Books About The Native American Woman

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My Name Is Shield Woman
by Ruth Scalp Lock

Ruth Scalp Lock, a Siksika woman, her Mother Cree, tells her story as a young child, her experience of Residential School, and her hard road through abuse and addiction. Awakened, Ruth embarks on a journey of healing and spiritual discovery. She is given the name Awo Taanaakii, Shield Woman, becoming a community leader and giving back to her people. The story is told by Ruth, and many others who have walked with her. This is a powerful story full of humanity, speaking of tragedy, resilience and much humour. It is a message for her People and all people.

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The Ways of My Grandmothers
by Beverly Hungry Wolf

A young Native American woman creates a hauntingly beautiful tribute to an age-old way of life in this fascinating portrait of the women of the Blackfoot Indians. A captivating tapestry of personal and tribal history, legends and myths, and the wisdom passed down through generations of women, this extraordinary book is also a priceless record of the traditional skills and ways of an ancient culture that is vanishing all too fast.

Including many rare photographs, The Ways of My Grandmothers is an authentic contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Native American lore -- and a classic that will speak to women everywhere.

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Lakota Woman
by Mary Crow Dog

Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance.

Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

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Women of the dawn
by Bunny McBride

Women of the Dawn tells the stories of four remarkable Wabanaki Indian women who lived in northeast America during the four centuries that devastated their traditional world. Their courageous responses to tragedies brought on by European contact make up the heart of the book. The narrative begins with Molly Mathilde (1665-1717), a mother, a peacemaker, and the daughter of a famous chief. Born in the mid-1600s, when Wabanakis first experienced the full effects of colonial warfare, disease, and displacement, she provided a vital link for her people through her marriage to the French baron of St. Castin. The sage continues with the shrewd and legendary healer Molly Ockett (1740-1816) and the reputed witchwoman Molly Molasses (1775-1867). The final chapter belongs to Molly Dellis Nelson (1903-1977) (known as Spotted Elk), a celebrated performer on European stages who lived to see the dawn of Wabanaki cultural renewal in the modern era.

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Mourning Dove
A Salishan Autobiography
Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, a member of the Colville Federated Tribes of eastern Washington State. She was the author of Cogewea, The Half-Blood (one of the first novels to be published by a Native American woman) and Coyote Stories, both reprinted as Bison Books.
Hum-Ishu-Ma (Mourning Dove) (Christal Quintasket) was born "in the Moon of Leaves" (April) 1888 in a canoe on the Kootenai River near Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Her mother Lucy Stukin was of Sinixt (Lakes) and Colville (Skoyelpi) ancestry. Lucy was the daughter of Sinixt Chief Seewhelken and her mother was Colville. Christal spent much time with her maternal grandmother, learning storytelling from her. Christal's father was Joseph Quintasket, a mixed-race Okanagan.

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Life Among the Piutes
by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins

“Life Among the Piutes” was written by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Northern Paiute Chief Winnemucca. In her book, Sarah provides a fascinating view into the lives of the Northern Paiutes living on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation during the late 1800s. Winnemucca gives her voice to the plight of her people as they struggle to survive the effects of government Indian policy in the Western United States, enabling the reader to examine how the US reservation system, assimilation policy and the BIA failed to provide adequately for the Paiute people. The feelings of hope and despair felt by the Paiute people during the 1870s and 1880s, coupled with examples of corruption by white settlers and Indian agents, make for a truly enlightening read. Winnemucca's memories are bittersweet. She relates her actions to help not only her own people but the US army during the Indian wars of that era, including the Bannock War. Marrying US Army soldier Lewis Hopkins in the early 1880s, her story also includes events during their marriage. An advocate for her people, Sarah traveled to Washington, D. C. to speak with the President. She also traveled coast-to-coast, publicly speaking about the plight of her people as well as her life as a young Paiute woman. Stories of her daring escapades as an Army scout and participation in several Indian wars are powerful and moving. Reflecting a side of history often overlooked by other authors, “Life Among the Piutes” is both heartbreaking and admirable. Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a powerful role model for Native American women of her time, and her contributions to the Paiutes have made her one of their most revered members over history.

