What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the U.S., has resulted in a whole month being designated for that purpose. One of the very proponents of an American Indian Day was Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian, who was the director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years they adopted such a day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association meeting in Lawrence, Kans., formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge issued a proclamation on Sept. 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens.
The year before this proclamation was issued, Red Fox James, a Blackfoot Indian, rode horseback from state to state seeking approval for a day to honor Indians. On December 14, 1915, he presented the endorsements of 24 state governments at the White House. There is no record, however, of such a national day being proclaimed. The first American Indian Day in a state was declared on the second Saturday in May 1916 by the governor of New York. Several states celebrate the fourth Friday in September. In Illinois, for example, legislators enacted such a day in 1919. Presently, several states have designated Columbus Day as Native American Day, but it continues to be a day we observe without any recognition as a national legal holiday.
In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”) have been issued each year since 1994 (source).
Summary: United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology.
Call #: PS 591.I55 W47 2020
Summary: Locally sourced, seasonal, "clean" ingredients and nose-to-tail cooking are nothing new to Sean Sherman, the Oglala Lakota chef and founder of The Sioux Chef. In his first cookbook, Sherman shares his approach to creating boldly-seasoned foods that are vibrant, healthful, at once elegant and easy.
Call #: E 98.F7 S54 2017
Summary: House Made of Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969, tells the story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, a goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.
Call #: PS 3563.O47 H6 1968
Summary: In an attack on an Indian village, a U.S. cavalryman takes a baby girl, but later gives her back. So begins a multi-generation saga on the girl's descendants as they navigate between modern life and ancient tradition.
Call #: PS 3555.R42 A8 1998
Summary: Collection of Native American fiction, including "Tosamah's story", "The marriage of white man's dog", and "The man to send rain clouds."
Call #: PS 508.I5 L54 1991
Summary: What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you think you should already know the answers -- or suspect that your questions may be offensive? In matter-of-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway.
Call #: E 77 .T795 2012
Summary: Carter Revard's newest collection, From the Extinct Volcano, A Bird of Paradise, sings through poetry and prose "to celebrate our creatural selves." Revard draws from a lifetime of experience that started on the Osage reservation during the Depression era and has continued through his role as a distinguished student, teacher, scholar, and poet. In this book, he illustrates how culture, which is not restricted to the human species, has survived through the practice of singing. In showing us this, Revard skillfully blends narratives of nonhuman animal behavior, scientific studies on the nature of language, and literary allusions. From the Extinct Volcano, A Bird of Paradise demonstrates how survival ultimately depends on song. Summary source: Goodreads
Call #: PS 3568. E784 F76 2014
Summary: A collection of poetry, fiction, and essays by Native American women, reflecting on the relation of women to their community, including transformation in the female experience, the theme of inner strength, reactions to stereotypes and simplified images, love, and sex.
Call #: PS 508.I5 S57 2002
Summary: Stories, some in verse, from the author's Laguna heritage.
Call #: PS 3569.I44 S8 1981a
Summary: Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Call #: JUV ALE (ECL - IL 224)
