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Wise Women
by Erin H. Turner

The story of Pocahontas saving John Smith is justly famous, as is the cross-country journey of Sacajawea with the Corps of Discovery, and Sarah Winnemucca earned fame by being a champion of her people as the old ways of life were disappearing. But there are lesser known stories of the Native American women who shaped their cultures and changed the course of American history. Illustrated with archival photographs, and encompassing twenty states―from Florida to Washington, Alaska to Maine―and many different tribes, this book brings together these amazing stories.
Daughters of the Earth
by Carolyn Niethammer


She was both guardian of the hearth and, on occasion, ruler and warrior, leading men into battle, managing the affairs of her people, sporting war paint as well as necklaces and earrings.

She built houses and ground corn, wove blankets and painted pottery, played field hockey and rode racehorses.

Frequently she enjoyed an open and joyous sexuality before marriage; if her marriage didn't work out she could divorce her husband by the mere act of returning to her parents. She mourned her dead by tearing her clothes and covering herself with ashes, and when she herself died was often shrouded in her wedding dress.

She was our native sister, the American Indian woman, and it is of her life and lore that Carolyn Niethammer writes in this rich tapestry of America's past and present.

Here, as it unfolded, is the chronology of the native American woman's life. Here are the birth rites of Caddo women from the Mississippi-Arkansas border, who bore their children alone by the banks of rivers and then immersed themselves and their babies in river water; here are Apache puberty ceremonies that are still carried on today, when the cost for the celebrations can run anywhere from one to six thousand dollars. Here are songs from the Night Dances of the Sioux, where girls clustered on one side of the lodge and boys congregated on the other; here is the Shawnee legend of the Corn Person and of Our Grandmother, the two female deities who ruled the earth. Far from the submissive, downtrodden “squaw” of popular myth, the native American woman emerges as a proud, sometimes stoic, always human individual from whom those who came after can learn much.

At a time when many contemporary American women are seeking alternatives to a life-style and role they have outgrown, Daughters of the Earth offers us an absorbing—and illuminating—legacy of dignity and purpose.

Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea
by Diane Glancy

Stone Heart is a gripping retelling of the story of American legend Sacajawea, the young Shoshoni woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the West. Presented in Sacajawea’s own voice juxtaposed with excerpts from Lewis and Clark’s diaries, it is a work of moving and illuminating fiction cast from a famed piece of history that has long been masked by myth.
Lewis and Clark recorded the external journey, its physical challenges and wonders. Diane Glancy’s Sacajawea experiences the expedition on a different plane, one that lies between the terrestrial and the magical, where clouds speak and ghost horses roam the plains. Both stunningly imagined and meticulously faithful to history, Stone Heart draws a lingering portrait of a woman of resilience and courage.
The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women
by Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine

The Hidden Half is a collection of papers which are concerned with research and analyses on Plains Indian women. Covering a wide range of topics, this volume presents case studies which focus on particular aspects of the female condition in Plains Indian societies, mostly concentrated on tribal groups in the northern Plains region of the United States and Canada. This book’s focus is primarily historical, dealing with the conditions of Plains Indian women in the pre-reservation period, but also contains selections concerned with the role and status of women in the modern reservation era.
American Indian Women: A Biographical Dictionary
editors Gretchen M. Bataille and Laurie Lisa

This A-Z reference contains 275 biographical entries on Native American women, past and present, from many different walks of life. Written by more than 70 contributors, most of whom are leading American Indian historians, the entries examine the complex and diverse roles of Native American women in contemporary and traditional cultures. This new edition contains 32 new entries and updated end-of-article bibliographies. Appendices list entries by area of woman's specialization, state of birth, and tribe; also includes photos and a comprehensive index.
During My Time
Florence Edenshae Davidson
by Margaret B. Blackman

This book is the first life history of a Northwest Coast Indian woman. Florence Davidson, daughter of noted Haida carver and chief Charles Edenshaw, was born in 1896. As one of the few living Haida elders knowledgeable about the culture of a bygone era, she was a fragile link with the past. Living in Masset on the Queen Charlotte Islands, some fifty miles off the northwest coast of British Columbia, Florence Davidson grew up in an era of dramatic change for her people. On of the last Haida women to undergo the traditional puberty seclusion and an arranged marriage, she followed patterns in her life typical of women of her generation.
All Our Relations
Native Struggles for Land and Life
by Winona LaDuke

This eagerly awaited non-fiction debut by acclaimed Native environmental activist Winona LaDuke is a thoughtful and in-depth account of Native resistance to environmental and cultural degradation.
LaDuke's unique understanding of Native ideas and people is born from long years of experience, and her analysis is deepened with inspiring testimonies by local Native activists sharing the struggle for survival.