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Crazy Brave
by Joy Harjo

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Her Native-American heritage is central to her work and identity—so much so that even her arms bear beautiful, intricate symbols of her tribe. Art literally runs in Harjo’s blood. Her paternal grandmother Naomi Harjo was a talented painter whose work filled the walls of Joy’s childhood home. Her aunt Lois Harjo also loved to paint, and both Naomi and Lois received their BFA degrees in the art form. Harjo’s mother, although she had only an eighth grade education, loved William Blake and taught herself the arts of poetry and music. She possessed a natural propensity for singing and performed occasionally with a country swing band.
These influences equipped Harjo with the tools to make sense of her difficult childhood. Harjo’s father walked out on the family when she was young, leaving her mother alone to care for Joy and her two younger siblings. Harjo’s home was no less broken when her mother remarried several years later. Her stepfather was a controlling man with an unpredictable temper. In her 2012 memoir Crazy Brave, Harjo recounts stories of her youth, many of which were clouded by her stepfather’s verbal and physical abuse. Drawing and acting classes were a much-needed escape from Harjo’s oppressive reality. “Art classes saved my life,” she said.

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Medicine Trail
The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon
by Melissa Jayne Fawcett

Contrary to the fictional account of James Fenimore Cooper, the Mohegan/Mohican nation did not vanish with the death of Chief Uncas more than three hundred years ago. In the remarkable life story of one of its most beloved matriarchs—100-year-old medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon—Medicine Trail tells of the Mohegans' survival into this century.

Blending autobiography and history, with traditional knowledge and ways of life, Medicine Trail presents a collage of events in Tantaquidgeon's life. We see her childhood spent learning Mohegan ceremonies and healing methods at the hands of her tribal grandmothers, and her Ivy League education and career in the white male-dominated field of anthropology. We also witness her travels to other Indian communities, acting as both an ambassador of her own tribe and an employee of the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Finally we see Tantaquidgeon's return to her beloved Mohegan Hill, where she co-founded America's oldest Indian-run museum, carrying on her life's commitment to good medicine and the cultural continuance and renewal of all Indian nations.

Written in the Mohegan oral tradition, this book offers a unique insider's understanding of Mohegan and other Native American cultures while discussing the major policies and trends that have affected people throughout Indian Country in the twentieth century. A significant departure from traditional anthropological "as told to" American Indian autobiography, Medicine Trail represents a major contribution to anthropology, history, theology, women's studies, and Native American studies.

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The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year
by Louise Erdrich

In The Blue Jay's Dance,Louise Erdrich's first major work of nonfiction, she brilliantly and poignantly examines the joys and frustrations, the compromises and the insights, the difficult struggles and profound emotional satisfactions she experienced in the course of one twelve month period--from a winter pregnancy through a spring and summer of new motherhood to fall a return to writing. In exquisitely lyrical prose, Erdrich illuminates afresh the large and small events that mothers--parents--everywhere will recognize and appreciate.

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Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative
by Ignatia Broker
With the art of a practiced storyteller, Ignatia Broker recounts the life of her great-great-grandmother, Night Flying Woman, who was born in the mid-19th century and lived during a chaotic time of enormous change, up-rootings, and loss for the Minnesota Ojibway. But this story also tells of her people's great strength and continuity. An enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, she has performed her own poetry on a syndicated radio series on Native writers. Ignatia Broker, who died in 1987, was a story-teller and teacher in the Ojibway tradition. In 1984 she received a Wonder Woman Foundation award honoring her as a woman striving for peace and equality.

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Native American Doctor: The Story of Susan La Flesche Picotte
by Jeri Ferris

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first American Indian woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.
As a child, Susan La Flesche had watched a sick Indian woman die because the local white doctor would not give her care. She later credited this tragedy as her inspiration to train as a physician, so she could provide care for the people she lived with on the Omaha Reservation.
Susan La Flesche Picotte was first person to receive federal aid for professional education, and the first American Indian woman in the United States to receive a medical degree. In her remarkable career she served more than 1,300 people over 450 square miles, giving financial advice and resolving family disputes as well as providing medical care at all hours of the day and night.

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Nancy Ward
Cherokee Chieftainess
by Pat Alderman

Nancy Ward's powerful role in Cherokee politics derived from the nation's matrilineal clan and kinship social system. Because of her distinguished lineage and bravery in battle when she took up her slain husband's weapons and led the Cherokee to victory over their Creek rivals in the Battle of Taliwa in 1755, Nancy Ward was honored with her nation's highest position for a woman.

She became the Ghigau, or "Beloved," "Honored," "Red," or "War" Woman of the Cherokee, and head of the Women's Council. This council had authority over vetoing wars (hence the internal Cherokee political conflict with her cousin Dragging Canoe), war parties, and deciding the fate of prisoners. She would use all of these powers during her eventful lifetime. As the Beloved Woman, she was also an influential spokesperson in the chief's councils. She also acted as a "cultural broker" to many European Americans who crowded in on the Cherokees in the southern Appalachian highlands.