There there - Tommy Orange

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Cave of Bones - Anne Hillerman

The Round House - Louise Erdrich

Love medicine - Louise Erdrich

The education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter

1491 - Charles Mann

Spider woman's daughter - Anne Hillerman

Spider woman's daughter - Hillerman, Anne

Summary: "Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manualito witnesses the cold-blooded shooting of someone very close to her. With the victim fighting for his life, the entire squad and the local FBI office are hell-bent on catching the gunman. Bernie, too, wants in on the investigation, despite regulations forbidding eyewitness involvement. But that doesn't mean she's going to sit idly by, especially when her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, is in charge of finding the shooter. Bernie and Chee discover that a cold case involving his former boss and partner, retired Inspector Joe Leaphorn, may hold the key. Digging into the old investigation, husband and wife find themselves inching closer to the truth-- and closer to a killer determined to prevent justice from taking its course" -- from publisher's web page.

Library Journal Reviews
Tony Hillerman's 18 mysteries followed the investigations of Navajo cops Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Fans mourned when Hillerman died in 2008. Now the late author's beloved characters return in this series relaunch by his daughter, Anne. The book opens with an act of unexpected violence against a dear friend, witnessed by police officer Bernadette Manualito. She and her husband, Jim Chee, begin to piece together clues and determine who would commit this crime, even questioning the motives of the unaccounted-for Louisa Bourbonnette, Leaphorn's friend and housemate. Interspersed throughout the tale, yet important to character development and emphasizing the role of Navajo culture and beliefs (a highlight of the previous series), are vignettes of Bernadette's troubled sister and Jim's past studies to become a Navajo healer and descriptions of Navajo creation stories. Characters from 1988's Thief of Time play a dominant role in the unfolding of the plot. Pot hunters, archaeologists, controversy over the museum display of tribal objects, and insurance fraud culminate in a heart-stopping, action-packed conclusion as Bernadette and Jim risk their lives to bring a would-be assassin to justice. VERDICT Fans of Southwestern mysteries will cheer this return of Leaphorn and Chee. [See Prepub Alert, 4/29/13; also highlighted at LJ's Day of Dialog Editors' Picks panel.—Ed.]—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Colls., Mt. Carmel

Check Availability

The absolutely true diary of a part-time indian

Summary: Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.


Kirkus Reviews
Alexie nimbly blends sharp wit with unapologetic emotion in his first foray into young-adult literature. Fourteen-year-old Junior is a cartoonist and bookworm with a violent but protective best friend Rowdy. Soon after they start freshman year, Junior boldly transfers from a school on the Spokane reservation to one in a tiny white town 22 miles away. Despite his parents' frequent lack of gas money (they're a "poor-ass family"), racism at school and many crushing deaths at home, he manages the year. Rowdy rejects him, feeling betrayed, and their competing basketball teams take on mammoth symbolic proportions. The reservation's poverty and desolate alcoholism offer early mortality and broken dreams, but Junior's knowledge that he must leave is rooted in love and respect for his family and the Spokane tribe. He also realizes how many other tribes he has, from "the tribe of boys who really miss . . . their best friends" to "the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers." Junior's keen cartoons sprinkle the pages as his fluid narration deftly mingles raw feeling with funny, sardonic insight. (Fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Check Availability

House of rain: tracking a vanished civilization across the American Southwest - Craig Childs

House of rain: tracking a vanished civilization across the American Southwest - Childs, Craig

Summary: Drawing on the latest scholarly research and archaeological evidence, the author examines the accomplishments of the Anasazi people of the American Southwest and speculates on why the culture vanished by the thirteenth century.



Booklist Reviews
Although less well known than the Mayans, the Anasazi, who flourished in the region now known as New Mexico, also vanished without a trace. Now, eight centuries after their thriving, 2,000-year-old civilization disappeared as though it had never existed, naturalist and adventurer Childs undertakes to find out where the Anasazi went and why. But discovering the fate of an entire race of people, 800 years after the fact, is not like tracking down a missing person. Childs' investigation relies heavily on scholarly literature, oral tradition, and lots of reading between the lines of history. There are no definitive answers here, but Childs ask plenty of tantalizing questions. The book is finally not so much about what happened to the Anasazi as it is about our own fascination with lost civilizations. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

On the rez - Ian Frazier

On the rez - Frazier, Ian

Summary: A writer visits the Pine Ridge Reservation with an old Sioux acquaintance and shares his observations of the heroism, humor, and tough spirit that keep these people afloat in the midst of crushing poverty. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Frazier writes urbane and witty essays for magazines such as the New Yorker, and he writes books that exemplify the best of immersion journalism. Energetically detailed first-person narratives, they combine detectivelike observations with history, travelogue, and social commentary. The first and most popular of these works was Great Plains (1989), in which Frazier reported on his journey from New York across the great American West. A meeting with an Oglala Sioux named Le War Lance proved crucial to his exploration, and Le plays an even larger role in Frazier's second foray. After Frazier and his family moved from Manhattan to Missoula, Montana, he decided to write about life on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Le, a man of courage and convictions, a teller of tall tales, a heavy drinker, and a master manipulator, provided entree into the homes of family and friends as long as Frazier kept his wallet and car at the ready. In between recounting every nuance of every experience, Frazier profiles Le and his family, American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, historical personages including Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, and SuAnne Marie Big Crow, a high-school basketball star who epitomized the best and most tragic aspects of Pine Ridge. He also writes with indelible precision about the reservation's dwellings and treacherous roads and highways as well as the grim and violent town of White Clay, Nebraska. By weaving the past with the present and illuminating so many aspects of Indian life, Frazier's frank and adroitly improvised narrative will stand as one of literature's most complex yet most clarifying testaments to the essence of American Indian culture. ((Reviewed November 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

Check Availability