New Native American Titles from Perpich Library

July 24, 2023

The library is busy adding new titles to the collection this summer! We are especially excited that we have added a number of new Native American titles, many of which are by local authors from Minnesota. Here is a selection of just a few of the Native American books that are now available for check out!

All items on this list are available at the Perpich library. Click on titles for more information.

1. Come Home, Indio by Jim Terry
Graphic Novel
In his memoir, we are invited to walk through the life of the author, Jim Terry, as he struggles to find security and comfort in an often hostile environment. Between the Ho-Chunk community of his Native American family in Wisconsin and his schoolmates in the Chicago suburbs, he tries in vain to fit in and eventually turns to alcohol to provide an escape from increasing loneliness and alienation. Terry also shares with the reader in exquisite detail the process by which he finds hope and gets sober, as well as the powerful experience of finding something to believe in and to belong to at the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance at Standing Rock.

2. Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector by Diane Wilson
Children’s Nonfiction
Ella Cara Deloria loved to listen to her family tell stories in the Dakota language. She recorded many American Indian peoples’ stories and languages and shared them with everyone. She helped protect her people’s language for future generations and also wrote stories of her own. One of the biographies from the Minnesota Native American Lives Series, written for 3rd-5th graders.

3. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition by Anton Treuer
Young Adult Nonfiction
Anton Treuer is a renowned author, speaker, language preservationist, scholar, etc. This young readers edition of the original book for adults from a university press includes new material for the younger lens. Organized by dozens of different questions, some weighty and some minor, but all the time funny, insightful, personal, and interesting, this book will tell you everything you ever wanted to learn about Native Americans, but were afraid to ask.

4. The Good Berry Cookbook: Harvesting and Cooking Wild Rice and Other Wild Foods by Tashia Hart
Nonfiction
Explore the natural history, ecological contributions, and cultural significance of manoomin (wild rice), and savor complementary wild foods and local flavors with more than seventy-five inspired recipes, including favorites from over a dozen Indigenous cooks from various nations. Through storytelling and science, the author emphasizes food as medicine: good choices for our environment and good choices for our plate unite as we enjoy the benefits the good berry and its botanical neighbors have to offer.

5. In the Night of Memory by Linda LeGarde Grover
Fiction
When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country’s long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched–and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover’s previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home.

6. Our Bearings: Poems by Molly McGlennen
Nonfiction
A collection of narrative poetry that examines and celebrates Anishinaabe life in modern Minneapolis. Crafted around the four elements–earth, air, water, and fire–the poems are a beautifully layered discourse between landscapes, stories, and the people who inhabit them. Throughout the collection, McGlennen weaves the natural elements of Minnesota with rich historical commentary and current images of urban Native life.

7. Powwow Day by Traci Sorell and illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight
Picture Book
River wants so badly to dance at powwow day as she does every year. In this uplifting and contemporary picture book perfect for beginning readers, follow River’s journey from feeling isolated after an illness to learning the healing power of community. Additional information explains the history and functions of powwows.

8. The Thanksgiving Play / What Would Crazy Horse Do? by Larissa Fasthorse
Play
A collection of two plays. In The Thanksgiving Play, a group of well-intentioned white teaching artists scramble to create an ambitious “woke” Thanksgiving pageant that also celebrates Native American Heritage Month. What Would Crazy Horse Do? examines the lives of Calvin and Journey–twins who are the last two members of Marahotah clan. When two white strangers arrive claiming their families have a shared history, the twins’ world is torn wide open.

9. Voices from Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stories and Storytellers by Teresa Peterson and Walter LaBatte Jr.
Nonfiction
Through five generations at Pejuhutazizi (the place where they dig the yellow medicine), Teresa Peterson’s family members have listened to and told stories: stories of events, migrations, and relationships in Dakota history, and stories that carry Dakota culture through tales, legends, and myths.

10. We Are Still Here: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know by Traci Sorell and illustrated by Frane Lessac
Picture Book
Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. This companion book to the award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people’s past, present, and future.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich Library.