in Native American oral tradition, along with 5-7 pieces of art by the author.

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Article contents

Native american literature.

• Margo Lukens
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.584
• Published online: 26 July 2017

At the start of European voyages of exploration and empire building, the North American continent was populated by somewhere between 20 and 100 million people who spoke more than 300 different languages descending from 17 language families as different from one another as the Germanic from the Sino-Tibetan. Since their origins on the continent, each of the more than 300 distinct cultural groups had developed its own oral literature containing ritual drama, song, narrative, and oratory, all held in the vessel of human memory and transmitted through performance. These literatures—or “oratures” as some have called them—describe and express the abundant differences among culture groups, although there are some basic similarities among the worldviews of Native people in North America.

One salient similarity is a high value placed on community, the group within which one has one's identity and wherein lie the keys to safety and survival in a subsistence economy. North American Native peoples also share a belief in the close coexistence of physical and spiritual realities and the necessity for humans to maintain a harmonious connection with all parts of their world. In all cases, the Native peoples' oral traditions contain teachings and rituals for the specific purpose of keeping their relationships in balance with the universe. Finally, their cultural practices having evolved from making a living in a particular ecosystem (for example, coastal, woodland, desert, arid plains), Native peoples have identified strongly with traditional land and sometimes with particular features of familiar landscapes.

Oral Traditions: Preservation in Written Texts

Knowledge of the oral traditions of Native North Americans has been preserved in writing by Europeans and Euro-Americans since the early missionary incursions of the Spanish Franciscans and the French Jesuits. The first serious ethnographic collector in English was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft , an Indian agent who, with the assistance of his wife, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwa), published Ojibwa stories in Algic Researches ( 1839 ). What followed in the wake of his effort was a wide variation in collectors' approaches to the oral traditional material. Some nineteenth- and early- twentieth-century collectors, like Charles Godfrey Leland and Frank Cushing , polished their material with an Anglo-American audience in mind, using elevated literary language, reaching for parallels with Greco-Roman mythology, and eliding the sometimes prevalent and often humorous references to bodily functions. Others, like Abby Alger (who trained with Leland) and the Reverend Silas Rand (Micmac legends) managed to preserve the sensibility of the original in their translations and often credited the Native storytellers from whom they got their material.

The twentieth century saw the “salvage anthropology” of Franz Boas and his students, who worked in reaction to the military subjugation of tribes in the United States and the institution of the reservation system during the last decades of the nineteenth century . Anthropologists like J. D. Prince and James Mooney made the objective preservation of “vanishing” cultures and languages their project. This approach sometimes resulted in the publication of transliterated oral texts along with ungainly word-for-word translations; however, this work was initially intended for a specialized academic audience. It has been suggested that work in collaboration with Native informants by such scholars as Ruth M. Underhill , Frances Densmore , and Ruth Bunzel may also have stimulated some Native communities to value and remain attentive to continued practice of their oral traditions. As the importance of ethnography rose in the early twentieth century , many “as told to” life stories were collected by anthropologists seeking to understand tribal cultures. Notable among these are such narrators as Sam Blowsnake (Winnebago), Mountain Wolf Woman (Winnebago), Maria Chona (Papago), and Helen Sekaquaptewa (Hopi), all of whom collaborated with scholars or with friends to whom they entrusted their stories.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, individual Native writers began to publish their own collected retellings of oral literature; one of the first was Joseph Nicolar (Penobscot) , who published a version of the cycle of stories of Gluskap, the Wabanaki culture hero.

European Colonial and Missionary Period

The Franciscan missionaries who accompanied Hernán Cortés in his conquest of the Aztec empire and tributaries set to work in the 1520s to convert Native people to Catholicism, hand in hand with a project to make them literate, first in Nahuatl and then in Spanish. Within the next one hundred years Aztec writers produced texts describing the conquest from the Native perspective, both in narrative and lyric form, which can be found in codices preserved in European ecclesiastical libraries.

Although the Mohegan preacher Samson Occom was the first Native writer to publish in English, it is clear that some Native people had been literate in English for a hundred years before his sermon on the death of Moses Paul ( 1772 ); letters of negotiation were written during King Philip's War ( 1675–1676 ) by Narragansett and Nipmuck men who had become literate as part of their conversion to Christianity. Occom himself was converted to Methodism and learned to read and write during his late teens, and although some Native people had been literate a century earlier, the experience of coming to literacy in late adolescence and in conjunction with religious conversion was recapitulated in the lives of numerous Native writers (and recounted in their texts) until the late nineteenth century . Occom's letters, sermon, and short autobiography reflect his frustration that even in his work as a missionary he encountered the racism of white ministers in the church hierarchy.

Early Self-Determination and Sovereignty

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries produced conditions that required Native people to negotiate space and power with a new republic. A century and a half of occupation by Anglo-Americans had created mixed-blood and literate people for whom assimilation was a strategy for survival and for acquisition of power. In New England, the itinerant Methodist preacher William Apess (Pequot) published several texts including his autobiography A Son of the Forest ( 1829 ); his works range from religious conversion narratives to political protest and lectures on revisionist history, ending with A Eulogy on King Philip in 1836 . Apess developed a concept of coalition among “people of color,” a term he used; his most widely anthologized work, An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man ( 1833 ), analyzes racism and its expressions in the early republic.

In the southeast, meanwhile, the Cherokee linguist Sequoyah had invented a system for writing his Native language; his Cherokee syllabary made possible the publication, in Cherokee and English, of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix . Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) was responsible for fund-raising to launch the paper and gave his Address to the Whites in 1826 as part of the Cherokee effort to convince Anglo-Americans that the Cherokee people were equal in their attainments to whites and ought to be trusted to remain on their traditional lands and govern themselves. Boudinot became editor of the Phoenix in 1828 and continued to write persuasively about the Cherokees' civilization until his death in 1839 at the hands of his own people.

Nineteenth-Century Autobiographers and Novelists

Black Hawk, an Autobiography ( 1833 ) is the first example of an “as told to” life story, collected from Black Hawk (Sauk) by Antoine Le Claire and edited by John Patterson . Another early- nineteenth-century life story tells about the role of Governor Blacksnake (Seneca) in the revolutionary war; it did not reach publication until 1989 under the title Chainbreaker . The genre's most famous exemplar is Black Elk Speaks ( 1932 ), which appeared a full century after Black Hawk's life story.

John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee) grew up in the traditional Cherokee homeland of Georgia, but like Elias Boudinot, his father and grandfather were murdered in the internecine struggle between traditional and assimilationist Cherokee parties facing the forced removal of their people to Indian Territory (the Trail of Tears, 1838–1839 ). Ridge fled from the site of family horrors and migrated west. On the wave of gold fever, he worked as a journalist in California and there wrote the first Native American novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta ( 1854 ), under the nom de plume Yellow Bird. The legendary California bandit provided Ridge with a story on which he could displace his own consciousness of injustice at the hands of white people and wreak a heroic revenge.

His contemporary George Copway (Ojibwa) first published an autobiography, The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-gah-ga-bowh , in 1847 ; he revised that work twice and republished it several times in the ensuing years. The autobiography contains several genres, including tribal ethnohistory, conversion narrative, and an account of his people's struggles with Anglo-American policy. Like William Apess , Copway devoted much of his life to working on behalf of Indian people in resistance to U.S. government plans for their relocation.

The first Native American woman to publish a volume on her own was Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Northern Paiute), who, like Copway, came to write after embarking on a career as a lecturer about her people. In her lectures she emphasized the parallels between Paiute and Christian morality and strove to demonstrate their potential for citizenship. Her cause to raise funds to establish a bilingual school for Native children in her community was taken up by the philanthropist Elizabeth Peabody , who introduced her to influential easterners (including Senator Henry Dawes , the sponsor of the General Allotment Act) and whose sister, Mary Peabody Mann , helped Winnemucca edit her manuscript for publication. Life Among the Paiutes ( 1883 ) resembles Copway's book in its inclusion of tribal ethnohistory, a memoir of the tribe's first contact with whites, and a detailed chronicle of the tribe's political relations with white settlers, Indian agents, and military personnel as well as Winnemucca's own role in these relationships. The text's purpose is social and political; it ends with a petition for readers (presumably sympathetic and enfranchised American citizens) to sign and circulate in support of the reunification of her people in a traditional homeland.

Sophia Alice Callahan (Muskogee Creek), the first Native American woman novelist, began Wynema, A Child of the Forest ( 1891 ) as a romance that celebrated both Creek traditional ways and the adaptability of Muskogee people to Anglo-American ways. The novel analyzes the prejudices of white people toward Indians and meditates on the issue of allotment of lands in severalty, a concern for Native reservation communities since the 1887 passage of the Dawes Act. However, before Callahan finished the manuscript, the December 1890 massacre of Sioux people at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, claimed her passionate attention, and her story swerves from its center at Muskogee, reaching out to incorporate Wounded Knee and in fact incorporating some of its survivors into Muskogee's mixed-blood center. After a successful reception in the twenty years following its appearance, Wynema lay forgotten in a few libraries until late- twentieth-century scholarly attention by Annette Van Dyke and A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff brought it to the light of republication.

Cultural Preservation and Instruction by Native Writers

In the mid- to late nineteenth century , Native writers like Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwa) and Joseph Laurent (Abenaki) perceived that preserving oral traditions in writing was one way to counteract cultural erosion; Schoolcraft published retellings in English of individual stories, while Laurent's 1884 New Familiar Abenaki and English Dialogues detailed the grammar of what Laurent called “the uncultivated Abenaki language,” with the object of preserving it from “alterations.” The Penobscot writer and tribal leader Joseph Nicolar wrote his 1893 Life and Traditions of the Red Man , an English-language version of traditional Penobscot stories, as an act of cultural preservation dedicated to the young people of his own nation. At the turn of the twentieth century Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, who wrote under the pen name Zitkala-Sa, published Old Indian Legends ( 1901 ), a collection of Dakota stories retold primarily for a juvenile non-Native audience; her writing career included journalism, fiction writing, autobiography, poetry, and political writing. The novelist Christine Quintasket (Okanogan/Colville), also known as Mourning Dove, collected stories from Okanogan elders for the 1933 volume Coyote Stories .

Early Twentieth Century

Although literary scholars usually locate the Native American “renaissance” in the late 1960s and 1970s, the early twentieth century was a period of prolific activity by literate Native people in a wide range of genres and fields: autobiography, novel, short fiction, drama, poetry, ethnography, political writing, and publishing. The U.S. government's policies of assimilation had been aggressively advanced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the General Allotment Act of 1887 and by a system of boarding schools for Indian children that removed them from the cultural influences of their home communities. In the process, however, children from numerous different tribes lived together at schools such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where they used English as their common language, and published their exemplary work in school newspapers such as the Carlisle Arrow . This experience led to the rise of a pan-Indian consciousness, out of which grew both political organization and the creation of literary works in English.

One of the central figures at the turn of the twentieth century was Zitkala-Sa—“Red Bird” in Lakota, a name she gave herself. Educated at a Quaker missionary boarding school and at Earlham College, she was hired by Richard Henry Pratt to teach at Carlisle, the school he had founded on military principles to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Her first major publication, three autobiographical articles in the Atlantic Monthly during the first three months of 1900 , revealed her deep disagreement with her employer's policy, creating a rift that led to her departure from Carlisle. These articles were collected, along with her essay Why I Am a Pagan ( 1901 ) and some short fiction, in a 1921 Ginn and Company volume entitled American Indian Stories . In the meantime Bonnin had collaborated with the composer William Hanson on the libretto and music of an opera entitled The Sun Dance ( 1913 ) and became secretary of the pan-Indian Society of American Indians and editor of its journal American Indian Magazine , to which she contributed numerous poems, articles, and editorials. In 1924 , the same year U.S. citizenship was finally granted to Native Americans, Bonnin coauthored Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians , an exposé of the land grab that followed the discovery of oil on Indian land. She founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 , several years after the demise of the SAI, and served as its president until she died in 1938 .

Contemporary with Bonnin were Charles Alexander Eastman (Santee Sioux) and Luther Standing Bear (Teton Sioux), both of whom wrote autobiographies, published retellings of traditional Sioux stories, and wrote some books intended for young audiences. Eastman was particularly known for his contributions to the early formation of the Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls in the early twentieth century . Eastman's Indian Boyhood ( 1902 ) is a memoir of his Santee childhood that ends with an optimistic view of his conversion to Christianity and entry into Anglo-American education; From the Deep Woods to Civilization ( 1916 ) problematizes Eastman's experiences and includes his view, as the first physician on the scene, of the massacre of Big Foot's Oglala band at Wounded Knee. Standing Bear's autobiographical My People, the Sioux ( 1928 ) chronicles in positive terms his experiences among the first students admitted to Carlisle and as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; his Land of the Spotted Eagle ( 1933 ) reflects more on Sioux traditions and provides a critique of white people's treatment of Native Americans.

The early twentieth century also saw Native authors writing short fiction, poetry, and political satire, much of which appeared in ephemeral publications such as local and Native-run newspapers but sometimes in magazines of national circulation. The poet of first importance during this period was E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), from Grand River Reservation of the Six Nations in southern Ontario. Her mother was English and her father was Mohawk; consequently her upbringing gave her grounding in the English Romantic poets as well as great respect for Mohawk traditions. When her family fell on hard times after her father's death, Johnson began a twenty-five-year career of writing poetry and performing it live for general audiences in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. Her first volume, The White Wampum ( 1895 ), is still one of the most published books of Canadian poetry; she also wrote numerous short stories, many of which deal with the issue of mixed blood. The last of these stories were collected in The Moccasin Maker , a volume published by friends after her death in 1913 .

Contemporary scholarship has brought to light some poetry by Zitkala-Sa, who had likely been influenced by Johnson; her energies, however, were expressed more aptly in her prose fiction and in her overt political work and writings. Their contemporary Alexander Posey (Creek) used poetry as his primary vehicle, basing the style of his early works on the Anglo-European classics he had read in school or at Bacone Indian University in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Posey's unique contribution to Native American letters, however, is a style he developed as a mature writer based in the customs, values, and speech styles of Creek people. In 1902 Posey bought and took over the editorship of the Indian Journal , and for the next six years it was his vehicle for publishing the satirical Fus Fixico letters, which were often picked up by mainstream newspapers. Posey became known as an insightful humorist and biting satirist whose works express and incorporate the language, social values, and aesthetic sense of Native American people. After his death by drowning in 1908 , his wife, Minnie Posey , published The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey ( 1910 ), the first collection of his works; the Fus Fixico letters were finally collected in one volume by Daniel Littlefield and Carol Hunter in 1993 . In a similar instance, Henry “Red Eagle” Perley (Maliseet) made a sixty-year career of writing short fiction and nonfiction for national magazines and Maine sportsmen's magazines and newspapers between 1911 and 1972 ; decades after his death Aboriginally Yours ( 1997 ), a volume collecting a portion of his works, was published by Perley's niece and granddaughter.

