Lansing Community College occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishnaabeg - Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the City of Lansing and LCC reside on land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.
Our Fight Has Just Begun by
Our Fight Has Just Begun is a timely and urgent work. The result of more than a decade of research, it revises history, documents anti-Indianism, and gives voice to victims of racial violence. Navajo scholar Cheryl Redhorse Bennett reveals a lesser-known story of Navajo activism and the courageous organizers that confronted racial injustice and inspired generations. Illuminating largely untold stories of hate crimes committed against Native Americans in the Four Corners region of the United States, this work places these stories within a larger history, connecting historical violence in the United States to present-day hate crimes. Bennett contends that hate crimes committed against Native Americans have persisted as an extension of an "Indian hating" ideology that has existed since colonization, exposing how the justice system has failed Native American victims and families. While this book looks deeply at multiple generations of unnecessary and ongoing pain and violence, it also recognizes that this is a time of uncertainty and hope. The movement to abolish racial injustice and racially motivated violence has gained fierce momentum. Our Fight Has Just Begun shows that racism, hate speech, and hate crimes are ever present and offers recommendations for racial justice.
Neither Wolf nor Dog 25th Anniversary Edition by
An Unforgettable Journey into the Native American Experience Against an unflinching backdrop of 1990s reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In this award-winning book, acclaimed author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Native American elder named Dan, who leads Kent through Indian towns and down forgotten roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull. Along the way we meet a vivid cast of characters -- ranging from Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic, to Annie, an eighty-year-old Lakota woman living in a log cabin with no running water. An unlikely cross between On the Road and Black Elk Speaks, Neither Wolf nor Dog takes us past the myths and stereotypes of the Native American experience, revealing an America few ever see.
Braiding Sweetgrass by
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub A Book Riot "Favorite Summer Read of 2020" A Food Tank Fall 2020 Reading Recommendation Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of meaning that will last the ages. Beautifully bound with a new cover featuring an engraving by Tony Drehfal, this edition includes a bookmark ribbon and five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the book--gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred--and offer an edition that will inspire readers to gift it again and again, spreading the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and the teachings of plants. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
There There by
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. A contemporary classic, this "astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale) "places Native American voices front and center" (NPR/Fresh Air). Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism A book with "so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation" (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down--full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.
We Are Water Protectors by
Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal #1 New York Times Bestseller Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade. Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all . . . When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth And poison her people's water, one young water protector Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.
The First Astronomers by
The First Astronomers is the first book to reveal the rich knowledge of the stars and the planets held by First Peoples around the world.
Native American Women Leaders by
There is insufficient recognition given to Native American women, many of whom have made enormous contributions to their respective tribal nations and to the broader United States. The 14 stories in this book are representative of the countless Native American women who have excelled as leaders (including Debra Haaland and her history-making role as Secretary of the Interior). They come from across the centuries and from a range of tribal nations, and represent a wide range of society, including politics, the arts, health care, business, education, wellness, feminism, environmentalism, and social activism. Most of these women have made their mark in more than one area. Each chapter includes personal biographical and public life information. Some of the women have given us much in writing, including memoirs, while others have left behind little or nothing written. Even in the absence of their own words, though, their actions still speak eloquently.
As Long As Grass Grows by
The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy. Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by
New York Times Bestseller Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck Recipient of the American Book Award The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resourceproviding historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles- "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them." Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
American Indians at the Margins by
Since the earliest days of America, racist imagery has been used to create harmful stereotypes of the indigenous people. In this book, the conflict between invading European white settlers and the indigenous groups who occupied the land that became the United States is described through the context of race and racism. Using depictions from art, literature, radio, cinema and television, the origin and persistence of such stereotypes are explained, and their debilitating effects on the well-being of Indians are presented. This text also explores their accomplishments in attempts to maintain their sovereignty, dignity and respect.
Walking the Old Road by
The story of a once vibrant, now vanished off-reservation Ojibwe village--and a vital chapter of the history of the North Shore "We do this because telling where you are from is just as important as your name. It helps tie us together and gives us a strong and solid place to speak from. It is my hope that the stories of Chippewa City will be heard, shared, and remembered, and that the story of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Chippewa will continue to grow. By being a part of the living narrative, Bimaadizi Aadizookaan, together we can create a new story about what was, what is, and, ultimately, what will be." --from the Prologue At the turn of the nineteenth century, one mile east of Grand Marais, Minnesota, you would have found Chippewa City, a village that as many as 200 Anishinaabe families called home. Today you will find only Highway 61, private lakeshore property, and the one remaining village building: St. Francis Xavier Church. In Walking the Old Road, Staci Lola Drouillard guides readers through the story of that lost community, reclaiming for history the Ojibwe voices that have for so long, and so unceremoniously, been silenced. Blending memoir, oral history, and narrative, Walking the Old Road reaches back to a time when Chippewa City, then called Nishkwakwansing (at the edge of the forest), was home to generations of Ojibwe ancestors. Drouillard, whose own family once lived in Chippewa City, draws on memories, family history, historical analysis, and testimony passed from one generation to the next to conduct us through the ages of early European contact, government land allotment, family relocation, and assimilation. Documenting a story too often told by non-Natives, whether historians or travelers, archaeologists or settlers, Walking the Old Road gives an authentic voice to the Native American history of the North Shore. This history, infused with a powerful sense of place, connects the Ojibwe of today with the traditions of their ancestors and their descendants, recreating the narrative of Chippewa City as it was--and is and forever will be--lived.
