Reading Adventures @ La Biblioteca: Native American Authors and Stories

#NotYourPrincess Voices of Native American Women

-Edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale

The first thing I am is a person.

I am a woman. And I am part of a nation,

the Indian nation. But people either

relate to you as an Indian or a s woman. They relate to you

as a category. A lot of people don't realize that

I am not that different

from everyone else.

Winona LaDuke

(Anishinaabe/Ojibwe) (pg.32)

Walking in two world by Wab Kinew

In the real world, Bugz is a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and life on the Rez. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massively multiplayer video game universe.

"We don't want to create two worlds, but walk together in one world -relating to each other as having our own uniqueness that we mutually respect." -Senator Murray Sinclair

Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass as thick and shining as the braid that hung down my grandmother's bak. But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself. I offer, in her place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Native American Code Talkers by M. M. Eboch

The Navajo code talkers were the United States' secret weapon. To make sure Japanese forces did not figure out their battle plans, US forces communicated using code.

Impossible? At first they could hardly believe this complex assignment. The same government that had forbidden them to speak their native language in school now depended on it for national security.

The Girl Who Lived with the Bears by Barbara Goldin

The story of the girl who insulated the bears and was taken to live with them is one of the most popular stories of the native peoples of what is now British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Over the years it has been told in varying versions by the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Tagish, Tutchone, and Ahtna peoples.

"The girl stood there, confused and growing angry. Handsome or not, she thought, he shouldn't keep a chief's daughter waiting." - The Girl Who Lived with the Bears