The novelists of the early twentieth century are few but notable for their adaptation of genre to Native concerns. The young Christine Quintasket (Colville/Okanogan) spent four years in a convent school and two at a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) school in Washington state; four years at the Fort Shaw Indian School near Great Falls, Montana; and two years at a business school in Calgary, Alberta, learning typing and correspondence skills. During her youth she had conceived a love for two narrative genres: the traditional tales of Okanogan culture and the romantic and melodramatic novels popular in Anglo-American culture. It was with these materials and styles that she set to work as Mourning Dove, or Hum-is hu-ma . Between 1912 and 1914 , when she was in business school, Mourning Dove completed the first draft of her novel Cogewea, the Half-Blood ( 1927 ), but it would take more than a decade of struggle to publish it, even with the assistance of a white collaborator, Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, an amateur ethnographer and supporter of Indian causes. The published novel, although marred by McWhorter's editorial incursions, weaves together Okanogan traditional story lines and a western romance plot, in which the mixed-blood hero and heroine establish a safe and prosperous future for themselves and their white and Indian relatives. Although Mourning Dove's collection Coyote Stories had been published three years before her death in 1936 , other editors brought out volumes of her renditions of traditional stories, Tales of the Okanogans ( 1976 ) and Mourning Dove's Stories ( 1991 ). Her memoirs were edited by Jay Miller in Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography ( 1990 ).

John Milton Oskison (Cherokee), educated at Stanford and Harvard, was the son of an English father and a Cherokee mother; he used his family's experience farming and ranching in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) as material and setting for numerous “western” short stories and novels of frontier life such as Wild Harvest ( 1925 ). The characters sometimes resemble Oskison or his family members, as in the dynastic novel Brothers Three ( 1935 ), and often his works meditate on negotiating mixed-blood identity amid the separations between Anglo and Native America. A world traveler who also possessed a degree in law, Oskison wrote numerous essays on topics as varied as scientific discovery, medicine, industry, international policy, and the political and economic issues affecting particular Native tribes.

Mid-Twentieth Century

The middle decades of the twentieth century were characterized by two policies enacted by the U.S. government. The first was the 1934 Wheeler-Howard Indian Reorganization Act; this act ended allotment of lands in severalty—which had resulted in the loss of 60 percent of previously reserved Indian land to non-Indians since 1887— and reestablished the authority of tribal governments. This act seemed a “New Deal” for Indian people. However, in 1953 , when popular post–World War II sentiment pointed toward ending government involvement with Native communities, Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, a policy known as “termination” of the government relationship of trusteeship with numerous tribes. Termination led to the loss of reservations and federal recognition for many tribes and to the forced migration of many Indian people to big cities in search of a non–land-based livelihood. Ironically these events brought many Native authors into the milieu of alienation that characterized the modern period for European and Anglo-American writers.

Some, like the Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs , chose an urban lifestyle; Riggs spent most of his adult life alternating between Greenwich Village and Santa Fe, New Mexico. His plays and screenplays, however, partake of New Mexico and the Oklahoma of his childhood. Riggs's most famous play, Green Grow the Lilacs ( 1931 ), provided the libretto for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical Oklahoma! ( 1943 ); Phyllis Cole Braunlich notes that Riggs used the taming and dividing of western land as “a metaphor for the spiritual change that was being forced on Native Americans, who believed that the land was a gift to all people from the Great Spirit.” Some of Riggs's plays were more overt in their treatment of Indian themes and characters, most notably The Cherokee Night ( 1932 ), which deals with the situation of Native people in his day.

Two novelists who were most important and accomplished during this period were John Joseph Mathews (Osage) and D'Arcy McNickle (Salish). Mathews had experienced childhood in Indian Territory, military service in Europe during World War I, education at Oxford University, and world travel before returning to Oklahoma to gather material for his first novel, Wah'Kon-Tah ( 1932 ). Mathews was elected to the tribal council the same year his second novel, Sundown ( 1934 ) was published. Both of his novels deal with the effects of allotment and assimilationist education on Native communities and individuals. Mathews published an autobiography entitled Talking to the Moon in 1945 , after which his career turned toward biography and an epic history of the Osage people based on oral accounts, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters ( 1961 ). At his death Mathews left behind the unpublished novel Within Your Dream and was still at work polishing his compendious autobiographical Twenty Thousand Mornings . D'Arcy McNickle, the son of a Metis mother and a white father, was adopted into the Flathead tribe, and his family settled on allotted land. After being sent to the Indian boarding school in Chemawa, Oregon, McNickle went to public schools in Montana and Washington State, enrolling at the University of Montana in 1921 . McNickle sold his allotment land to finance studies at Oxford, but when the money ran out in 1926 he settled in New York City, where he began work on his first novel, The Surrounded ( 1936 ). The novel went through numerous revisions before publication, corresponding with an evolution in McNickle's orientation toward his Indian and mixed-blood characters; he came to believe adherence to tribal ways and communities was better for Indian people than assimilation. The years John Collier served as commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs ( 1933–1945 ) gave McNickle the promise of government employment as an Indian working on behalf of Indians. By 1936 he was living in Washington, D.C., working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and beginning his path of publishing works of history. He published a juvenile novel Runner in the Sun in 1954 , and his last novel, Wind from an Enemy Sky , was published posthumously in 1978 . McNickle was honored during his lifetime by an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado; in 1972 he became program director at the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indians, which was renamed for him after his death in 1977 .

Unique among mid- twentieth-century Native American literature was Black Elk Speaks , a collaborative work narrated by Nicholas Black Elk (Oglala Lakota) and fashioned into prose by the German-born poet John Neihardt. The volume presents special problems to readers looking for Black Elk's voice, since he narrated his visions and experiences in his Native language; almost simultaneously, Black Elk's son Ben translated his father's words into English, which Neihardt then rephrased for his daughter Enid to copy down in shorthand. She later typed them into longhand, from which Neihardt then composed the text. Black Elk Speaks is a work of hope perched at the edge of despair, the last-ditch effort of the Oglala holy man to provide spiritual teaching for his people and the world beyond; since the middle of the twentieth century Black Elk Speaks has provided a map for the spiritual seeking of many Native people outside the Oglala, as well as for non-Native people wishing to understand a Native American spiritual perspective.

Late Twentieth Century

The late twentieth century in Native American letters is marked by a widespread literary flowering across the genres, the “Native American Renaissance,” heralded by the publication of Vine Deloria Jr. 's (Standing Rock Sioux) Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto ( 1969 ), the first of his numerous works of philosophy, religious studies, and political and legal critiques of American society. The same year, the mainstream literary establishment recognized the talent of N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa); his first novel, House Made of Dawn ( 1968 ), received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Momaday's poetry, fiction, and prose memoirs have influenced and inspired two generations of Native American and First Nations (Canadian-Native) writers. It is notable that many authors have published in multiple genres: for example, James Welch (Blackfeet) followed his first work of poetry with the influential novel Winter in the Blood ( 1974 ) and four more that have followed. Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo) has produced a dozen volumes of poetry, fiction, and scholarship since 1973 and is probably most widely known for The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions ( 1986 ). Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) began her literary career with poetry but, in collaboration with her husband Michael Dorris (Modoc), soon became a prolific writer of Faulkneresque novels including Love Medicine ( 1984 ) and Tracks ( 1988 ). Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) published numerous works of poetry before her work branched to produce the novels Mean Spirit ( 1990 ) and Solar Storms ( 1995 ). Diane Glancy (Cherokee) has published fifteen volumes including poetry ( Brown Wolf Leaves the Res , 1984 ), short fiction ( Lone Dog's Winter Count , 1991 ), and plays ( War Cries , 1996 ). Foremost among these versatile writers is Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), whose early work includes the volume of poetry entitled Laguna Woman ( 1974 ) as well as the appearance of a number of her poems and short stories in anthologies of Native American writing published in the mid-1970s: The Man to Send Rain Clouds ( 1974 ), Voices of the Rainbow ( 1975 ), and Carriers of the Dream Wheel ( 1975 ). Silko's career blossomed with the publication of her novel Ceremony ( 1977 ), which weaves together mythic stories of Laguna spiritual tradition and a plot dealing with the experiences of a young mixed-blood Laguna man who serves in World War II; the novel blends the stylistic elements of oral tradition and postmodern narrative. Her later novels Almanac of the Dead ( 1991 ), a complex vision of self-interest and violence in the Americas, and Gardens in the Dunes ( 1999 ) explore the world beyond Laguna but with the sensibility and values she derives from Laguna. Silko also continues to range across genres, publishing poetry, fiction, and memoir in Storyteller ( 1981 ), letters between herself and the poet James Wright in a volume called The Delicacy and Strength of Lace ( 1986 ), and essays in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit ( 1996 ).

Among those who work primarily in verse, Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) has been an influential poet since the early 1970s. The best-known of his fifteen volumes is From Sand Creek ( 1981 ). Ortiz's work is based in his strong Acoma identity, incorporating Keresan language and the spiritual traditions of his community. Joy Harjo (Muskogee Creek) went to college to learn painting but decided to become a writer after hearing Ortiz read. While she is primarily a poet ( She Had Some Horses , 1983 ; In Mad Love and War , 1990 ), Harjo's works include a screenplay and recordings of musical performances with her band, Poetic Justice. The Hopi/Miwok poet Wendy Rose, trained academically as an anthropologist, has published eleven volumes since 1973 . Primary among her philosophical concerns is the negotiating of identity, since having a non-Hopi mother situated her as an outsider to that community; The Halfbreed Chronicles and Other Poems ( 1985 ) is in many respects a complex response to and meditation on the conundrum of identity. What Happened When the Hopi Hit New York ( 1982 ) contemplates the specificity of different landscapes and connects her with Maurice Kenny (Mohawk), a prolific poet since the late 1950s, whose works have twice been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes; he received the American Book Award in 1984 for The Mama Poems ( 1984 ). Luci Tapahonso (Navajo) writes poetry from the perspective of Navajo as her first language, using both Navajo and English in her work. Saani Dahataal: The Women Are Singing ( 1993 ) is rooted in Tapahonso's connection to her family and community and combines aspects of Navajo tradition and contemporary mainstream American life.

At work in his own direction before the 1969 flowering, Gerald Vizenor (Anishinaabe) began his prolific literary career in poetry after encountering haiku and other Asian literary forms while stationed in Japan with the U.S. Army. During the 1960s he published nine volumes of poetry, including some reworking of traditional Ojibwa (Anishinaabe) lyrics. During the mid-1960s he worked on behalf of urbanized Indians in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and through this work began writing journalistic pieces; he wrote and edited for the Minneapolis Tribune from 1968 to 1976 . In the 1970s Vizenor began publishing essays and fiction and made a transition from community service to college teaching and leadership in Native American studies. Vizenor's theoretical work on Indian identity as a construct (“terminal creeds are terminal diseases”) and his stance on mixed blood as creative, similar to the energy of the “compassionate trickster,” inform most of his work, including Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent ( 1981 ), Griever: An American Monkey King in China ( 1987 ), Landfill Meditation ( 1991 ), and Chancers ( 2000 ). N. Scott Momaday has called Vizenor “the supreme ironist among American Indian writers of the twentieth century ,” and for Louis Owens, Vizenor's work provides the most “outrageous challenge to all preconceived definitions.”

Louis Owens (Cherokee/Choctaw) wrote novels and taught writing at the college level, becoming one of the most respected Native literary scholars of his generation. Owens published American Indian Novelists: An Annotated Critical Bibliography ( 1985 ) with his friend and colleague Tom Colonnese (Lakota), following that with Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel ( 1992 ) and Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place ( 1998 ). His works of fiction partake of the popular genre of murder mystery but are always informed with tradition and sensibilities from his Choctaw heritage: The Sharpest Sight ( 1992 ), Bone Game ( 1994 ), Wolfsong ( 1995 ), and Nightland ( 1996 ) all rely on a Choctaw mixed-blood protagonist to unravel the mystery. In Owens's last novel, Dark River ( 1999 ), his protagonist Jake Nashoba dies of a gunshot wound in the process of discovering the answer to the puzzle, an intimation of Owens's untimely death in July 2002 . Shorty Luke, “the surviving twin” of the story, gives him this epitaph: “It is said that Jacob Nashoba went home.”

Directions for the Twenty-First Century

Most of the writers from the end of the twentieth century have survived into the twenty-first, and readers should expect an ever-increasing and changing body of work from Native American writers whose careers have lately begun. Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) has kept up a pace of producing at least one book a year in his first ten years of writing, and two of his titles have been made into films: The Business of Fancydancing ( 1992 ) retained its title, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven ( 1993 ) became Smoke Signals . He has also worked on a screenplay based on his novel Indian Killer ( 1996 ). Greg Sarris (Pomo/Miwok) too has made the crossover into screenplay with his “novel in stories” Grand Avenue ( 1994 ), which is set in the tough Santa Rosa, California neighborhood where Sarris grew up. His biography of Pomo basketmaker Mabel McKay and his 1993 critical text Keeping Slug Woman Alive hold substantial promise for the future. Readers might also hope to see more from Betty Louise Bell (Cherokee), whose first novel, Faces in the Moon , a multigenerational story of women in one mixed-blood Cherokee family, appeared in 1994 , and Susan Power (Dakota), author of The Grass Dancer ( 1994 ).

Another emerging direction in Native American literature is the proliferation of drama, a genre that flowered sooner in Canada than in the United States, with government support for the work of highly popular playwrights such as Tomson Highway (Cree), author of The Rez Sisters ( 1988 ) and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing ( 1989 ). In the United States, the Kiowa/Delaware playwright Hanay Geiogamah has been at work in theater since the early 1970s, publishing ( Body Indian , 1972 ; Foghorn , 1973 ), directing, producing, and teaching Native American theater. For the past twenty years William Yellow Robe Jr. has acted, directed, taught, and written forty-two plays including The Independence of Eddie Rose ( 1986 ). The contemporary writers Gerald Vizenor ( Ishi and the Wood Ducks , 1994 ), Diane Glancy ( The Truth Teller , 1993 ), and LeAnne Howe ( Indian Radio Days , 1993 ) have contributed to this growing field.

