LibGuides: Indigenous Peoples Resources: Articles + Literature

Introducing a Series Curated by Natalie Diaz

Literary Hub
In my Mojave culture, many of our songs are maps, but not in the sense of an American map. Mojave song-maps do not draw borders or boundaries, do not say this is knowable, or defined, or mine. Instead our maps use language to tell about our movements and wonderings (not wanderings) across a space, naming what has happened along the way while also compelling us toward what is waiting to be discovered, where we might go and who we might meet or become along the way. This feature of indigenous women is meant to be like those song-maps, to offer myriad ways of “poetic” and linguistic experience—a journey through or across memory, or imagination, across pain or joy or the impossibility of each, across our bodies of land and water and flesh and ink—an ever-shifting, ever-returning, ever-realizing map of movement, of discovery, of possibility, of risk—of indigenous and native poetry. It is my luck to welcome you to this indigenous space and invite you into the conversations of these poems, languages, imageries and wonders. In the first installment of this bi-monthly feature, I’m pleased to share the work of Laura Da’, Kimberly Blaeser, Heid E. Erdrich, and Kat Page (full bios [included]).

–‘Ahotk, Natalie Diaz

BuzzFeed
With two highly anticipated books, Terese Marie Mailhot and Tommy Orange are part of a new generation of indigenous writers, trained in a program that rejects the standards of white academia.

AICL
Established in 2006, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical perspectives and analysis of indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society. Scroll down for links to book reviews, Native media, and more.

The Paris Review
Orange hates public speaking. With his head buried in his notes, he intoned, “As Native people we have a bad history with schools, with institutions. They’re still teaching history wrong. We still hear them saying: ‘just get over it already,’ even when they’re saying they know the feeling is there. Get over what? The mountain that is history?”

Lit Hub
This fall, The Lifted Brow, a quarterly literary magazine based in Melbourne, Australia, announced a First Nations issue with a twist: not only would the issue feature work by First Nations contributors, but the entire issue—its budget and all editorial and creative control—would be managed by a staff of First Nations editors and designers. The Lifted Brow has published many world-renowned authors, including Christos Tsiolkas, Helen Garner, David Foster Wallace, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay, Neil Gaiman, and Tracey K. Smith, among others. But as the Brow’s staff acknowledges in its announcement: “although we’ve had First Nations editors commission and edit work for us, our magazine staff and our organization only ever has input from Indigenous persons around the fringes of our activities, and as such are in small and large ways contributing to the ongoing project of colonization.”

Women Who Made Herstory
Throughout history, Native American women have always served as leaders, healers, artists—and anything else they wanted to be. But you wouldn’t know it from reading most history textbooks. Pocahontas and Sacajawea usually appear in them somewhere, but all too often their stories take a supporting role to dominating white male narratives. And if you think Native American Heritage Month in November will fill in the gaps left by our inadequate American educational system, think again. (Not to mention, it can actually be a nightmare for Native people.)