Culture

When did the federal government's self-appointed, essentially limitless authority over Native America become constitutional?The story they have chosen to tell is wrong. It is time to tell a better story. Thus begins Keith Richotte's playful,...

Lasting nearly two years, the Great Sioux War pitted almost one-third of the U.S. Army against Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyennes. By the time it ended, this grueling war had played out on twenty-seven different battlefields scattered across five...

Little has been done to compile a complete, in-depth oral history of the Battle of the Little Bighorn from the descendants of the Native American and First Nations people who fought there on June 25th, 1876. Until now. With the help and guidance of...

When it was first published in 1928, Luther Standing Bear’s autobiographical account of his tribe and tribesmen was hailed by Van Wyck Brooks as “one of the most engaging an veracious we have ever had.” It remains a landmark in Indian...

When Standing Bear returned to the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation after sixteen year’s absence, his dismay at the condition of his people may well have served as a catalyst for the writing of this book, first published in 1933.  In addition to...

The wild plants in this book tell stories of land, people, and food. As renowned botanist Kelly Kindscher guides us through over one hundred edible plants in this beautiful field guide, we find that foraging has always been an important part of prairie...

In The Education of Clarence Three Stars Philip Burnham tells the life story of the remarkable Packs the Dog, a member of the Minneconjou Lakotas who was born in 1864 east of the Black Hills. His father, Yellow Knife, died when the boy was...

Almost 200 previously unpublished Edward Curtis images of Native Americans of the Great Plains region have now entered the public eye. These tucked-away photographs weren’t initially chosen for Curtis’ 20-volume The North American Indian...

When Europeans came to the Americas centuries ago, too many of them brought racism along with them. Even presidents such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson each had different takes on how to solve the “Indian...

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from...

This unique book sheds new light on Crazy Horse and his people, the Teton Sioux.  It is based on interviews with over thirty elderly Sioux people as well as on years of research in published and unpublished sources.  All of the informants...

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded―increasing 85 percent in just ten years―the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not...

Timothy C. Winegard's The Horse is an epic history unlike any other. Its story begins more than 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe. When one human tamed one horse, an unbreakable bond was forged and the...

As we face an ever-more-fragmented world, What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? demands a return to the force of lineage—to spiritual, social, and ecological connections across time. It sparks a myriad of ageless-yet-urgent questions:...

Northern Plains Native Americans: A Modern Wet Plate Perspective (VOLUME 3) presents a selection from Balkowitsch's photographic project which aims to capture 1000 wet plate portraits of Native Americans over four volumes. Following in the footsteps of...

“The single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States,” Vine Deloria Jr. called it. For the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara communities living on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, the...

Haskell Institute of Lawrence, Kansas, first opened its doors in 1884 to twenty-two Ponca and Ottawa children, sent there to be taught Anglo-Protestant cultural values. For a century and a quarter since that time, this famous boarding school institution...

This is a companion book for the award winning short film “Lost Bird (Zintkala Muni) which also includes lead sheet for the song “Little Bird - Lost Bird of Wounded Knee”. A true story of "found and lost" . . . and found again...

This enriching cookbook celebrates eight important plants Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world: corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao—with more than 100 recipes. When these eight Native American plants...

In The Sacred Wisdom of the Native Americans, Professor Larry J. Zimmerman tells the tragic tale of their conquest and dispossession, followed by their survival against the odds and the renewal of pride in a distinctive cultural heritage. Learn...

Lamesa, Texas, July 1989.  It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison.  They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA - they don’t really count.  Amber’s the...

Ezra Cloud hates living in Northeast Minneapolis. His father is a professor of their language, Ojibwe, at a local college, so they have to be there. But Ezra hates the dirty, polluted snow around them. He hates being away from the rez at...

In the late 1800's, the Ghost Dance religion promised hope and resurrection at a time when Native American nations across America faced destruction.  Misunderstood by authorities, the Ghost Dance sparked atrocious attack on indigenous men, women,...

References to the Indian Wars, those conflicts that accompanied US continental expansion, suffuse American military history. From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation “Geronimo” used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and...