Hollywood's Native Americans : Stories of Identity and Resistance
Resource Devastation on Native American Lands
This book focuses on the toxic legacy of Native North America, which is pervasive but largely invisible to most non-Native peoples...The book links present-day Native American cultural and economic revival to a fundamental struggle to restore the health of both Native peoples and their homelands. It links past and present with a sense of Native Americans’ perceptions of nature and the sacred land. By doing so, it also provides the majority society with an example to emulate as we emerge, by necessity, from the age of fossil fuels into a sustainable energy paradigm.
Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press by
2018 Outstanding Academic Title, selected by Choice;Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press is the first comprehensive collection of writings by students and well-known Native American authors who published in boarding school newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students used their acquired literacy in English along with more concrete tools that the boarding schools made available, such as printing technology, to create identities for themselves as editors and writers.In these roles they sought to challenge Native American stereotypes and share issues of importance to their communities. Writings by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), Charles Eastman, and Luther Standing Bear are paired with the works of lesser-known writers to reveal parallels and points of contrast between students and generations. Drawing works primarily from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Pennsylvania), the Hampton Institute (Virginia), and the Seneca Indian School (Oklahoma), Jacqueline Emery illustrates how the boarding school presses were used for numerous and competing purposes.While some student writings appear to reflect the assimilationist agenda, others provide more critical perspectives on the schools' agendas and the dominant culture. This collection of Native-authored letters, editorials, essays, short fiction, and retold tales published in boarding school newspapers illuminates the boarding school legacy and how it has shaped, and continues to shape, Native American literary production.
Trickster by
2010 Maverick Award winner2011 Aesop Prize Winner--Children's folklore section 2011 Eisner Award Nominee All cultures have tales of the trickster--a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. This beautiful anniversary edition graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.
The Grass Shall Grow by
The Grass Shall Grow is a succinct introduction to the work and world of Helen M. Post (1907-79), who took thousands of photographs of Native Americans. Although Post has been largely forgotten and even in her heyday never achieved the fame of her sister, Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott, Helen Post was a talented photographer who worked on Indian reservations throughout the West and captured images that are both striking and informative. Post produced the pictures for the novelist Oliver La Farge's nonfiction book As Long As the Grass Shall Grow (1940), among other publications, and her output constitutes a powerful representation of Native American life at that time. Mick Gidley recounts Post's career, from her coming of age in the turbulent 1930s to her training in Vienna and her work for the U.S. Indian Service, tracking the arc of her professional reputation. He treats her interactions with public figures, including La Farge and editor Edwin Rosskam, and describes her relationships with Native Americans, whether noted craftspeople such as the Sioux quilter Nellie Star Boy Menard, tribal leaders such as Crow superintendent Robert Yellowtail, or ordinary individuals like the people she photographed at work in the fields or laboring for federal projects, at school or in the hospital, cooking or dancing. The images reproduced here are analyzed both for their own sake and in order to understand their connection to broader national concerns, including the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The thoroughly researched and accessibly written text represents a serious reappraisal of a neglected artist.
Shapes of Native Nonfiction by
Just as a basket's purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket. Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.
We Will Always Be Here by
The history of Native Americans in the U.S. South is a turbulent one, rife with conflict and inequality. Since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the fifteenth century, Native peoples have struggled to maintain their land, cultures, and ways of life. In We Will Always Be Here, contemporary tribal leaders, educators, and activists share their struggles for Indian identity, self-determination, and community development. Reflecting on such issues as poverty, education, racism, cultural preservation, and tribal sovereignty, the contributors to this volume offer a glimpse into the historical struggles of southern Native peoples, examine their present day efforts, and share their hopes for the future. They also share examples of cultural practices that have either endured or been revitalized. In a country that still faces challenges to civil rights and misconceptions about Indian identity and tribal sovereignty, this timely book builds a deeper understanding of modern Native peoples within a region where they are often overlooked.
Indigenous Pop by
Popular music compels, it entertains, and it has the power to attract and move audiences. With that in mind, the editors of Indigenous Pop showcase the contributions of American Indian musicians to popular forms of music, including jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip hop. From Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra to Jim Pepper, from Buffy Saint-Marie to Robbie Robertson, from Joy Harjo to Lila Downs, Indigenous Pop vividly addresses the importance of Native musicians and popular musical genres, establishing their origins and discussing what they represent. Arranged both chronologically and according to popular generic forms, the book gives Indigenous pop a broad new meaning. In addition to examining the transitive influences of popular music on Indigenous expressive forms, the contributors also show ways that various genres have been shaped by what some have called the "Red Roots" of American-originated musical styles. This recognition of mutual influence extends into the ways of understanding how music provides methodologies for living and survival. Each in-depth essay in the volume zeros in on a single genre and in so doing exposes the extraordinary whole of Native music. This book showcases the range of musical genres to which Native musicians have contributed and the unique ways in which their engagement advances the struggle for justice and continues age-old traditions of creative expression.
Native American Landmarks and Festivals by GATHER follows the stories of natives on the frontlines of a growing movement to reconnect with spiritual and cultural identities that were devastated by genocide.