January AuthorCAT: Indigenous Writers

Who are Indigenous Peoples?

It is estimated that there are more than 370 million indigenous people spread across 70 countries worldwide. Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. Spread across the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific, they are the descendants - according to a common definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.

Among the indigenous peoples are those of the Americas (for example, the Lakota in the USA, the Mayas in Guatemala or the Aymaras in Bolivia), the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand. These and most other indigenous peoples have retained distinct characteristics which are clearly different from those of other segments of the national populations.

https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf
Why Saying Aborigine Isn't OK

Asia
Taiwan
Taiwanese Indigenous Authors Reach Out

Australia and New Zealand

Australia
Seven must-read books by Indigenous authors ABC - Australian Broadcasting Commission
Australian first nations fiction Readings is a Melbourne book shop.

The Yield by Tara June Winch Miles Franklin Prize
My Place by Sally Morgan
Talking to My Country by Stan Grant
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington

New Zealand
An Introduction to Maori Literature in 7 Books

Africa
Black South African authors writing about race

Kenya
Ngugi wa Thiong'o writes in Gikuyu: A Grain of Wheat; The Wizard of the Crow

North America

Ten new books by native writers
Must-read books by indigenous authors Penguin

The Break by Katherena Vermette Canada

South America

5 Mayan Authors You Should Know

Multiple Countries

22 Books By Indigenous Writers to Read Right Now Chicago Review of Books

AuthorCAT Wiki

Suggestions are welcome

I am planning to read Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko, an Australian Aboriginal writer.

I think I'm going to read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian (Igbo) writer.

I have got Carpentaria on my TBR, for starters...

A couples of books I read in 2021 that would fit (and I recommend):

Born Into This by Adam Thompson - a short story collection by an Aboriginal Tasmanian (pakana) author; 16 stories about and of the life of the Aboriginal Tasmanian population in Australia.

If you like poetry, Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry (fully available online WITH recordings of the authors both reading and discussing their poetry https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-p... is a must read.

Not sure if I am reading anything relevant in 2022 but we will see.

I'm planning to read something by Joy Harjo, the first native American to be a U.S. Poet Laureate. I notice that she edited Living Nations, Living Words mentioned in >6 AnnieMod:.

Popping in to recommend the following authors for North America: Thomas King (Green Grass, Running Water), Richard Wagamese (Medicine Walk), and Waubgeshig Rice (Moon of the Crusted Snow).

I am in line at the library for Firekeeper's Daughter, by Angeline Boulley, so if the hold comes in in January, that will be my selection for this CAT.

I am planning on reading The Moon of Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice.

>1 pamelad: I have added a link to this thread in the AuthorCat Planning thread.

I've had That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott on my to be read shelf for ages. A great excuse to read it!

>8 rabbitprincess:
I'll add another Richard Wagamese recommendation:
Indian Horse

I might be back with more Canadian/North American recommendations.

Oh! Braiding Sweetgrass / Robin Wall Kimmerer is another one. This one is nonfiction.

Ok, yes. More Canadian/North American indigienous recommendations:

7 Generations / David A Robertson (graphic novel)
From the Ashes / Jesse Thistle (memoir)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie (YA)
The Birchbark House / Louise Erdrich (children's/historical)

I don't know yet what I'll be reading.

I'm thinking of The Invisible Guardian, the first in Dolores Redondo's Baztan trilogy. The author is Basque.

I'm planning to read The Moon of Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice since I took a BB for it this year. And maybe Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall too.

I haven’t chosen AuthorCAT as a category for myself but I would like to recommend Velma Wallis. She has written three books that I know of. I just finished the wonderful Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival with drawings by indigenous artist James Grant.

>15 marell: I can second the recommendation of Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival

>15 marell: That was a read for my RL book club. I liked it!

Another two Indigenous authors in Canada: Thomas King (Indians on Vacation and others) and Drew Hayden Taylor (Motorcycles and Sweetgrass). I haven't read the latter yet, he is on my tbr list.

Three that are on my TBR
The Sentence
The Yield
The Firekeepers Daughter

I have read An American Sunrise and can definitely recommend it.

On my tbr (but not sure how many holds are at the library right now... there might be a few):
Jonny Appleseed / Joshua Whitehead

Ahh, looks like it is available. That will probably be the one for me.

There are several books on my TBR list that fit this CAT
  21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act
  The Reason You Walk
  Braiding Sweetgrass

I'm also thinking about The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, but I have to do some more research to learn more about the author.

>21 dreamweaver529: Braiding Sweetgrass is lovely.

I will probably read either The Sentence or Firekeeper's Daughter depending on which comes through via library hold first.

Thanks so much for putting this together pamelad. I want to participate, but don't know how realistic that is given I have already committed to four other books in January. But I am bookmarking for future reference.

I have the third book in China Achebe’s African Trilogy Arrow of God and Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice in the stacks. I am tempted by some of the other titles mentioned here.