Increasingly it will be important for the field of Native American literary studies to be enriched and interrogated by the perspectives of Native American literary critics such as Paula Gunn Allen, Greg Sarris, Robert Allen Warrior (Osage), and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Dakota). Cook-Lynn has been an arbiter in Native American studies, having founded Wicazo Sa Review and operated it as an entirely Native-edited journal since 1985 . She and fellow Native critics, teachers, and publishers like Jeannette Armstrong and Joseph Bruchac will help foster the talent of new writers as well as the ongoing growth of the field.

See also Erdrich, Louise ; Momaday, N. Scott ; and Silko, Leslie Marmon .

Further Reading

• Allen, Paula Gunn . The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions . Boston, 1986; rev. 1992.
• Bataille, Gretchen M. , and Kathleen Mullen Sands . American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives . Lincoln, Neb., 1984.
• Bruchac, Joseph , ed. Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets . Tucson, Ariz., 1987.
• Brumble, H. David , 3d. American Indian Autobiography . Berkeley, Calif., 1988.
• Colonnese, Tom , and Louis Owens , comps . American Indian Novelists: An Annotated Critical Bibliography. New York, 1985.
• Harjo, Joy , and Gloria Bird , eds. Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Woman's Writings of North America . New York, 1997.
• Jaskoski, Helen , ed. Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays . New York, 1996.
• Krupat, Arnold . The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon . Berkeley, Calif., 1989.
• Lincoln, Kenneth . Native American Renaissance . 2d revised edition. Los Angeles, 1985.
• Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. , and James W. Parins , comps . American Indian and Alaskan Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826–1924. Westport, Conn., 1984.
• Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. , and James W. Parins , comps . A Biobibliography of Native American Writers, 1772–1924. Metuchen, N.J., 1981.
• Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. , and James W. Parins , comps . A Biobibliography of Native American Writers, 1772–1924: A Supplement. Metuchen, N.J., 1985.
• Murray, David . Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American Indian Texts . Bloomington, Ind., 1991.
• Nelson, Robert M. Place and Vision: The Function of Landscape in Native American Fiction . New York, 1993.
• Owens, Louis . Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel . Norman, Okla., 1992.
• Roemer, Kenneth M. , ed. Native American Writers of the United States. Dictionary of Literary Biography , vol. 175. Detroit, 1997.
• Ruoff, A. La vonne Brown . American Indian Literatures: An Introduction, Bibliographic Review, and Selected Bibliography . New York, 1990.
• Ruppert, James . Mediation in Contemporary Native American Fiction . Norman, Okla., 1995.
• Sarris, Greg . Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts . Berkeley, Calif., 1993.
• Swann, Brian , and Arnold Krupat , eds. Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature . Berkeley, Calif., 1987.
• Trout, Lawana , ed. Native American Literature: An Anthology . Lincolnwood, Ill., 1999.
• Vizenor, Gerald , ed. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures . Albuquerque, N.Mex., 1989.
• Warrior, Robert Allen . Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions . Minneapolis, 1995.
• Wiget, Andrew O. , ed. Critical Essays on Native American Literature . Boston, 1985.
• Wiget , ed. Handbook of Native American Literature . Detroit, 1994.
• Wyss, Hilary E. Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America . Amherst, Mass., 2000.

Related Articles

• Erdrich, Louise
• Momaday, N. Scott
• Silko, Leslie Marmon

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Native American Heritage Month: Biographies and Essays

| By Carol Brennan |

November is U.S. Native American Heritage Month, providing Americans the chance to reflect on the original caretakers of our continental treasures. Since the first-known contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century, Native Americans have played a decisive role in shaping American history and culture . Gale In Context: Biography features hundreds of biographies of prominent Native Americans from the past as well as leading activists, artists, and game changers who continue to positively impact twenty-first-century life in the United States.

In the struggle to end forced relocations and other violence perpetrated on Native Americans, the list of legendary names featured in In Context: Biography includes Wampanoag chief Massasoit , Shawnee chief Tecumseh, Sioux leader Sitting Bull, Apache warrior Geronimo, and Seminole chief Osceola. Gale resources also provide informative profiles of lesser-known figures from American history, among them Saint Kateri Tekakwitha , a Mohawk woman who became the first Native American woman to be honored as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Neolin, a Lenni Lenape also known as the Delaware Prophet, was an influential leader who urged Native Americans to abstain from alcohol and reject the material goods offered to Native American communities in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions. Another overlooked figure is Ishi, a Yahi whose 1916 death in San Francisco prompted newspaper tributes to a man often known as the last living Native American who had never been in contact with a person of European origin.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the most celebrated athletes of Native American heritage were Jim Thorpe , a Sac and Fox multisport powerhouse who in 1912 became the first Native American to win the Olympic gold. The emergence of surfing is widely credited to the heroic feats depicted in early Hollywood footage of Duke Kahanamoku, a native Hawaiian. In the modern era, Oren Lyons, a Seneca and professor, became one of the leading proponents of lacrosse, the only Native American sport that is played in organized leagues at all levels, from youth to collegiate to professional.

In Context: Biography also features a trove of essays on Native Americans in the arts. These include Maria Tallchief , the Osage celebrated as the first American woman to become a prima ballerina, and N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa who in 1969 became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer prize. Beacons of twenty-first-century progress include Joy Harjo , the Muscogee poet who in 2019 became the first Native American to be named U.S. poet laureate, and Jason Momoa, a native Hawaiian and popular star of Hollywood action films.

One of the first Native Americans to represent Indigenous communities at the highest levels of the U.S. government was Charles Brent Curtis, a Kaw who in 1924 became the first American affiliated with a tribe to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914. He went on to serve as U.S. vice president from 1929 to 1933. Following that lead is Winona LaDuke , an Ojibwe and former U.S. vice presidential candidate who played a significant role as an environmental activist involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota in 2016–17. Other trailblazers who have emerged in recent years include Diane Humetewa , a Hopi who became the first Native American woman and first tribal member to serve on the U.S. federal judiciary. The Laguna Pueblo community rejoiced in President Joe Biden’s choice of Deb Haaland , the congresswoman from New Mexico who in 2021 became the first Native American to serve as a U.S. cabinet secretary when she was confirmed as the new secretary of the interior. 

The powerful stories from the past and topical content on contemporary leaders found in In Context: Biography serve to illuminate the history celebrated each November in Native American Heritage Month.

You can read more about these Native Americans and others in Gale In Context: Biography .

Not a  Gale In Context: Biography  subscriber?  Learn more about this authoritative database >>

About the Author Carol Brennan has been writing biographical entries for Cengage/Gale since 1993. If she’s not writing, she is either at yoga or walking her dachshund. Carol consumes an alarming volume of podcasts and audiobooks weekly.

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Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph: From Indians to Icons

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Essay by David M. Buerge

Introduction, chief seattle, chief joseph.

• Early Reminiscences
• My First Reception in Seattle
• The Surrender of Joseph

Bibliography

Study questions, about the author.

Of all the Native Americans who lived or are living in the Pacific Northwest, two who enjoy the most recognition are Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph. Seattle was the Lushootseed leader after whom the city of Seattle was named, the largest city to be so honored. Joseph was chief of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce and a leader of the Nez Perce during their desperate, daring 1877 war with the United States. Both were noted orators.

The Pacific Northwest remains remote from the rest of the country, but here, as elsewhere, Native Americans figure prominently in its unfolding history. Coyote of Columbia River mythology still animates our folklore. The Spokane prophet Circling Raven announced the imminent arrival of a new people and leaders like the Nuu-chah-nulth headman Maquinna and one-eyed Concomly of the Chinooks impressed fur traders enough to earn prominence in early narrative histories of the region. In 1831, the Nez Perce were among the group making the portentious trip to St. Louis seeking information about the white man's religion. When trade and missionary work turned to conquest, the bravery and sagacity of Kamiakin of the Yakama, Moses of the Middle Columbia Salish, and Leschi of the Nisquallies commanded respect from friend and foe alike. The Wanapam prophet Smohalla kept religious traditions alive east of the Cascades while John and Mary Slocum inspired a religious fervor on upper Puget Sound that developed into the Indian Shaker Church. The creativity and strength needed to survive forced assimilation and racial bias continues to find expression in figures as diverse as the late Nisqually fishing rights activist Billy Frank, Sn. and Spokane/Coeur d'Alene writer and film director Sherman Alexie.

So Seattle and Joseph do not stand alone or even apart from other Northwestern native leaders who have defended and inspired a people sorely tested by history. That they are better known than the others has much to do with the sentiments they evoked from the Americans who invaded their lands.

When Seattle died on June 6, 1866, he was believed to be about 80 years old. He would, therefore, have been born around 1786, a full generation before Joseph. Because he had reached middle age before he appears in the historic record, information about his early years is fragmentary. He told settlers he was born on Blake Island in central Puget Sound. His father, Schweabe, was a noble from the main Suquamish village at Agate Pass and his mother, Sholitza, was Duwamish from the lower Green River. His birth occurred during an apocalyptic time in his peoples' history when epidemics inadvertently introduced by western traders decimated the native population, and the introduction of western trade goods and firearms added to the turmoil. Seattle claimed he was present when the British ship H.M.S. Discovery , captained by George Vancouver, anchored off Bainbridge Island on May 20, 1792, and the happy memories of the explorer's visit and his appreciation of the power and abilities of Westerners remained with him all his life. (See also: "Vancouver and the Indians of Puget Sound" .)

Despite an attribution of slavery in his lineage, Seattle's noble status was affirmed by his reception of Thunderbird power from an important supernatural wealth-giver during a vision quest held sometime during his youth. He married well, taking wives from the important village of Tola'ltu on the western shore of Elliott Bay. His first wife died after bearing a daughter, but a second bore him sons and daughters, and he owned slaves, always a sign of wealth and status.

During the period when his famous uncle, Kitsap, led a coalition of Puget Sound forces against the powerful Cowichans of Vancouver Island, who had been sending raiders south, Seattle succeeded in ambushing and destroying a party of raiders coming down the Green River in canoes from their strongholds in the Cascade foothills. He also attacked the S'Klallam, a powerful people living on the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula, and claimed to have taken a length of shell money from one of their headmen. He may also have participated in raids on the upper Snoqualmie River. By the time he entered the historic record in 1833, when the Hudson's Bay Company founded Fort Nisqually near the head of the Sound, he enjoyed a reputation as an intelligent and formidable leader with a compelling voice. The nickname given him by Company personnel, 'Le Gros' (the big one), indicates he had a physique to match his personality.

The Chief Trader at Fort Nisqually, Francis Herron, considered Seattle important - and dangerous - enough to request his mark on a treaty foreswearing murder. His intimidating presence during frequent visits to the fort, however, kept officials on their guard, and the trouble he caused by murdering a Skykomish shaman in 1837 led Herron's replacement, William Kittson, to hope that the Suquamish would kill him. They, however, valued his leadership. In 1841 he led a crippling raid on the village Yila'lqo, at the confluence of the Green and upper White Rivers, to revenge a murdered kinsman, and six years later he helped lead the Suquamish in an attack upon the Chemakum stronghold of Tsetsibus, near Port Townsend, that effectively wiped out this rival group.

The death of one of his sons during this episode appears to have affected him deeply, for not long after that, Seattle sought and received baptism into the Catholic Church, taking the prophet Noah as his spiritual intersessor. (See also: "Christianity, a Matter of Choice" .) He was probably baptised by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at their St. Joseph of Newmarket Mission, founded near the new American settlement of Olympia in 1848, and he appears as Noe Siattle in the Oblate Sacramental Register. His children were also baptized and raised in the faith, and his conversion marked the end of his fighting days and his emergence as a leader seeking cooperation with incoming American settlers.

These reached Puget Sound in 1846, and the warm welcome and aid Seattle gave those visiting his homeland earned him the reputation as a friend of the whites. His speech greeting Isaac N. Ebey and B. F. Shaw when they visited Elliott Bay in the summer of 1850, requesting that they settle among his people and trade, was recorded by Shaw. The glowing description of his country that Ebey published in the Oregon Spectator shortly afterwards encouraged settlement in the Duwamish River Valley.

Seattle actively sought out settlers with whom he could do business and trade, and he took up residence at Olympia to develop contacts. His first success came with Charles Fay, a San Francisco merchant, with whom he organized a fishery on Elliott Bay in the summer of 1851. When Fay departed in the fall, Seattle returned to Olympia and convinced David S. Maynard to take his place. In the spring of 1852, Seattle and Maynard organized another fishery at dzidzula'lich, a native village on the east shore of the bay. By the summer, the Americans who took claims near the village named the hybrid settlement Seattle after their patron and protector.

Seattle's efforts to participate meaningfully in the creation of the new community and blend his people's future with the settlers' fell victim, however, to land hunger and the desire of many influential whites to keep their people separate from the native population. This, however, did not lessen Seattle's friendship and loyalty. Notes from the translation of his speech greeting the prospect of treaty negotiations announced by Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens during the latter's visit to Elliott Bay in January, 1854, were purportedly written down by Henry Smith, a recent arrival to the area. Stevens recognized Seattle's importance as a native leader, and because of his age and prestige, he served as native spokesman during the treaty council held at Point Elliott (Muckilteo), from December 27, 1854, to January 9, 1855. Despite voicing misgivings about his people receiving money for their land, he was the first to place his mark on the treaty document ceding title to some 2.5 million acres of land, retaining a reservation for his Suquamish but none for the Duwamish.

Unhappiness over the treaties and American arrogance caused many Duwamish to repudiate Seattle's leadership and led, ultimately, to the Yakima Indian War of 1855-57. Subsequent native accusations of his duplicity during that conflict suggest he tried to maintain contact with all native parties east and west of the mountains, but he remained a firm ally of the Americans, and his contacts provided them valuable intelligence.

After native forced were defeated, Seattle struggled to help his people, unsuccessfully seeking clemency for the war leader, Leschi, and petitioning the governor to hurry ratification of the treaty. On the Fort Kitsap (Port Madison) reservation he attempted to curtail the influence of whiskey sellers and prevent the ritual murder of slaves. He had freed his own slaves as required by the treaty. Off the reservation, he participated in meetings to resolve native disputes.

