National Native American Heritage Month was established in 1990. Each year in November, communities gather together to honor the contributions of Native Americans across the United States. This month the Library invites you to explore its collection of titles by Native American authors. Each of these works are available online.
- The Dance Boots by Linda LeGarde Grover. A collection of linked stories that explore the harsh legacy of Indian boarding schools. Told in a contemporary style and set in an imaginary Ojibwe reservation, this work pays special attention to the Ojibwe language, customs, and history in its effort to encapsulate the harrowing impacts of racism and discrimination. Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award and the 2011 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.
- White Birch, Red Hawthorn: A Memoir by Nora Murphy. The author’s personal investigation into the multigenerational cost of immigration and genocide in the American heartland that connects the author’s Irish heritage with the dispossession and dislocation of the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk people.
- Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption by Susan Devan Harness. Harness details her struggles as an American Indian child adopted and raised by a white couple in the rural American West.
- Even as We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle. A story of a 19-year-old Cherokee boy who was wrongfully accused of the murder of a white girl and his fight to prove his innocence against the prejudice and persecution of the local white community in Cherokee, North Carolina during World War II.
- Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year by Linda LeGarde Grover. A narrative of Ojibwe families and their connections to land, history, and tribal communities. Winner of the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction.