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