One of the books I've bought with money from my in-laws is Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, so I plan to read that for this challenge in January.

I am planning to read The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich.

The Yield by Tara June Winch is on my tbr as well, but I think I will save it for AlphaKIT because I don't have many Y books.

I can already see that I will get so many BBs from this thread!

I completed The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John which was about the lives of 3 women who work for Goode's department store in Sydney in 1959. I liked this book for its wit. 224 pages I'm now going to tackle When Things Fall Apart for both this CAT and my own personal African cat.

Happy to see this monthly theme! I plan on reading Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese.

>27 Tess_W: Tess, I don't think Madeleine St John is an Aboriginal writer.

>29 pamelad: Hmmmm, well, I got it from the internet search. If it's on the internet, it must be true, eh? ;) Well, then...I'll just put it under my Australian themed reads and continue my reading of Things Fall Apart for this cat. Thanks for the scoop!

I'm considering The interrogation of Ashala Wolf - it's a bit of an older one from my TBR list so this could be the impetus for me to get it off there

I finally received my November Early Review book. I will be reading American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa.

I am planning to read Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon. It also works for the January MysteryKIT theme "series" and, for me, the RandomKIT theme "Home" because it takes place in my home state of Minnesota.

In addition to Firekeeper's Daughter, I have DreadfulWater, by Thomas King; and Permanent Astonishment, by Tomson Highway on my shelves. Lots of great reading ahead :)

I think I may read Talking To My Country by Stan Grant.

I read Not Meeting Mr Right by Anita Heiss, an Aboriginal Australian. It's an odd mixture of politics and chick-lit.

The Blue Sky by Galsang Tschinag is about Tuvans, indigenous people living in the High Altai Mountains in north-west Mongolia. They are nomadic herders.

I decided to read The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich which will work here and also for Random Cat. Completed today.

There are so many books by indigenous authors.


Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer is fantastic. If you're looking for a non-fiction read, this is a very good one.

I read Joy Harjo's An American Sunrise: Poems for this challenge. Ms. Harjo is the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate. Although this volume is called poems, some of the offerings are prose text, and a few offerings are not by Ms. Harjo herself although she does give the source in the Acknowledgments. The volume traces the story of her ancestors including their experience on the Trail of Tears. I found "Washing My Mother's Body" describing Ms. Harjo's doing it and relating the life and hardships of her mother particularly moving.

>39 dreamweaver529: I have a copy of that book in my collection. I will have to take a book bullet from you and read it this year.

>40 sallylou61:. I read that one a couple of years ago and have the book on my shelf.

>40 sallylou61: Thank you for sharing, this is definitely a BB for me!

>41 lowelibrary: Please do. It is a very good book. So good, in fact, that I'm planning on getting a hard copy myself just to lend people.

I completed Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Achebe is a Nigerian writer with ancestry in the Igbo tribe. This book is very readable in spite of the numerous African words that I'm sure I couldn't say aloud. I even stumbled over them when reading. Achebe established that the Igbo's are a very stable, patriarchal, and religious society. The main character, Okwonko, is driven by the haunting memory of his father's "un-masculinity." He has to do the opposite to prove that he is successful, and that his downfall; when tradition begins to fall apart. I was expecting to be more wowed than I was. Even though this story is set in the 19th century, it still had some very common and universal themes. This is book 1 in the trilogy. I probably won't go looking for the other books. This wasn't a bad read. It was educational, predictable, but not fun. 215 pages 3 stars

>40 sallylou61: Joy Harjo's project as US Poet Laureate was to put togehter an anthology (Living Nations, Living Words) of Native American poetry, as well as an online archive where you can hear some of the poets reading their work.

>46 markon:. Thanks. We discussed that briefly in >6 AnnieMod:, >7 sallylou61: above. Ms. Harjo is a woman of many talents who has written a number of books and is a musician. Now I'm going to concentrate on her two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. Recently I've been referring to Indians as Native Americans. This appears to be established by academics; I notice in the notes at the end of Poet Warrior, Ms. Harjo says: "I've resisted it {Native Americans} and prefer the term "Native Nations" or "Indigenous" or even just "Native"." (p.219)

I've finished Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice - a BB taken from VivienneR.

I, too, have just completed Moon of the Crusted Snow, an excellent post-apocalyptic story of survival.

Here's the February 19th century author thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/338792

I finished Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones.

Mongrels is a coming of age story about a boy who lives with his aunt and uncle on the fringes of society. They are outcasts that are barely getting by and constantly on the move. The chapters of the book are vignettes of his life that are not always told in order. There will be a chapter when he is eleven and the next will be when he is fifteen and the next will go back to when he is nine. They also switch from first person to third person between chapters. Despite the confusion this could cause, it worked. All of the chapters and the stories they told fit together and the order makes sense for the story. While this is a story about werewolves, it is much more than that. It is a coming of age story about a boy trying to figure out his place in the world. It has a much more literary feel than other werewolf books I have read. I think that anyone that likes werewolf stories should include this in their reading plans, but that those that like more realism in their books may enjoy it too.

