NEWSPAPERS
USEFUL LINKS
HOW DO I?
COURSE GUIDES
DATABASES
All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths about Native Americans by
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 disrupt long-held and enduring myths... Accessibly written and revelatory, "All the Real Indians Died Off" challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.
As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by
The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism. 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. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by
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.
Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples: What Archaeology, History, and Oral Traditions Teach Us about Their Communities and Cultures by
A groundbreaking volume on the rich 13,000-plus-year history and culture of Connecticut's indigenous peoples.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by
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.
Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 by
The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally...Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation...Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by
In matter-of-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway. White/Indian relations are often characterized by guilt and anger. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask cuts through the emotion and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by
The received idea of Native American history--as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear--and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence--the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by
In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals...Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of "colonial America" is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an "Indigenous America" that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America's past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by
Historian and activist 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. Honored in 2015 with both an American Book Award and a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for U.S. multicultural writers.
The Longest Trail by
Alvin Josephy Jr.'s groundbreaking, popular books and essays advocated for a fair and true historical assessment of Native Americans, and set the course for modern Native American studies. This collection, which includes magazine articles, speeches, a white paper, and introductions and chapters of books, gives a generous and reasoned view of five hundred years of Indian history in North America from first settlements in the East to the long trek of the Nez Perce Indians in the Northwest. The essays deal with the origins of still unresolved troubles with treaties and territories to fishing and land rights, and who should own archeological finds, as well as the ideologies that underpin our Indian policy. Taken together the pieces give a revelatory introduction to American Indian history, a history that continues both to fascinate and inform.
North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment by
"Adornment - jewelry, beadwork, and ceremonial regalia - is a defining medium of cultural expression for North American Indians. Southwestern turquoise jewelry and Plains beadwork are recognized hallmarks of Indian peoples, yet there exist many other examples of Indian artistry, such as beautifully "carved" metal bracelets from the Northwest Coast; quillwork and moosehair objects from the Subarctic; etched dentalium-shell and elkhorn jewelry from northern California; and engraved purple mussel-shell gorgets from Oklahoma and the Southeast. This book, filled with thousands of beautiful and distinctive objects, many of them never before published, presents the first comprehensive study of Indian adornment from prehistoric times to the present."
North American Indians: a Very Short Introduction by 
The Other Slavery:The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by
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. Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret.
Rez Life by
Novelist David Treuer examines Native American reservation life--past and present--illuminating misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation while also exploring crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of native language and culture.
This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by
A new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story...This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. This Land is Their Land shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.
Voices of the American Indian Experience by
Voices of the American Indian Experience provides unique insights into American Indian history by focusing on Indian accounts instead of on relying on other sources. As a result, their voices are clearer, and readers learn more about Indians directly from Indians, rather than through accounts that are filtered, diluted, and possibly even misinterpreted by an outsider's perspective. The volumes comprise a vast and fascinating variety of sources that span creation stories from Native American prehistory, to Indians who met the earliest Europeans to visit the Americas, all the way through to American Indians who served in recent foreign conflicts in the U.S. Armed Forces.
The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.
IAIS is a museum and research center in Washington, Connecticut - just 25 minutes from Taft - dedicated to preserving and sharing the culture and history of Native American peoples, particularly those from the Northeastern Woodlands. Exhibits include a replica Algonkian village, and nature trails and a garden with plants used by native peoples.
The museum’s research center houses some 6,000 ethnographic items and over 300,000 archaeological artifacts. These cultural remains represent hundreds of Native American societies throughout the Western Hemisphere.