Books About The Native American Woman

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Mankiller: A Chief and Her People
by Wilma Mankiller

In this spiritual, moving autobiography, Wilma Mankiller, former Chief of the Cherokee Nation and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, tells of her own history while also honoring and recounting the history of the Cherokees. Mankiller's life unfolds against the backdrop of the dawning of the American Indian civil rights struggle, and her book becomes a quest to reclaim and preserve the great Native American values that form the foundation of our nation.

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LaDonna Harris: A Comanche Life
by LaDonna Harris

This book is the unforgettable story of a Comanche woman who has become one of the most influential, inspired, and determined Native Americans in politics. LaDonna Harris was born on a Comanche allotment in southern Oklahoma in the 1930s. From her earliest years, she was immersed in a world of resistance, reform, and political action. As the wife of Senator Fred R. Harris, LaDonna was actively involved in political advising, campaigning, and networking.
Not content to remain in the background, LaDonna became a well-known political figure in her own right, serving on the National Indian Opportunities Council as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s appointee and working beside such notable political figures as Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, and Sargent Shriver. In 1980 she became the vice-presidential nominee for the environmentalist Citizen’s Party. Her story provides a witty and valuable American Indian insider’s view of modern national political scenes.

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Warrior Woman: The Story of Lozen
by Peter Aleshire
Warrior Woman is the story of Lozen, sister of the famous Apache warrior Victorio, and warrior in her own right. Hers is a story little discussed in Native American history books. Instead, much of what is known of her has been passed down through generations via stories and legends.

For example, it is said that she was embued with supernatural powers, given to her by the gods. She would lift her arms to the sky and place her palms against the wind, and through the heat she felt in her open hands, she could detect the direction and distance of her enemies. Whether true or not, she did ride into battle alongside Geronimo in the Apache wars, and fought bitterly and savagely until she was captured along with her people, packed into railroad cars, and sent to imprisonment in the east, where she spent her last days.

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Aunt Sarah: Woman of the Dawnland
by Trudy Ann Parker

Sarah (Jackson) Somers reached out to help and heal many more humans and animals than she could ever keep track of. A St. Francis Abenaki whose homeland hugged the border between Vermont and Canada, she was known to most simply as “Aunt Sarah.”

Now, her great-great niece has captured her life’s story in a book of the same name. Trudy Ann Parker wrote Aunt Sarah: Woman of the Dawnland (1994, Dawnland Publications) not from written records, but from a legacy of spoken lore handed down at kitchen tables, beside campfires, and at the knees of several generations of relations.

Parker’s book does a lot more than tell Aunt Sarah’s story – it gives voice to a people long silent. In most educations, American history begins with the arrival of Europeans to New England, Parker says. “I wanted to offer a piece of New England history that hasn’t been told. History has not included the stories of the native people, who lived here in great numbers and are still here. History has been written around these people.”

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Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina
by Maria Tallchief

Growing up on the Osage Indian reservation, Maria Tallchief was a gifted pianist and dancer. According to Osage tradition, women are not permitted to dance, but Maria's parents recognized her gifts and allowed her to break the rule. Then when Maria reached the age of twelve, her father told her it was time to choose between her two loves. Maria chose ballet. It was a decision that would change not only the course of her life, but the face of classical ballet in America. The fascinating story of Maria Tallchief's rise to become America's prima ballerina will captivate young readers.

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Buffy Sainte-Marie: It's My Way
by Blair Stonechild

2013 Saskatoon Book Awards: Aboriginal Peoples? Writing Award winner
Buffy Sainte-Marie is a symbol of the free expression movement of the 1960s and her powerful songs inspired countless people seeking hope and change. Her life has been one of transitions; from songwriter to famous intellectually-oriented folk and protest singer, to country and western and rock and roll musician, to social activist, mother, script-writer, actress, digital artist, philanthropist, children's educator, and "medicine woman." Within all these roles, and throughout her incredibly diverse and engaging, though private, life, Buffy Sainte-Marie has cultivated her unique vision for achieving collective beauty and purpose in an often lonely world.

In this ambitious biography of an international cultural icon, Blair Stonechild seeks to bring together the many facets of a remarkable life, and to develop a sense of the woman behind it all. In doing so, Stonechild also traces some of the tumultuous history of the Cree people, and offers a fascinating, and challenging, view into the impoverished Saskatchewan reserve where Sainte-Marie was born, and an exploration of the story and context of a Native culture which Buffy continues to inspire today.

