Book Reviews

First published in 1970 and long out of print, The Indians Won is a stunning work of speculative fiction that imagines that, following the defeat of Custer and Benteen at the Little Bighorn in 1876, the many Indigenous tribes of America formed...

In the 1860s and 1870s, the United States government forced most western Native Americans to settle on reservations. These ever-shrinking pieces of land were meant to relocate, contain, and separate these Native peoples, isolating them from one another...

Through meticulous research, Hidden Disgrace pierces through the veil of descriptions of Indians as either savages or “Noble Savages” and describes them as real people with both strengths and weaknesses. Likewise, it takes a hard look at the...

Why We Serve commemorates the 2020 opening of the National Native American Veterans Memorial at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the first landmark in Washington, DC, to recognize the bravery and sacrifice of Native veterans...

Dismissed as a “gaudy liar” by most historians and often discredited by writers who deprecated his mixed blood, James Pierson Beckwourth was one of the giants of the early West, certainly deserving to rank alongside Kit Carson, Bill Williams,...

Through the interpretive lens of colonial theory, Jeffrey Ostler presents an original analysis of the tumultuous relationship between the Plains Sioux and the United States in the 1800s. He provides novel insights on well-known aspects of the Sioux...

On December 28, 1894, the day before the fourth anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, Lakota chief Two Sticks was hanged in Deadwood, South Dakota. The headline in the Black Hills Daily Times the next day read “A GOOD...

Indian basketball was born of hard times and hard places, its evolution traceable back to the boarding schools—or “Indian schools”—of the early twentieth century. Davies describes the ways in which the sport, plied as a tool of...

In this poignant collection of oral histories, four Indian elders recount their life stories in their own quiet but uncompromising words. Growing up and living in Minnesota and the Dakotas, Stella Pretty Sounding Flute and Iola Columbus (Dakota) and...

This book presents two of the most important traditions of the Dakota people, the Red Road and the Holy Dance, as told by Samuel Mniyo and Robert Goodvoice, two Dakota men from the Wahpeton Dakota Nation near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada...

This first complete account of the Lakota Indians traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty‑first century. Pekka Hämäläinen explores the Lakota roots as marginal hunter‑gatherers and...

Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella. Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be...

 As a prominent leader of the Sicangu Lakotas during a time of conflict and change, Spotted Tail (1823–1881) left his mark on the Northern Great Plains. He was not a hereditary chief but developed his standing over time, first proving himself...

“Land of Nakoda” is a vivid account of the history, legends, customs, crafts, and ceremonies of the Assiniboine Indians of the northern plains. First published in 1942, it was written and illustrated by tribal members who interviewed the Old...

When a young girl helps tend to her grandmother’s garden, she begins to notice things that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully coloured clothing? Why does she speak another language and spend so much...

Throughout his life, John Johnston was known by several names, including “Crow Killer” and “Liver-Eating Johnson” (without the “t”), names he earned through his penchant for killing Crow Indians before cutting out and...

Begun as a pork-barrel project by the federal government in the early 1900s, the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians quickly became a dumping ground for inconvenient Indians. The federal institution in Canton, South Dakota, deprived many Native...

When Blue Bird and her grandmother leave their family’s camp to gather beans for the long, threatening winter, they inadvertently avoid the horrible fate that befalls the rest of the family. Luckily, the two women are adopted by a nearby Dakota...

Irene and her family live together on Nipissing First Nation, until the day a government agent comes to their door to take Irene and two of her brothers away to live at a residential school, very far from home.  Irene's parents don't want to send...

On August 19, 1854, U.S. Army lieutenant John L. Grattan led a detachment of twenty-nine soldiers and one civilian interpreter to a large Lakota encampment near Fort Laramie to arrest an Indian man accused of killing a Mormon emigrant’s cow. The...

Black Elk (1863-1950), the Lakota holy man, is beloved by millions of readers around the world. The book Black Elk Speaks is the most widely-read Native American testimony of the last century and a key work in our understanding of American...

The determined story of an Ojibwe grandmother (nokomis), Josephine Mandamin, and her great love for nibi (water). Nokomis walks to raise awareness of our need to protect nibi for future generations and for all life on the planet. The walks are full of...

This book was not written for the scholar but was developed for the lover of myths. "In the beginning was Inyan, who had no beginning, for he was there when there was no other, only Hanhepi, the Darkness. Inyan was soft and shapeless, but he was...

The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neeley is a compelling book of Quanah Parker who was born into both the red and white worlds. He was the son of a white captive woman named Cynthia Ann Parker and Comanche Chief Peta...