Celebrating Indigenous Authors!

While today we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day and November is Indigenous People’s Month, it’s important we teach our children (and ourselves) authentic stories about the myriad of cultures that both represent and surround us. In school we are taught to value and praise the colonizing culture who continues to marginalize and dismiss the stories of the people who are Native to the land we stand in today. Slide through to see a short list of books written by Indigenous authors to decolonize and diversify your home bookshelf all year long. The books on this list were adapted from lists curated by Dr. Debbie Reese of American Indians in Children’s Literature and Social Justice Books.

Book Titles:

Preschool- Elementary:
* My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith
* We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom
* Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story by SD Nelson
* Little You by Richard Van Camp
* Fall in Line, Holden! by Daniel W. Vandever
* The Forever Sky by Thomas Peacock
* Kiss by Kiss: A Counting Book for Families by Richard Van Camp
* Sweetest Kulu by Celina Kalluk

Middle School - High School:
* Apple in the Middle by Dawn Quigley
* An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
* In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph M. Marshall III
* Indian No More by Charlene Willing and Traci Sorell
* Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
* How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America edited by Sara Sinclair
* Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich by Annie Boochever and Roy Peratrovich, Jr.

Graphic Novels:
* A Girl Called Echo Series by Katherena Vermette
* Captain Paiute: Indigenous Defender of the Southwest by Theo Tso
* Fire Starters by Jen Storm
* THE WOOL OF JONESY by Jonathan Nelson (and it’s wordless!)
* This Place: 150 Years Retold foreword by Alicia Elliott