I don’t have the official data to prove it, but more people have asked me for book recommendations in 2023 than any year prior. Certainly, I’ve never been shy about sharing lists of excellent new texts with anyone who inquires. This past year brought more precise questions about which titles belong on specific bookshelves. The queries I addressed ranged from “What’s the best novel you read this year?” to “Which new history book should I buy?” to “What book should I add to my syllabus?” The upshot is that I was inspired to reimagine the layout of this annual column, focusing my allyship for Native texts into the categories that follow. As always, the list is hardly exhaustive, but it does include the publications from the past 12 months that I’m certain will be a welcome addition to anyone’s library—be it a single book, or, more likely, all of them.

Fiction

A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Sioux) is a novel comprised of interconnected stories spanning three generations of Dakhóta and Lahkóta girls. Linked thematically by the dolls each carried, Power begins in the 1960s, moves to the 1930s, and concludes at the turn of the twentieth century. The dolls are not merely sources of comfort and imaginative play, but rather they attempt to protect the humans who own them. Although experienced and inherited trauma shapes the story arc, the narrative is ultimately a mixture of healing and sentimentality. Longlisted for the National Book Award, this novel will offer readers catharsis and give them a means to talk about it.

Short Stories

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk (Cheyenne and Arapaho) and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the horror collection the post-pandemic world needs. Taking its title from a belief held by a variety of Native communities, the collection brings together 27 established and emerging writers who share stories certain to unsettle. The pervasive quality that connects the pieces is their unflinching look at how issues such as societal status, blood quantum, perusing revenge, and upholding traditions manifests in modern society. It’s a collection steeped in metaphors, but within these seemingly fanciful stories lies some unwavering truths for readers to contemplate.

Sovereignty

In Defense of Sovereignty: Protecting the Oneida Nation’s Inherent Right to Self-Determination by Rebecca M. Webster (Oneida), chronicles the conflict between the Oneidas and the largely non-Native village of Hobart, Wisconsin, that was formed on the tribe’s lost allotted land. The central issue is Hobart’s unsuccessful attempts to usurp centuries of tribal and federal law by demanding the Oneida Nation buy a permit to host their annual “Big Apple Fest.” Oneida refused and the case worked its way through the courts, eventually costing the village nearly a million dollars. Webster was one of her tribe’s lawyers during the litigation, and her work reveals that Oneida’s fight against a local permit prevented the case from spiraling into an international legal precedent.

Poetry

From Unincorporated Territory [åmot] by Craig Santos Perez is the fifth collection in the poet’s “from unincorporated territory” series. Rightfully awarded the National Book Award for poetry, the collection of “experimental and visual poems” further explores the culture of Perez’s Chamoru culture in the American territory of Guam. Åmot translates into English as “medicine,” and Perez’s creative and innovative work serves as a balm for a multitude of historical and enduring traumas. He honors his ancestors, his relatives, and the person he’s become through humor, recollections, and captivating turns of phrases. For years, Perez’s immense talent has been underrated, and this collection helps to validate that the accolades he is now receiving are well-deserved and long overdue.  

Historical Recovery

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock draws upon contemporaneous accounts to reveal how Indigenous people encountered the “New World” after trans-Atlantic voyages of their own. Confronting the dismissive, retrospective fictions that have permeated public imagination, Pennock reads between the lines to uncover the humanity of the Indigenous people who resisted colonization at its genesis. Her text reveals both the brutality of the colonizers and the tenacity of the Natives who persisted as diplomats, horticulturalists, artists, and polyglots. In so doing, Pennock offers a counter to the 1492 narrative, showing how the Indigenous people of America also had a profound global impact that began at first contact.

United States History

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone) boldly asserts that “American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development.” Eschewing reductive or binary narratives, Blackhawk approaches the history of America as an overlay of stories that both intertwine and diverge. Of course, the center of his chronicle is the reality that the space occupied by the world’s model for democracy is land that was taken from Indigenous people. From first contact, through wars, revolution, and ever-changing federal policy, Blackhawk’s National Book Award-winning text shows how Native people shaped America’s story.   

Memoir

Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook by Thomas Pecore Weso is a posthumous sequel to his celebrated collection of family stories, Good Seeds: A Menominee Food Memoir. In this collection, Weso offers remembrances from his youth spent on his home reservation. Seasoning each recollection with recipes, Weso further affirms his theory that “the basic Menominee food pyramid” included “sweet, salt, meat, and water.” Rich with captivating tales that include driving a convertible on logging roads, agreeing on terms before throwing eggs at passing cars, and his grandmother’s brief stay in a jailhouse she’d later purchase, Weso’s entries offer readers catharsis—demonstrating how to laugh, boast, debate, eat, mourn, and heal.         

Historical Reckoning

The Cost of Free Land: Jews and the Lakota by Rebecca Clarren tells how her Jewish great-great-grandparents fled antisemitism in Russia for a 160-acre homestead on Lakota land. Clarren, a journalist by trade, recognizes that her family’s pursuit of the American Dream, like millions of other immigrants in the late-nineteenth century, was only made possible by the theft of land and resources from America’s original citizens. The Jewish refugees were afforded more freedoms than their Dakota neighbors, creating opportunity gaps of which repercussions are felt to this day. Rich in archival research and interviews, the text illuminates how historical wounds were afflicted and cauterized as well as how modern Americans can atone and heal.

The best thing about finishing a great book is the joy of telling someone else to read it. I wish each of you the opportunity to connect with these texts, hoping they resonate and inspire you to pass along the recommendations.  

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.