Your November challenge is to read some books by Indigenous authors! We've got a lot of great suggestions for you.
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"Combining graphic fiction and non-fiction, this young adult graphic novel serves as a window into one of the unique dangers of being an Indigenous teen in Canada today. The text of the book is derived from excerpts of a letter written to the Winnipeg Chief of Police by fourteen-year-old Brianna Jonnie -- a letter that went viral and in which, Jonnie calls out the authorities for neglecting to immediately investigate and involve the public in the search for missing Indigenous people, and urges them to "not treat me as the Indigenous person I am proud to be" if she were to be reported missing. Indigenous artist Neal Shannacappo provides the artwork for the book. Through his illustrations he imagines a situation in which a young Indigenous woman does disappear, portraying the reaction of her community, her friends, the police and media. An author's note at the end of the book provides context for young readers about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada."--
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Book
Call Number:
YA 305.48 Jon
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Sixteen-year-old Josh is no stranger to gang life. His dad, the leader of the Warriors, a gang on their reserve, is in jail, and Josh’s older brother has taken charge. Josh’s mom has made it clear the Warriors and their violence aren’t welcome in her home -- Josh’s dad and brother included. She wants Josh to focus on graduating high school. Josh is unsure whether gang life is for him -- that is until gang violence arrives on his doorstep. Turning to the Warriors, Josh, now known as “Creeboy,” starts down the path to becoming a full gang member -- cutting himself off from his friends, family and community outside the gang. It’s harder than ever for Creeboy to envision a different future for himself. Will anything change his mind?
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Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Wou
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A Constellation of Minor Bears
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Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger.
While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.
Determined to go on the trio’s post-graduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger.
Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead. . . .
While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.
Determined to go on the trio’s post-graduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger.
Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead. . . .
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Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Fer
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"Dawn Quigley (Ojibwe) tells the story of urban Native kids who find strength in connection with those who came before and in the hope that lets them take flight"--Provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
J FIC Qui
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Since moving to the Blackfeet Reservation with her parents, Mara Racette has felt like an outsider, taunted by her tight-knit classmates for growing up far away. So, when a local girl includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor her missing sister, Mara thinks she’ll finally make some friends. Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered. Because the members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation: New-girl Mara, who hated Samantha for being particularly cruel. Grief-stricken Loren Arnoux, who was Samantha’s best friend until her sister’s disappearance drove a wedge between them. Class-clown Brody Clark, whose unreciprocated crush on Samantha is an open secret. And tough-guy Eli First Kill, who has his own complicated history with Samantha. Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.
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Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Cob
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Making love with the land : essays
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In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Joshua Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly--even joyfully--maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial.--
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Book
Call Number:
814 Whi
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Noopiming : the cure for white ladies
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Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's 'Noopiming' braids together humor, piercing detail, and a deep, abiding commitment to Anishinaabe life to tell stories of resistance, love, and joy. Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” the title is a response to English Canadian settler Susanna Moodie's 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. Set in the same place as her colonial memoir, the novel is offered as a cure for the racist treatment of Mississauga Nishnaabeg in Moodie's writing. Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering the sharpness of unmuted feeling from long ago, finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce the seven characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator's will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman, their conscience; Sabe, a gentle giant, their marrow; Adik, the caribou, their nervous system; and Asin and Lucy, the humans who represent their eyes, ears, and brain. The novel's characters emerge from deep within Abinhinaabeg thought to commune beyond an unnatural urban-settler world littered with SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, and Fjällräven Kånken backpacks. --
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Sim
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A boy and his mother refuse to identify themselves as American or Canadian at the border and become caught in the limbo between nations when they claim their citizenship as Blackfoot.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Kin
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Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year-- ever since that terrible night they'd had their first serious argument. Still grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears Victor's unmistakable voice coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. He has the same face, the same eyes, the same hands. He doesn't recognize Joan, insists his name is Eugene Wolff, and that he is a reverend whose mission is to spread the word of Jesus and grow His flock. Joan turns to Ajean, an elderly foul-mouthed card shark who is one of the few among Métis community steeped in the traditions of the Métis people and knowledgeable about their ancient enemies. -- adapted from jacket