While I hadn't anticipated joining the Challenge this month, I realize that the book I read for my local F2F book club was The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Boy, did I devour this book! It wasn't easy reading, but the sections on Pixie, where she goes to Minneapolis, I had to finish just to see what happened to her.

I had no idea until I read this book about the legislation called "terminations" for Native peoples. This book documents the lives of members of the Chippewa nation during this time (1950's) as they have to fight, yet again, to keep their remaining lands.

Like several people here, I decided to read a book by Louise Erdrich. I finished The Sentence, which is also on this year's Tournament of Books shortlist. It really captures the ups and downs of 2020 (at least from the North American perspective) and features some wonderful characters, including a ghost.

I also have a non-fiction recommendation. Last year, I'd read A Mind Spread on the Ground by Tuscarora writer Alicia Elliott. This is a collection of essays that I found insightful and thought-provoking.

I read Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese. He was an amazing writer and I'm looking forward to reading more by him. Thanks to Judy (DeltaQueen50) and rabbitprincess for justly singing his praises a couple of years ago.

>54 NinieB: I am always happy to hear that people have discovered and love Richard Wagamese. He was such a talented writer!

>54 NinieB: - I've taken that same BB and from those same people and it's on my agenda for later this year.

Jonny Appleseed / Joshua Whitehead
2 stars

Not really much of a story to this – Jonny is a gay indigenous boy growing up on the rez, and he moves to Winnipeg when he gets older, where he becomes a prostitute (my mistake – apparently not a prostitute, but a cybersex worker).

It was not in chronological order, and it was quite sexually graphic at times. The author narrated the audio – I rarely lost focus, but he did have a monotone voice. Turns out there might have been more of a “plot” than I thought (although, still kind of flimsy, I think), so maybe I did miss more than I thought. For some reason, I had it in my head that indigenous 2-spirit people were more accepted in indigenous cultures than gay people in white cultures, but (at least in this book) that doesn’t appear to be the case.

>57 LibraryCin: I remember reading/being told the same thing back in the 1970s, a time when treating gay people better than mainstream/white culture does was not a particularly high bar to clear. Acceptance of our existence without criminalising us does not necessarily translate into a respected place in society.

>54 NinieB: >56 dudes22: I'm a big fan of Richard Wagamese's work too. Apart from his more well-known works Indian Horse and Medicine Walk, I'd also recommend Ragged Company.

>58 Robertgreaves: Sadly, that is a good point.

I've read Crazy Brave, a memoir of her early life by Joy Harjo. In this memoir her artistic endeavors are centered on studio art.

I have finished Carpentaria which was an amazing journey.

Thanks to a BB from >39 dreamweaver529: I have started Everything You Wanted To Know About Indians But Were Afraid To Ask by Anton Treuer as a second read this month.

I read Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich.

I have really enjoyed the month reading the following books by Canadian Indigenous authors:

Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson () A MUST read! So good! First book in trilogy.
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese () Highly Recommended!
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline () Really good dystopian/ post-apocalyptic story!
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice () An okay dystopian/apocalyptic story.

I am hoping to wrap up my January reading with Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese.

>51 Cora-R: I am wanting to read that one. I'm currently reading Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones. Last year I read and loved his My Heart is a Chainsaw.

>65 lkernagh: Hi Lori! I love that you gave a galaxy of stars to Son of a Trickster - it's waiting patiently for me on my Kindle!

>65 lkernagh: Hey Lori, great to see you with an awesome update! The only one of those I haven't read is the Dimaline, and evidently I need to :)

I've read and enjoyed The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. This was my first of his and I will definitely be looking forward to reading more of his work.

>67 DeltaQueen50: - It was either extra stars or +++ added to the rating. Such a great BC-based coming-of-age story. I predict it will be one of my top 5 reads for 2022.

>68 rabbitprincess: - The Dimaline book is well written. A wonderful surprise for me. :-)

I finished Braiding Sweetgrass a few days ago. Very good.

>65 lkernagh: Thanks so much for these recommendations---definitely added to my TBR.
I am nearly finished with Moon of the Crusted Snow on audio. Will post when I finish in the next few days.

I finished Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss yesterday and loved it. Who knew mosses could be so fascinating? I loved her effortless weaving of scientific and indigenous knowledge and wisdom.

I finished Moon of the Crusted Snow yesterday...counting it for January!
A solid 4 star read for me. See more on my thread.
Beebeereads Steps Up

I finished The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian just under the wire on Monday. Such a good story.

I read Tracks by Louise Erdrich. I finished yesterday but read the majority of it in January. I loved this novel and cannot wait to read more by this author!