Last year, I wrote a couple of posts with books by Native authors for Indigenous People’s Month. This year, I want to share two Native American legends, a true story about a Native woman’s childhood at the turn of the last century, and a book featuring real Indigenous heroes who have accomplished great things throughout history.

1. Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes, by Wab Kinew, ill. by Joe Morse

This book uses poetry to introduce kids to accomplished Indigenous people present and past. The pictures are detailed and have interesting surprises for kids who take the time to study them. At the end, there are life-like drawings of each person featured, along with a brief bio telling a little more about their lives. The kids remembered some of the people featured from books we read the year before, and others were new to us.

2. Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story, by S.D. Nelson

Buffalo Bird Girl was a real person. As she watched her culture disappearing, she connected with an anthropologist and shared her memories with him and allowed herself to be photographed. Now a record exists of her life before colonization changed her world. The book intersperses real photos of indigenous people from the beginning of the 1900’s (including Buffalo Bird Girl) with beautiful colored pencil and acrylic artwork by Nelson.

3. How the Stars Fell into the Sky: A Navajo Legend, by Jerrie Oughton, ill. by Lisa Desimini (the only book on this list not by a Native author)

We love new stories and legends, and the kids got to this book before I had a chance to read it to them. When I did get around to reading it to them for school, they told me they’d already read it, but didn’t mind hearing it again, which is high praise.

The story has parallels to the Bible story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It fascinates me how different cultures have such similar stories to explain universal Truths; in this case, how sin came into the world.

4. Hiawatha and the Peacemaker, by Robbie Robertson, ill. by David Shannon

This story is amazing, and the artwork is incredible, colorful, and expressive. This isn’t the Hiawatha you know from the poem, and your only regret will be that it took this long to meet the Hiawatha in this book. We were all riveted by this story and the powerful message it contained.

Looking for middle grade/YA books by and about Indigenous people? Check out this post. And seriously, adults, if you haven’t watched Reservation Dogs yet, just do it. Yes, it has a fair amount of language and a little bit of violence, but it is real, and funny, and there is no sex, and that is hard to find these days.

Learning about the cast has been its own side hobby – these folks are incredible on-screen and off-. It’s a generous gift I don’t feel the rest of us deserve, to be let into Native life and culture in such a way. Every part of the show, from the camera shots, the characters, and the script, down to which bit of music is spliced in where, was so clearly chosen with love and attention to detail. It’s an homage, a work of art, and an opportunity to laugh.