He retained his friendship with Maynard and cultivated new relationships with people such as William De Shaw, Indian Agent and owner of a trading post at Agate Pass, and sawmill owner George Meigs, whose teetotaling company town provided native workers a safe haven from predatory whiskey sellers. Seattle continued to befriend Americans; expressing pleasure at being invited to their gatherings, and suffering their slights and humiliations with stoic dignity.

He received the sacrament of Confirmation at Tulalip in 1864, reaffirming his commitment to his faith, but the leadership of the native Catholic community at Suquamish rested with another Suquamish leader, Jacob, who built the first church there. An 1865 ordinance enacted by the newly incorporated town of Seattle forbade permanent Indian houses within the city limits, forcing Seattle to vacate the place where he had greeted Shaw and Ebey and invited them to settle. He lived at his homes on the Port Madison Reservation, and probably north of the city limits where the daughter of his first wife, called Angeline by settlers, lived, but he was a common sight in town, visiting friends and caring for his people who worked there and continued to gather at temporary campsites on its waterfront. (See also: "Chief Seattle and Angeline" .)

In that year he visited the photographic studio operated by E. M. Sammis at the corner of Front and Mill Streets (First and Yesler) and sat for a portrait.

He died on the reservation after a brief illness.

When Joseph was born in 1840 in a cave on Joseph Creek, a tributary of the Grand Ronde River, in the northeast corner of present-day Oregon, his people were already well known to Americans. His father, Tuekakas (one of many spellings), was the leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce and one of Henry and Eliza Spaulding's first Christian converts at the Lapwai mission, founded in 1836. His mother's name survives as Khap-khap-on-imi. Spaulding gave the Tuekakas the Christian name, Joseph, probably at his baptism in 1839. His young son, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, 'Thunder Rolling In The Mountains,' received the same name , probably in the early 1860s, and incoming white settlers distinguished father and son as Old Joseph and Young Joseph.

The Nez Perce, who had maintained good relations with the Americans for virtually the entire period from their encounter with the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, remained neutral during the Cayuse War of 1847-1850, and aided the Americans militarily during the Yakima War. By then, however, Old Joseph had begun to distance himself from Christianity and return to more traditional native beliefs and practices espoused by the Wanapam prophet, Smohalla, whose followers were called 'Dreamers' by whites. Two young sons, Ollokot and Young Joseph, followed their father's inclinations. Old Joseph signed the Treaty of Walla Walla engineered by Stevens in May/June 1855, but he had grown suspicious of American intentions and sincerity. (See also: "Indian Council at Walla Walla" and "Lawyer of the Nez Perces" .)

His fears were substantiated when thousands of miners invaded Nez Percez lands after gold was discovered on them in 1860, and in 1863 when government commissioners ordered the Nez Perce reservation reduced from 5000 square miles to between 500 and 600 at a treaty council held at Lapwai. The Wallowa Valley was not included in the reduced reservation. The treaty demands split the Nez Perce into treaty and non-treaty factions, more or less along religious lines; the treaty faction being led by Christians and the non-treaty by those retaining traditional beliefs. Old Joseph numbered himself among the latter, tearing up his copy of the treaty and destroying the bible Spalding had given to him.

The Lapwai treaty, known by angry Nez Perce as the 'thief treaty,' left Old Joseph's people in an untenable position. Further treaty councils affirmed Nez Perce ownership of the Wallowa Valley, but in 1875, this decision was reversed, and more settlers entered the area. Made a trespasser in his own country, Old Joseph had few allies to help him resist white demands for his people's removal. Just before his father died in 1871, young Joseph recalled his plea. "My son never forget my dying words. This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother."

In January, 1877, the Army demanded that all non-treaty Nez Perce remove themselves to the Lapwai Reservation. At stormy council meetings held in May, government officials backed by military force demanded that the Nez Perce leave the Wallowa Valley, and the chiefs consented grudgingly. General Oliver Howard gave them 30 days to make the move. Passions rose as the Nez Perce gathered their goods and stock, and in June, three young men, seeking to revenge a kinsman murdered earlier by a settler, killed and wounded several whites. Another group went on another rampage killing more people. The army intervened and in the early morning of June 17, attacked the Nez Perce in White Bird Canyon. (See also: "General Howard and the Nez Perce War of 1877" and "Nez Perce and their War" .)

The army suffered a humiliating defeat in what became the opening battle of the Nez Perce War. During the next four months approximately 1000 Nez Perce men, women and children, of which somewhat less than a quarter were fighting men, encumbered by what goods they could carry and hundreds of horses, conducted an extraordinary retreat over 1700 miles of mountain and prairie, fighting several engagements against better armed and more numerous forces until they were eventually forced to surrender barely 40 miles from safe haven in Canada.

The national press covered the campaign closely, and identified Joseph as the primary war leader during most of it, but subsequent study places Looking Glass in that role after his group joined the retreat in July. Specifically, Joseph guarded the women and children, the people's hope and future, during the retreat, making him, in effect, the guardian of the people. (See also: "Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Warriors" .)

His courage, intelligence and confident bearing, his empathy, tact and diplomatic skills inspired them to heroic efforts and impressed their white adversaries. After the Bear Paws battle, with most of the warriors and leading chiefs killed, it fell to him to surrender, and his speech, recorded at the site by Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, and published in the November 17, 1877 issue of Harper's Weekly , made him the symbol of Nez Perce heroism and resistence. (See also: "Last Stand of the Nez Perces" .)

Even in defeat Joseph did not lose heart, but continued to defend and support those entrusted to his care with every tool at his disposal. (See also: "Nez Perces in Exile" .) During his people's fatal confinement at Fort Leavenworth and in Oklahoma, he appealed to military and civil officials, even President Rutherford B. Hayes for their return to their homeland, and he presented his case to the public at large, providing his account of Nez Perce history and their treatment at the hands of the Americans to the Reverend W. H. Hare in an interview published in North American Review in April, 1879. Eventually 268 Nez Perce of the non-treaty bands who survived captivity were permitted to return to the Northwest. About half went to Lapwai and in June 1885, Joseph led his remnant band to the Colville Reservation in Eastern Washington.

There he sought to live in the tradition manner and follow his Dreamer beliefs. He also continued his efforts to return his people to the Wallowa Valley but without success. The photographs made of him from 1879 onward record the effect of this ordeal.

In 1899 officials allowed Joseph to return briefly to the Wallowa Valley, and a year later he visited his father's grave. By then it had been ransacked, and a local dentist exhibited Tuekakas' skull in his office as a curio. As the aged son confronted the desecrated grave in the midst of a plowed field, an observer recalled that he "melted and wept". Rebuffed in his efforts to purchase land for a reservation, he nevertheless continued to plead for his people's return to any sympathetic ear, and on visits to Washington. D.C., New York, Seattle and St. Louis, he continued to make his case publically. He returned from St. Louis for the annual July 4 celebration at Nespelem on the Colville Reservation, and on September 21, 1904, died alone in his lodge, sitting before his fire.

The transformation of Seattle and Joseph into popular folk heroes after their deaths has followed a convoluted trail. Joseph's national prominence rested initially upon the erroneous assumption that he masterminded the Nez Perce retreat, an error spread quickly and widely thanks to the telegraph and the emergence of a national media. The beauty and sadness of his surrender speech, his compelling argument on his peoples' behalf, and the sheer moral force of his presence won him admiration and even adulation among those disposed to be sympathetic toward his people. As a man of principle and courage defeated by a powerful and relentless foe, he became an attractive symbol to many.

Seattle's fame came more slowly. His death went unreported in the city named after him, and it was not until 1870, when the Seattle Weekly Intelligencer reprinted an Overland Monthly article describing his funeral, that any local attention was paid to him. But it was not until Henry Smith worked the notes he claimed to have taken of Seattle's 1854 remarks into a speech laden with prophetic irony that was printed in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, that his status as a folk icon approached that of Joseph. Smith's reconstruction of the speech, one of eleven essays celebrating pioneer achievements, appeared at a highly charged moment in Seattle's social history, and was intended as an admonition to the emergent professional elites that were displacing the older pioneer proprietors. Like Joseph, Seattle became an attractive and compelling symbol.

Sympathy for Joseph and the cause of his people has never flagged, and today, although his role in the dramatic events of 1877 has been clarified, his dramatic appeal has not lessened, and his poignant efforts to sustain his peoples' hopes continues to haunt the popular mind. He remains an outstanding native leader and his appeal to both native and white audiences serves, as he had hoped it would, as a bridge of understanding between two races estranged and yet bound together by history.

Seattle's fame is such that many continue to attribute to him a speech presenting him as an environmental prophet, despite the fact that it has been shown to be entirely apocryphal, the innocent product of screen writer Ted Perry in 1970. But the dignity of Seattle's speech, as recalled by Smith, and of his person, attested by native and white contemporaries, resonates with Native American efforts to maintain pride in their heritage, just as our growing appreciation of his complex character and the role he played fostering cooperative development help reawaken our understanding of the native contributions to the history of the Pacific Northwest.

Bagley, Clarence. "Chief Seattle and Angeline." Washington Historical Quarterly , No. 22 (1931): 243-275.

Buerge, David M. "Chief Seattle: The Man, Not The Myth." Seattle Weekly , June 29, 1983, 24-28.

Buerge, David M. "The Man Who Invented Chief Seattle." Seattle Weekly , September 1, 1993, 18-28.

Carlson, Frank. "Chief Sealth." The Bulletin of the University of Washington , Series III, Number 2, December 1903.

Coombs, Samuel. "Good Chief Seattle." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer , Sunday, May 26, 1893, 9.

Denny, Arthur A. Pioneer Days on Puget Sound . Seattle, W. T.: C.B. Bagley, Printer, 1888.

Denny, Emily Inez. Blazing the Way: True Stories, Songs And Sketches of Puget Sound And Other Pioneers . Seattle: Rainier Publishing Company, Inc., 1909, reprinted by the King County Museum of History and Industry, Dec. 1984.

Dickey, George, Ed. The Journal of Occurences At Fort Nisqually . Fort Nisqually Association, 1989.

Elmendorf, William W. Twana Narratives: Native Historical Accounts of a Coast Salish Culture. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993.

Gibbs, George, M.D., "Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon." Contributions to the North American Ethnologist , Vol. 1, 1877, U.S. Govt. Printing Office.

Grant, Frederick James, Ed. History of Seattle, Washington . New York: American Publishing and Engraving Co., 1891.

Hanford, Cornelius H. Seattle and Environs 1852-1924 , Chicago & Seattle: Pioneer Historical Publishing Co., 1924. p. 148.

Harrington, John Peabody. The Papers of John Peabody Harrington. Alaska/Northwest Coast, in National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Reel 015, Lummi-Duwamish.

Kaiser, Rudolph. "A Fifth Gospel, Almost" Chief Seattle's Speech(es): American Origin and European Reception." Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays , Feest, Christian F., Aachen: Heredot, Rader Verlag, 1987.

Leighton, Caroline C. West Coast Journeys 1865-1879 . Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1995.

Meany, Edmund. Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound . Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.: Binfords & Mort, Publishers, 1957.

Metcalfe, James Vernon. The Life of Chief Seattle . Seattle: A Catholic Northwest Progress Publication, 1964. [In this work, however, Metcalf incorporates the erroneous assumption of Fr. Felix Verwilghen, that the headman known as Tsla-la-cum or Steilacoom was actually Seattle. The two were separate individuals. D. Buerge].

Prosch, Thomas W. David S. Maynard and Catherine T. Maynard . Seattle: Lowman & Hanford Stationery & Printing Co., 1906.

Sacramental Register. Olympia and Puget Sound. 1848 to 1860 . Oblate Fathers, OMI. Volume I, Part II (available in Seattle Archdiocesan Archives).

Sacramental Register. Tulalip and Puget Sound. Oct. 15, 1857 to April, 1868 , Vol. II

Snyder, Warren A. "Autobiography of Ameliz Snaetlum." in "Southern Puget Sound Salish: Texts, Place Names and Dictionary." Sacramento Anthropological Society Papers 9 , Sacramento, CA. 1968. p. 131, number 12.

Starling, Edmund A. to Isaac Stevens, December 4, 1853. The Records Of The Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1853-1874 . Roll 1, (b), Copies and Drafts of Letters Sent, March 1853-March 31, 1856.

Scammon, C. M., "Old Seattle and his Tribe." The Overland Monthly , vol. 4, April, 1870, no. 4.

Smith, Henry A., "Early Reminiscences. Number Ten. Scraps From A Diary. Chief Seattle-A Gentleman by Instinct-His Native Eloquence. Etc., Etc." Seattle Sunday Star , October 29, 1887, vol. IV, no. 52, 3, c. 5-6.

Tolmie, William Fraser. The Journals of William Fraser Tolmie: Physician and Trader . Vancouver Canada: Mitchell Press, Limited, 1963.

Verwilghen, Fr. Felix, CICM. Chief Sealth, ca. 1786-1866, In The Letters Of The First Christian Missionaries Of The Puget Sound Area . Paper presented to the Pioneer Association of the State of Washington, 1964.

Ward, Dillis B. "From Salem, Oregon to Seattle, Washington, in 1859." Washington Historical Quarterly , Vol. VI, No. 2, April, 1915, pp. 100-106.

Watt, Roberta Frye. 4 Wagons West. the story of Seattle . Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort Publishers, 1931.

For Chief Joseph

Beal, Merrill D. "I Will Fight No More Forever" Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963.

Gridley, M. Kopet: A Documentary Narrative of Chief Joseph's Last Years . Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1981.

Joseph, Nez Perce Chief. Chief Joseph's Own Story . Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1984.

Josephy, Alvin M. Jr., The Nez Perce Indians And The Opening Of the Northwest . Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997.

McWhorter, L. V. Hear Me My Chiefs! Nez Perce Legend and History . Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1986.

Taylor Marian W. Chief Joseph Nez Perce Leader . New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993.

Wilfong, Cheryl. Following the Nez Perce Trail . Oregon University Press, 1994.

