Best Native American Books

Eloquent, heartbreaking, and meticulously documented, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee follows the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19^th century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, the book highlights the voices of American Indians who actually experienced the battles, massacres and broken treaties. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

As the peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse remains one of the most perennially fascinating figures of the American West. Drawing on extensive research and a rich oral tradition that is rarely shared outside the Native American community, Marshall gives us a uniquely complete portrait of Crazy Horse. The Journey of Crazy Horse celebrates an enduring culture and gives vibrant life to its most trusted and revered hero. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Journey of Crazy Horse at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

In Walking with Grandfather, Joseph M. Marshall shares the very best from a lifetime of lessons passed on to him by his grandfather. With him, readers gain access to the timeless teachings that, until now, remained largely unheard outside the culture of the Lakota people. Marshall takes the reader through the rich oral history of the Lakota and shows us how we can rediscover the invaluable wisdom of our elders. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Book includes CD with author commentary and teaching stories.

Find Walking with Grandfather at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

For many people, the Sioux — as warriors and as buffalo hunters — have become the symbol of all that is American Indian … colorful figures endowed with great fortitude and powerful vision. They were the heroes of the Great Plains, and they were the villains, too. Hassrick eloquently describe the ways of the people, the patterns of their behavior, and the concepts of their imagination. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

Witness offers a rare participant's perspective on 19^th and early 20^th century Lakota and Dakota life. This work includes extraordinary firsthand and as-told-to historical stories by tribal members — such as accounts of life in the Powder River camps and at the agencies in the 1870s, the experiences of a mixed-blood girl at the first off-reservation boarding school, and descriptions of traditional beliefs — in addition to sixty biographies of Lakota and Dakota chiefs and headmen. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find Witness: A Hunkpapha Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

A young Native American writer hailed by the New York Times as “one of the major lyric voices of our time” … Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves characters, themes and language as he evokes the complex density of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation, an existence filled with pain, anger and bitterness but also, more importantly, forgiveness and resilient hope … Alexie writes with affection, grace, and most of all, passion. He is a modern myth maker with a razor-sharp eye for the ironies of modern Indian life, recording the estrangement between Indians and the rest of the world, while affirming the continuing power of his tribe's cultural history and language. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood. In this fictionalized account of actual events, Nerburn brings the land of the northern High Plains alive and reveals the Native American way of teaching and learning with a depth that few outsiders have ever captured. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder’s Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers and the old ones still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide and the complex, unforgettable characters we have come to know from Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story, The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with profound insight into humanity and Native American culture. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo: A Child, an Elder, and the Light from an Ancient Sky at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

Black Elk Speaks is the story of the Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during the momentous twilight years of the 19^th century. Neihardt and Black Elk worked together on this work to convey Black Elk's experiences in this powerful and inspirational message for all humankind. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find Black Elk Speaks at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

Rich with storytelling, history and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and imparts the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. In this book, Marshall focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of living: bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth and compassion. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

Black Elk was the only qualified priest of the older Oglala Sioux still living when The Sacred Pipe was written. This is his book, orally translated by Joseph Epes Brown during his time on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Beginning with the story of White Buffalo Cow Woman’s first visit to the Sioux to give them the sacred pipe, Black Elk describes and discusses the details and meanings of the seven rites, which were disclosed — one by one — to the Sioux through visions. He takes the reader through the sun dance, the purification rite, the keeping of the soul and other rites, showing how the Sioux have come to terms with God and nature and their fellow men through a rare spirit of sacrifice and determination. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Sacred Pipe at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

This compelling narrative explains how Native Americans found themselves time and again betrayed by the ever-expanding white nation of the East, fighting for lands on the edge of the shrinking frontier. — Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center

Find The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians at the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.