NCW Libraries

A casual note left on the windshield of a car. The death of an old dog. And author Kent Nerburn unexpectedly finds himself back on the Dakota reservation where more than a decade before he traveled with the elder, Dan, whose thoughts he chronicled in the classic of Native American studies, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Now almost ninety, Dan wants Nerburn to assist in the unlikely task of burying Fatback, the old Labrador who had been Dan's closest companion...

Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) wrote "The Soul of the Indian" to examine the spiritual history of Native American's before European settlement in America. Born of Minnesota Sioux parents in South Dakota, Charles Eastman spent his life working with Natives and Europeans to bridge cultural divides. Born into and raised by a traditional Sioux family, Eastman developed a deep connection to the life of American Indians. Yet at the age of 15 Eastman's...

"The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, as a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves...

Methow traditions and Interior Salishan lifeways of north central Washington State, with comparisons for the Fraser Columbia Plateau and Native Americas. Native Met How pulls together decades of interviews and publications as a scholarly reference and future overview to aid researchers, so a publication's original page numbers are shown within [square brackets], with added information set between {curved brackets} and all native words in italics....

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, the author 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 the Americas, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In this book, she brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans...

Across North America, dedicated language warriors are powering an upswell, a resurgence, a revitalization of indigenous languages and cultures. Through deliberate suppression and cultural destruction, the five hundred languages spoken on the continent before contact have dwindled to about 150. Their ongoing survival depends on immediate, energetic interventions. Anton Treuer has been at the forefront of the battle to revitalize Ojibwe for many years....

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath-- known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara-- has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Salmón, an ethnobotanist, builds on this concept of connection and highlights plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. He teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification...

We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and species are disappearing at a rate not seen since Earth's major extinctions. The rapid, large-scale changes caused by fossil-fuel powered globalization increasingly threaten societies in new, unforeseen ways. But most security policies continue to be built on notions that look back- ward to a time when geopolitical threats derived mainly from the rivalries...

In The Rotinonshonni Through the Eyes of Teharonhia:Wako and Sawiskera, Brian 'Natoway' Rice seeks to offer a comprehensive history based on the oral traditions of the Rotinonshonni (people of the longhouse). The book has its origins in Rice's study with traditional Cayuga royaner Jacob Thomas, who performed days-long recitations of the oral history of the Iroquois in English. Rice suggests that, "My purpose in writing this book is to not only inform...

At least 43,000 Native Americans fought in the Vietnam War, yet both the American public and the United States government have been slow to acknowledge their presence and sacrifices in that conflict. In this first-of-its-kind study, Tom Holm draws on extensive interviews with Native American veterans to tell the story of their experiences in Vietnam and their readjustment to civilian life. Holm describes how Native American motives for going to war,...