Intermediate:

• Why would we know more about Joseph's early life than Seattle's?
• What accomplishments and characteristics enabled Seattle to become a leader among his people? What can these things tell you about the world in which he lived?
• Why would Seattle have found it in his interest to develop positive ties with the Americans?
• Why did Joseph find it necessary to fight the Americans?
• What reasons would have impelled Seattle to become a Catholic convert?
• What reasons would have impelled Old Joseph and Young Joseph to renounce Christianity?
• Why would Seattle have signed and supported the Treaty of Point Elliott?
• In your opinion, is Seattle a suitable or unsuitable namesake for the city named after him? Substantiate your argument.
• What western places or objects are named after Old Joseph and Young Joseph or mark important events associated with then? Locate these on a map.
• Construct a timeline showing the major events in Nez Perce history from their earliest appearance in the historic record to the present day. What makes the events important enough to be included in the timeline?
• Compare Seattle's speeches as recorded by Shaw, Smith and Perry. What internal evidence exists to show that Perry's speech is apocryphal?
• Seattle's speech recorded by Smith and Joseph's surrender speech are among the best known examples of Native American oratory. Why would these speeches appeal to Americans of the late 19th century?
• Research the Dreamer beliefs propounded by Smohalla. Why would Joseph have found these appealing?
• How do present day Native Americans regard Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph? How has this view changed over time?
• Compare and contrast the figures of Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph. In what ways are they significantly alike and significantly different?
• Research the other Northwestern Native American figures mentioned at the beginning of the essay. How might their contributions be considered as significant as those of Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph?
• What factors prevented Chief Seattle and his people from participating in the development of the Puget Sound region in the same manner as the white settlers?
• What factors prevented Chief Joseph from succeeding in restoring his people to their homeland despite the favorable impressions he made on so many influential Americans?

David M. Buerge was born in Oakland, California, in 1945. He has published several books and numerous articles dealing with the social and religious history of the Northwest in general and of Native Americans in the Seattle area in particular. He is currently writing a biography of Chief Seattle. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Mary Anne, and their children and teaches at a private school.

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Native American Leaders: A Timeline

By: Vincent Schilling

Published: November 7, 2023

Leadership can entail many things. For Native Americans, caring for their people has meant not only securing food and shelter, or carrying forward spiritual teachings and cultural traditions, or helping to keep the peace internally and with neighbors. Ever since European settlers began arriving in the 16th century, leadership for America’s Indigenous peoples has disproportionately involved fighting to simply exist. 

Some American Indian leaders sought to broker treaties. And when that didn’t work, they went to war—to protect their ancestral lands, their hunting grounds and their ways of life. Some gave their lives in the struggle. In later years, leaders have served not only as chiefs but as activists and organizers, calling attention to the ongoing discrimination and oppression of Indigenous peoples. Issues have ranged from broken treaties and tribal sovereignty to voting rights and forced sterilization.

Though nowhere near complete, this list details many influential Native American leaders, both men and women, who made their mark in history.

Powhatan (c. 1547 - c.1618)

Powhatan Confederacy

First Leader in Contact With the Jamestown Settlers

Best known as Pocahontas ’ father, Chief Powhatan (a.k.a. Wahunsenacawh) was the supreme Indigenous leader in the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia, who built a confederacy of dozens of tribes—through force, marriage and by "adoption." In the early 1600s, Chief Powhatan adopted Englishman John Smith as a wereowance, or leader, of what would eventually become Jamestown Colony . But when relations with the English settlers soured, he ordered his warriors to attack James Fort in 1609, initiating the first Anglo-Powhatan war. That lasted until the marriage of his daughter Pocahontas to English colonist John Rolfe . After she died in 1617, Powhatan ceded his rule to his brothers, Opechancanough and Itoyatan.

Opechancanough (c. 1554-1646)

One of the Canniest Resistance Leaders in Colonial America

Abducted by the Spanish as a youth in 1561 and brought to live in King Phillip II’s court in Madrid, Opechancanough returned nine years later to become a powerful resistance leader against colonial forces. After the Spanish converted him to Catholicism and baptized him under a new name, “Don Luís de Velasco,” they returned him to Virginia to convert his people. Instead, Opechancanough retaliated, killing eight Jesuit priests with an Indian war party, effectively squashing Spanish colonial ambitions in the region. Decades later, he helped coordinate an attack on the Jamestown colony that nearly drove out the English as well, killing approximately 350 settlers, burning houses and slaughtering livestock. Yet the colonists continued arriving, and the leader struck again, killing approximately 500 settlers in the mid-1640s. Reaching nearly 100 years old, he died when a guard shot him in the back.

Po'Pay (c.1630-1692)

Tewa Pueblo

Coordinated Successful Pueblo Revolt to Drive Out Spanish Oppressors

Born in what would become present-day New Mexico, Po’Pa y (translation: “Ripe Squash”) orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 , successfully driving out Spanish conquistadors who had enslaved local Indigenous people and outlawed their traditions and spiritual practices. After Po’Pay and 46 other leaders were jailed, flogged (and some executed) for “sorcery,” they planned in secret for four years to oust their oppressors. To coordinate the two dozen different Pueblo communities speaking six different languages and spread over 400 miles, Po’Pay devised a communication system involving coded messages in knotted ropes carried by special runners. During the uprising, Pueblo rebels captured horses, cut off water supplies and set fire to Catholic churches, ultimately killing about 400 Spanish and several dozen priests, The revolt succeeded in driving the Spanish from the region for 12 years, allowing Pueblo people to restore threatened traditions. 

Col. Louis Cook, a.k.a. Atiatoharongwen (c. 1740-1814)

Mohawk, Abenaki 

Highest Ranking Native American Officer in the Revolution

Fluent in French, English and Mohawk—and talented as an opera singer— Cook became renowned as a warrior. As various European colonial forces battled for North American territory, he fought first for the French and then offered his services to General George Washington in 1775, going on to command the Indian Rangers and help defeat the British near Saratoga. His 1779 commission as a lieutenant colonel made him not only the highest-ranking Indigenous officer in the Continental Army, but—because his father was of African descent—the only known Black officer as well. 

Tecumseh (1768-1813)

Rallied Tribes Together Against White Settlers

A staunch opponent to the encroachment of white settlers and a renowned orator, Tecumseh (birth name: “Shooting Star”) worked to unite Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region and beyond to collectively defend Native lands and cultures. As a leader whose father and brother were killed by American forces, he fought many battles against the U.S. military, defeating General Arthur St. Clair’s forces at the Battle of Wabash in 1791. He and his brother Tenskwatawa founded the community of Prophetstown in what is now Indiana, as a base for their confederacy; future president William Henry Harrison led a U.S. force to destroy it in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe . During the War of 1812 , Tecumseh sided with the British in hopes of slowing westward expansion.  

John Ross (1790-1866)

Tried to Stop the Trail of Tears

John Ross , principal chief and national council president of the Cherokee, devoted his life to resisting the U.S. government seizure of his people’s land. Born to a Scottish father and Cherokee mother and educated in a white school, he straddled both worlds, helping draft a constitution and start a tribal newspaper. After rival Cherokee leaders signed a fraudulent treaty giving away ancestral homelands, Ross fought Washington for two years against his people’s removal, being imprisoned in the process. President Andrew Jackson refused his petitions, leading to the brutal forced migration known as the Trail of Tears ; thousands died, including Ross’ wife. He served as chief of the new United Cherokee Nation for the remainder of his life, continuing to fight for his people’s needs in Washington actively.

Osceola (c. 1804-1838)

Fought to Protect Seminole Florida Homelands

Though not a formal chief, Osceola (“Black Drink Singer”) earned recognition as a prominent military tactician and leader who opposed the Treaty of Payne’s Landing, which sought to remove Seminole from their ancestral Florida lands. Believed to have been born to a Creek mother, Osceola led warriors from his adopted Seminole tribe into the Everglades, where they fought back against the U.S. government and provided refuge for tribal people who didn’t wish to leave, as well as escaped slaves. Eventually, Osceola was captured and imprisoned at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, where he died in 1838. 

Pi'tamaka / Running Eagle (died c. 1878)

Blackfeet Nation 

Renowned Hunter and Warrior

Growing up, young Pi'tamaka (“Brown Weasel Woman”) preferred the activities of Native males and asked her father to teach her to hunt and fight. On one occasion, she risked her life to rescue him when he fell from his horse during an enemy attack. After he was killed by an enemy war party during a buffalo hunt, she assumed a leadership role, protecting horses from raiders and fighting many battles, including against the Crow. Chief Lone Walker gave her the name Running Eagle, an honor usually given to male warriors. She died in 1878 in a battle with Flathead warriors. Pitamakan Lake in Glacier National Park bears her name. 

Manuelito (c. 1818 -1893)

Navajo / Dine’

Navajo Warrior and Resistance Leader

A leader of the Dine’ (Navajo) people, Manuelito led significant resistance to the U.S. government's efforts to relocate them to the arid Bosque Redondo reservation south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. After army troops destroyed tribal homes, crops and livestock, some two-thirds of the Navajo surrendered, undergoing the Long Walk of 1864 , a brutal forced march to the reservation. Manuelito and thousands of other Dine’ refused to surrender, withdrawing into the mountains and becoming guerrilla fighters. But after U.S. Army Colonel Kit Carson led the destruction of their food sources, Manuelito surrendered. He eventually traveled to Washington and successfully petitioned for a new Navajo reservation sited on original tribal lands. 

Red Cloud (1822-1909)

Oglala Lakota

First Indian in the West to Win a War Against the US 

A fearless warrior and raider in his youth, Red Cloud became a formidable opponent to the U.S. military in the Upper Plains—especially after the discovery of gold in Montana accelerated the influx of miners and other migrants, threatening the buffalo population and crucial Lakota hunting grounds. The fierce battles that ensued between Native warriors and the U.S. military in the years directly after the Civil War became known as Red Cloud’s War. In December of 1866, he led the Fetterman Massacre , a surprise attack on U.S. forces that killed more than 80 U.S. soldiers; it was the largest victory for Native Americans in the Plains prior to the Battle of Little Bighorn. After 1870, Red Cloud became a diplomat for his people, visiting Washington, D.C., repeatedly—and twice meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant .   

Geronimo (1829-1909)

Chiricahua Apache

Last Indian Leader to Formally Surrender

A renowned Apache leader and medicine man, Geronim o (birth name: “One Who Yawns”) was the last Native American leader to formally surrender to the U.S. military. He devoted his life to avenging his murdered family and fearlessly fighting all government efforts to herd his people off their ancestral Southwest lands and onto reservations—whether by treaty or military force. A skilled guerrilla warrior, Geronimo led his followers repeatedly to escape San Carlos Reservation. After dodging more than 8,000 soldiers during their final escape, they were caught on September 4, 1886. Geronimo spent his last two decades as a prisoner of war.

Sitting Bull (c.1831-1890)

Teton Dakota

Defeated Custer at Little Bighorn

One of the most famous Native Americans of the 19th century, Sitting Bul l united the Sioux tribes of the Great Plains against white settlers encroaching on their territory. A great warrior chief who joined his first war party at age 14, Sitting Bull fought many battles against the U.S. military in the Great Sioux Wars, culminating with the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer at the infamous Battle of the Little Bighorn . In 1885, Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show , gaining national renown. But U.S. officials, fearing he might be leading an uprising, sent Indian police to arrest him. He died while resisting. 

Queen Lili'uokalani (1838-1917)

Native Hawaiian 

First Woman to Rule Hawaii

Lili'uokalani , the first woman to rule Hawaii—and the archipelago’s last monarch—was a gifted musical composer who authored “Aloha Oe,” a national anthem for Hawaii. After succeeding her brother on the throne in 1891, she fought to restore Native Hawaiian sovereignty after white landowners had forced him at gunpoint to cede political power in what came to be known as the Bayonet Constitution. When Lili'uokalani pushed to restore the original Hawaiian constitution, those sugar and pineapple barons, with the help of a U.S. minister and a contingent of Marines, staged a coup, deposing her . For five years, she petitioned President Grover Cleveland and Congress for reinstatement. After a failed rebellion aimed at restoring the monarchy, Lili'uokalani was arrested, and sentenced to five years of hard prison labor. She was pardoned in 1896; the U.S. officially annexed Hawaii as a territory two years later.  

Lozen (c. 1840-1889)

Chihenne Apache

Warrior Sometimes Referred to as the Apache Joan of Arc

Victorio, a Chihenne Apache chief, once said of his warrior sister, " Lozen is my right hand…strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people.” Helping lead the fight against European invaders and forced relocation to horrible conditions in the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, Lozen rode and fought fiercely alongside her brother for decades. After his death , she supported Geronimo in the last campaign of the Apache Wars.

Chief Joseph (1840-1904)

Led His People on a Daring Escape

Hailed as a great war leader during the Nez Perce War of 1877, Chief Joseph (“Thunder Rolling Down From the Mountains”) actually made his mark more as a diplomat and peacemaker. After leading forceful dissent against a dubious U.S. government treaty requiring his Nez Perce band to leave their fertile homelands in the Pacific Northwest, he finally consented to migrate rather than be attacked. But instead of leading his people to their assigned reservation, he guided hundreds on a daring escape toward Canada, outmaneuvering the pursuing troops for more than 1,600 miles, all the while taking care to protect the women, children and elders. Forced to surrender 40 miles from the border, he never stopped fighting for his people’s return to their ancestral lands.

Zitkala-Ša / Red Bird (1876-1938)

Yankton Sioux

Influential Activist for Women’s and Indian Rights

Influential writer, musician and activist Zitkala-Ša (a.k.a. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) advocated for both women’s suffrage and Indigenous rights. Educated at a Quaker-run Indian boarding school, Earlham College and the New England Conservatory of Music, she published essays in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Weekly and taught briefly at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School , but soon quit to write and agitate. Her works American Indian Stories and Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians described the horrors of Indian boarding schools and recounted U.S. government corruption in running the reservation system. In 1924, in part due to Zitkala-Ša’s efforts, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act . In 1926, she and her husband formed the National Council of American Indians, and she traveled the country advocating for Native suffrage and self-determination. 

American Indian Movement (AIM) (1968-present)

Varied tribal affiliations

1960s/70s Activists Who Led High-Profile Protests

In 1968, inspired in part by the civil rights movement , Native American community leaders founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) to bring renewed attention to the a history of oppression faced by Indigenous people, as well as ongoing issues of broken treaties, discrimination, poverty and inadequate housing, healthcare and job opportunities Led by notable activists including Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means, AIM organized or participated in highly publicized protests, including the occupations of Alcatraz Island and Mount Rushmore , a takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and The Longest Walk , where Native American protesters from over 100 Indian communities walked 8,200 miles across the country in protest to a lifetime of injustice. The FBI and CIA targeted the movement, leading to a violent standoff at the community of Wounded Knee , South Dakota, in 1973.

