Remarkable Girls and Women: Native Voices

These novels, memoirs, and short stories capture the strength and wisdom of Native Women facing significant challenges, decisions, and changes. From the upper reaches of the Artic to the peaks of the Andes, from the waters of the Great Lakes to the shores of Hawaii, these books will introduce you to characters that will stay with you long after finishing the final pages.

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women

Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change.

April Raintree

Two Métis sisters are taken from their parents as young children and reared in separate foster homes — doing all they can to maintain the ties between them and trying in different ways to live in a society that rejects and abuses them. To varying degrees both sisters struggle with learned shame, and, in a narrative unsweetened by sentiment or apology, how one of them summons the strength to face her demons is their shared story. Adapated for high school from the award-winning novel In Search of April Raintree. — Oyate

Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me

Product Description: Moana Kawelo, PhD, has a promising career as a museum curator in Los Angeles. The untimely death of her father and the gravitational pull of Hawaii when she returns home for his funeral causes Moana to question her motivations and her glamorous life in California. Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me is the story of Moana's struggle to understand her ancestral responsibilities, mend relationships, and find her identity as a Hawaiian in today s world. 2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award Winner.

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer
Illustrated by: Natasha Donovan
Age Level: 6-9

Cherokee author Traci Sorell and Métis illustrator Natasha Donovan trace Ross's journey from being the only girl in a high school math class to becoming a teacher to pursuing an engineering degree, joining the top-secret Skunk Works division of Lockheed, and being a mentor for Native Americans and young women interested in engineering. In addition, the narrative highlights Cherokee values including education, working cooperatively, remaining humble, and helping ensure equal opportunity and education for all.

Halfbreed

Product Description: For Maria Campbell, a Métis ("Halfbreed") in Canada, the brutal realities of poverty, pain, and degradation intruded early and followed her every step. Her story is a harsh one, but it is told without bitterness or self-pity. It is a story that begins in 1940 in northern Saskatchewan and moves across Canada's West, where Maria roamed in the rootless existence of day-to-day jobs, drug addiction, and alcoholism. It was Cheechum, her Cree great-grandmother, whose indomitable spirit sustained Maria Campbell through her most desperate times.

Hat Trick (Lorimer Sports Stories)

Product Description: Leigh Aberdeen is one of the top players on her Alberta hockey team, the Falcons. But as a Métis and the only girl on the team, she's different — and not everyone is happy about that. To top it off, she doesn't think her mother wants her to play hockey, so Leigh hasn't told her about the Falcons. Soon she's getting threatening messages on the phone, the Falcons' captain tries to get her kicked off the team, and her mother wants Leigh to go to a dance recital on the same night as the finals.

Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater

Product Description: Keepers of the Morning Star is the first major anthology of Native women's contemporary theater bringing together works from established and new playwrights. This collection, representing a rich diversity of Native communities, showcases the exciting range of contemporary Native women's theater from the dynamic fusion of storytelling, ceremony, music and dance to the bold experimentation of poetic stream of consciousness and Native agitprop.

Keeping the Rope Straight: Annie Dodge Wauneka's Life of Service to the Navajo

Annie Wauneka devoted her life to helping her people. Inspired by the example of her father, Annie immersed herself in tribal politics and became a leader in the battle against tuberculosis. Annie melded traditional Diné (Navajo) culture with the modern world and brought about unprecedented improvements in the healthcare and education available to her people. Her years of service earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the title "Our Legendary Mother" from the Diné Nation.

Killer of Enemies

Product Description: Years ago, seventeen-year-old Apache hunter Lozen and her family lived in a world of haves and have-nots. There were the Ones — people so augmented with technology and genetic enhancements that they were barely human — and there was everyone else who served them. Then the Cloud came, and everything changed. In the midst of a post-apocalyptic world, fate has given Lozen a unique set of survival skills and magical abilities. With every monster she takes down, her powers grow, and she connects those powers to an ancient legend of her people.

Lightfinder

Lightfinder is a YA fantasy novel about Aisling, a young Cree woman who sets out into the wilderness with her Kokum (grandmother), Aunty and two young men she barely knows. They have to find and rescue her runaway younger brother, Eric. Along the way she learns that the legends of her people might be real and that she has a growing power of her own.

Moose to Moccasins: The Story of Ka Kita Wa Pa No Kwe

Having been born in a tent on Bear Island, Lake Temagami in 1908, Madeline Katt Theriault could recall an earlier independent and traditional First Nations lifestyle. In this book, the late author proudly tells of her youth and coming of age by sharing her vivid memories and drawing on exceptional old family photographs. In her own words, she writes of a time long ago — a time that was difficult, but not without personal rewards.

