Reading List: History

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society.

Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman’s friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois—including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society—to her later years as a wealthy banker’s wife in Texas.

It seems that each generation will have to read and reread Vine Deloria’s “Manifesto” for some time to come, before we absorb what he tells us (with a great deal of humor) about U.S. race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists. This book should to be required reading for all Americans, whatever their special interest.

Recounts the ongoing debate over the “Influence Theory,” the Haudenosaunee’s (Iroquois) Great Law of Peace’s effect on the formation of the United States Constitution.

These important essays by Native American leaders and scholars present persuasive evidence that the American colonists and U.S. founding fathers borrowed from the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian political institutions in drafting the U.S. Constitution and in creating democratic traditions, and review the effects of rulings by the Supreme Court on dominion and land claims.

This work is a metahistory of moral reflection, and the need for human beings to establish intellectual and emotional connections with the entire living world in order to achieve abundance, quality, and peace.

Brings together over thirty years of Vine Deloria’s work, expressing his concern for the religious dimensions and implication of human existence.

This work critiques the Western spiritual world view and its effect on Native Americans and society as a whole.

Urging us to come to a fuller understanding of the perils of technology, Mander explores the sociopolitical ramifications of technological innovation and the spiritual wisdom of Native Peoples, desperately needed by us at this moment in time.

In this revised and updated edition, James Loewen surveys six new high school history textbooks written since the first edition of Lies was published. In his inimitable style, he adds material to each of the chapters noting where new books are more accurate and where they are still fatally flawed. A must-read for teachers.

This important issue from the colloquium, “The Native American Struggle: Conquering The Rule of Law” contains speeches by Leonard Peltier, Lorraine Canoe, and Oren Lyons and includes papers by Jack F Trope, Mark Save, Steven Paul McSloy, and Jo Corrillo. Steven T. Newcomb’s paper, “The Evidence of Christian Nationalism in Federal Indian Law: The Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson v. McIntosh, and Plenary Power” provides an important treatise of the basis upon which all land claims rest in the United States.

To the Spaniards he was known as El Popay, the man from San Juan Pueblo who led the successful Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in what is now New Mexico. For Pueblo Indians, Popay is celebrated as the revolutionary figure without whom they would not have survived.

Examines modern science as it relates to Native American oral history. Deloria turns his audacious intellect and fiery indignation to an examination of modern science as it relates to Native American oral history and exposes the myth of scientific fact, defending Indian mythology as the more truthful account of the history of the earth.

The late author Hans Koning provides, in ten short chapters, a brilliant account of the ongoing war waged by Europeans against the Native Peoples of the Americas over five centuries after Columbus’s arrival. From the Spanish conquest to the colonization of North America, Koning frames the U.S. policy toward indigenous and foreign peoples.

Ward Churchill, explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present.

Wisdom of the Elders is the first book to explore shared beliefs of the delicate interrelationship between humans and the environment contained in both Western science and the wisdom of Native Peoples around the world.

An in-depth account of Native resistance to environmental and cultural degradation. LaDuke’s unique understanding of Native ideas and people is borne from long years of experience, and is deepened by inspiring testimonies from local Native activists sharing the struggle for survival.

KANATSIOHAREKE (pronounced Ga na jo ha lay gay) is the true account of how a small group of traditional Kanienkehaka (Mohawks) set out to fulfill a prophesy of hope and determination. Generation after generation of these First Nations People had passed on the story of how they would someday return to the homeland of their ancestors, the Mohawk River Valley in central New York State. In that place, they would reestablish a community where they would work hard to revitalize and teach their cultural traditions, language and spirituality.

In this thoroughly revised and updated edition of the first book-length treatment of the subject, S. James Anaya incorporates references to all the latest treaties and recent developments in the international law of indigenous peoples. Anaya demonstrates that, while historical trends in international law largely facilitated colonization of indigenous peoples and their lands, modern international law’s human rights program has been modestly responsive to indigenous peoples’ aspirations to survive as distinct communities in control of their own destinies.

This book provides a theoretically grounded and practically oriented synthesis of the historical, contemporary and emerging international law related to indigenous peoples. It will be of great interest to scholars and lawyers in international law and human rights, as well as to those interested in the dynamics of indigenous and ethnic identity.

A vivid account of ten Supreme Court cases that changed the fate of Native Americans, providing the contemporary historical and political context of each case, and explaining how the decisions have adversely affected the cultural survival of Native people to this day.

What is the First Step in Developing a Successful Business Relationship with any American Indian Tribe? Understanding that relationships come first and business comes second! That pearl of wisdom and others is what you will take away from Working in Indian Country. It is the definitive work on how to successfully build trust and long-term working relationships with tribal leaders. Born out of nearly twenty years of working with American Indian tribes both as a federal official and as a seminar facilitator, Larry Keown’s Working in Indian Country lays a foundation for relationship building based on redefining your leadership role through understanding history, trust, respect, honor, and tribal sovereignty. There is little doubt you will experience a paradigm shift in how you currently think about working with American Indian Tribes. Whether you are a government or corporate official, work for a non-profit organization, or merely have a personal interest about Working in Indian Country, this book will serve as your bible and should always be at “arms length” in your personal library. “Every organization dealing with American Indian tribes should have a line of top- management people who are familiar with the contents of this book.” Jeff Sanders Chair, Dept of Sociology et al. Montana State University – Billings