By Deborah Martinez Martinez
As Native American Heritage Month winds down for 2024, there are many outstanding authors to read. Among them are Pulitzer Prize winning N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), James Welch (Blackfeet and A’aninin), Janet Campbell Hale (Coeur d’Alene, Kootenay, and Cree), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Activist ), Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek).
“Beginning in 1969 with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, the first wave of the Native American Renaissance is characterized by a struggle between two worlds for a generation existing both on and off the reservation, a devotion to the land, and a celebration of traditional customs and myths,” states reedsy.com blog on Native American Authors.
Although not a new book, Warrior Princesses Strike Back: How Lakota Twins Fight Oppression and Heal through Connectedness is a book about healing from colonialization. The two sisters, Sarah Eagle Heart and Emma Eagle Heart-White, published in 2023 by the Feminist Press (NY), begin by telling their own stories about the “paradox of suffering and enlightenment.” They share that they did not feel poor but were rich in Lakȟóta culture. They are involved in psychology, psychotherapy, and energy work.
Another wonderful children’s book is kimotinâniwiw itwêwina: Stolen Words by Melanie Florence, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard and Translated by Dolores Sand and Gayle Weenie, published by Second Story Press (Toronto, 2019). The bilingual Plains Cree and English book tells the story of a child being told by her grandfather that he cannot speak Cree. “The words were taken away by men and women dressed in black,” he tells her. It’s a heartrending story about being stripped of life’s words by a school system. The child brings her grandfather a book from school, “Introduction to Cree.”
A Colorado-based Native American group, the Utes, has a storyteller Sondra G. Jones who “traces the metamorphosis of the Ute people from a society of small interrelated bands to sovereign, dependent nations in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.” Three reservation-based groups of Utes are recognized by the U.S. Although Jones wrote Being and Becoming (published by Univ. of Utah Press, 2019), she is not Ute by blood but is a professor of history at University of Utah. The book is well-recognized as bringing together little known information in both historical and contemporary settings.