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Dim
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The received idea of Native American history has been that it essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee: Not only did more than 150 Sioux die at the hands of the U.S. Cavalry, but Native civilization did as well. David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Not despite but rather because of American Indians' intense struggles to preserve their tribes, their cultures, and their very existence, the true story has been one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir to explore 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. The forced assimilation of children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and at the same time steered the emerging shape of self-rule and inspired a new generation of resistance. This is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative epoch.--From dust jacket.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
970.004 Tre
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When Louise Wolfe's boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. She'd rather spend her senior year with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, an ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper's staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director's inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey. But 'dating while Native' can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey's? -- adapted from jacket
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Smi
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Go show the world : a celebration of Indigenous heroes
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Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Kin
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Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies...especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges...a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Jon
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"Cash and Sheriff Wheaton make for a strange partnership. He pulled her from her mother's wrecked car when she was three. He's kept an eye out for her ever since. It's a tough place to live-northern Minnesota along the Red River. Cash navigated through foster homes, and at thirteen was working farms. She's tough as nails-five feet two inches, blue jeans, blue jean jacket, smokes Marlboros, drinks Bud Longnecks. Makes her living driving truck. Playing pool on the side. Wheaton is big lawman type. Scandinavian stock, but darker skin than most. He wants her to take hold of her life. Get into Junior College. So there they are, staring at the dead Indian lying in the field. Soon Cash was dreaming the dead man's cheap house on the Red Lake Reservation, mother and kids waiting. She has that kind of power. That's the place to start looking. There's a long and dangerous way to go to find the men who killed him. Plus there's Jim, the married white guy. And Longbraids, the Indian guy headed for Minneapolis to join the American Indian Movement. Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. She is a mother, grandmother, writer, and performance artist. A recipient of the Loft's Inroads Writers of Color Award for Native Americans, she studied under Anishinabe author Jim Northrup."-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ren
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"Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities, are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected, from their culture and each other, and struggle to fit in at school and at their new home -- until they find a secret place, walled off in an unfinished attic bedroom. A portal opens to another reality, Askí, bringing them onto frozen, barren grounds, where they meet Ochek (Fisher). The only hunter supporting his starving community, Misewa, Ochek welcomes the human children, teaching them traditional ways to survive. But as the need for food becomes desperate, they embark on a dangerous mission. Accompanied by Arik, a sassy Squirrel they catch stealing from the trapline, they try to save Misewa before the icy grip of winter freezes everything -- including them."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Rob
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Seven fallen feathers : racism, death, and hard truths in a northern city
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"Over the span of ten years, seven high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The seven were hundreds of miles away from their families, forced to leave their reserve because there was no high school there for them to attend. Award-winning journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this northern city that has come to manifest, and struggle with, human rights violations past and present against aboriginal communities."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
305.897 Tal
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The year is 1883. High in the remote mountains, the town of Goetia is booming as prospectors from near and far come to mine the powerful new element Divinity. Divinity is the remains of the body of the rebel Abaddon, who fell to earth during Heaven’s War, and it powers the world’s most inventive and innovative technologies, ushering in a new age of progress. However, only the descendants of those that rebelled, called Fallen, possess the ability to see the rich lodes of the precious element. That makes them a necessary evil among the good and righteous people called the Elect, and Goetia a town segregated by ancestry and class. Celeste and Mariel are two Fallen sisters, bound by blood but raised in separate worlds. Celeste grew up with her father, passing in privileged Elect society, while Mariel stayed with their mother in the Fallen slums of Goetia. Upon her father’s death, Celeste returns to Goetia and reunites with Mariel. Mariel is a great beauty with an angelic voice, and Celeste, wracked by guilt for leaving her sister behind, becomes her fiercest protector. When Mariel is accused of murdering a Virtue, the powerful Order of the Archangels that rule Goetia, Celeste must take on the role of Advocatus Diaboli (Devil’s Advocate) and defend her sister in the secretive courts of the Virtue. Celeste, aided by her ex-lover, Abraxas, who was once one of the rebels great generals, sets out to prove Mariel innocent. But powerful forces among the Virtues and the Elect mining barons don’t want Celeste prying into their business, and Mariel has secrets of her own. As Celeste is drawn deeper into the dark side of Goetia, she unravel a layer of lies and manipulation that may doom Mariel and puts her own immortal soul at risk.
