Guides: Native and Indigenous American Studies: Find Books

Library of Congress Subject Headings for Indigenous Studies

The Library of Congress is currently reevaluating their Subject Headings for Native and Indigenous American peoples. Visit this website for more information about initiatives such as the Indigenous Headings Consultant Group and the Reparative Description & Digitization Work Group.

Books

Below is a sample of physical books held by the duPont-Ball Library. See "Where to find Books in the Library" in the left-hand navigation column, or visit the Front Desk of the library for assistance with locating specific titles.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz New York Times Bestseller Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck Recipient of the American Book Award The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples   Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them."   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. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
Call Number: E76.8 .D86 2014
ISBN: 9780807000403
Publication Date: 2014-09-16
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson Now available in paperback, The Earth Shall Weep is a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed history of the Native American peoples. Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures. The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent, from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today. It is a clash that would ultimately result in the reduction of the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to 250,000 over a span of four hundred years, and change the face of the continent forever. A tour de force of narrative history, The Earth Shall Weep is a powerful, moving telling of the story of Native Americans that has become the new standard for future work in the field.
Call Number: E77 .W54 1999
ISBN: 9780871137302
Publication Date: 1999-03-12
Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves. Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S. expansion.  Deeply researched and passionately written, Seeing Red will command attention from readers who are invested in the enduring issues of equality, equity, and national belonging at its core.
Call Number: E99.A35 W57 2022
ISBN: 9781469664842
Publication Date: 2022-02-22
The Cambridge History of Native American Literature by Melanie Benson Taylor (Editor) Native American literature has always been uniquely embattled. It is marked by divergent opinions about what constitutes authenticity, sovereignty, and even literature.  It announces a culture beset by paradox: simultaneously primordial and postmodern; oral and inscribed; outmoded and novel. Its texts are a site of political struggle, shifting to meet external and internal expectations. This Cambridge History endeavors to capture and question the contested character of Indigenous texts and the way they are evaluated. It delineates significant periods of literary and cultural development in four sections: "Traces & Removals" (pre-1870s); "Assimilation and Modernity" (1879-1967); "Native American Renaissance" (post-1960s); and "Visions & Revisions" (21st century). These rubrics highlight how Native literatures have evolved alongside major transitions in federal policy toward the Indian, and via contact with broader cultural phenomena such, as the American Civil Rights movement. There is a balance between a history of canonical authors and traditions, introducing less-studied works and themes, and foregrounding critical discussions, approaches, and controversies.
Call Number: PS153.I52 C365 2020
ISBN: 9781108482059
Publication Date: 2020-09-17
Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel E. Moerman An extraordinary compilation of the plants used by North American native peoples for medicine, food, fiber, dye, and a host of other things. Anthropologist Daniel E. Moerman has devoted 25 years to the task of gathering together the accumulated ethnobotanical knowledge on more than 4000 plants. More than 44,000 uses for these plants by various tribes are documented here. This is undoubtedly the most massive ethnobotanical survey ever undertaken, preserving an enormous store of information for the future.
Call Number: E98 .B7 M66 1998
ISBN: 9780881924534
Publication Date: 1998-08-15
Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art by Karen Kramer Russell (Editor) Public perception of Native American art and culture has often been derived from misunderstandings and misinterpretations, and from images promulgated by popular culture. Typically, Native Americans are grouped as a whole and their art and culture considered part of the past rather than widely present. Shapeshifting challenges these assumptions by focusing on the objects as art rather than cultural or anthropological artifacts and on the multivalent creativity of Native American artists. The approach highlights the inventive contemporaneity that existed in all periods and continues today. More than 75 works in a wide range of media and scale are organized into four thematic groups: changing--expanding the imagination; knowing--expressing worldview; locating--exploring identity and place; and voicing--engaging the individual. The result is a paradigm shift in understanding Native American art. Published in association with the Peabody Essex Museum Exhibition Schedule: Peabody Essex Museum(01/14/12 - 04/29/12) 
Call Number: N6538 .A4 S436 2012
ISBN: 9780300177329
Publication Date: 2012-02-07

eBooks

Below is a sample of eBooks accessible to Stetson students, faculty, and associates through the duPont-Ball Library.