WARN: Women of All Red Nations (1974-present)

Women-Run Indigenous Activist and Advocacy Organization

Formed in 1974 as a way to supplement the activism of AIM (the American Indian Movement), Women of All Red Nations was the brainchild of women leaders including Lorelei DeCora Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Phyllis Young and Janet McCloud. In the 1970s, since many of the (mostly male) leaders from the American Indian Movement had been imprisoned, killed or were under the U.S. government’s surveillance, WARN leaders worked to fill the gaps left behind by AIM. WARN spotlighted issues including racist education, environmental contamination and, in particular, the forced sterilizations of Native women in the 1960s and ’70s. The organization is credited for federal regulations on medical sterilization practices in the United States.

Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010)

Cherokee Nation

First Woman Chief of a Major Tribal Nation

When Wilma Mankiller took on the role of principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985, she became the first woman ever to head a major Native American tribe. Growing up without power or running water, Mankiller later served as the director of the Oakland Native American Youth Center and even collaborated with members of the Black Panther Party. As chief of the Cherokee Nation, she revolutionized Indian policy by using tribal members as contractors. She served for a decade, making strides in areas like decreased infant mortality, higher education achievement and improved community infrastructure. Recognizing her efforts in self-determination, President Bill Clinton awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. In 2022, the U.S. Mint minted a quarter featuring her image.

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11 Native American Writers that You Should be Reading

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1. N. Scott Momaday

A writer, teacher, artist, and storyteller, N. Scott Momaday is one of the most celebrated Native American writers of the past century. His novel, House Made of Dawn , is widely credited with helping Native American writers break into the mainstream and won Momaday the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Since then, he has published several more novels, collections of short stories, plays, and poems and has been honored with numerous awards, including a National Medal of Arts and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. He was also made Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.

2. Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie is one of the best known Native American writers today. He has authored several novels and collections of poetry and short stories, a number of which have garnered him prestigious awards, including a National Book Award. In his work, Alexie draws on his experiences growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation, addressing sometimes difficult themes like despair, poverty, alcoholism, and Native American identity with humor and compassion. As a result, no survey of Native American literature is complete without Alexie’s work.

3. Louise Erdrich

During her long literary career, Louise Erdrich has produced thirteen novels, as well as books of poetry, short stories, children's books, and a memoir. Her first novel Love Medicine won her the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984, and would set the stage for her later work, The Plague of Doves , which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Erdrich’s work centers on Native American characters, but draws on the literary methods and narrative style pioneered by William Faulkner.

4. Leslie Marmon Silko

A key figure in the first wave of the “Native American Renaissance” (a term fraught with controversy, but that’s another discussion), Silko is an accomplished writer who has been the recipient of MacArthur Foundation Grants and a lifetime achievement award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Her most well-known work is the novel Ceremony , in which she draws on her Laguna heritage to tell the story of a WWII veteran returning home from the war to his poverty-stricken reservation. She has written numerous novels, short stories, and poems in the years since, and remains a powerful figure in American literature.

5. James Welch

Considered one of the founding authors in the Native American Renaissance, Welch was one of the best-known and respected Native American authors during his lifetime. The author of five novels, his work Fools Crow won an American Book Award in 1986 and Winter in the Blood has been named as an inspirational work by many other authors. Welch also published works of non-fiction and poetry, and even won an Emmy for the documentary he penned with Paul Stekler called Last Stand at Little Bighorn .

6. Janet Campbell Hale

Growing up on reservations helped inspire some of the work of this writer and professor, and she honed her gift for the written word at UC Berkeley while earning her M.A. in English. Her novel The Jailing of Cecelia Capture was nominated for a Pulitzer and is perhaps her best-known work, though her Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter is a close runner up, earning her the American Book Award. Both novels, one fiction and one non-fiction, are essential reads for anyone trying to understand the modern Native American experience.

7. Barney Bush

Bush is an author, creative writing professor, and musician. During the 1960s, Bush was a well-known activist in the American Indian Movement, protesting, organizing, and writing to bring attention to Indian issues. Yet Bush is best known for his poetry, much of which is musical and spoken. His poems touch on themes like identity, cultural conflict, social struggle, and the disintegration of traditional values, and can be found in both recorded and written forms.

8. Charles Eastman

This list wouldn’t be a complete list without including Eastman, whose early works on Native American history helped to redefine how Americans looked at the past. Eastman was the first author to address American history from a native point of view, writing a number of books that detailed his own past as well as Native American culture and history. Must-reads include Deep Woods to Civilization and The Indian Today: The Past and Future of the First American .

9. Qwo-Li Driskill

Cherokee poet, scholar, and activist Qwo-Li Driskill was raised in rural Colorado. Driskill earned a BA from the University of Northern Colorado, an MA from Antioch University Seattle, and a PhD from Michigan State University. Driskill’s poetry engages themes of inheritance and healing, and is rooted in personal Cherokee Two-Spirit, queer, and mixed-race experience. Walking with Ghosts (2005), Driskill’s first poetry collection, was named Book of the Month by Sable: The LitMag for New Writing and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

10. Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing. Her poetry inhabits landscapes—the Southwest, Southeast, but also Alaska and Hawaii—and centers around the need for remembrance and transcendence. Her work is often autobiographical, informed by the natural world, and above all preoccupied with survival and the limitations of language.

11. Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017), which is a finalist for the National Book Awards. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and is poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond , was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry.

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10 Native North American Women Writers to Read This Fall

Anne Mai Yee Jansen

Anne Mai Yee Jansen is a literature and ethnic studies professor and a lifelong story addict. She exists on a steady diet of books and hot chocolate, with a heaping side of travel whenever possible. Originally hailing from the sun and sandstone of southern California, she currently resides with her partner, offspring, and feline companion in the sleepy mountains of western North Carolina.

View All posts by Anne Mai Yee Jansen

In the U.S., today marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and National Native American Heritage Month is just around the corner. At the same time, the mainstream is finally starting to pay attention to the disproportionate impact of violence on Native women, girls, and two spirit people. With these dates and the #MMIWG2 movement in mind, there’s no time like the present to pick up a book (or 20) by some of the amazing Indigenous women writers on the scene today. These women are creating art that has far-reaching implications for everyone, Native or otherwise. Whether they’re writing about gendered issues, settler colonialism, the environment, or mental health, their works offer important insights into contemporary Indigeneity. Also, they’re frankly amazing. So in the spirit of decolonizing your bookshelves , here are ten contemporary books by Native North American women writers for you to check out.

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

Where better to start than with Mvskoke (Creek) writer, musician, and activist Joy Harjo? She’s the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate and the first ever Native American to hold that title. Her latest collection, An American Sunrise , was published last fall. It’s a moving personal and political reckoning of settler colonialism in the United States. And yet, the collection is full of music, infused by the jazzy quality of Harjo’s poetry. In a nutshell, this book is an ambitious and fierce meditation on place and nation.

Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is the first enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to publish a novel. Even As We Breathe is a historical novel that tells the story of a young Cherokee man who leaves home to work at a resort hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains during WWII. Unfortunately, shortly after his arrival he finds himself entangled in a fight to prove his innocence for a crime he didn’t commit. Not only does Clapsaddle tell a darn good story, but she does so in a way that feels conversational and intimate. Needless to say, it’s an immensely engaging read.

A History of Kindness by Linda Hogan

Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan has been publishing since the late 1970s. Although she’s primarily a poet, Hogan has also written essays, novels, and a memoir. Her latest poetry collection, A History of Kindness , was released this June and centers the global environmental crisis of the contemporary moment. There’s something calm and steadying about Hogan’s poetry. In other words, her writing is accessible and complex all at once. With that in mind, if you prefer prose, try her novel People of the Whale . It’s a captivating story of trauma, war, and survival. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with anything Hogan’s written.

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah Miranda

Deborah Miranda’s (Chumash/Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen) mixed-genre book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir takes on colonial histories in California. Miranda locates Native women’s voices in the archives, exhuming them from anthropological documents and newspapers so their words can accompany hers in this robust rejection of dominant narratives of Native absence. The book includes poems, photographs, and other archival documents. At times playful, at other times tender, Bad Indians is a powerful read.

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

Whereas , the first collection by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, is a brilliant and thought-provoking work that takes on legislative legacies governing Native Americans. The book takes its title from the language of treaties and other government proclamations. As such, Long Soldier deconstructs language and policy alike, turning them inside out in this formally innovative and critically important book. This one will give your brain a workout—and it’s totally worth it!

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Mojave poet Natalie Diaz made a big splash with her first poetry collection in 2012. She published her second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem , earlier this year. Intense and poignant, Diaz’s collection overwrites narratives of erasure in powerful ways. She incorporates everything from statistics to hip hop lyrics into her poetry. Consequently, her style is easy to connect with even as she wrestles with everything from the personal to the political.

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

Terese Marie Mailhot’s (Seabird Island First Nation) memoir, Heart Berries , attracted a lot of attention two years ago. In fact, critics lauded it as not only a blazingly raw depiction of mental health issues, but also one book in a movement that signaled the beginning of a New Native American Renaissance . Deeply personal, Heart Berries is rendered with a sense of urgency. Mailhot’s essays explore her early years alongside her adult struggles with PTSD and bipolar disorder. This book might break your heart a little bit, but you’ll feel stronger because of it.

Savage Conversations by LeAnne Howe

Choctaw writer and scholar LeAnne Howe has published poetry, novels, stories, essays, and scholarship. Her most recent work, Savage Conversations , is a fascinating play that brings together two historical events: Mary Todd Lincoln’s 1875 institutionalization and Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 order that resulted in the largest mass execution in the U.S. In this slim volume, Mary Todd Lincoln experiences a recurring haunting that forces readers to face the skeletons in the U.S.’s closet.

This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

First Nations (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) writer, artist, and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes groundbreaking and thought-provoking works. Her second short story collection, This Accident of Being Lost, is my personal favorite. Both beautiful and unconventional, this book doesn’t pull any punches. Indeed, it’s sharp where both wit and commentary are concerned. As a result, it’ll leave you with a lot to think about. Incidentally, Simpson released her latest book, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies , in September.

Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline

Métis writer and activist Cherie Dimaline has a new book, Empire of Wild , that I’d loosely characterize as part monster story and part myth. It’s about love and loss and fighting for what’s yours. This book is a wild ride, that’s for sure! Of course, I’m a huge sci-fi fan so I also have to mention her 2017 book The Marrow Thieves , a chilling YA dystopia in which most humans have lost their ability to dream but find a “cure” in the marrow of Indigenous peoples’ bones. Whichever book you pick up, Dimaline doesn’t disappoint.

Want more suggestions for Native-authored books? Check out these posts:

Read Harder: A Book in Any Genre Written by A Native, First Nations, or Indigenous Author

