Read Diverse Books at WCL

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land. In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.

Beginning with the tribes' devastating loss of land and the forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools, he shows how the period of greatest adversity also helped to incubate a unifying Native identity. He traces how 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 their self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is an essential, intimate history - and counter-narrative - of a resilient people in a transformative era.

General George Custer's ill-fated attack on a huge encampment of Plains Indians on 25th June, 1876, has gone down as one of the most disastrouos defeats in American military history. Much less understood is how disastroous the encounter was for the victors, the Sioux and the Cheyenne under the leadership of Sitting Bull. Within 15 years no American Indians resided outside reservations and their ancient culture lay in ruins.

This pioneering book was the first to recognize Native American oral verse as a vibrant part of North American literature. First published in 1918, its ancient and modern songs were translated by the era's leading scholars and poets.

In striking contrast to conventional accounts, Pocahontas is a bold and daring biography that attempts to tell the extraordinary story of the beloved Indian maiden from the Native American perspective. Drawing from sources often overlooked by Western historians, Dr. Paula Gunn Allen offers remarkable new insights into the adventurous life and sacred role of this foremost American heroine. Dr. Gunn Allen convincingly argues that through all of this, Pocahontas fulfilled a crucial and essential role in the birth of a New World. This stunning portrait presents the fascinating, untold story of one of the most romantic and beloved figures in American history, and reveals why so many have revered Pocahontas as the female counterpart to George Washington, the true "Mother of Our Nation."

Poetry. Native American Studies. This anthology of poetry includes fifty-two poets from more than thirty-five different Native American nations. Some of the poets include Elizabeth Woody, Joy Harjo, Adrian C. Louis, Barney Bush, Jim Barnes, and Peter Blue Cloud. Each poet is introduced with a biographical paragraph followed by a selection of their poetry.

Ohiyesa, a Dakota Indian also known as Charles Alexander Eastman, is one of America's most fascinating and overlooked individuals. Born in Minnesota in 1858, he obtained postgraduate degrees and advised U.S. presidents before returning to traditional living in native forests. This beautifully packaged reissue contains Ohiyesa's insights on spirit, the human experience, and white culture's impact on Native American culture.

A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, loss, and forgiveness from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother Lillian was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She selflessly cared for strangers, but was often incapable of showering her children with the affection that they so desperately craved. She wanted a better life for her son, but it was only by leaving her behind that he could hope to achieve it. It's these contradictions that made Lillian Alexie a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated, and very human woman. When she passed away, the incongruities that defined his mother shook Sherman and his remembrance of her. Grappling with the haunting ghosts of the past in the wake of loss, he responded the only way he knew how: he wrote.