National Network for Equitable Library Service

Molly's father grew up on the Mohawk Reserve of Akwesasne, where he learned the best scary stories. One of her favorites was the legend of Skeleton Man, a tale about a man with a deadly hunger. But ever since her parents mysteriously vanished, those tales have started to feel too real.

Eastman, a Sioux educated in white society, kept his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to the natural world. These six essays, told in very personal terms and coupled with seven folk tales, illuminate the high ethics and morality of a culture that few people know about.

Richard Wagamese, one of Canada's most celebrated Indigenous authors and storytellers, was a writer of breathtaking honesty and inspiration. Always striving to be a better, stronger person, Wagamese shared his journey through writing, encouraging others to do the same.

Influenced by his Native American heritage and its oral storytelling traditions, here are prose poems about nature, animals, warriors, and hunters, as well as meditations that explore themes of love, loss, time, and memory.

First grader Jo Jo Makoons knows how to do a lot of things, but there's one thing Jo Jo doesn't know how to do: be fancy. She has a lot to learn before her Aunt Annie's wedding. Favorite purple unicorn notebook in hand, Jo Jo starts exploring her Ojibwe community to find ways to be fancy.

Drawing his account from the Lakota oral tradition, historian Joseph M. Marshall III reveals the nuanced complexities of the quintessential clash of cultures between the Lakota Sioux and whites at Little Bighorn.

Two people navigate their differences with curiosity and openness in this stunning picture book that imagines the first meeting between an Indigenous fisher and a European sailor. Based on an actual journal entry by French explorer Jacques Cartier from his first expedition to North America in July 1534, this story imagines the first encounter between a European sailor and a Stadaconan fisher. As the two navigate their differences (language, dress, food) with curiosity, the natural world around them notes their similarities.

In this Inuit tale, the actions of a hare and a fox change the Arctic forever by creating day and night. In very early times, there was no night or day and words spoken by chance could become real. When a hare and a fox meet and express their longing for light and darkness, their words are too powerful to be denied. Passed orally from storyteller to storyteller for hundreds of years, this beautifully illustrated story weaves together elements of an origin story and a traditional animal tale, giving young readers a window into Inuit mythology.

Little Wolf, grown up with children of her own, moves to the country where her mother, White Raven, shares a sad story from her childhood. All grown up with a family of her own, Little Wolf moves from the big city to the island of her ancestors. She wants to share the beauty and mysteries of nature with her children, and she wants them to learn as much about their culture as possible. One day, Little Wolf's mother, White Raven, visits and begins to tell her grandchildren stories from her own childhood. But the stories are not happy ones.

A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Esquire From Kliph Nesteroff, "the human encyclopedia of comedy" ( VICE ), comes the important and underappreciated story of Native Americans and comedy. It was one of the most reliable jokes in Charlie Hill's stand-up routine: "My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York.