2025 Native American & Alaska Native Authored Leadership Book List

In honor of Alaska Native & Native American Month, we’ve updated our Native American & Alaska Native Authored Leadership Book List. This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order.

Check out our other leadership book lists by authors who identify as LGBTQIA+, AANHPI, women, Hispanic/ Latino/ Latinx, Black and those who identify as having disabilities.

1. #Not Your Princess: Voices of Native American Women — Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale (editors)
2. A History of my Brief Body — Billy-Ray Belcourt
3. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground — Alicia Elliott
4. A Yupiaq Worldview: a Pathway to Ecology and Spirit — Angayuqaq Kawagley
5. Abandon Me: Memoirs — Melissa Febos
6. American Indian Stories — Zitkala-Sa
7. An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir — Ursula Pike
8. As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock — Dina Gilio-Whitaker
9. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
10. Bad Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun — Velma Wallis
11. Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir — Deborah Miranda
12. Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point — Gerald Vizenor
13. Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future — Patty Krawec
14. Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir — Thomas C. Gannon
15. Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience — Veronica Gorrie
16. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy man of the Oglala Sioux — Black Elk
17. Black Indian: A Memoir — Shonda Buchanan
18. Blonde Indian: an Alaska Native Memoir — Ernestine Hayes
19. Bone Dance — Wendy Rose
20. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants — Robin Wall Kimmerer
21. Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land — Toni Jensen
22. Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII — Chester Nez
23. Cold River Spirits: Whispers from a Family’s Forgotten Past — Jan Harper-Haines
24. Cormorant Hunter’s Wife — Joan Naviyuk Kane
25. Crazy Brave: A Memoir — Joy Harjo
26. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies — Joanne Barker
27. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto — Vine DeLoria, Jr.
28. Decolonizing Pathways towards Integrative Healing in Social Work — Kris Clarke and Michael Yellow Bird
29. Dog Flowers: A Memoir — Danielle Geller
30. Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World — Linda Hogan
31. Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong — Paul Chaat Smith
32. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask — Anton Treuer
33. Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People — William Iggiagruk Hensley
34. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England — Jean O’Brien
35. For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook — Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
36. Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science
37. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses — Robin Wall Kimmerer
38. Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong — Linda LeGarde Grover
39. Girlhood — Melissa Febos
40. God is Red: A Native View of Religion — Vine DeLoria, Jr.
41. Heart Berries — Terese Marie Mailhot
42. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies — Dylan Robinson
43. In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience — Helen Knott
44. Indian Stories: Ahtna Indian Stories from Cantwell, Alaska — Jake Tansy
45. Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality — Michelle R. Jacobs
46. Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance — Terria Smith
47. Lakota Woman — Mary Brave Bird
48. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims — Sarah Winnemucca
49. Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself — Black Hawk
50. Like a Loaded Weapon — Robert A. Williams Jr.
51. Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice — Ada Deer
52. Making Love with the Land — Joshua Whitehead
53. Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations — Mishuana Goeman
54. Men We Reaped: A Memoir — Jesmyn Ward
55. Mourning Dove — Mourning Dove
56. Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant — Susan Supernaw
57. Native American DNA — Kim TallBear
58. Native American Entrepreneurs — Ron P. Sheffield, J. Mark Munoz
59. Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God — Kaitlin B. Curtice
60. Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of Tribal Self-Governance — Raymond D. Austin
61. New Poets of Native Nations — Heidi Erdrich
62. Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative — Ignatia Broker
63. Nooping: The Cure for White Ladies — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
64. Nulato: An Indian Life on the Yukon — Poldine Carlo
65. Original Fire: Selected and New Poems — Louise Erdrich
66. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance — Nick Estes
67. People of Kauwerak: Legends of the Northern Eskimo — William A. Oquilluk
68. Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity — Darrel McLeod
69. Poet Warrior: A Memoir — Joy Harjo
70. Pollution is Colonialism — Max Liboiron
71. Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood — Maude Kegg
72. Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance — Leonard Peltier
73. Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America — Matika Wilbur
74. Qanruyuteput Iinruugut: Our Teachings Are Medicine — Alice Rearden
75. Qulirat Qanemcit-Ilu Kinguvarcimalriit: Stories for Future Generations — Paul John
76. Raising Ourselves: A Gwitch’in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River — Velma Wallis
77. Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming — Winona LaDuke
78. Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation — Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzi, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, David Correia
79. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk — Sasha LaPointe
80. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition — Glen Sean Coulthard
81. Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo‘olelo, Aloha ‘Aina, and Ea — Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio
82. Rock Piles Along the Eddy — Ishmael Hope
83. Roughly for the North — Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen
84. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World — Tyson Yunkaporta
85. Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America — Michael John Witgen
86. Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community — Heidi Erdrich, Laura Tohe
87. Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders — J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Robert Warrior
88. Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence — Nicola I. Campbell
89. Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land — Noé Alvarez
90. Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement — Nick Estes, Jaskiran Dhillon
91. Starvation Mode — Elissa Washuta
92. Storyteller — Leslie Marmon Silko
93. Tales of Ticasuk: Eskimo Legends & Stories — Ticasuk Emily Ivanoff Brown
94. The Assassination of Hole in the Day — Anton Treuer
95. The Bear is My Father: Indigenous Wisdom of a Muscogee Creek Caretaker of Sacred Ways — Bear Heart & Reginah WaterSpirit
96. The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America — Sarah Deer
97. The Common Pot — Lisa Brooks
98. The Four Hills of Life: Ojibwe Wisdom — Thomas Peacock, Marlene Wisuri
99. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee — David Treuer
100. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America — Thomas King
101. The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living — Joseph Marshall III
102. The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages — N. Scott Momaday
103. The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction — Robert Warrior
104. The People Shall Continue — Simon Ortiz
105. The Queerness of Native American Literature — Lisa Tatonetti
106. The Rediscovery of America — Ned Blackhawk
107. The Roots of Ticasuk — Ticasuk (Emily Ivanoff Brown)
108. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions — Paula Gunn Allen
109. The School Days of an Indian Girl, and an Indian Teacher Among Indians — Zitkala-Sa
110. The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir — Ernestine Hayes
111. The Third Space of Sovereignty — Kevin Bruyneel
112. The Turquoise Ledge — Leslie Silko
113. There There — Tommy Orange
114. Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World — Doug Good Feather
115. Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity — Leah Myers
116. Thunder Song: Essays — Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe
117. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions — Robert Warrior
118. Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival — Velma Wallis
119. Walking the Ojibwe Path — Richard Wagamese
120. We Have Not Stopped the Trembling Yet: Letters to My Filipino-Athabascan Family — E.J.R. David
121. When My Brother Was an Aztec — Natalie Diaz
122. Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means — Russell Means, Marvin J. Means
123. Whereas — Layli Long Soldier
124. Whip Smart — Melissa Febos
125. Whiskey Tender — Deborah Jackson Taffa
126. White Magic — Elissa Washuta
127. Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video — Beverly Singer
128. Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities — Lisa Tatonetti
129. X-Marks — Scott Richard Lyons
130. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie
131. Yupiit Qanruyutait: Yup’ik Words of Wisdom — Ann Fienup-Riordan
132. Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being — Harold Napoleon

View all of our leadership book lists here.