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111 Leadership Books Written by Native American and Alaska Native Authors

October 29, 2024 by Dr. Julie Pham Leave a Comment

We created this list to promote leadership narratives written by people of Native American and Alaska Native Heritage. This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order.

  1. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
  2. Recovering the Sacred: The power of naming and claiming by Winona LaDuke
  3. Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  4. The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir by Ernestine Hayes
  5. Black Indian: A memoir by Shonda Buchanan
  6. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian manifesto by Vine deLoria Jr. 
  7. Where White Men Fear to Tread: The autobiography of Russell Means by Russell Means and Marvin J. Means
  8. Prison Writings: My life is my Sun Dance by Leonard Peltier
  9. The School Days of an Indian Girl, and an Indian Teacher Among Indians by Zitkala-Sa
  10. The Man Made of Words: Essays, stories, passages by N. Scott Momaday
  11. Muscogee Daughter: My sojourn to the Miss America Pageant by Susan Supernaw 
  12. Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by himself by Black Hawk
  13. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes
  14. Code Talker: The first and only memoir of the original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez
  15. Abandon Me: Memoirs by Melissa Febos
  16. Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
  17. As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
  18. Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
  19. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  20. God is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine deLoria Jr. 
  21. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
  22. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King
  23. Lakota Woman by Mary Brave Bird
  24. #Not Your Princess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale (editors)
  25. The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Silko
  26. Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward 
  27. Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World by Linda Hogan
  28. Bad Indians: a Tribal Memoir by Deborah Miranda 
  29. Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative by Ignatia Broker
  30. Dog Flowers: A Memoir by Danielle Geller
  31. Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood by Maude Kegg
  32. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer
  33. The Assassination of Hole in the Day by Anton Treuer
  34. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
  35. Nooping: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
  36. The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction by Robert Warrior
  37. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions by Robert Warrior
  38. Like a Loaded Weapon by Robert A. Williams Jr. 
  39. Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point by Gerald Vizenor
  40. The Third Space of Sovereignty by Kevin Bruyneel
  41. Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of Tribal Self-Governance by Raymond D. Austin
  42. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England by Jean O’Brien
  43. X-Marks by Scott Richard Lyons
  44. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition by Glen Sean Coulthard
  45. The Queerness of Native American Literature by Lisa Tatonetti
  46. Speaking of Indigenout Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders by J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Robert Warrior
  47. Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon
  48. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies by Dylan Robinson
  49. Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities by Lisa Tatonetti
  50. Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo’olelo, Aloha ‘Aina, and Ea by Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osario
  51. Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong by Paul Chatt Smith
  52. Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation by Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzi, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia
  53. Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video by Beverly Singer
  54. The People Shall Continue by Simon Ortiz
  55. Poet Warrior: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
  56. The Four Hills of Life: Ojibwe Wisdom by Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri
  57. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen
  58. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies by Joanne Barker
  59. For indigenous Eyes only: A Decolonization Handbook by Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
  60. Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations by Mishuana Goeman
  61. The Beginning and End of Race: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America by Sarah Deer
  62. When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
  63. A History of my Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt
  64. Starvation Mode by Elissa Washuta
  65. The Roots of Ticasuk by Ticasuk (Emily Ivanoff Brown)
  66. Native American DNA by Kim TallBear
  67. Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez, PhD
  68.  Pollution is Colonialism by Max Libioron
  69. Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead
  70. Nulato: An Indian Life on the Yukon by Poldine Carlo
  71. Cold River Spirits: Whispers from a Family’s Forgotten Past by Jan Harper-Haines
  72. Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis 
  73. Bad Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun by Velma Wallis
  74. Raising Ourselves: A Gwitch’in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River by Velma Wallis
  75. We Have Not Stopped the Trembling Yet: Letters to my Filipino-Athabascan Family by E.J.R David 
  76. Qulirat Qanemcit-Ilu Kinguvarcimalriit: Stories for Future Generations by Paul John 
  77. Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being by Harold Napoleon
  78. A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit by Anagyuqaq Kawagley
  79. Qanruyuteput IInruugut: Our Teachings Are Medicine by Alice Rearden
  80. Yupiit Qanruyutait: Yup’ik Words of Wisdom by Ann Fienup-Riordan
  81. Rock Piles Along the Eddy by Ishmael Hope
  82. Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir by Ernestine Hayes 
  83. Indian Stories: Ahtna India Stories from Cantwell, Alaska by Jake Tansy
  84. Cormorant Hunter’s Wife by Joan Naviyuk Kane
  85. Roughly for the North by Carrie Ayagduk Ojanen
  86. People of Kauwerak: Legends of the Northern Eskimo by William A. Oquilluk
  87. Takes of Ticasuk: Eskimo Legends and Stories by Ticasuk Emily Ivanoff Brown
  88. Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William Iggiagruk Hensley
  89. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta
  90. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha Lapointe
  91. Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience by Veronica Gorrie
  92. Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell 
  93. Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity by Darrel McLeod
  94. White Magic by Elissa Washuta 
  95. An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike 
  96. Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land by Toni Jensen
  97. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott 
  98. Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur
  99. Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance by Terria Smith
  100. Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World by Doug Good Feather
  101. Girlhood by Melissa Febos
  102. The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
  103. Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen
  104. Thinning Blood by Leah Myers
  105. Walking the Ojibwe Path by Richard Wagamese
  106. Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality by Michelle R. Jacobs
  107. Starvation Mode by Elissa Washuta
  108. The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living by Joseph Marshall III
  109. Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future by Patty Krawec
  110. The Bear is My Father: Indigenous Wisdom of a Muscogee Creek Caretaker of Sacred Ways by Bear Heart & Reginah WaterSpirit
  111. In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott

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