2026 Native American & Alaska Native Authored Leadership Books

In honor of Alaska Native & Native American Month, we’ve updated our 2026 Native American & Alaska Native Authored Leadership Book List to include 166 titles. This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order.

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 Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices — Sara Sinclair & Stephanie Sinclair
5. A Voice Like Mine: A Memoir — Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo)
6. A Yupiaq Worldview: a Pathway to Ecology and Spirit — Angayuqaq Kawagley
7. Abandon Me: Memoirs — Melissa Febos
8. American Indian Stories — Zitkala-Sa
9. An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir — Ursula Pike
10. An Ojibwe Home in the City: White Earth Women and Community Organizing in Minneapolis — Sasha Maria Suarez
11. As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice — Dina Gilio-Whitaker
12. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance — Laeanne Betasamosake Simpson
13. Bad Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun — Velma Wallis
14. Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir — Deborah Miranda
15. Bead on an Anthill: A Lakota Childhood — Delphine Red Shirt
16. Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point — Gerald Vizenor
17. Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past — Patty Krawec
18. Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir — Thomas C. Gannon
19. Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption — Susan Devan Harness
20. Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience — Veronica Gorrie
21. Black Elk Speaks — Black Elk
22. Black Indian: A memoir — Shonda Buchanan
23. Blonde Indian: an Alaska Native Memoir — Ernestine Hayes
24. Bone Dance — Wendy Rose
25. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of My Ancestors — Louise Erdrich
26. Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer
27. Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s — Tiffany Midge
28. Call Me Indian: From the Trauma of Residential School to Becoming the Nhl’s First Treaty Indigenous Player — Fred Sasakamoose
29. Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land — Toni Jensen
30. Code Talker — Chester Nez
31. Cold River Spirits — Jan Harper-Haines
32. Cormorant Hunter’s Wife — Joan Naviyuk Kane
33. Crazy Brave: A Memoir — Joy Harjo
34. Critically Sovereign — Joanne Barker
35. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian manifesto — Vine deLoria, Jr.
36. Decolonizing Pathways towards Integrative Healing in Social Work — Kris Clarke and Michael Yellow Bird
37. Dog Flowers: A Memoir — Danielle Geller
38. Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World — Linda Hogan
39. Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong — Paul Chaat Smith
40. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask — Anton Treuer
41. Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People — William Iggiagruk Hensley
42. Fighting for the Puyallup Tribe — Ramona Bennett
43. Firsting and Lasting — Jean O’Brien
44. For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook — Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
45. Fresh Banana Leaves — Linda Black Elk
46. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses — Robin Wall Kimmerer
47. Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong — Linda LeGarde Grover
48. Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age — Joy Harjo
49. Girlhood — Melissa Febos
50. God is Red: A Native View of Religion — Vine deLoria, Jr.
51. Heart Berries — Terese Marie Mailhot
52. Hungry Listening — Dylan Robinson
53. I Love You So Many: A Native Memoir of Adventure, Culture, and Family — Terria Smith
54. In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience — Helen Knott
55. Indian Stories: Ahtna Indian Stories from Cantwell, Alaska — Jake Tansy
56. Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality — Michelle R. Jacobs
57. Keewaydinoquay: Stories from My Youth — Keewaydinoquay
58. Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance — Terria Smith
59. Lakota Woman — Mary Brave Bird
60. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims — Sarah Winnemucca
61. Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak — Black Hawk
62. Like a Loaded Weapon — Robert A. Williams Jr.
63. Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice — Ada Deer
64. Making Love with the Land — Joshua Whitehead
65. Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age — Darrel McLeod
66. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People — Wilma Mankiller
67. Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations — Mishuana Goeman
68. Men We Reaped: A Memoir — Jesmyn Ward
69. Mourning dove — mourning dove
70. Muscogee Daughter: My sojourn to the Miss America Pageant — Susan Supernaw
71. My Grandfather’s Altar: Five Generations of Lakota Holy Men — Richard Moves Camp
72. Native American DNA — Kim TallBear
73. Native American Entrepreneurs — Ron P. Sheffield & J. Mark Munoz
74. Native Writers: Voices of Power — Kim Sigafus & Lyle Ernst
75. Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God — Kaitlin B. Curtice
76. Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law — Raymond D. Austin
77. New Poets of Native Nations — Heidi Erdrich
78. Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative — Ignatia Broker
79. Nooping: The Cure for White Ladies — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
80. Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present — Adrienne Keene