Native Women of Courage

Product Description: Native Women of Courage profiles ten outstanding women leaders in the Native community. All of these successful, trailblazing women are stellar role models who have raised the profile of indigenous culture in North America. From heroines of the past to women making history today, this exciting work of non-fiction reminds readers of the extraordinary contributions of Native American women to our daily lives and to our country's social fabric.

Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative

Product Description: 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, uprootings, and loss for the Minnesota Ojibway. This story also tells, however, of her people's great strength and continuity.

Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing up Female in America

brightly colored hands raised in fists and peace signs

From Amy Reed, Ellen Hopkins, Amber Smith, Sandhya Menon, and more of your favorite YA authors comes an anthology of essays that explore the diverse experiences of injustice, empowerment, and growing up female in America.

Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Product Description: Cassidy Rain Berghoff didn't know that the very night she decided to get a life would be the night that her best friend would lose his. It's been six months since her best friend died, and up until now Rain has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around her aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again — at least through the lens of her camera.

She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World

Illustrated by: Alexandra Boiger

This book celebrates thirteen American women who helped shape our country through their tenacity, sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience. They all certainly persisted. This book features: Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Clara Lemlich, Nellie Bly, Virginia Apgar, Maria Tallchief, Claudette Colvin, Ruby Bridges, Margaret Chase Smith, Sally Ride, Florence Griffith Joyner, Oprah Winfrey, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Sisters of the Neversea

Sisters of the Neversea

Lily and Wendy have been best friends since they became stepsisters. But with their feuding parents planning to spend the summer apart, what will become of their family — and their friendship? Little do they know that a mysterious boy has been watching them from the oak tree outside their window. A boy who intends to take them away from home for good, to an island of wild animals, Merfolk, Fairies, and kidnapped children, to a sea of merfolk, pirates, and a giant crocodile. A boy who calls himself Peter Pan.

Solar Storms

Product Description: Searching for her birth mother, 17-year-old Angela finds her way to the remote region of the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnesota. Here she reunites with the woman who raised her during her early years. But her happiness is short-lived, when she gets involved in a conflict with developers preparing to build a huge hydroelectric dam.

The Girl Who Married the Moon: Tales from Native North America

What sets this book apart from other collections of Native American tales is its focus on women. Of the 16 stories (4 from each corner of the U.S.), most are relatively unknown…Several selections involve abduction; there is a bit of cruelty and gore; and one romantic story ends tragically. Edging toward nonfiction, two pieces reflect actual coming-of-age ceremonies, and another celebrates the courage of a woman during the historical battle of Rosebud Creek. — School Library Journal

The Queen of Water

Product Description: Born in an Andean village in Ecuador, Virginia lives with her large family in a small, earthen-walled dwelling. In her village of indígenas, it is not uncommon to work in the fields all day, even as a child, or to be called a stupid Indian by members of the ruling class of mestizos, or Spanish descendants. When seven-year-old Virginia is taken from her village to be a servant to a mestizo couple, she has no idea what the future holds.

The Storytellers' Club: The Picture-Writing Women of the Arctic

"(T)his novel captures the world of the Inupiaq of Alaska…The book is set in the 1920s, but the tales are from the women's youth, around the late 1800s. The stories range from the everyday — favorite recipes — to legends of giants and spiders that live among the people. They are lessons in history, both because these are women who never learned to read and write, and because they record the history of the Alaskan Indians.

The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir

Product Description: Leslie Marmon Silko combines memoir with family history and reflections on the creatures and beings that command her attention and inform her vision of the world, taking readers along on her daily walks through the arroyos and ledges of the Sonoran desert in Arizona. Silko weaves tales from her family's past into her observations, using the turquoise stones she finds on the walks to unite the strands of her stories.

Waterlily (New Edition)

Product Description: When Blue Bird and her grandmother leave their family's camp to gather beans for the long, threatening winter, they inadvertently avoid the horrible fate that befalls the rest of the family. Luckily, the two women are adopted by a nearby Dakota community and are eventually integrated into their kinship circles. Published after Deloria's death, this novel offers a captivating glimpse into the daily life of the nineteenth-century Sioux.

We Are Water Protectors

child standing in waves holding a feather
Illustrated by: Michaela Goade

Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, Carole Lindstrom's bold and lyrical picture book We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguarding the Earth’s water from harm and corruption.

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.