Native American Poets You Need to Read Right Now

6 New Novels by Indigenous Authors of the U.S.

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• “Shoshone Love Song” a Native American Song For a considerable amount of time, this masterpiece was neglected yet in the twentieth century the tide turned, and this work of art began to attract the attention of many musicians, and poets.
• Native American Identity in ‘Smoke Signals’ Native American identity is represented by the differences between Victor and Thomas and the attempts of each to turn the other into an Indian. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Comparison Between Native American Religions and African Religions Additionally, in the African religions, the initiation and the rites of passage ceremonies were also used to bring mature individuals to the spiritual world.
• How the French, Spanish and British Dealt With Native Americans The settlers were mainly made of French, British, and the Spanish who interacted differently with the natives depending on their primary mission.
• The Circle of Life: Belief of Native Americans He shows the weakest and frailest infants being at the base of the hill while the oldest were on the top.
• Native American’s Journal Entries in 1875-1934 We had initially moved from the North East heading towards the Southwest because of the mounting hostility between our tribe and the vicious Ojibwa, who were lucky to have guns as weapons, thanks to the […]
• Native Americans in the United States Having analyzed the great history of American people, its great cultural heritage and peculiarities of its development it is possible to conclude that there are some main characteristics which give America its identity.
• “Summer Rain” and “Rainbow”: Comparing of the Poems of Native American Poetry It is probably done to encourage the audience to think about the superiority and grandeur of the Universe and show humanity the importance of a respectful attitude toward it.
• Native American Visual Arts In particular, the paper discusses the richness of Native American art that depicts various aspects of the history and the culture of indigenous people.
• Native American Studies: Iroquois Creation Legend Much of what we know of ancient culture is brought to us in the form of stories, either the stories of the descendants or the stories of the conquering outsiders.
• Psychoeducation Group for Trauma in the Native American Population To summarize, in terms of the population’s fundamental demographics, it can be stated that Native Americans constitute a disadvantaged group due to the ongoing issues with their social, political, and health.
• Native Americans’ Health and Discriminatory Practices The latter especially included the Blood Quantum Act, which was drafted by the federal authorities of the thirteen colonies to limit the ability of Native Indians to obtain citizenship.
• Causes and Consequences of Native American Migration The major cause of the migration of the Native Americans stemmed from the great immigration of European colonialists.”European colonization forced thousands of Native Americans to migrate from their settlements to other parts of America”.
• Adolescent Middle-Class Native Americans The discussion of the ethnicity was quite eye-opening the adolescents noted that they were proud of being Native Americans and were ready to reveal and emphasize their cultural heritage.
• Native Americans: Overview of Health Implications Thus, the historical background for the migration of Native Americans affects the group today and has generated challenges that are to be adequately addressed.
• Treatment of Native Americans and Its Causes The main thesis is that the expansionist mindset of the well-equipped white conquerors was a factor in the hard-line approach to Native Americans.
• Historical Roots of Native Americans’ Repressions It was, far and away, the most meaningful class I have taken, from the modules to the homework and discussions. There is a cozy image for European-born Americans, but it minimizes the tragedy of his […]
• The Integration of Native Americans Through the Prism of American Movies When looking at the topic of Native American integration into society, the best way to define the word “integration” would be to resort to social groups and civilization in general.
• Native Americans’ Socioeconomic Position on Reserves The tribes’ lack of access to water altered their diet and labor habits. The cause was a lack of access to sufficient healthcare, and nutritious food has resulted in a diabetes epidemic.
• Physical and Cultural Genocide Policy Toward Native Americans Thus, the US government pursued a two-pronged policy of physical and cultural genocide toward Native Americans to acquire their lands and, later, to suppress their resistance. The US government planned to civilize the Native Americans […]
• Native Americans in Life of Mature English Colonies Socially, the European colonists made native Americans part of their lives through the interpretation of English and the embrace of kinship ties.
• Native Americans’ Cultural Concerns The core of the problem is not the lack of cultural features but its historical suppression that cannot be covered further and must be addressed.
• Native American Fashion Discussion Native American fashion collections aim to show respect and immortality of the indigenous culture; however, implementing the items in modern life is false memorization.
• Experiences of Native Americans on Reservation Minority Women One of the problems is the fact that the problem of negative attitudes and intolerance, and inequality toward Native women are very rarely discussed in scientific literature. One of the critical aspects in the framework […]
• The Settlers and Native American Tribes Relationship The main issue in their concerns was that there were lands on which Native American tribes lived and which became the target of the settlers.
• Native Americans’ Cultural Characteristics The Native Americans also believe in the sacredness and holiness of nature. The value requires Native Americans to practice non-interference with the affairs of others in the community.
• History of Native American Societies Being highly diverse, Native American culture shaped its representatives’ interactions with colonialists, which ultimately led to the appropriation of Native American culture and the following destruction of Native American people’s lives.
• Native American Resistance History It stipulated the right of the Americans to expand their lands by exterminating the people who lived there and to develop new territories under the leadership of the American government.
• Native American Boarding Schools Discussing the topic of boarding schools for Native Americans further, it is possible to find arguments supporting the practice from the time periods they were established in.
• The Europeans and Native Americans Relationships This series of military conflicts became a significant constituent of the history of interaction between Europeans and Native Americans and demonstrated the power of the concept of conflict partly forming these relationships.
• Native Women in the Times of the Colonial Conquest of the Americas Chapter 5 of the book talks about the condition of native women in the times of the colonial conquest of the Americas.
• Contribution to World War II of Chinese and Native Americans Despite the dire conditions many of them lived in and white Americans’ discrimination against them, they used the war as the opportunity to prove themselves as loyal patriots.
• “The Spirit of Crazy Horse”: Dispelling Myths About Native American Tribe However, the PBS Documentary The Spirit of Crazy Horse effectively dispels such myths, as it unveils the cultural beliefs, traditions, lifestyles, history, and worldview of one Native American tribe the Lakota. The film highlights the […]
• British Slave Trade and Role of Native Americans 3 Although the resistance that Native Americans demonstrated was beyond impressive and inspirational, the strategic advantage of the British colonists defined the outcome, leading to a spike in the British slave trade and the further […]
• Sherman on the Lack of Native American Restaurants Moreover, the centuries of discrimination and abuse led to the isolation of Native Americans and the dissociation with the rest of the country.
• Mary T. Newman’s Native American Pottery In addition, I compared my experience during the virtual attendance to the following issues: the heritage and tradition of Native Americans and the local history and tourism.
• Native Americans: Current Affairs According to Bohrer, the Indian Health Service is responsible for the distribution of the doses in the region, with the organization managing to extend eligibility quicker than the rest of the country and exchange doses […]
• Cherokee Native Americans’ Relocation From Georgia to Tahlequah In brief the Trail of Tears as this relocation is usually referred to, is the US government enforced relocation of the Cherokee Native Americans from their native lands in Georgia to Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
• The Colombian Exchange: Exploration and Effects on Native Americans The Colombian exchange was the name given for the complex movement of goods and diseases between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
• “Native Reactions to the Invasion of America” by James Axtell The Europeans took advantage of the disunity among the native tribes to grab their land and exploit them. The author explains that the Native Americans designed a similar language to the Europeans to communicate with […]
• Native Americans and Religion Therefore, all three explorers of the American continent would have agreed on this particular point and wanted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity.
• American History: Native Americans I agree with Student A that the war was inevitable, and we both refuted a popular argument that the war could have been avoided if the federal government had allowed some states to preserve slavery; […]
• The Way the Federal Government Treated Native Americans A 2009 series of documentaries titled We Shall Remain is dedicated to the history of Native Americans, and its third episode, The Trail of Tears, is particularly about the forced removal of Cherokee from their […]
• The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act NAGPRA is part of the extensive debate in the United States between the Native American community and the archaeological community. Walter Echo-Hawk, who acted as the community’s spokesperson for this case, said, “The time has […]
• Alcoholism in Native Americans Theories suggest that the rate at which alcohol is absorbed in the body of a Native American is different from that of the rest of the U.S.population.
• Life Course Theory in Native Americans The life-course perspective shows that the patterns of crime vary as per individual life due to different attributing factors. The third paradigm is the life perspective criminology with a focus on events in life, transitions […]
• A Native American Girl With a Large Second Degree Burn As part of the follow-up process, the public health nurse had to pay a visit to the family to take care of the wound.
• Native Americans: Boundaries and Organization Native Americans are people from nations that are dependent domestically and these nations are to be found within the boundaries of the United States of America.
• Native-Americans: The Removal from the Mississippi Strip Red Indians were the initial land owners in this region and only welcome white Americans to settle close to them due to their generosity.
• Cultural Geography of Hopi, a Native American Tribe This is a tradition to them and it is done by the Hopi women. The Hopi basketry is a symbolism of tradition connecting the past, present, and future and specifically reflects their religion and agriculture.
• Native Americans and Hawaiians The Native Americans also hold the belief that they are the god’s chosen people, and so they deserve to be first-class citizens.
• Art Native American: Sand Painting This paper aims at giving a brief analysis of the sand painting done by the Native Americans as well as the purpose of the painting.
• Native Americans Before the Arrival of the Europeans The paper will particularly focus on the Aztecs, the Incas, the Pueblo and the Iroquois. These ethic groups include the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Onandagua and the purpose of the […]
• Migrations Stories of the Native Americans In this essay, the similarities in the thematic of the stories, the differences that are present in the stories and the possible reasons for these differences will be examined.
• Effect of Disease on Native Americans As any serious epidemic would do, the birth rate of the natives was heavily reduced, caused by a lack of proper health due to the prevailing diseases especially in the childbearing stage of life.
• Native American Spirituality Visions, dreams, insight and knowledge comprise this world view as well as transcendence of time and space, metamorphosis, and the role non-human. Shamanism has become somewhat of novelty and is prevalent only in many indigenous […]
• Indian Strategies of Native Americans This marked the evolvement of different strategies that were used by the Indians to counterattack the expansion of the American territories.
• The Exploitation of Native Americans through Indian Gaming and Slot Parlors They suggest the need to distinguish among different types of casino and slot parlors activities, both in terms of characteristics of the particular type of casino and slot parlors and characteristics of the particular Native […]
• The Cultural Differentiation Between Native Americans and Euro-Americans In what concerns the historical relations between the Euro-Americans and the Native Americans in the United States, the case is much worse, as multi-culture does not imply considering one culture superior, and thus assimilating the […]
• Jeffersonian vs. Jackson and His Supporters’ View on Native Americans Again his interest was to see the Native Americans’ culture, religious belief, as well as lifestyle integrated into the Western Europe’s culture, which he believed held the key to the prosperity of the United States […]
• Taensa Group: Native American Culture So that the Taensa children can see the important of the education the government in America should initiate change in that they should begin to work on the content of education and not on the […]
• History of Native Americans and First Europeans The Natives were very friendly to the Europeans to the extent that they offered a lot of support in terms of food and transport.
• Native Americans in Anglo-American Nation Building The Natives became resistant and hostile towards the whites, and in the 1830s, the government made a policy to get rid of the Natives.
• The Battle of Fallen Timbers: The U. S. Army Against Native American Indians The lands over the Appalachian Mountains, extending to the Mississippi River was ceded to the United States by Great Britain as part of the treaty which saw the end of the American Revolution.
• Native Americans in Canada Thus, the current paper will compare and analyze the arguments from the book by Bumstead and from the article by Trigger so that to see the actual facts from the history.
• Native Americans History: Trail of Tears Therefore, The Trail of Tears was a battle between the Europeans and Native Americans, often referred to as the American Holocaust because it completely outcast a group of people due to the fact they were […]
• Chesapeake: A Native American Tribe’s Challenges The Chesapeake involves the following lands: Virginia, Maryland, the New Jerseys, and Pennsylvania. In contrast to the Chesapeake, New England’s life was based on religious traditions and values.
• Virginia Colony: English and Native Americans The development of the Virginia colony started with the settlement of Native Americans, this was followed by the establishment of European settlements at Jamestown in 1607 by the English colonist.
• Problem of Racism to Native Americans in Sport The primary reason is that the issue began with a Native American person demanding the change of the name, but the problem was escalated to a national or societal degree.
• Native Peoples of the American Southwest Many of the differences can be attributed to the vast size of the continent where they live relative to the size of the population.
• Native American Culture’s Development History The Hohokam culture was concentrated in the region of the American Southwest and consisted of a cluster of small villages spread across the Gila River banks.
• Native American Culture and Its Development After sovereign tribes were resettled by the US government and the reservations’ boundaries became ultimately fixed, Native Americans were exposed to the influence of the western culture.
• Native American Studies in “We Shall Remain” Series Actually, these are the major cohorts used in the entire play which appears to have been directed to the audience to give some in-depth insights and understanding of the political stand and relationships of the […]
• Native American Population and Federal Policies As the Native populations were unaware of the expedition’s aims in detail, they provided the Corps with the needed information, thus facilitating the next step in federal policies toward Indian populations and the expansion of […]
• Native Americans’ Burial Rituals Additionally, the obscurity of the perspectives awaiting the dead conditioned the formation of the concept of the spiritual world and the growth of rituals used to prepare a person for his/her existence in the new […]
• The Storage of Radioactive Waste on Native American Lands The main issue that is being brought up is a question of the credibility on the part of Angela Smith when she is making her argument against the storage of radioactive waste on Native American […]
• Native Americans’ Evolution in the XIX Century The Corps of Discovery, war, and assimilation policies had the most significant impact on the development of the relationships between Native Americans and the US citizens.
• Native American Imagery Causing Prejudice The concept of the Native people as savages and their implementation in business and commerce creates barriers to the development of the basis for moral respect.
• Native Americans in the US of the 19-20th Centuries In the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of the Native Americans in the United States was approximately 25,000. The political problem that the Native Americans faced was the issue of land.
• Taos Pueblo in Native American Culture and History This practice has been embraced to support the traditional values and aspects of such structures. Such values have therefore been used to define the social aspects of many native groups.
• Native Americans’ History, Farming, Agriculture Nowadays, the task of primary importance is to educate the society and convey the idea that the rich past of the American Indians should be remembered.
• Native Americans and Colonists’ Conflict It is also paramount to understand the fact that Native Americans did not know the meaning of the concept of a nation, and it was one of their weaknesses during the conflict.
• Native Americans History in “Thunder Heart” Movie It should be stated that the historical significance of lands and the population living on it during centuries should not be underestimated and cannot remain underdeveloped notwithstanding the contradicting political views as they might hinder […]
• Counseling Native Americans vs. White Population A counselor should be ready to deal with tribal considerations and diversity in general to offer quality services to the client.
• Native Americans, Colonial Militia, and US Military The Native American Timeline shows how the Native Americans suffered in the hands of both the American colonialists in the 1600s before the country gained independence and in the hands of the United States military […]
• American Protest Literature: Native American Injustices Native American protest literature was mostly characterised by non-fictional stories written in the form of autobiographies, short stories and novels that were authored in response to the American society’s infringement of the Native American people’s […]
• Native Americans Role in World War I Most of the students who went to schools away from the reserves came to the realization that they were, ‘first Americans and then indians second.’3 The schools also taught patriotic songs as well as observation […]
• Blackfoot People in the Native Americans History The presence of the Europeans in the form of traders acts as the origin of the changes experienced by the Blackfoot people. There are numerous ways of revitalizing the Blackfoot culture and language.
• Sacredness of the Native American Religious Groups Religious ceremonies are a reminder of sacred origins and indicate the necessity of harmonious way of life and a balance of the universe.
• Andrew Jackson’s Policies Toward Native Americans He was the seventh president of the United States and a core founder of the Democratic Party. The law supported for the resettlement of Native Americans on the west of Mississippi River in Indian Territory.
• Europeans and Natives in British and Spanish America As a result, the exploitation and enslavement of the American Indians was the characteristic features of the relations between the Spanish and American natives.
• The Native Americans and Immigrants Lives Summary of the Article This article explains why the process of transplantation continued to affect the lives of both the Native Americans and immigrants.
• The Settlers and the Native Americans Relationships Following the discovery of the continents of North and South Americas, the accounts and chronicles by the men who discovered the New World amazed the Europeans of the 16th and 17th centuries.
• The Main Persons in Native American History During the early 16th century, he sailed to the Dominican Republic and to Cuba, where he reinforced the effort of the Spaniards to conquer the two areas.
• Native American Indian Arrowheads The method used in identifying the arrowheads involved observing the shape of the base, the style used in flaking, and the material used to make the arrowhead.
• The Lived Experiences of Native American Indian Women Parenting off the Reservation On the same note, the study will try to bring determine the attitudes and perceptions that women have with regards to raising their children on and off the reservations.
• Racism Against Native Americans He uses a number of racial and cultural abuses that are used in a derogatory way to refer to people of other cultures, races, sexual orientation and religious affiliations to make the point that the […]
• Native American Multicultural Literature When the old medicine man recognizes that he fails in his attempt to cure him, he attributes his failure to the coming of the white man.
• Stereotypes of Native Americans in Film From the beginning of the Film industry to the end of the Second World War, all the scenes in films revolved around the negative perceptions that the Europeans had on the Native Americans.
• European Colonization Impacts on the Native American Population An examination of various historical accounts from the 15th to 19th century show that the Native American population was adversely affected by the arrival of European settlers due to various conflicts that arose and the […]
• Native Americans: Social Issue In addition, the references of the natives by the mainstream society have led to the under development and have prevented the evolution of the Indian Americans.
• Native American Culture and American Indians However, the history of the USA has come through the colonization and many people who now inhabit the continent are not the Native Americans.
• Native Americans and the Federal Government The worsening of ties between Native Americans and the Federal Government: a review of related literature The worsening of the ties between the federal government and Native Americans can be traced back to the colonization […]
• The Native Americans: Origin, Society and Culture In addition, we see that the Chumash Elders and young Apprentices pays tribute to the composer and recorder of the notes as symbolic of a traditional tool for passing on language and culture to the […]
• Violence Against Native American Women The goal of this paper is to examine the factors contributing to gender violence against Native American women and the response of their religious and spiritual traditions.
• Native Americans Transition From Freedom to Isolation From the arguments of many anthropologists and archeologist, the first people to arrive in America most probably arrived during the last ice age period of about 20,000-30,000 years ago when they used the bridge at […]
• Native American Mascots and Nicknames in Sports The use of the term Washington Redskins has brought many controversies, with majority of people particularly the Native American groups and the United States government arguing that the term “redskin” should be withdrawn from the […]
• Rivalry Between the Europeans and Native Americans The protracted rivalry that existed between the two cultures was indeed beneficial to the Native Americans bearing in mind that they had a tendency of supporting the opponents of the Europeans in return for unilateral […]
• The Native Americans and the Euro Americans The entry of the colonialists into Native America was the beginning of the suffering of the Native Americans. However, the situation changes in 1812 when the policy of assimilation of the native lands was no […]
• The Relationship Between Native Americans and Christians In the two stories, the writers have discussed the topic in a way that leaves no doubt as to the nature of the relationship between Christianity and Native Americans.
• Native American Stories of Early American Settlers He believed that the loss of land was a great evil to the Native Americans. They also drew parallels between their own religion and that of the European settlers.
• Decentering of the Native American Culture During this era, they craved to have their culture intact and untainted by the white settlers way of life as depicted in the performance of Lakota Ghost Dance, which was a performative cultural and religious […]
• Themes in Native American Tricksters Whether the character is the wizened old man Coyote of the Crow tribes, Raven in the Indian lore or even Wakdjunkaga of the Winnebago, the narratives seems to be written from the same script.
• Native Americans and Colonization The disregard of the human rights of the Native Americans by the Whites put in place the foundation for racism, prejudice, and discrimination for all the Native Americans for decades in the future.
• Native American Spiritualism They all believe in the existence of God and that the soul continues to exist in the world of the living dead, that every one will carry his own cross and that even after death […]
• Overview of the Native American Culture Apart from the high standards of quality attained from products of Native American art, the contemporary artists working in literary fields is a source of pride Survival According to Belgrad, the American Indian is branded […]
• Historical US Relationships With Native American The Native Americans mostly reside on western states, south, and the mid West; this distribution reveals the outcomes of the historical pattern of settlement and relocation of the American Indians to the western and southern […]
• The History of California: Native Americans and Chumash Beliefs Though some of the documents were not originally from that period, the fact that they covered the period and they were later used as the prime sources of information qualifies them to be primary sources […]
• Through Women’s Eye: Native American Women Changing Experiences This essay shall discuss the prominent factors that affected views and social values of Native American Women in the late nineteenth century, variation of White and Native American women, boarding school experiences of Native American, […]
• History of Native Americans in Mississippi According to Baca, the Native American Indian groups of Choctaw and Chickasaw were the most populous; the southern and central parts of the present Mississippi were occupied by Choctaw native group while the northern part […]
• Native Americans: The Sad Aftereffect of Decentering Sayre provides the idea of decentering as the reason for the Native American culture to come to decay and finally dissolve in the melting pot of the Europeans coming to the continent and taking control […]
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• Native American’s Discrimination and Disenfranchisement
• Historical Challenges That Native American Women Have Faced
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• Native American Slavery and Its Impact on American History
• Essential Native American Historical Dates
• Life for American Women and Native American Woman
• Politics and the Reduction of Native American Land
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• Language Loss: Native American Languages
• Native American Civilization Before Columbus
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• Did Westward Expansion Affect Native American Life
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• Cleansing and Forced Relocation of Native American Nations
• The Underlying Motivation for European/Native American Interaction
• African and Native American Influence in America
• Native American Culture and Way of Life Decimation
• Five Reasons for Traditional Native American Resistance to Acculturation
• Native American Culture and Their Non-Verbal Communication
• Gender Roles and Sexuality in the Cultural Beliefs of the Native American Tribes
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• What Were the Consequences of the Introduction of Special Education for Native American Girls?
• How Many Native Americans Were Killed for Their Land?
• What Was the Impact of Western Settlement on the Native American Population in History?
• Did the United States Influence Native American Culture?
• What Was Native American Society Like Before Contact with Europeans?
• How Much Money Does the US Government Give to Native American Tribes?
• What Are the Hidden Similarities Between Native American Literature and Modern Literature?
• How Have Native Americans Worked to Preserve Their Culture?
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• What Are the Challenges and Benefits of Being Native American?
• How Did Native Americans Contribute to Medicine?
• What Were the 4 Main Causes of the Decline of the Native American Population?
• Did the United States Protect the Rights of Native Americans?
• What Stereotypical Images and Attributes Are Associated with Native American Culture?
• How Many Native American Tribes Were There Before Europeans?
• What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of Native American Women in Their Spiritual Society?
• Are Native American Religious and Cultural Practices Effective in Preserving the Environment?
• What Disease Was the Key Factor in the Depopulation of Native Americans in the Americas?
• How Much Do Native Americans Get Paid a Month in Minnesota?
• What Is the Difference Between Western Medicine and Native American Medicine?
• Is the Decolonization History of Native American Ethnography Important?
• What Are the Most Common Themes Found in Native American Literature?
• How Might Manifest Destiny Later Affect US Relations with Native Americans?
• What Are the Characteristics of Early Native American Literature?
• Is There a Chance for a Native American Revival in the 21st Century?
• What Are the Values and Morals in Native American Myths and Tales?
• How Did Native Americans Treat the Environment?
• What Is the Biggest Problem Facing Native Americans Today?
• How Did Contact with Europeans Change Native American Societies?
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/native-american-essay-topics/

