Resources - Books & Newspapers

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Indian Country Today

Reservation Dogs

From Co-Creators and Executive Producers Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, FX’s Reservation Dogs is a half-hour comedy that follows the exploits of “Elora Danan” (Devery Jacobs), “Bear Smallhill” (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), “Willie Jack” (Paulina Alexis) and “Cheese” (Lane Factor), four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma.

Click here to watch and learn more about Reservation Dogs

Dark Winds

Dark Winds is an American psychological thriller television series created by Graham Roland based on the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman.

Click here to watch and learn more about Dark Winds

Rutherford Falls

Rutherford Falls is a comedy about two lifelong best friends, Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), who find themselves at a crossroads - quite literally when their sleepy town gets an unexpected wakeup call.

Click here to watch and learn more about Rutherford Falls.

Mohawk Girls

The award-winning hit dramatic comedy series follows four young women figuring out how to be Mohawk in the 21st century. And, of course, trying to find love. But in a small world where you or your friends have dated everyone on the rez, or the hot new guy turns out to be your cousin, it ain’t that simple. Torn between family pressure, tradition, obligation and the intoxicating freedom of the “outside world,” this fabulous foursome is on a mission to find happiness… and to find themselves.


Click here to watch and learn more about Mowhawk Girls.

Basketball or Nothing (2019)

Follow the Chinle High basketball team in Arizona's Navajo Nation on a quest to win a state championship and bring pride to their isolated community.

Click here to watch and learn more about Basketball or Nothing

Prey (2022)

The newest entry in the “Predator” franchise, 20th Century Studios’ “Prey” is an all-new action thriller set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago. It is the story of a young woman, Naru, a fierce and highly skilled warrior raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the Great Plains.

Click here to watch and learn more about Prey

Wild Indian (2021)

Wild Indian is a 2021 American thriller film written and directed by Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. Decades after covering up his classmate's murder, Michael (Michael Greyeyes) has moved on from his reservation and fractured past. When a man who shares his violent secret seeks vengeance, Michael goes to great lengths to protect his new life with his wife (Kate Bosworth) and boss (Jesse Eisenberg) from the demons of his past.

Click here to watch and learn more about Wild Indian.

Shouting Secrets (2011)

Shouting Secrets is a hopeful and heartwarming, universal story taking place in a present-day Native American family. It's a story that is at once about the constancy and the fragility of love, as well as the importance of family.

Click here to watch and learn more about Shouting Secrets.

Gather (2020)

Gather (2020) is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty and land stewardship, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.

Click here to watch and learn more about Gather.

Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015)

Songs My Brother Taught Me is a 2015 American independent coming-of-age Native American drama tragedy film written and directed by Chlo� Zhao. With an older brother in jail and living with their single mother on Pine Ridge Reservation, Johnny and his sister Jashuan's lives develop new challenges when their absentee cowboy father suddenly dies. The loss prompts Johnny to strike out for Los Angeles, but would mean leaving behind his beloved sister.

Click here to watch and learn more about Songs My Brother Taught Me.

Wind River (2017)

Wind River is a 2017 neo-Western crime film written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. It is about a wildlife officer, who is haunted by a tragedy that happened because of him, teams up with an FBI agent in solving a murder of a young woman on a Wyoming Native American reservation and hopes to get redemption from his past regrets.

Click here to watch and learn more about Wind River.

Windtalkers (2002)

Windtalkers is a 2002 American war film directed and co-produced by John Woo, starring Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, and Christian Slater. It is based on the real story of Navajo code talkers during World War II.

Click here to watch and learn more about Windtalkers.

Indian Horse (2017)

Indian Horse is a 2017 Canadian drama film adaptation of the 2012 novel by author Richard Wagamese (Ojibwe) of the same name. The film follows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism.

Click here to watch and learn more about Indian Horse.

