Native American Biographies

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered America. Right? WRONG! Columbus never actually set foot in what is now the United States. His voyages took him to islands in the Caribbean and along the coast of South America. The truth is, when Columbus first arrived, Indigenous peoples, including the Taino, had been living there for thousands of years, raising their families, running their societies, and trading with their neighbors. He didn’t “discover” the lands at all! And his name? Not even really Christopher Columbus!

Gettysburg Rebels is the gripping true story of five young men who grew up in Gettysburg, moved south to Virginia in the 1850s, joined the Confederate army - and returned "home" as foreign invaders for the great battle in July 1863. Drawing on rarely seen documents and family histories, as well as military service records and contemporary accounts, Tom McMillan delves into the backgrounds of Wesley Culp, Henry Wentz, and the three Hoffman brothers in a riveting tale of Civil War drama and intrigue.

In 2008, Daniel Richard Wolfe was awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder at the Regina Correctional Centre. This wasn't his first time in jail; from his teenage years his life had been marked by stints in and out of prison - with Danny sometimes finding his own way out. This time around, he was orchestrating his boldest move yet: a carefully plotted escape that would send the RCMP on a nationwide manhunt, launching Danny Wolfe to headline-topping notoriety.

1921, Oklahoma. Dépossédés de leurs terres, les Indiens Osages ont été parqués dans une réserve aride. Mais sous leurs pieds coule un océan de pétrole. De quoi rameuter, en quelques mois, les vautours blancs assoiffés d'or noir. Bientôt, les membres les plus riches de la tribu disparaissent, l'un après l'autre. Balle dans la tête, empoisonnement, incendie...

After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the larger questions of its peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder’s death at the hands of four White men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird.

Who was Nede Wade Christie? Was he a violent criminal guilty of murdering a federal officer? Or a Cherokee statesman who suffered a martyr’s death for a crime he did not commit? For more than a century, journalists, pulp fiction authors, and even serious historians have produced largely fictitious accounts of “Ned” Christie’s life. Now, in a tour de force of investigative scholarship, Devon A. Mihesuah offers a far more accurate depiction of Christie and the times in which he lived.

Sacagawea was the only girl, and the only Native American, to join Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, which explored the United States from the Mississippi River all the way to the Pacific Ocean in the early 1800s. As a translator, she helped the team communicate with members of the Shoshone tribe across the continent, carrying her child on her back the whole way. By the time the expedition arrived at the west coast, Sacagawea had proved that she truly was a trailblazer.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1953: An impoverished Cherokee named Buster Youngwolfe confesses to brutally raping and murdering his 11-year-old female relative. When Youngwolfe recants his confession, saying he was forced to confess by the authorities, his city condemns him, except for one man - public defender and Creek Indian Elliott Howe. Recognizing in Youngwolfe the life that could have been his if not for a few lucky breaks, Howe risks his career to defend Youngwolfe against the powerful county attorney’s office.

The name "Geronimo" came to Corine Sombrun insistently in a trance during her apprenticeship to a Mongolian shaman. That message and the need to understand its meaning brought her to the home of the legendary Apache leader's great-grandson, Harlyn Geronimo, himself a medicine man on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico.

Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce tribe, lived from 1840 to 1904. He became a legend through his heroic efforts to keep his people in their homeland in Oregon's Wallowa Valley. For years he tried to accommodate encroaching white men on his tribal lands, but finally gave up and attempted, in the fall of 1877, to lead his people safely to Canada.

The descendant of Cherokee ancestors who had been forced to walk the Trail of Tears, Wilma Mankiller experienced her own forced removal from the land she grew up on as a child. As she got older and learned more about the injustices her people had faced, she dedicated her life to instilling pride in Native heritage and reclaiming Native rights. She went on to become the first woman Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Born in 1925, Maria Tallchief spent part of her childhood on an Osage reservation in Oklahoma. With the support of her family and world-renowned choreographer George Balanchine, she rose to the top of her art form to become America's first prima ballerina.

Anxious to be given a name as strong and brave as that of his father, a proud Lakota Sioux grows into manhood, acting with careful deliberation, determination, and bravery, which eventually earned him his proud new name: Sitting Bull.

The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, near Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman returning home from trading beaver pelts is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony by a vicious white runaway indentured servant. The tribesman, fighting for his life, is able with his final breaths to reveal the details of the attack to Providence’s governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government ensues to capture the killer and his gang, now the most hunted men in the New World.

AN ENCOUNTER is the story of Macu, a young man who leaves his tribe on his first solo hunting trip. Hoping to prove himself by killing and carrying home a small deer, his encounter turns out to be of a much more singular and fateful nature. An entertaining and instructive story suitable for readers of all ages.

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The highway is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis. Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and testament to their families and communities' unwavering determination to find it.

Black Snake is the story of four leaders - LaDonna Allard, Jasilyn Charger, Lisa DeVille, and Kandi White - and their fight against the pipeline. It is the story of a new generation of environmental activists, galvanized at Standing Rock, becoming the protectors of America's natural resources.

In the heart of Indian country in the American west, clandestine criminals were profiting greatly from the sale of sacred Native American artifacts stolen from tribal lands. These artifacts were so ancient they had been used since the migration of the first Americans into North America some 15,000 years ago. In the year 1998, the illegal trafficking of these artifacts peaked in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges.

Among the Oglala Lakota, one of the most famous bands of the Native American Tribe known as the Sioux, the longest and most effective leader was Makhpiyaluta, better known as Red Cloud. Though he has not been remembered as vividly as another member of the Oglala Lakota, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud led the group for 40 years, in war, in peace, and on a reservation, becoming so esteemed and influential that Americans began to mistakenly take him for the leader of the entire Sioux tribe.