"191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/native-american-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/native-american-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/native-american-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "191 Native American Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/native-american-essay-topics/.

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The Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books , Literature | November 15th, 2012 3 Comments

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for  The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry . Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for  Pub­lish­ers Week­ly :  “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.”  To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays , as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

• James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here .)
• Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here .)
• Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here .)
• John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
• Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
• Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
• Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here .)
• Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
• Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here .)
• David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here  in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his  arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly .

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

by Mike Springer | Permalink | Comments (3) |

Related posts:

Comments (3), 3 comments so far.

Check out Michael Ven­tu­ra’s HEAR THAT LONG SNAKE MOAN: The VooDoo Ori­gins of Rock n’ Roll

Wow I think there’s oth­er greater ones out there. Just need to find them.

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The Top 10 Essays Since 1950

Robert Atwan, the founder of The Best American Essays series, picks the 10 best essays of the postwar period. Links to the essays are provided when available.

Fortunately, when I worked with Joyce Carol Oates on The Best American Essays of the Century (that’s the last century, by the way), we weren’t restricted to ten selections. So to make my list of the top ten essays since 1950 less impossible, I decided to exclude all the great examples of New Journalism--Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr, and many others can be reserved for another list. I also decided to include only American writers, so such outstanding English-language essayists as Chris Arthur and Tim Robinson are missing, though they have appeared in The Best American Essays series. And I selected essays , not essayists . A list of the top ten essayists since 1950 would feature some different writers.

To my mind, the best essays are deeply personal (that doesn’t necessarily mean autobiographical) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demonstrate a mind in process--reflecting, trying-out, essaying.

James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son" (originally appeared in Harper’s , 1955)

“I had never thought of myself as an essayist,” wrote James Baldwin, who was finishing his novel Giovanni’s Room while he worked on what would become one of the great American essays. Against a violent historical background, Baldwin recalls his deeply troubled relationship with his father and explores his growing awareness of himself as a black American. Some today may question the relevance of the essay in our brave new “post-racial” world, though Baldwin considered the essay still relevant in 1984 and, had he lived to see it, the election of Barak Obama may not have changed his mind. However you view the racial politics, the prose is undeniably hypnotic, beautifully modulated and yet full of urgency. Langston Hughes nailed it when he described Baldwin’s “illuminating intensity.” The essay was collected in Notes of a Native Son courageously (at the time) published by Beacon Press in 1955.

Norman Mailer, "The White Negro" (originally appeared in Dissent , 1957)

An essay that packed an enormous wallop at the time may make some of us cringe today with its hyperbolic dialectics and hyperventilated metaphysics. But Mailer’s attempt to define the “hipster”–in what reads in part like a prose version of Ginsberg’s “Howl”–is suddenly relevant again, as new essays keep appearing with a similar definitional purpose, though no one would mistake Mailer’s hipster (“a philosophical psychopath”) for the ones we now find in Mailer’s old Brooklyn neighborhoods. Odd, how terms can bounce back into life with an entirely different set of connotations. What might Mailer call the new hipsters? Squares?

Read the essay here .

Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (originally appeared in Partisan Review , 1964)

Like Mailer’s “White Negro,” Sontag’s groundbreaking essay was an ambitious attempt to define a modern sensibility, in this case “camp,” a word that was then almost exclusively associated with the gay world. I was familiar with it as an undergraduate, hearing it used often by a set of friends, department store window decorators in Manhattan. Before I heard Sontag—thirty-one, glamorous, dressed entirely in black-- read the essay on publication at a Partisan Review gathering, I had simply interpreted “campy” as an exaggerated style or over-the-top behavior. But after Sontag unpacked the concept, with the help of Oscar Wilde, I began to see the cultural world in a different light. “The whole point of camp,” she writes, “is to dethrone the serious.” Her essay, collected in Against Interpretation (1966), is not in itself an example of camp.

John McPhee, "The Search for Marvin Gardens" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1972)

“Go. I roll the dice—a six and a two. Through the air I move my token, the flatiron, to Vermont Avenue, where dog packs range.” And so we move, in this brilliantly conceived essay, from a series of Monopoly games to a decaying Atlantic City, the once renowned resort town that inspired America’s most popular board game. As the games progress and as properties are rapidly snapped up, McPhee juxtaposes the well-known sites on the board—Atlantic Avenue, Park Place—with actual visits to their crumbling locations. He goes to jail, not just in the game but in fact, portraying what life has now become in a city that in better days was a Boardwalk Empire. At essay’s end, he finds the elusive Marvin Gardens. The essay was collected in Pieces of the Frame (1975).

Read the essay here (subscription required).

Joan Didion, "The White Album" (originally appeared in New West , 1979)

Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Black Panthers, a recording session with Jim Morrison and the Doors, the San Francisco State riots, the Manson murders—all of these, and much more, figure prominently in Didion’s brilliant mosaic distillation (or phantasmagoric album) of California life in the late 1960s. Yet despite a cast of characters larger than most Hollywood epics, “The White Album” is a highly personal essay, right down to Didion’s report of her psychiatric tests as an outpatient in a Santa Monica hospital in the summer of 1968. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” the essay famously begins, and as it progresses nervously through cuts and flashes of reportage, with transcripts, interviews, and testimonies, we realize that all of our stories are questionable, “the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.” Portions of the essay appeared in installments in 1968-69 but it wasn’t until 1979 that Didion published the complete essay in New West magazine; it then became the lead essay of her book, The White Album (1979).

Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" (originally appeared in Antaeus , 1982)

In her introduction to The Best American Essays 1988 , Annie Dillard claims that “The essay can do everything a poem can do, and everything a short story can do—everything but fake it.” Her essay “Total Eclipse” easily makes her case for the imaginative power of a genre that is still undervalued as a branch of imaginative literature. “Total Eclipse” has it all—the climactic intensity of short fiction, the interwoven imagery of poetry, and the meditative dynamics of the personal essay: “This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds.” The essay, which first appeared in Antaeus in 1982 was collected in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), a slim volume that ranks among the best essay collections of the past fifty years.

Phillip Lopate, "Against Joie de Vivre" (originally appeared in Ploughshares , 1986)

This is an essay that made me glad I’d started The Best American Essays the year before. I’d been looking for essays that grew out of a vibrant Montaignean spirit—personal essays that were witty, conversational, reflective, confessional, and yet always about something worth discussing. And here was exactly what I’d been looking for. I might have found such writing several decades earlier but in the 80s it was relatively rare; Lopate had found a creative way to insert the old familiar essay into the contemporary world: “Over the years,” Lopate begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” He goes on to dissect in comic yet astute detail the rituals of the modern dinner party. The essay was selected by Gay Talese for The Best American Essays 1987 and collected in Against Joie de Vivre in 1989 .

Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature" (originally appeared in Harper’s, 1988)

“The best essayist of my generation,” is how John Updike described Edward Hoagland, who must be one of the most prolific essayists of our time as well. “Essays,” Hoagland wrote, “are how we speak to one another in print—caroming thoughts not merely in order to convey a certain packet of information, but with a special edge or bounce of personal character in a kind of public letter.” I could easily have selected many other Hoagland essays for this list (such as “The Courage of Turtles”), but I’m especially fond of “Heaven and Nature,” which shows Hoagland at his best, balancing the public and private, the well-crafted general observation with the clinching vivid example. The essay, selected by Geoffrey Wolff for The Best American Essays 1989 and collected in Heart’s Desire (1988), is an unforgettable meditation not so much on suicide as on how we remarkably manage to stay alive.

Jo Ann Beard, "The Fourth State of Matter" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1996)

A question for nonfiction writing students: When writing a true story based on actual events, how does the narrator create dramatic tension when most readers can be expected to know what happens in the end? To see how skillfully this can be done turn to Jo Ann Beard’s astonishing personal story about a graduate student’s murderous rampage on the University of Iowa campus in 1991. “Plasma is the fourth state of matter,” writes Beard, who worked in the U of I’s physics department at the time of the incident, “You’ve got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and there’s your plasma. In outer space there’s the plasmasphere and the plasmapause.” Besides plasma, in this emotion-packed essay you will find entangled in all the tension a lovable, dying collie, invasive squirrels, an estranged husband, the seriously disturbed gunman, and his victims, one of them among the author’s dearest friends. Selected by Ian Frazier for The Best American Essays 1997 , the essay was collected in Beard’s award-winning volume, The Boys of My Youth (1998).

David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" (originally appeared in Gourmet , 2004)

They may at first look like magazine articles—those factually-driven, expansive pieces on the Illinois State Fair, a luxury cruise ship, the adult video awards, or John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign—but once you uncover the disguise and get inside them you are in the midst of essayistic genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s shortest and most essayistic is his “coverage” of the annual Maine Lobster Festival, “Consider the Lobster.” The Festival becomes much more than an occasion to observe “the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker” in action as Wallace poses an uncomfortable question to readers of the upscale food magazine: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” Don’t gloss over the footnotes. Susan Orlean selected the essay for The Best American Essays 2004 and Wallace collected it in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (2005).

Read the essay here . (Note: the electronic version from Gourmet magazine’s archives differs from the essay that appears in The Best American Essays and in his book, Consider the Lobster. )

I wish I could include twenty more essays but these ten in themselves comprise a wonderful and wide-ranging mini-anthology, one that showcases some of the most outstanding literary voices of our time. Readers who’d like to see more of the best essays since 1950 should take a look at The Best American Essays of the Century (2000).

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