Dances With Wolves (1990)

Dances With Wolves is a 1990 American epic Western film starring, directed, and produced by Kevin Costner in his feature directorial debut. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 novel Dances with Wolves, by Michael Blake, which tells the story of Lieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote western Civil War outpost, who finds himself engaging with a neighboring Sioux settlement, causing him to question his own purpose.

Click here to watch and learn more about Dances With Wolves.

Powwow Highway (1989)

Powwow Highway is a 1989 comedy-drama film from George Harrison's HandMade Films Company, directed by Jonathan Wacks. Based on the novel Powwow Highway by David Seals. It tells the story of two Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage.

Click here to watch and learn more about Powwow Highway.

Once Were Warriors (1994)

Once Were Warriors is a 1994 New Zealand tragic drama film based on New Zealand author Alan Duff's bestselling 1990 first novel. The film tells the story of the Heke family, an urban Māori whānau living in South Auckland, and their problems with poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence, mostly brought on by the patriarch, Jake. It explores the detrimental effects of the colonisation of New Zealand suffered by Māori, and the survival of Māori culture against all odds.

Click here to watch and learn more about Once Were Warriors.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Killers of the Flower Moon is a 2023 American epic Western crime drama film directed and co-produced by Martin Scorsese, who also co-wrote the script alongside Eric Roth, based on the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, it focuses on a series of murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land. Tribal members had retained mineral rights on their reservation, and White opportunists sought to gain their wealth.

Click here to watch and learn more about Killers of the Flower Moon.

Apocalypto (2006)

Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic historical action-adventure film produced, co-written, and directed by Mel Gibson. The film features a cast of Native American and Indigenous Mexican actors. Set in Yucat�n around the year 1502, Apocalypto portrays the hero's journey of a young man named Jaguar Paw, a late Mesoamerican hunter and his fellow tribesmen who are captured by an invading force. After the devastation of their village, they are brought on a perilous journey to a Mayan city for human sacrifice at a time when the Mayan civilization is in decline.

Click here to watch and learn more about Apocalypto.

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019)

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a 2019 Canadian drama film written and directed by Elle-M�ij� Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn. When �ila encounters a young Indigenous woman, barefoot and crying in the rain on the side of a busy street, she soon discovers that this young woman, Rosie, has just escaped a violent assault at the hands of her boyfriend. �ila decides to bring Rosie home with her and over the course of the evening, the two navigate the aftermath of this traumatic event.

Click here to watch and learn more about The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open.

Dawnland (2018)

Dawnland is a documentary that focuses on the systematic separation of Wabanaki children from their families by government agents, children who were then placed with white families during most of the 20th century.

Click here to watch and learn more about Dawnland.

Our Sisters in Spirit (2018)

Our Sisters in Spirit explores the question of calling a national public inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada or whether there may be a better approach. Many view this as stemming from racism, sexism, and colonialism. Canada's federal government, however, has not called a national inquiry into the matter.

Click here to watch and learn more about Our Sisters in Spirit.

The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo (2009)

The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is now an empty field. But in1864, for 6,000 Navajo, it was the endpoint of a 300-mile journey on foot. The U.S. Cavalry marched the defeated tribe at gunpoint through the snow along the trail that is now Route 66. The starving Navajo were opposed by an army of settlers led by Kit Carson, who was hired to defeat and suppress Native tribes.

Click here to watch and learn more about The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo.

Bowwow Powwow by Brenda J. Child

Bowwow Powwow, written by Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe). The story she tells was translated into Ojibwe by Gordon Jourdain (Lac La Croix First Nation), and Jonathan Thunder (Red Lake Ojibwe) did the extraordinary illustrations.
Learn more about Bowwow Powwow

Journey of the Freckled Indian by Alyssa London

The Journey of the Freckled Indian seeks to help children be proud of who they are and increase their confidence in their identity. The books help to spread a message of belief and pride in yourself and your culture.
Learn more about Journey of the Freckled Indian

Fry Bread by Juana Martinez-Neal

Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpr� Award winner and Caldecott Honore� Juana Martinez-Neal.
Learn more about Fry Bread