The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature by Scott Atran; Douglas L. Medin An analysis of the cognitive consequences of diminished contact with nature examines the relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it, and how these are affected by cultural differences. Surveys show that our growing concern over protecting the environment is accompanied by a diminishing sense of human contact with nature. Many people have little commonsense knowledge about nature--are unable, for example, to identify local plants and trees or describe how these plants and animals interact. Researchers report dwindling knowledge of nature even in smaller, nonindustrialized societies. In The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature, Scott Atran and Douglas Medin trace the cognitive consequences of this loss of knowledge. Drawing on nearly two decades of cross-cultural and developmental research, they examine the relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it and how these are affected by cultural differences. These studies, which involve a series of targeted comparisons among cultural groups living in the same environment and engaged in the same activities, reveal critical universal aspects of mind as well as equally critical cultural differences. Atran and Medin find that, despite a base of universal processes, the cultural differences in understandings of nature are associated with significant differences in environmental decision making as well as intergroup conflict and stereotyping stemming from these differences. The book includes two intensive case studies, one focusing on agro-forestry among Maya Indians and Spanish speakers in Mexico and Guatemala and the other on resource conflict between Native-American and European-American fishermen in Wisconsin. The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature offers new perspectives on general theories of human categorization, reasoning, decision making, and cognitive development.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780262267410
Publication Date: 2010-01-22
100 Days of Cree by Neal McLeod; Arok Wolvengrey As an Elder once said, "Learn one Cree word a day for 100 days, and emerge a different person." In 100 Days of Cree Neal McLeod offers a portal into another way of understanding the universe--and our place within it--while demonstrating why this funny, vibrant, and sometimes salacious language is "the sexiest" of them all (according to Tomson Highway). Based on a series of Facebook posts, the 100 short chapters or "days" in the book present chains of related words, some dealing with the traditional--the buffalo hunt, the seasons--and others cheekily capturing the detritus of modern life--from internet slang to Johnny Cash songs to Viagra.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780889774308
Publication Date: 2016-06-30
Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation by Brian Swann (Editor) Since Europeans first encountered Native Americans, problems relating to language and text translation have been an issue. Translators needed to create the tools for translation, such as dictionaries, still a difficult undertaking today. Although the fact that many Native languages do not share even the same structures or classes of words as European languages has always made translation difficult, translating cultural values and perceptions into the idiom of another culture renders the process even more difficult.   In Born in the Blood, noted translator and writer Brian Swann gathers some of the foremost scholars in the field of Native American translation to address the many and varied problems and concerns surrounding the process of translating Native American languages and texts. The essays in this collection address such important questions as, what should be translated? how should it be translated? who should do translation? and even, should the translation of Native literature be done at all? This volume also includes translations of songs and stories.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780803235410
Publication Date: 2011-06-01
The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution by Gerald Vizenor (Editor); Jill Doerfler (Editor) The White Earth Nation of Anishinaabeg Natives ratified in 2009 a new constitution, the first indigenous democratic constitution, on a reservation in Minnesota. Many Native constitutions were written by the federal government, and with little knowledge of the people and cultures. The White Earth Nation set out to create a constitution that reflected its own culture. The resulting document provides a clear Native perspective on sovereignty, independent governance, traditional leadership values, and the importance of individual and human rights. This volume includes the text of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation; an introduction by David E. Wilkins, a legal and political scholar who was a special consultant to the White Earth Constitutional Convention; an essay by Gerald Vizenor, the delegate and principal writer of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation; and articles first published in Anishinaabeg Today by Jill Doerfler, who coordinated and participated in the deliberations and ratification of the Constitution. Together these essays and the text of the Constitution provide direct insight into the process of the delegate deliberations, the writing and ratification of this groundbreaking document, and the current constitutional, legal, and political debates about new constitutions.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780803244658
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby; Mary Louisa Plummer (As told to) A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780887555053
Publication Date: 2016-05-03
Native American Performance and Representation by S. E. Wilmer (Editor) Native performance is a multifaceted and changing art form as well as a swiftly growing field of research. Native American Performance and Representation provides a wider and more comprehensive study of Native performance, not only its past but also its present and future. Contributors use multiple perspectives to look at the varying nature of Native performance strategies. They consider the combination and balance of the traditional and modern techniques of performers in a multicultural world. This collection presents diverse viewpoints from both scholars and performers in this field, both Natives and non-Natives. Important and well-respected researchers and performers such as Bruce McConachie, Jorge Huerta, and Daystar/Rosalie Jones offer much-needed insight into this quickly expanding field of study. This volume examines Native performance using a variety of lenses, such as feminism, literary and film theory, and postcolonial discourse. Through the many unique voices of the contributors, major themes are explored, such as indigenous self-representations in performance, representations by nonindigenous people, cultural authenticity in performance and representation, and cross-fertilization between cultures. Authors introduce important, though sometimes controversial, issues as they consider the effects of miscegenation on traditional customs, racial discrimination, Native women's position in a multicultural society, and the relationship between authenticity and hybridity in Native performance. An important addition to the new and growing field of Native performance, Wilmer's book cuts across disciplines and areas of study in a way no other book in the field does. It will appeal not only to those interested in Native American studies but also to those concerned with women's and gender studies, literary and film studies, and cultural studies.
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780816502745
Publication Date: 2011-11-01