Native American Essays

Discover the soul, spirit, and history of the great Native American heritage. The mysterious beginnings of Indigenous communities began in North America over 15,000 years ago. Tragically, and for far too long, the various Indigenous cultures in North America have been systematically mistreated, misrepresented, and misunderstood. This audiobook is a compelling but difficult listen. It tells the story of Native American history, which many have books left out, and the moviemakers wouldn't touch. Listening to this audiobook will be an eye opener.

Until surprisingly recently, most history books noted that America was discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. The truth was that by the time that Columbus arrived in America, people had been living there for more than 12,000 years. This is the story of the gradual rise, sudden destruction, and slow recovery of the native people of North America.

With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty renowned writers, performers, athletes, and activists explore what it means to be Native American today. Through a series of essays and poems, these luminaries give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy.

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history - in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.

In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Joshua Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Deeply rooted within, he reaches across the anguish to create a new form of storytelling he calls "biostory"—beyond genre, and entirely sovereign. Through this narrative perspective, Making Love with the Land recasts mental health struggles and our complex emotional landscapes from a nefarious parasite on his (and our) well-being to kin, even a relation, no matter what difficulties they present to us.

Luis J. Rodriguez writes about race, culture, identity, and belonging and what these all mean and should mean (but often fail to) in the volatile climate of our nation. His passion and wisdom inspire us with the message that we must come together if we are to move forward.

This is a collection of stories drawn from many different tribes of Native Americans. Although the different lifestyles of these varied peoples dictate widely different types of story, they are united by a common belief in the spiritual power of the natural world and the magic that inhabits all living things. Stars and animals speak, wizards and giants cast wicked spells and young heroes and heroines brave all dangers to come home safe in the end.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art—in particular music—and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.

In the first part of this audiobook, you’ll know: the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, the role of disease in the European colonization of America, and more....

At a crucial and fragile moment in Canada's long history with Indigenous peoples, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance. Based on years' worth of columns, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of colonialism, the Indian Act, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities.

This book is the first volume of a collection of RoadRUNNER travelogues created by James T. Parks, which focus on locations and routes steeped in American history. Jim’s original articles are scattered piecemeal throughout various RoadRUNNER bimonthly issues, spanning more than a decade of time. With that in mind, we have updated information, where feasible, that appeared in the original articles. Listeners who are interested in how America came to be what it is today will find this integrated collection of historically themed adventures of particular interest.

In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead brilliantly explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person "in the rupture" between identities.

Attraverso il racconto, popolato di voci e testimonianze dirette, dei più sacri simboli degli indiani d’America, questo audiolibro immerge l'ascoltatore nella meravigliosa vastità della cultura dei nativi americani, e lo rende partecipe dell'impressionante potenza della loro spiritualità naturalistica e delle immagini che popolano, terse e grandiose, il loro – e nostro – mondo divino.