Showing titles in Indigenous Peoples

Since its publication in 1932, Black Elk Speaks has moved countless readers to appreciate the American Indian world that it described. John Neihardt’s popular narrative addressed the youth and early adulthood of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious elder. Michael F. Steltenkamp now provides the first full interpretive biography of Black Elk, distilling in one volume what is known of this American Indian wisdom keeper whose life has helped guide others. Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic shows that the holy-man was not the dispirited traditionalist commonly depicted in literature....

Sitting Bull lives on in legacy as a Native American chief who fought against white oppression. When the US government broke land treaties to seek gold in the Black Hills, Sitting Bull took a stand against the desecration of this sacred land. He led his people, the Hunkpapa Lakota, through a period of resistance amidst crisis. He persisted through the end of the Great Sioux Wars, famously facing off against George Armstrong Custer in the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. Though shot and killed in 1890, Sitting Bull's immortal spirit of resistance continues to inspire.

In 2012 especially there was a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ends. The focus on the doomsday scenario, however, has overshadowed the Mayans' true contributions to astronomy, language, sports, and art.

On June 25, 1876, five troops of the U. S. Seventh Cavalry, under command of General George Armstrong Custer, rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn River expecting to rout the Indian encampment there. Instead they were met by the gathered strength of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who did not run, but turned to battle the soldiers.

At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, Canada and the United States had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had made an expansive international border that restricted movement.

Reporting for her local newspaper, Odawa Anishinaabe journalist Sierra BiidaabanNadeau stumbles onto a family's—and a nation's—buried stories. In enrollment records of Michigan boarding schools, she finds the names of ten of her ancestors thrown into the maw of American settler colonialism...

In December 1835, fewer than five hundred Cherokee signed the Treaty of New Echota—a document never ratified by the Cherokee National Council or the Cherokee people. Congress accepted it anyway, by a single vote. Three years later, sixteen thousand Cherokee were marched at bayonet point from Georgia to Oklahoma. Four thousand died in stockades, on frozen roads, and by the ice-choked Mississippi. The mortality rate rivaled the Bataan Death March. General Winfield Scott's orders called for "every possible kindness," yet one in four never arrived.

Peabody and Emmy-nominated Native comedian Joey Clift takes you on a journey to discover the largest population you don’t know in his hilarious debut for fans of Michael Harriot, Mo Rocca, and Phoebe Robinson. Foreword by Shane Hawk, writer and co-editor of Never Whistle at Night: An...

Examines the Path of Souls or Trail of Ghosts, a Native American model for the after-death journey Demonstrates how psychoactive plants were used to evoke the liminal state between life and death in initiatory rites and spirit journeys Explores the symbology of the large earthwork...

The Navajo, or Diné (“the people”), are the single largest group of Native American people in North America. Their traditional homeland, the Diné Bikéyah, stretched across the vast landscapes of present-day Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, defined by four sacred mountains that symbolized their spiritual and physical world. Yet their language and culture suggest that the Navajo actually originated in present-day Canada before migrating south toward New Mexico.

Faced with a constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, Canada’s “reconciliation project” has obviously gone off the rails. In this series of concise and thoughtful essays, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor explains why reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is failing and what needs to be done to fix it.

The gospel of Jesus has not always been good news for Native Americans. The history of North America is marred by atrocities committed against Native peoples. Indigenous cultures were erased in the name of Christianity. As a result, to this day few Native Americans are followers of Jesus. However, despite the far-reaching effects of colonialism, some Natives have forged culturally authentic ways to follow the way of Jesus. In his final work, Richard Twiss provides a contextualized Indigenous expression of the Christian faith among the Native communities of North America. 

People often wonder about the Osage tribe, who they were, where they came from, and what happened to them. Unless you are a student of Indian history or Missouri history, you may not be able to answer any of these questions. In simple descriptive terms the author will answer these questions, and many more. In the historical era, the European explorers paved the way for wave after wave of invading numbers seeking adventure, freedom, domination, and riches.

The Navajo tribe, the Diné, are the largest tribe in the United States and live across the American Southwest. But over a century ago, they were nearly wiped out by the Long Walk, a forced removal of most of the Diné people to a military-controlled reservation in New Mexico. Send a Runner tells the story of a Navajo family using the power of running to honor their ancestors and the power of history to explain why the Long Walk happened.

The name Pocahontas is one of the most recognized in the world, and many think they know the story of how she met and fell in love with a European colonist meddling in her Native American affairs. But is this really what happened? It certainly has been a popular theme, and whole Disney movies have been made celebrating this narrative, but besides these conveniently glossed-over tales, what is the real story?

Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee.

The Pawnee Indians were a fierce, proud, and determined people who called themselves the "men of men". Though there are many Native American tribes to learn about, the Pawnees were unique in many ways; they were a peace-loving, agricultural people with permanent settlements in what is now Nebraska. They dedicated themselves to their gods, the stars, and even arranged their villages according to important star clusters.

From the best-selling novelist of the American West, comes a novel of romance, danger, and life along the trail.

In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next 50 years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley.

In 1550-51, Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, in the Valladolid Debate, attempted to settle the issue of whether or not Native Americans should have been enslaved, given sanction by the Pope. Both carefully argued their sides, las Casas stating emphatically, through his "Apología", that Native Americans were not all uncivilized and that only Canaanite tribes could be enslaved.