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell

Otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is a word that Cherokee people use to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the Cherokee New Year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. Written by Traci Sorell, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and illustrated by Fran� Lessac, this nonfiction look at one group of Native Americans is appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.
Learn more about We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga

Mission to Space by John Herrington

Astronaut John Herrington shares his passion for space travel and his Chickasaw heritage as he gives children a glimpse into his astronaut training at NASA and his mission to the International Space Station. Learn what it takes to train for space flight, see the tasks he completed in space, and join him on his spacewalk 220 miles above the earth. This unique children's book is illustrated with photos from Herrington's training and space travel and includes an English-to-Chickasaw vocabulary list with space-related terms.
Learn more about Mission to Space

We are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstorm

Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption―a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade.
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The Earth Made New: Plains Indian Stories of Creation by Paul Goble

This beautifully illustrated Plains Indian Creation story celebrates a new Earth after the flood and narrates the making of the buffaloes, mountains, plants, colorful horses and Thunderbirds among others. Weaving together the legends of the Plains Indian tribes, including the stories of the Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Arapaho, and the Crow.
Learn more about The Earth Made New: Plains Indian Stories of Creation

My Powerful Hair by Carole Lindstorm

From the award-winning and bestselling author of We Are Water Protectors comes an empowering picture book about family history, self-expression, and reclaiming your identity. From Carole Lindstrom, author of the New York Times bestseller and Caldecott Medal winner We Are Water Protectors, and debut illustrator Steph Littlebird comes an empowering and healing celebration of hair and its significance across Indigenous cultures.
Learn more about My Powerful Hair

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, written by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by U.S. Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”
Learn more about An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples by Timothy Braatz

Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples is about who have lived for centuries in central Arizona. Although primarily concerned with survival in a desert environment, early Yavapais were also involved in a complex network of alliances, rivalries, and trade.
Learn more about Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples.

Sharing the Desert: The Tohono O’odham in History by Winston P. Erickson

This book marks the culmination of fifteen years of collaboration between the University of Utah's American West Center and the Tohono O'oodham Nation's Education Department to collect documents and create curricular materials for use in their tribal school system.
Learn more about Sharing the Desert: The Tohono O’odham in History.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Learn more about Braiding Sweetgrass

American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa

A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to preserve her culture—with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Whereas. Combining Zitk�la-Sa childhood memories, her short stories, and her poetry, American Indian Stories is the origin story of an activist in the making, a remarkable woman whose extraordinary career deserves wider recognition.
Learn more about American Indian Stories

Iktomi and the Ducks and Other Sioux Stories by Zitkala-Sa

In this renowned collection of fourteen Native stories, the noted Yankton Sioux writer Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) shares tales learned during her childhood in the late nineteenth century. Told for generations, these stories are part of both the heritage and the legacy of the Yankton Sioux, reflecting an active, continually revitalized storytelling tradition. Power, wonder, and a distinctive understanding of the world infuse these tales.
Learn more about Iktomi and the Ducks and Other Sioux Stories

Weaving Sundown In A Scarlet Light by Joy Harjo

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light traces every occasion of a lifetime; it offers poems on birth, death, love, and resistance, motherhood and losing a parent, on fresh beginnings amidst legacies of displacement.
Learn more about Joy Haro and her collection.

Speaking for the Generations Edited by Simon J. Ortiz

In "Speaking for the Generations," Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz brings together contemporary Native American writers to take their turn. Each offers an evocation of herself or himself, describing the personal, social, and cultural influences on her or his development as a writer.
Learn more about Speaking for the Generations

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how each era's depredations spawned new survival modes. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity.
Learn more about The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.

Rez Life by David Treuer

Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length nonfiction work, Treuer brings a novelist’s storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present. A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, Treuer grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation but was educated in "mainstream" America. Treuer traverses the boundaries of American and Indian identity as he explores crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of his native language and culture. Rez Life is a strikingly original work of history and reportage, a must-read for anyone interested in the Native American story.
Learn more about Rez Life

God is Red by Vine DeLoria

First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world."
Learn more about God is Red.

