A theme emerged at book launches this year. Whether at a virtual or in-person event, authors shared how the pandemic impacted both their literal and creative lives. While each writer’s reasoning was uniquely their own, there was a common thread of needing to connect their work with other people. As I listened to what became a familiar motivation, I reflected on the observations of the late Richard Wagamese (Wabaseemoong Ojibway): “We all have stories within us. Sometimes we hold them gingerly, sometimes desperately, sometimes as gently as an infant. It is only by sharing our stories, by being strong enough to take a risk—both in the telling and in the asking—that we make it possible to know, recognize and understand each other.” Wagamese’s words are from a posthumous text published this year. It’s one of the powerful books included in this list, each of which I’m grateful to share as an ally of Indigenous stories.      

A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks (Osage) is a short story collection that explores the legacy of displacement among contemporary tribal people. In crisp, clever prose, Hicks challenges notions about gender roles, problematic fresh starts, and interactions with the police. Whether set at a San Francisco college student’s first Thanksgiving gathering or a small town in Oklahoma, the text explores the legacy of colonialism in modern America. An IAIA graduate, Hicks used her book tour to call attention “to visiting, honoring and rematriating…ancestral land,” ensuring that patrons recognize that her art is grounded in the sincere honesty that is too often reduced as mere activism. Deeply imaginative and enriched by passages in the use of the Osage’s Wazhazehe language, Hick’s book palpitates.     

Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah (Cherokee/Kiowa) is a novel that illuminates moments in the life of Ever Geimausaddle. Taking its title from the powwow custom of asking the community to give to someone in need, the IAIA alum’s book shares 12 stories told from the perspective of Ever’s family members, including an Army veteran trying to get sober, young men spending their per capita checks, an expectant parent worrying about her role as a single mother, and grandparents wondering about the next generation’s struggle to walk in two worlds. While each voice is distinct, they contribute to a collective story about familial bonds that readers won’t soon forget.

Me Tomorrow: Indigenous Views on the Future compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake Ojibwe) is a collection of essays that imagines Indigenous life in the years to come. The fourth book in a series that presents Native wisdom on topics as varied as humor, sexuality, and art, this installment challenges misconceptions that Turtle Island’s first citizens “are always looking backward, at what we are trying to get back to or reclaim.” With pieces exploring land, water, education, and writing, this text mixes new voices with decorated scholars in ruminations about the legacy created for the next seven generations. The collection is hopeful, illuminating paths that readers can readily imagine becoming tomorrow’s reality.   

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (Penobscot) is comprised of 12 stories that take their reader down unimaginable paths through the actions of unforgettable characters. Set on the land of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, the book recounts moments in a multi-generational family’s confrontations with mortality, poverty, and addiction. Sprinkled with humorous passages, the diverse stories include a child finding a cursed jar, a man’s hair being frozen to the snow, a grandmother succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease, and an attempt to rob a tribal museum. Constructed through prose that is rich in both plot and execution, this is a book that reflects how humanity is shaped by both trauma and survival.

Selected: What Comes From Spirit by Richard Wagamese (1955-2017) (Wabaseemoong Ojibway) collects the wisdom of a singular voice we lost too soon. A survivor of Canada’s “Infamous Sixties Scoop” that removed aboriginal children from their birth families, Wagamese writes about contemporary First Nations life in a way that both exposes afflictions and offers space for healing. This text combines his columns, blog posts, and social media accounts into a singular volume filled with meditative passages such as “I’ve come to understand the pain of a wound or a loss is over as soon as it happens. What follows is the pain of getting well.” Recognized as a book for his devotees, Wagamese’s Selected makes fans of us all.  

Shutter by Ramona Emerson (Navajo) is a supernatural crime novel about a forensic photographer who sees dead people. Rita Todacheene is haunted by the ghosts of the cases she works, demanding she runs down leads ignored by an inept detective. Driven forward despite the toll taken on her own well-being, Rita navigates an underworld of murder, cover-ups, cartels, and revelations. Centered in Navajo beliefs and framed by Albuquerque’s unmatched mystique, this is a remarkable first book in an eventual trilogy. A graduate of the MFA program at IAIA, Emerson’s writing is as rich as its plot is thrilling, a fact that landed her book on this year’s longlist for the National Book Award.

Spirit Matters: White Clay, Red Exits, Distant Others by Gordon Henry (White Earth Anishinaabe) is a collection of poetry where ancient Indigenous spirits mingle with the artifacts of American modernity. While each poem stands on its own­—characters, waterways, and ghosts weave throughout the text, making familiar refrains hum from the pages. With a mischievous painter’s eye for images, Henry offers passages on an “insulin syringe full of bear grease,” “ill pronouns fixed to inflamed abstract terms,” and “memory coming out of a closet/a dark room like a gravedigger’s shovel.” A trickster wordsmith, Henry challenges readers to imagine what is, what was, and what someday might be.

The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives by Linda LeGarde Grover (Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe) is a collection of works divided into “four human ages, intertwined with the ages of the Earth.” A gifted storyteller, Grover shares traditional narratives on the majesty of creation, before moving to describe the acculturative machinations of Indian Boarding School life. Her characters confess to having “reverted to their pagan ways” upon returning home, vocalizing the affinity for the natural world they inherited from their ancestors. Writing at times in both Ojibwe and English, Grover’s text models contextual resistance to the assimilation narratives that too often reduce the power of Native lifeways.

While this list is hardly exhaustive, its collected works are truly revelatory. As Richard Wagamese states, “I don’t want to be the kind of writer who can take the sun and turn it into a shining word in your imagination. I want to take a shining word and turn it into the sun for you.” It is my hope that the books on this list become like a sun for you, fortifying you “to know, recognize and understand” the world we all call home.

Ryan Winn teaches in the Liberal Studies Department at College of Menominee Nation. 

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in the Inquisitive Academic or any other opinion columns published by the Tribal College Journal (TCJ) do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TCJ or the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.