Popular media depict miners as a rough-and-tumble lot who diligently worked the placers along scenic rushing rivers while living in roaring mining camps in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Trafzer and Hyer destroy this mythic image by offering a collection of original newspaper articles that describe in detail the murder, rape, and enslavement perpetrated by those who participated in the infamous gold rush. "It is a mercy to the Red Devils," wrote an editor of the Chico Courier, "to exterminate them." Newspaper accounts of the era depict both the barbarity and the nobility in human nature, but while some protested the inhumane treatment of Native Americans, they were not able to end the violence. Native Americans fought back, resisting the invasion, but they could not stop the tide of white miners and settlers. They became "strangers in a stolen land."
Michigan State University Press

Darren Bonaparte (Mohawk)
More books have been written about the “Lily of the Mohawks” than any other aboriginal woman who has ever lived, but none have ever told her story from the perspective of her own nation.  Mohawk author Darren Bonaparte sets out to do just that by presenting a bold new biography that reestablishes her place in the greater context of Kanien’kehá:ka history and culture. He brings a critical eye to the documents written by the priests who knew her, and asserts that it was much more than religion and the fur trade that drew so many of her people from their Mohawk Valley homeland to the banks of the St. Lawrence River more than three centuries ago. Illustrations by R. Kakwirakeron Montour

Stan Padilla illustrates quotations from traditional Native Americans on the importance of educating young people using the time-honored values of The People. Good for young readers.
Book Publishing Company

Anna Moore Shaw (Pima)
"A most interesting book. . . . Her account of how the Pima Indians lived, their family structure, how they reared their children, courtship and marriage, how they treated their elders, their religious practices before the coming of a Christian missionary in 1870, and their accommodation with death are related in language that can be easily understood by the layman and, yet, provide information which can be used by the sociologist and anthropologist." —Journal of the West
University of Arizona Press

Adam Fortunate Eagle (Chippewa)
The occupation of Alcatraz Island, from November 1969 to June 1971, is one of the more important Indian activist events in the twentieth century, yet remains a poorly recorded event. The occupation of wounded Knee II, which lasted seventy-one days, and the occupation of the Washington, D.C., BIA headquarters, which lasted for only seventy hours, may well have not occurred at all without the occupation of Alcatraz.

The occupation of Alcatraz Island represents the longest continuous occupation of a federal facility by any minority group in US history. Alcatraz set in motion a wave of overtly nationalist Indian militancy that ultimately resulted in abandonment of the US government's policy of termination and the adoption of a policy of Indian self-determination. This publication commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Alcatraz occupation and presents poetry and political statements written by Indian people during the occupation or in commemoration of the event.
University of California

Tom Porter/Sakokwenionkwas (Mohawk)

Iroquois teachings as passed down through the oral tradition. This deeply personal, greatly informative book by Tom Porter, a Bear Clan elder of the Mohawk nation, brings together a lifetime of experience in service to Native people, with thoughts on everything from the Iroquois creation story and colonialism to casinos. If you can only read one book this year, there's no bettrer choice than this story of a beloved elder who has never failed to honor and uphold the wisdom of his ancestors.
XLibris

Trudy Ann Parker (Abenaki)

Aunt Sarah, a St. Francis Abenaki born in a Wigwam, was a basket maker and a healing woman who lived to see 108 winters. This is the epic tale of her long life.
Dawnland Publications

John Stands in Timber (Cheyenne)
This classic work is an oral history of the Cheyenne Indians from legendary times to the early reservation years, a collaborative effort by the Cheyenne tribal historian, John Stands In Timber, and anthropologist Margot Liberty. Published in 1967, the book now has an updated bibliography and a new preface by Liberty, in which she shares her memories of Stands In Timber and describes the circumstances of the Cheyennes over the past thirty years.
Yale University Press