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Marooned in the Arctic
The True Story of Ada Blackjack
by Peggy Caravantes

In 1921, four men ventured into the Arctic for a top-secret expedition: an attempt to claim uninhabited Wrangel Island in northern Siberia for Great Britain. With the men was a young Inuit woman named Ada Blackjack, who had signed on as cook and seamstress to earn money to care for her sick son. Conditions soon turned dire for the team when they were unable to kill enough game to survive. Three of the men tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea for help but were never seen again, leaving Ada with one remaining team member who soon died of scurvy. Determined to be reunited with her son, Ada learned to survive alone in the icy world by trapping foxes, catching seals, and avoiding polar bears. After she was finally rescued in August 1923, after two years total on the island, Ada became a celebrity, with newspapers calling her a real “female Robinson Crusoe.” The first young adult book about Blackjack’s remarkable story, Marooned in the Arctic includes sidebars on relevant topics of interest to teens, including the use cats on ships, the phenomenon known as Arctic hysteria, and aspects of Inuit culture and beliefs. With excerpts from diaries, letters, and telegrams; historic photos; a map; source notes; and a bibliography, this is an indispensible resource for any young adventure lover, classroom, or library.

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Pretty-shield
Medicine Woman of the Crows
by Frank Bird Linderman

Pretty-shield, the legendary medicine woman of the Crows, remembered what life was like on the Plains when the buffalo were still plentiful. A powerful healer who was forceful, astute, and compassionate, Pretty-shield experienced many changes as her formerly mobile people were forced to come to terms with reservation life in the late nineteenth century. Pretty-shield told her story to Frank Linderman through an interpreter and using sign language. The lives, responsibilities, and aspirations of Crow women are vividly brought to life in these pages as Pretty-shield recounts her life on the Plains of long ago. She speaks of the simple games and dolls of an Indian childhood and the work of the girls and women—setting up the lodges, dressing the skins, picking berries, digging roots, and cooking. Through her eyes we come to understand courtship, marriage, childbirth and the care of babies, medicine-dreams, the care of the sick, and other facets of Crow womanhood. Alma Snell and Becky Matthews provide a new preface to this edition.

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Grandmother's Grandchild
My Crow Indian Life
by Alma Hogan Snell

“I became what the Crows call káalisbaapite—a ‘grandmother’s grandchild.’ That means that I was always with my Grandma, and I learned from her. I learned how to do things in the old ways.”—Alma Hogan Snell
Grandmother's Grandchild is the remarkable story of Alma Hogan Snell (1923–2008), a Crow woman brought up by her grandmother, the famous medicine woman Pretty Shield. Snell grew up during the 1920s and 1930s, part of the second generation of Crows to be born into reservation life. Like many of her contemporaries, she experienced poverty, personal hardships, and prejudice and left home to attend federal Indian schools.
What makes Snell's story particularly engaging is her exceptional storytelling style. She is frank and passionate, and these qualities yield a memoir unlike those of most Native women. The complex reservation world of Crow women—harsh yet joyous, impoverished yet rich in meaning—unfolds for readers. Snell's experiences range from the forging of an unforgettable bond between grandchild and grandmother to the flowering of an extraordinary love story that has lasted more than five decades.

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The Flight of Red Bird
by Doreen Rappaport

Taken from her family on the Yankton Sioux Reservation at the age of eight and sent to a school far from home, Gertrude is forced to become "civilized"--to give up her moccasins, her long hair, and her language, and to renounce her Sioux heritage. As an adult, she renames herself Zitkala-¬Sa, which means "Red Bird," and devotes her life to fighting for justice for Native Americans. Her powerful and memorable story, told in her own words from letters and diaries, will inspire anyone who has ever dreamed of making a difference.

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Chipeta: Queen of the Utes
by Cynthia S. Becker & P. David Smith

Chipeta became famous as the Ute Chief Ouray's wife--a trusted confidant and a beautiful, faithful companion. Later she blossomed in her own right and whites and Utes alike sought her opinion. Although the title was first used as a derogatory remark, Chipeta was eventually regarded like a "queen" by both the whites and the Utes. She was even talked about by the elite and the press of Washington D.C.

Chipeta outlived Ouray by almost half a century. During part of this time she was ignored, forgotten, and cheated by the whites, although immediately after Ouray's death she was courted by many suitors and men wrote poetry about her. In her old age the whites honored her on many special occasions. Although she could not have children of her own, she "adopted" many orphaned Utes. Perhaps her greatest legacy was that through all that happened to her she did not become embittered and remained a humble, caring, loving person. Chipeta was a special individual who we would all do well to emulate.

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Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko
by Ellen L. Arnold

Leslie Marmon Silko, one of America's best known Native authors, was born in 1948 and grew up at Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, of mixed Laguna, Mexican, and white ancestry. Her early short stories, poems, and brilliant first novel Ceremony (1977) earned her recognition as a star of the Native American Renaissance. In Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko, her readers will find both the power that fueled her early work and an update on her recent career.

A MacArthur "genius" grant funded the beginnings of her second novel, Almanac of the Dead. This epic retelling of the 500-year history of the Americas took her ten years to complete. She intended her most recent book, Gardens in the Dunes, a historical novel of the Victorian era, as a reward for her readers who survived the fury of Almanac of the Dead.

Silko grants interviews rarely, but the sixteen included here are generously wide-ranging and deeply honest. They reflect her heritage of storytelling and give vivid accounts of her life experiences, her creative processes, and her forthright political views. As she speaks, she spins out descriptions of the living oral traditions, the communal relationships, and the desert landscape that are the sources of her inspiration.