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Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Roa
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Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's own nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal.
Format:
Audiobook
Call Number:
FIC Wei
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Walking the clouds : an anthology of Indigenous science fiction
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In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction, Grace Dillon collects some examples of the craft, with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Wal
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When a ghost talks, listen : a Choctaw Trail of Tears story
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"Ten-year-old Isaac, now a ghost, continues with his people as they walk the Choctaw Trail of Tears headed to Indian Territory in what will one day become Oklahoma. There have been surprises aplenty on their trek, but now Isaac and his three Choctaw comrades learn they can time travel--making for an unexpected adventure. The foursome heads back in time to Washington, D.C., to bear witness for Choctaw Chief Pushmataha who has come to the nation's capital at the invitation of Andrew Jackson."--
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Book
Call Number:
J FIC Tin
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"When the river swallowed Kai, Damien's little brother didn't die so much as vanish. As the unbearable loss settles deeper into his bones, Damien, a small-town line cook, walks away from everything he has ever known. Driving as far south as his old truck and his legs allow, he lands in a fishing village beyond the reach of his past where he hopes he can finally forget. But the village has grief of its own. The same day that Damien arrives, a young woman from the community's most powerful family is being laid to rest. A stranger in town, Damien is the object of gossip and suspicion, ignored by all except the dead girl's mother, Ana Maria, who offers Damien a room and a job. Grateful for her kindness, Damien soon begins to fall under Ana Maria's charismatic spell. But how long can he resist the rumors swirling through town suggesting she might have had something to do with her daughter's death? Or deny his strange kinship with one of Ana Maria's surviving daughters, Marta, who knows too well the grief that follows the loss of a sibling--and who is driven by a fierce need for revenge? Swiftly, Damien finds himself caught in a power struggle between the brujas, a whirlwind battle that threatens to sweep the whole village out to sea. Resonant with the Diné creation story and the unshakeable weight of the Long Walk--the forced removal of the Navajo from their land--Swim Home to the Vanished explores the human capacity for grief and redemption, and the lasting effects it has on the soul" --Dust jacket.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Bas
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"Seven years on the run from her abusive father, and with no hope of sanctuary among the dwindling pockets of human civilization, Lark is out of options. Her only leverage is a cursed power: she can thrust fear onto others, leaving all threats fleeing in terror. It's a means of survival as she searches for a place to call home. If the campfire myths of her childhood are true, Lark's sole chance for refuge could lie in Cagmar, the city of trolls--a brutal species and the sworn enemies of humanity. Valuing combat prowess, the troll high council is intrigued. Lark could be much more useful than the low-caste humans who merely labor in Cagmar. Her gift makes her invaluable as a monster slayer to fight off the unspeakable creatures that torment the trolls' hanging city, suspended from a bridge over an endless dark canyon. Lark will do anything to make Cagmar her home, but her new role comes with a caveat: use her power against a troll, and she'll be killed. Her loyalty is quickly put to the test when she draws the hatred of a powerful troll who loathes humankind. Still, she finds unexpected friendship in the city and, even more surprisingly, love. But if everything else doesn't undo her, being caught in the arms of a troll surely will. Now in the fight of her life, Lark has a lot to learn--about her past, about trust and hope when all seems lost, and above all, about the extraordinary power of fear itself" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Hol
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Give me some truth : a novel with paintings
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Description:
In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Gan