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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.

October 20, 2026: “Unseen” and 143 other books by authors with disabilities

Image caption: Julie at the airport preparing bundles of rubber bands to illustrate the Rubber Band Rule for a keynote talk.

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we updated our leadership book list and it now have 144 books, including memoirs, written by people who identify as having disabilities.

While researching this list, I discovered Unseen: How I Lost My Vision but Found My Voice by Molly Burke, a social media influencer, entrepreneur, and disabilities advocate. 

At age 4, Burke was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a condition that causes slow, progressive vision loss. Growing up, Burke was the cute poster child for a charity that conducted research for curing RP. She described herself as promoting “cure culture,” which aspires to fix people instead of celebrating them the way they are. By age 14, she realized that there was no cure for her and fell into despair. As an adult, she realized:

I was deeply entrenched in the medical model of disability…. It suggests that people with disabilities are broken, and that science and medicine can fix us. They want to heal us, to change us, so that we can fit into society better…. I now follow the social model. I no longer think that I am broken or not enough because of my blindness…My vision loss simply means I perceive the world differently from someone with 20/20 vision. 

Burke’s evolution of thinking of herself as someone needing to be cured, versus someone who is blind, made me ask this question: What is something I’ve been thinking I want to fix because it’s different from what is considered “normal”? 

My closest experience was in my teens and early 20s when I desperately wanted to be taller. I used to wear 4 inch platform heels, which made me 5’4”. While many people wear high heels because they like the look, I mostly wanted the height. High heels for me were a temporary fix, rather than the cure that I didn’t really need.  

What is something you used to do, or perhaps still do, to “fix” or “cure” something about yourself to make you feel “normal”? 

You can check out Burke’s memoir and other leadership books by authors with disabilities on our updated list from CuriosityBased. Huge thanks to Dr. Robin Nussbaum of We Do HR Solutions and Vanessa Laughlin of Banister Advisors for recommending many new titles to this list.

If you find this list valuable, please share it and spread the word. We put a lot of effort into these lists, and want the authors to get the recognition they deserve!

Here’s a sample message you can use when sharing this book list with your network:

Want to read leadership narratives written by Americans with disabilities? Check this out! (https://tinyurl.com/2026DisabilitiesBooks). #diverseleadershipauthors #DisabilityAwareness #NDEAM (National Disability Employment Awareness Month) #DisabilityPride #InclusionMatters #DisabilityRights #AccessibilityForAll #InclusionRevolution #DisabilityAdvocacy #DisabilityInclusion #BreakingBarriers #AccessIsLove

You can check out our other leadership book lists by those who identify as Hispanic/Latinx/Latino, Black, LGBTQIA+, AANHPI, Native American, and women. 

 Also, please send me any other recommendations you have for this list or any of our other lists.

Best, 

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