Native American Science

Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometers away in the far reaches of Treaty 8. Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her older sister and Kokum before their untimely deaths.

Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history.

When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the DC metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe.

In the tradition of Calvino’s Italian Folktales, Greg Sarris, author of the award-winning novel Grand Avenue, turns his attention to his ancestral homeland of Sonoma Mountain in Northern California. In 16 interconnected original stories, the twin crows Question Woman and Answer Woman take us through a world unlike yet oddly reminiscent of our own: one that blooms bright with poppies, lupines, and clover; one in which Water Bug kidnaps an entire creek; in which songs have the power to enchant; in which Rain is a beautiful woman who keeps people’s memories in stones.

In Aurora Crossing by best-selling author Karl H. Schlesier, a young man - an outsider by upbringing and ancestry - becomes embroiled in the Nez Perces War of 1877. His quest to find identity and belonging in the clash of cultures takes him on the historic 1,200-mile Nez Perces trek from Idaho toward refuge in Canada.

Hidden in the mountains, the indigenous peoples of Mexico have kept alive the spiritual path of the ancient Toltecs, one of the most powerful Mesoamerican spiritual traditions alive today. Tracing their lineage to a time before the Aztec, the Toltecs recognize Earth as a living being, share a profound communion with their land, and demonstrate unusual powers of perception.

Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories - Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties.

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.

War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Meka's nomadic people, the Ba'Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba'Suon share an empathic connection. A decade later and under a fragile truce, Meka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country.

Learning Native Wisdom explains why achieving a sustainable culture is more important than any other challenge we face today. Although there are many measures of a society's progress, Holthaus warns that only a shift away from our current culture of short-term abundance, founded on a belief in infinite economic growth, will represent true advancement. In societies that value the longevity of people, culture, and the environment, subsistence and spirituality soon become closely allied with sustainability.

In The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers explore how the event has been remembered, told, and retold. They examine the recollections of Indians and settlers and their descendants, and they consider local history, mass-media treatments, and literature to draw thought-provoking conclusions about how this story has changed over time.

The hunters noticed the circling birds against the rose-tinted sky above the rim rock and saw where the flat rays of the early morning sun glinted on something that didn't belong there, and the three of them walked that way. What they find sends FBI agent Zack Tolliver and his friend Eagle Feather in pursuit of a dangerous and powerful killer.

The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 is the story of the Natchez Indians as revealed through accounts of Spanish, English, and French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists, and in the archaeological record. Because of their strategic location on the Mississippi River, the Natchez Indians played a crucial part in the European struggle for control of the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Annie conquered one world, but is a stranger in another. A stranger besieged by creatures who plan to wield her like a weapon. Good has triumphed over evil, and the land of Aerisia is finally at rest. Until ancient beings, long imprisoned, begin to stir...Entertainment superstar Annie Richards is enjoying an unparalleled musical career that has lately become endangered by haunting visions that threaten her sanity. A journey home to convalesce is disrupted when creatures straight from her nightmares bring down her plane. Annie awakens in a mysterious, parallel world.

Stories that stir within us the unquenchable hope for a better tomorrow. Dr. Karen Anderson stepped through the veils of reality, her heart syncing to the rhythm of a world long past. The past and present merged into a tapestry of passion and history, bringing to life an adventure that transcends time. Amidst the rolling plains and the whisper of the wind, she found a bond with Standing Deer, a warrior as steadfast as the earth itself. Their journey, a tapestry woven from the threads of history and dreams, reminds us that love knows no bounds, not even those of time, and in the embrace of ...

Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests of Southwestern Brazil. Previously uncontacted tribes are extremely rare, but a one-man tribe was unprecedented. And like all of the isolated tribes in the Amazonian frontier, he was in danger.

A creature of myth and magic emerging from the mist-shrouded forests of the Northwest, Coyote appears as a creator, messenger, hero, trickster, fool, or shapeshifter. Always on the lookout for fun, mischief, or the opportunity to help humans, Coyote’s encounters with gods, demons and the supernatural bring to life the rich cultural traditions of the Northwest peoples.

Mohammed Ali ben Said (later renamed Nicholas Said) was born in North Africa and enslaved when he was 12 years old. During his eventful life, he traveled to five continents, learned seven languages, served princes and diplomats, fought in the Union Army, and recorded his life story in his own words. He finally settled in Alabama, and his autobiography was published in 1873.

Heliopause is a real place—the very outer edge of our solar system where the sun's solar winds are no longer strong enough to keep debris and intrusions from bombarding our system. It is the farthest edge of our protected boundary (it was recently crossed by Voyager), and the line beyond which space experts look for extraterrestrial presences. This is where Daniel Wilson's fascinating novel begins.

Love is the silver lining in a cloud of woe. The legacy continues… A grand adventure where the pages practically turn themselves. The Wilderness time travel series continues weaving exquisite intrigue and timeless passion. Fire-fighter and paramedic, Matthew Standing Deer, son of Standing Deer and Karen Anderson, seeks his path in the untamed world of the Lakota Nation only to find himself hurtled into danger, uncontrollable greed, and searching for a serial killer. The twists and turns of destiny spirit him to the wild and dangerous Great Plains and the crush of reality for a love he can...