Ceremony
The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit.
More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power.
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII
His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn’t stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave him the strength—both physical and mental—to excel as a marine.
During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare—and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific.
INCLUDES THE ACTUAL NAVAJO CODE AND RARE PICTURES
The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII.
During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare--and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific.
INCLUDES THE ACTUAL NAVAJO CODE AND RARE PICTURES
Indian Givers
An utterly compelling story of how the cultural, social, and political practices of Native americans transformed the way life is lived around the world. Now available with a new introduction by beloved author Jack Weatherford.
"Remarkable...Weatherford is certainly right in his central thesis: that we have underrated and ignored the contributions of American Indians to the world's economy and culture".—Los Angeles Times
Native American Testimony
In a series of powerful and moving documents, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history of Native American and white relations as seen though Indian eyes and told through Indian voices: a record spanning more than five hundred years of interchange between the two peoples. Drawing from a wide range of sources—traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, government transcripts, firsthand interviews, and more—Nabokov has assembled a remarkably rich and vivid collection, represnting nothing less than an alternative history of North America.
Beginning with the INdian's first encounters with the earliest explorers, traders, missionaries, settlers, and soldiers and continuing to the present, Native American Testimony presents an authentic, challenging picture of an important, tragic, and frequently misunderstood aspect of American history.
Native Peoples of the SW
This comprehensive look at Native American groups in the southwestern United States is one of the first to provide both ethnographic research and Native American viewpoints. Included are chapters on the Pueblos, the Hopi, and the Zuni; the Pimans, the Yaqui, and the River Yumans; the Upland Yumans, the Apache, the Navajo, and the Southern Paiute. It explores each group's environmental adaptation, linguistic affiliation, social organization, history, world view, material culture, and ceremonial institutions. Native Americans speak about contemporary issues such as the repatriation of sacred objects, reservation gambling, preservation of native plants, and the philosophy behind tribal colleges.
"The combination of a scholarly and lyrical style makes Native Peoples of the Southwest highly informative and a pleasure to read. Reminiscent in its historical truthfulness of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is a scholarly text that American Indians would want for their own children's higher education. And a must read for non-Indians who want to understand the true history of Southwestern American Indians. Native Peoples of the Southwest authoritatively answers why Indian people persistently and proudly are committed to preserving and maintaining their language, culture, and traditions within a society that nearly annihilated them, and provides hope that those who read it will join American Indians in cherishing and supporting the preservation of these living cultural treasures that bless this great land known for a short historical time as America."--Glenn Johnson, M. Ed. (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma)
Navajo Weapon
Based on first-person accounts and Marine Corps documents, and featuring the original code dictionary, Navajo Weapon tells how the code talkers created a unique code within a code, served their country in combat, and saved American lives. It relates the events of nine key battles of the South Pacific, including Bougainville, Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.
The Navajo language-notoriously difficult to translate under the best circumstances-proved an ideal top-secret medium for confounding the Japanese in World War II and transmitting combat intelligence quickly and accurately. It was the only code that the Japanese were never able to crack. Using first-person accounts, correspondence and Marine Corps documents, this remarkable story tells how Navajo code talkers worked together to create a unique ""code-within-a-code,"" and serve their country in dangerous combat situations-a daring achievement that remained secret for twenty-four years.
Project 562
In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states--from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)--to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country.
The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people--all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more.
A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.
Pueblo Food Experience
The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook is an original cookbook by, for, and about the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. This cookbook is a product of the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, founded by Roxanne Swentzell at Santa Clara Pueblo. Its goal is to promote healing and balance by returning to the original foodways of the Pueblo peoples. The precontact, indigenous diet emphasizes chemical-free meat, fowl, fish and a wide variety of whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. Buffalo Tamales, Blue Corn Cakes, and Rabbit Stew are just a few of the unique and delicious Pueblo recipes. Five thought-provoking essays contribute to the understanding of Pueblo history and culture. Though written in the Tewa Pueblo of Santa Clara, indigenous peoples everywhere and anyone interested in learning about Pueblo culture and food will delight in this book.
Restoring Relations Through Stories
This insightful volume delves into land-based Diné and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories--oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hózhǫ́, * Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites. Renae Watchman introduces the book with an overview of stories that bring Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or Shiprock Peak, the sentinel located in what is currently the state of New Mexico, to life. The book then introduces the dynamic field of Indigenous film through a close analysis of two distinct Diné-directed feature-length films, and ends by introducing Dene literatures.
While the Diné (those from the four sacred mountains in Dinétah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm Diné and Dene kinship. She explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Diné and Dene across time and space through re-storying of relations.
Spider Womans Gift
At Canyon de Chelly, in the heart of the Navajo Nation, stands an eight-hundred-foot sandstone rock formation known as Spider Rock. According to Diné oral history, this sacred place is where Spider Woman makes her home. For centuries, her gift of weaving has provided the Diné with a constant means of sustenance.
The Dine Reader
The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature is unprecedented. It showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose.This wide-ranging anthology brings together writers who offer perspectives that span generations and perspectives on life and Diné history. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental inequalities.
The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people. The volume opens with a foreword by poet Sherwin Bitsui, who offers insight into the importance of writing to the Navajo people. The editors then introduce the volume by detailing the literary history of the Diné people, establishing the context for the tremendous diversity of the works that follow, which includes free verse, sestinas, limericks, haiku, prose poems, creative nonfiction, mixed genres, and oral traditions reshaped into the written word.
This volume combines an array of literature with illuminating interviews, biographies, and photographs of the featured Diné writers and artists. A valuable resource to educators, literature enthusiasts, and beyond, this anthology is a much-needed showcase of Diné writers and their compelling work. The volume also includes a chronology of important dates in Diné history by Jennifer Nez Denetdale, as well as resources for teachers, students, and general readers by Michael Thompson. The Diné Reader is an exciting convergence of Navajo writers and artists with scholars and educators.
The Fourth World of the Hopis
Here the noted folklorist brings together traditional accounts of epic events and adventures in the life of Hopi clans and villages, from legendary to historical times. The setting of these various adventures and events is not the Southwest as we know it today, but a vast and largely unpeopled wilderness in which clans and families wandered in search of a final living place, and in search of their collective identity. Notes, a pronunciation guide, and a glossary enhance the reader's appreciation of the text.
