On each page of this volume, LaDuke speaks forcefully for self-determination and community. Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation.

All Our Relations features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others.

"One of the pleasures of reading All Our Relations is discovering the unique voices of Native people, especially Native women, speaking in their own Native truths."-Women's Review of Books

"...as Winona LaDuke describes, in moving and often beautiful prose, [these] misdeeds are not distant history but are ongoing degradation of the cherished lands of Native Americans."-Public Citizen News

"...a rare perspective on Native history and culture."-Sister to Sister/S2S

"Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation. All Our Relations is essential reading for everyone who cares about the fate of the Earth and indigenous peoples."-Winds of Change

"No ragtag remnants of lost cultures here. Strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos."-Whole Earth

Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman
by David E. Jones

An intimate portrait of the last surviving Comanche Eagle doctor! Life histories are an excellent means of crosscultural understanding. In detailing the life of a Comanche medicine woman who wanted her methods recorded, Jones demonstrated such an intense interest in her training and experiences as a shaman that Sanapia not only accepted him as a valued biographer but also adopted him as a son. Readers will enjoy this intimate portrait of the last surviving Comanche Eagle doctor, revealed in descriptive accounts of her ritual behavior, her attitude toward the profession, the paraphernalia she employed, and her function in Comanche society.
Women and Power in Native North America
by Lillian A. Ackerman and Laura F. Klein

Since the colonization of indigenous peoples in North America, the roles of Native women within their societies have been concealed or, at best, misunderstood. By examining gender status, and particularly power, in ten culture areas, this volume, edited by Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, seeks to draw away the curtain of silence surrounding the lives of Native North American women.

Power is understood to be manifested in a multiplicity of ways: through cosmology, economic control, and formal hierarchy. In the Native societies examined, power is continually created and redefined through individual life stages and through the history of the society. The important issue is autonomy-whether, or to what extent, individuals are autonomous in living their lives. Each author demonstrates that women in a particular cultural area of aboriginal North America had (and have) more power than many previous observers have claimed.

Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris
by Bunny McBride
Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris chronicles the extraordinary life of a twentieth-century American Indian performing artist. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age—performing vaudeville in New York, starring in the classic docudrama The Silent Enemy, then dancing for royalty and mingling with the literary elite in Europe.

In Paris, Molly found an audience more appreciative of authentic Native dance than in the United States. There Molly married a French journalist, but she was forced to leave him and flee France with her daughter during the 1940 German occupation.

Drawing extensively on diaries, letters, interviews, and other sources, Bunny McBride reconstructs Molly Spotted Elk’s story and sheds new light on the pressures Molly and her peers endured in acting out white stereotypes of the “Indian.”

Mountain Wolf Woman
A Ho-Chunk Girlhood
by Diane Holliday

With the seasons of the year as a backdrop, author Diane Holliday describes what life was like for a Ho-Chunk girl who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Central to the story is the movement of Mountain Wolf Woman and her family in and around Wisconsin. Like many Ho-Chunk people in the mid-1800s, Mountain Wolf Woman's family was displaced to Nebraska by the U.S. government. They later returned to Wisconsin but continued to relocate throughout the state as the seasons changed to gather and hunt food.

Based on her own autobiography as told to anthropologist Nancy Lurie, Mountain Wolf Woman's words are used throughout the book to capture her feelings and memories during childhood. Author Holliday draws young readers into this Badger Biographies series book by asking them to think about how the lives of their ancestors and how their lives today compare to the way Mountain Wolf Woman lived over a hundred years ago.

Women of the Earth Lodges
Tribal Life on the Plains
by Virginia Bergman Peters

In Women of the Earth Lodges, Virginia Peters uses women’s accounts, myths and creation stories, and anthropological and archaeological data to examine the influence and vitality of Plains Indian women. She demonstrates that village life was organized around women’s labor and the women acted as partners with men in economic, social, and religious affairs-functions overlooked by contemporary observers.

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