Celebrating Native American Heritage Month 2025 Showcasing Indigenous Resources and Creators
By Agnes Attakai, Sonoran Center’s Program Manager for Native Initiatives
November is Native American Heritage Month in the United States! This is an important time to honor and support the Native communities that have called this country home for generations. This resource list aims to celebrate the rich culture and resilience of Indigenous Americans by highlighting resources and literature by Indigenous and writers and organizations.
This month, our focus should be on uplifting and empowering the voices and stories of the Native community!
Circle of Indigenous Empowerment (CIE)
The Circle of Indigenous Empowerment (CIE) is dedicated to supporting—and uplifting—Native persons with disabilities through culturally grounded education and community engagement. CIE offers a monthly webinar series that explores topics such as disability history in Native communities, intersectionality, and practical strategies for increasing access. Through these ongoing conversations, CIE works to strengthen knowledge, visibility, and empowerment across Indigenous disability communities.
Subscribe to CIE newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/arizona.edu/native-center-newsletter-subscribe
Monthly Webinar Archive: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDgxDBeLwM7IJR67dVzKvKxJVzRdJ8wPm
Resources for Tribal Elders
Native American Heritage Month is an important time to honor older members of tribal communities as keepers of wisdom and cultural traditions that have been passed down over generations. As of 2023 there were nearly one million American Indian and Alaska Native people over 65 and 34% Native people over the age of 55 have a disability. Native elders are respected pillars of their communities and face unique challenges in accessing health and long-term care, stable housing, and economic security as they age.
Below are organizations focusing on the needs of Tribal Elders:
The National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA)
The National Indian Council on Aging is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides advocacy, resources, and health services for Tribal Elders across the country. Additionally, NICOA acts as a national sponsor for the Senior Community Service Employment Program, assisting in employment training and experience.
Native American Elder Justice Initiative (NAEJI)
The Native American Elder Justice Initiative (NAEJI) provides culturally-relevant technical assistance and training on elder justice to tribal communities across the United States. A 501(c)3 non-profit educational association, NAEJI works to help people and programs figure out how to competently and effectively access and serve Native American elders.
The Native American Disability Law Center
The Native American Disability Law Center provides legal advocacy, referrals, and educational resources to protect the rights of Native Americans with disabilities, particularly in the four corners region.
National Resource Center on Native American Aging (NRCNAA)
The NRCNAA focuses on community-based solutions to health and social issues affecting Native Elders. They provide education, training, and support to the aging Native population.
Resource Center on Native Aging and Disability: https://www.nrcnaa.org/native-aging-disability
Coalition on Urban Indian Aging: https://www.nrcnaa.org/coalition-on-urban-indian-aging
Native American Heritage Month Book Recommendations from Agnes Attakai
I love reading books. Below are books on my shelf that I recommend, and I hope you will enjoy. To learn more about Indigenous books the following websites have great lists:
American Indian Children’s Literature: https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
GoodReads: Fiction and Nonfiction Reads for Native American Heritage Month: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2956-fiction-and-nonfiction-reads-for-native-american-heritage-month
Poetry Foundation: Native American Poetry and Culture: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144560/native-american-poetry-and-culture
This collection of poems features both old and new Native American poets from several different tribes across the United States. The extensive collection seeks to highlight the vibrance and diversity of Native American cultures as well as bring to light important social issues.
Children’s Picture Books
Laurel Goodluck
Kara and Amanda hate not being together. Then it's time for the family reunion on the Rez. Each girl worries that the other hasn't missed her. But once they reconnect, they realize that they are still forever cousins. This story highlights the ongoing impact of the 1950s Indian Relocation Act on Native families, even today.
Daniel W. Vandever
These three picture books are great contemporary stories of young Native kids with imagination.
Indigenous Knowledge
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer
This collection of essays blends Indigenous wisdom with scientific knowledge about the natural world.
Fiction / Young Adult Fiction
Brian Young
When Nathan goes to visit his grandma, Nali, at her mobile summer home on the Navajo reservation, he knows he’s in for a pretty uneventful summer, with no electricity or cell service. Yet he encounters and helps a water monster and his uncle to heal.
Angeline Boulley
Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. This book is about a girl who learns what it means to be an Ojibwe woman and discovers the beauty and empowerment of community.
Angeline Boulley
Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything. Containing themes of identity, justice, and tradition, this thriller is about the power of taking back one’s stolen history.
Angeline Boulley
These three crime novels highlight Native teens solving mysteries with themes of identity, trust and resilience.
Crime
A Cash Blackbear Mystery Series
Marcie R. Rendon
Book 1: Murder on the Red River (2017)
Book 2: Girl Gone Missing (2019)
Book 3: Sinister Graves (2022)
Book 4: Broken Field (2025)
Renee "Cash" Blackbear, a 19-year-old, tough-as-nails, resilient Ojibwe woman, has lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota's Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. Her life revolves around driving trucks for local farmers, drinking beer, playing pool, smoking cigarettes, and solving criminal investigations through the power of her visions.
Shutter (2022) and Exposure (2024)
Ramona Emerson
Rita Todacheene is a Navajo forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook.
Horror
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
Edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr
This book features twenty-six stories written by indigenous authors. Surrealism and the supernatural, indigenous folklore, traditions, beliefs, racism, legacy and generational trauma are only a few of the themes that are explored in this collection of “dark” fiction. This is a good introductory book.
Andrea L. Rogers
This collection of short stories in the horror genre is organized chronologically from the 1830's to the future. They follow a Cherokee family through time with stories including horror tropes of vampires, ghosts, zombies, and more.
Romance
The Truth According to Ember (2024)
Danica Nava
Ember is tired of her dead-end job, of being broke, and never getting ahead as a Chickasaw woman. So, she lies on her job application, lands her dream job and navigates an office romance.
Danica Nava
A Muscogee pop star and a cowboy who couldn’t be more different come together to strike a deal to save the family ranch.
Indigenous Futurism-Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction
Grace Dillon
This first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors features science fiction tales that explore ideas of finding connection and returning to our roots.
Take Us to Your Chief: And Other Stories
Drew Hayden Taylor
The nine stories in this collection span all traditional topics of science fiction—from peaceful aliens to hostile invaders; from space travel to time travel; and from government conspiracies to connections across generations.
Daniel H.Wilson
This is a fast-moving action story about a war in the near future between humans and robots, as documented in a secret robot archive unearthed after the war is over. During this war, one of the only safe places was a reservation.
Cherie Dimaline
In a world where most people have lost the ability to dream, a fifteen-year-old Indigenous dreamer struggles for survival against an army of "recruiters" who seek to steal his marrow and return dreams to the rest of the world.
Humor
Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s
Tiffany Midge
This is a powerful and compelling collection of Tiffany Midge's musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. Artfully blending sly humor, social commentary, and meditations on love and loss, Midge weaves short, stand-alone musings into a memoir that stares down colonialism while chastising hipsters for abusing pumpkin spice.
More Indigenous humor books can be found at the Pima County Library Many Nations *Laughs Indigenously* List:
https://pima.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/display/1291403957/2653269997
Memoir
Deborah Jackson Taffa
This is a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
Poetry
Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995)
Ofelia Zepeda
Zepeda’s poems capture the most subtle perceptions of the natural world-the smell of coming rain, the taste of dust-and her poems, deriving from tribal, family, and personal memories, reveal a Tohono consciousness of weather, sky, earth, and water, and of the landmarks which measure the passage of the seasons.