Indigenous American Reads

Title: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Published: 2020

The author, a botanist as well as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, introduces the reader to plants and animals from both a scientific as well as a spiritual, mythic perspective. Braiding Sweetgrass nurtures an awareness of the importance of ecological balance in our world.

Title: A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca, the Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard who Walked across America in the Sixteenth Century
By: Andrés Reséndez
Published: 2007

Apart from being a riveting tale of survival in an unknown world, this account of the journey of three surviving Spaniards offers an introduction to Native American culture across North America in the 1530s: their humanity and spirituality, their reliance on the bounty of nature, and not least their susceptibility to European diseases.

Title: The Round House: A Novel
By: Louise Erdrich
Published: 2012

Louise Erdrich is one of America’s most celebrated writers of Native American heritage. One of her most suspenseful novels, with moments of laugh-out-loud humor, this coming-of-age story set on a North Dakota reservation in 1988 follows young Joe Coutts as he sets out to avenge the brutal rape of his mother at the hands of a non-Indian, who by law can’t be prosecuted by their tribal government.