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