Conquest of Paradise by Kirkpatrick Sale

Christopher Columbus' arrival on a small Bahamian island in 1492 is often judged to be a defining moment in the history of mankind, changing forever the map of the world. Kirkpatrick Sale offers readers a unique take on Columbus and his legacy, separating the man from the legend. Sale also looks at the global consequences of the discovery, revealing the colossal impact this brief moment in history had on a continent and the world.
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A Novel: Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan

Early in this century, rivers of oil were found beneath Oklahoma land belonging to Indian people, and beautiful Grace Blanket became the richest person in the Territory. But the greed of white men murdered her, and the Graycloud family, who cared for her daughter, began dying mysteriously. Letters sent to Washington, D.C. begging for help went unanswered, until at last a Native American government official, Stace Red Hawk, traveled west to investigate. What he found has been documented by history: rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder. But he also found something truly extraordinary--his deepest self and abiding love for his people, and their brave past.
Learn more about A Novel: Mean Spirit.

The Deaths of Sybil Bolton by Dennis McAuliffe, Jr.

For those seeking a true family story of the Osage Reign of Terror portrayed in Killers of the Flower Moon. Journalist Dennis McAuliffe Jr. grew up believing that his Osage Indian grandmother, Sybil Bolton, had died an early death in 1925 from kidney disease. It was only by chance that he learned the real cause was a gunshot wound, and that her murder may well have been engineered by his own grandfather. As McAuliffe peeled away layers of suppressed history, he learned that Sybil was a victim of the systematic killing spree in the 1920s—when white men descended upon the oil-rich Osage reservation to court, marry, and murder Native women to gain control of their money. The Deaths of Sybil Bolton is part murder mystery, part family memoir, and part spiritual journey.
Learn more about The Deaths of Sybil Bolton.

A Pipe for February by Charles H. Redcorn

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Osage Indians owned Oklahoma’s most valuable oil reserves and became members of the world’s first wealthy oil population. Osage children and grandchildren continued to respect the old customs and ways, but now they also had lives of leisure: purchasing large homes, expensive cars, eating in fancy restaurants, and traveling to faraway places. In the 1920s, they also found themselves immersed in a series of murders. Charles H. Red Corn sets A Pipe for February against this turbulent, exhilarating background.
Learn more about A Pipe for February.

Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed, and Murder on the Osage Reservation by Dennis McAuliffe, Jr.

Journalist Dennis McAuliffe, Jr. opens old family wounds and ultimately exposes a widespread murder conspiracy and shameful episode in American history. Dennis McAuliffe, Jr. confesses that he has not always been an Indian. When he was 15 years old, his mother sobbed as she told him that her real mother was an Osage Indian. “Denny, you’re an Indian. I’m so sorry.” She told him that his Osage grandmother had died of kidney disease. Shocked and upset by his mother’s tearful condition, Denny left the room convinced that his grandfather not one of his favorite peopleactually murdered his grandmother. This book records his journey as he comes to terms with his identity as an Osage and as he investigates the Reign of Terror during the 1920s.
Learn more about Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed, and Murder on the Osage Reservation.

PWNA Youtube

Check out our YouTube channel to watch videos about Food Insecurity, interviews with our AIEF Scholars, a reality series with Wes Studi and much more! Visit our Youtube channel to learn more >>

PresPicks

PWNA President & CEO Joshua Arce has curated a list of articles he believes is vital in showing what goes on across #IndianCountry. Be #NativeAware, check out more #prespicks at nativepartnership.org/prespicks

Noteworthy Natives

There have been many notable Native Americans down through the ages and although mainstream America has not included them in most of modern day history books, Native American lore has held them in high regard. We cannot erase the omissions of the past but we can draw attention to at least a small number of the many outstanding Native Americans.
Check out our list of #NoteworthyNatives >>

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