81. Nulato: An Indian Life on the Yukon — Poldine Carlo
82. Our History Is the Future — Nick Estes
83. Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef — Nephi Craig
84. People of Kauwerak: Legends of the Northern Eskimo — William A. Oquilluk
85. Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity — Darrel McLeod
86. Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School — Adam Fortunate Eagle
87. Plums or Nuts: Ojibwe Stories of Anishinaabe Humor — Larry Amik Smallwood & Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr
88. Poet Warrior: A Memoir — Joy Harjo
89. Pollution is Colonialism — Max Liboiron
90. Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood — Maude Kegg
91. Prison Writings: My life is my Sun Dance — Leonard Peltier
92. Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America — Matika Wilbur
93. Qanruyuteput iinruugut: our teachings are medicine — Alice Rearden
94. Qulirat Qanemcit-Ilu Kinguvarcimalriit: Stories for Future Generations — Paul John
95. Raising Ourselves — Velma Wallis
96. Recovering the Sacred: The power of naming and claiming — Winona LaDuke
97. Red Nation Rising — Nick Estes, et al.
98. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk — Sasha Lapointe
99. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition — Glen Sean Coulthard
100. Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band — Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni
101. Remembering Our Intimacies — Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osario
102. Rock Piles Along the Eddy — Ishmael Hope
103. Roughly for the North — Carrie Ayagduk Ojanen
104. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World — Tyson Yunkaporta
105. Seeing Red — Michael John Witgen
106. Sharice’s Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman — Sharice Davids
107. She Persisted: Maria Tallchief — Christine Day
108. Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community — Heidi Erdrich & Laura Tohe
109. Soft As Bones: A Memoir — Chyana Marie Sage
110. Speaking of Indigenous Politics — J. Kehaulani Kauanui & Robert Warrior
111. Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence — Nicola I. Campbell
112. Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land — Noé Alvarez
113. Standing with Standing Rock — Nick Estes & Jaskiran Dhillon
114. Starvation Mode — Elissa Washuta
115. Storyteller — Leslie Marmon Silko
116. Tales of Ticasuk: Eskimo Legends & Stories — Ticasuk Emily Ivanoff Brown
117. The Assassination of Hole in the Day — Anton Treuer
118. The Bear is My Father — Bear Heart & Reginah WaterSpirit
119. The Beginning and End of Rape — Sarah Deer
120. The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood — Louise Erdrich
121. The Boy from Buzwah: A Life in Indian Education — Cecil King
122. The Common Pot — Lisa Brooks
123. The Four Hills of Life: Ojibwe Wisdom — Thomas Peacock & Marlene Wisuri
124. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present — David Treuer
125. The Inconvenient Indian — Thomas King
126. The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living — Joseph Marshall III
127. The Man Made of Words — N. Scott Momaday
128. The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction — Robert Warrior
129. The People Shall Continue — Simon Ortiz
130. The Queerness of Native American Literature — Lisa Tatonetti
131. The Rediscovery of America — Ned Blackhawk
132. The Roots of Ticasuk — Ticasuk (Emily Ivanoff Brown)
133. The Sacred Hoop — Paula Gunn Allen
134. The School Days of an Indian Girl, and an Indian Teacher Among Indians — Zitkala-Sa
135. The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir — Ernestine Hayes
136. The Third Space of Sovereignty — Kevin Bruyneel
137. The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt — Clyde Bellecourt
138. The Turquoise Ledge — Leslie Silko
139. The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life — Amy Bowers Cordalis
140. The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir — Linda Hogan
141. Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
142. There There — Tommy Orange
143. Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World — Doug Good Feather
144. Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity — Leah Myers
145. This Wound Is a World — Billy-Ray Belcourt
146. Thunder Song: Essays — Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe
147. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions — Robert Warrior
148. Two Old Women — Velma Wallis
149. Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls — Angela Sterritt
150. Walking the Ojibwe Path: A Memoir in Letters to Joshua — Richard Wagamese
151. We have not stopped the trembling yet — E.J.R. David
152. We Survived the Night — Julian Brave NoiseCat
153. When My Brother Was an Aztec — Natalie Diaz
154. Where White Men Fear to Tread — Russell Means & Marvin J. Means
155. Whereas — Layli Long Soldier
156. Whip Smart — Melissa Febos
157. Whiskey Tender — Deborah Jackson Taffa
158. White Magic — Elissa Washuta
159. Wiping the War Paint off the Lens — Beverly Singer
160. Wisdom Lessons: Spirited Guidance from an Ojibwe Great-Grandmother — Mary Lyons
161. Written by the Body — Lisa Tatonetti
162. X-Marks — Scott Richard Lyons
163. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie
164. You Were Made for This World: Celebrated Indigenous Voices Speak to Young People — Stephanie Sinclair & Sara Sinclair
165. Yupiit Qanruyutait: Yup’ik Words of Wisdom — Ann Fienup-Riordan
166. Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being — Harold Napolen

View all of our leadership book lists here.