Resources – Native American

• Online resources:  Tribal directories, educational and historical resources, and current environmental stewardship programs
• Select bibliography:  U.S.-Native American relations (history)
• Poetry, memoirs, stories, and novels (writers of Native American heritage)

Return to essay: “U.S. continental expansion and Native American dispossession”

(1) Online resources

Tribal directories

500 Nations: State-by-state tribal directory (tribes, nations, bands, rancheria, and pueblos), with contact information and websites.

National Congress of American Indians:  Tribal Directory of all federally and state recognized nations, tribes, and bands (alphabetical list) – contact information, not including websites.

Wikipedia directory:  Alphabetical list of federally recognized tribes, with links.

Exhibitions, events, museums, art, journals, and educational resources

American Indian Workshop (AIW), founded in 1980, is a European scholarly platform for researchers concerned with topics related to the Native Peoples of North America. The AIW meets annually in a European city and otherwise provides up-to-date information on events, studies, and European museums with Native North America collections.

Association on American Indian Affairs:  Over 200 Native American Studies programs at colleges and universities in the United States, with links to each program.

Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM):  Maintains a list of Native American and Alaska Native museums and cultural centers; and a list of publications focused on Indigenous peoples.

Collections: A Journal of Museum and Archives Professionals, published annually by Sage.

First American Art magazine.  Founded in Norman, Oklahoma, in 2013, this quarterly journal produced by Indigenous peoples of the Americas features a wide variety of ancestral, historical, and contemporary art and artist profiles.

Native American Heritage Month in November – events and resources.

Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) – an interdisciplinary, international membership-based organization comprised of scholars working in the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies broadly defined; hosts annual meetings; publishes the Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.

Native News online.  News and opinion articles, divided into sections:  current events, sovereignty, education, arts & entertainment, health, environment, and trending stories.

National Park Service: American Indian Heritage – list, with links, of national monuments, historical parks, and other sites across the United States.

Oklahoma Museums Association:  Teacher and Virtual Educational Resources.  List includes Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center, Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center and Department of Education, First Americans Museum, Oklahoma Indian Territory Museum of Black Creek Freedmen, Shawnee Tribe Cultural Center Teacher’s Guide, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Cultural Center & educational resources.

Oklahoma Native Art Institutions.  List of Tribal museums and cultural centers, art centers, Native artist organizations, events calendar, and more in the state of Oklahoma, with links to each.

Oklahoma Pow Wow Calendar.  Over 80 events are held each year in the state, including community Pow Wows, college Pow Wows, tribal homecoming, tribal ceremonies, and contest Pow Wows sponsored by casinos.  See also Pow Wows Calendar, featuring Pow Wow listings across North America.

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC, and New York City):  Exhibitions and events and Native Knowledge 360 degrees – lessons and resources for teaching and learning about Native histories and cultures.

United Nations, International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, August 9 – events and resources.

University of California Merced:  Resources for those researching topics related to Native American and Indigenous communities.  Includes Native American authors and podcasts; archives, libraries, and museums (mainly California); novels, comics, children and young adult books; newspapers, magazines, films, and more.

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Teaching Native American Histories – search lesson plans for any grade level, K-2 through college/university.

University of Oregon Libraries: Major Native American and Indigenous Studies journals – list.

Utah Indian Curriculum Project:  Tribal histories and lessons plans for five tribes of Utah – Northwestern Shoshone, Southern Paiute, Ute, Navajo, and Goshute – from elementary to high school.

Wikipedia: Native American museums in the United States by state or territory – comprehensive list.

Maps

Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM):  Map of locations in North America of Native American tribes, cultural centers, institutions holding Native materials, libraries, museums, and Tribal colleges (incomplete).

Invasion of America: How the United States Took Over an Eighth of the World.  An interactive map illustrating the United States’ seizure of land by treaty and executive order from America’s indigenous people between 1776 and 1887, a project directed by Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory.

Library of Congress:  Indian land cessions in the United States – maps of each state.

Library of Congress:  1892 map showing Indian reservations within the continental United States

Library of Congress:  Map of Indian tribes, cultures & languages in the continental United States (before 1492).

Native Land Digital: Indigenous land map. Search territories, languages, treaties among Indigenous groups (before 1492).

U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs: Indian Lands of Federally Recognized Tribes, June 2016 map.

Treaties and Indigenous rights

Organization of American States, “American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” adopted June 15, 2016.  Includes collective rights, gender equality, and protections against genocide and racial discrimination.

United Nations General Assembly, “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” adopted September 13, 2007.

United Nations General Assembly, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” adopted December 10, 1948.

United States National Archives: 374 ratified treaties with the United States, digitalized.  See also Native American treaties, 1722-1869, original copies (some are difficult to read).

Yale Law School, The Avalon Project:  Selection of 30 treaties, clearly written, between the United States and Native Nations.

List of U.S.-Indian treaties, 1819-1868, by the Dept. of the Interior, quoting provisions for education, schools, and boarding schools.

Indigenous environmental stewardship (North America)

American Prairie.  Collaborates with Tribal nations, agencies, and research institutions to return bison to the land and keep the herds healthy.

Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps.  “Our vision is to lead our Nations back to ecological and cultural well-being by engaging Indigenous youth and young adults in conservation service programs that reconnect participants to the land, their cultural heritage, and their traditions.”

Conservation Fund.  “The Conservation Fund specializes in creating solutions that meet community needs, including responding to requests from Indigenous communities to assist in efforts to realize their vision for securing culturally significant lands.”

Conservation Initiative on Human Rights.  Partners with Indigenous and local communities and various agencies “to promote the positive links between conservation and rights of people to secure their livelihoods, enjoy healthy and productive environments and live with dignity.”

Earthjustice Tribal Partnerships Program.  “We proudly partner with and represent over 100 Tribes, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Indigenous groups who are fighting to protect their water, wildlife, and sacred lands from extractive industries.”

First Nations Development Institute.  “First Nations envisions a future where Native stewardship is woven into all lands, nourishing vibrant ecosystems and communities.” The institute helps tribes reclaim and ancestral lands and provides grants for tourism projects.

Indian Land Tenure Foundation.  Provides grant funding to Indian nations to support various aspects of land recovery with a focus on reacquiring alienated reservation lands.  In June of 2022, the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe completed a purchase that restored to the Band more than 28,000 acres of land within the Bois Forte Reservation.

Indigenous Climate Action (Canada).  “An Indigenous-led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors and land defenders from communities and regions across the country.”

Mother Tree Project & Program (Canada).  Integrates scientific inquiry with ancestral Indigenous knowledge, collaborating with over twelve First Nation communities in British Columbia.

National Wildlife Federation, Tribal Partnerships Program.  “We work nationwide with tribes to protect wildlife, advance land stewardship, safeguard water resources, provide environmental education, and combat climate change.”

Native Conservancy.  Founded in 2003, “Native Conservancy protects ancestral lands, revives ocean abundance, and supports thriving Indigenous communities.”  Includes a program to restore bison to Tribal lands.

Nature Conservancy.  “Around the globe, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have long protected their lands and waters in reciprocity with nature, often guided by deep connections to place, culture and ways of knowing.”

Nature United.  “As an organization, Nature United believes that the increased authority and capacity of Indigenous peoples to steward their lands and waters is critical for the future of healthy ecosystems and communities, and it results in effective and durable sustainable management over time.”

Tribal Fish and Wildlife Management.  “The Native American Fish & Wildlife Society is a national Native American non-profit organization that serves as an informative communication network between tribal, federal, and state fish and wildlife management entities.”

Wilderness Society.  “The health of our lands and waters depends on working collaboratively in ways that honor tribal sovereignty, uphold treaty obligations, embrace Indigenous Knowledge and advance Indigenous priorities.”

World Wildlife Foundation.  “Indigenous-led conservation is the most effective and equitable way to safeguard habitat, reverse wildlife loss and reduce climate change. Studies show that Indigenous-managed lands boast higher levels of biodiversity – unsurprising, given millennia of stewardship experience.”

Yale historican Ned Blackhawk won the 2023 National Book Award for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.

(2) Select bibliography

Akers, Donna (Choctaw).  “Native Nations in an Age of Western Expansion, 1820-80.”  In Clifford E. Trafzer, ed., American Indians, American Presidents: A History.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2009.

Aune, Stefan.  Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire.  Oakland: University of California Press, 2023.

Blackhawk, Ned (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone).  The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023.

_____.  Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Brooks, Lisa (Abenaki).  The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Brown, Dee.  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.  New York: Henry Hold & Company, 1970.

Buffalohead, W. Roger (Ponca), Priscilla Buffalohead (Ojibwa), and Minnesota Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.  Against the Tide of American History: The Story of the Mille Lacs Anishinabe.  Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, 1985.

Calloway, Colin G.  The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

_____.  “The Chiefs Now in This City”: Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

_____.  First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History.  Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.

_____.  The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, The First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

_____.  New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

_____, ed.  Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West Was Lost.  New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Conn, Steven.  History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century.  University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Cozzens, Peter.  The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West.  New York: Vintage Books, 2016.

_____.  Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation. N ew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

DeLay, Brian.  War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the US-Mexican War.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Deloria, Philip J. (Yankton Dakota descent).  Indians in Unexpected Places.  Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2004.

_____.  “Indigenous/American Pasts and Futures.”  The Journal of American History, September 2022: 255-270.

Deloria, Jr., Vine (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).  Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.  Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988 (originally published in 1969).

_____.  Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence.  Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974.

Dickason, Olive Patricia (Métis ancestry).  The Myth of the Savage: And the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas.  Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1997.

Drinnon, Richard.  Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating & Empire-Building.  Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne (Cherokee ancestry).  An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.

_____, with Dina Gilio-Whitaker.  “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths about Native Americans.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.

DuVal, Kathleen.  Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.  New York: Random House, 2024.

Estes, Nick (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe).  Our History Is the Future.  New York: Verso, 2019.

Fixico, Donald L. (Sac & Fox Nation).  Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.

_____.  The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State.  Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2024.

_____, ed.  Indian Treaties in the United States: An Encyclopedia and Documents Collection.  Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2018.

Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (Colville Confederated Tribes/Okanogan and Sinixt).  As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2019.

Goetz, Rebecca Anne.  The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race.  Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2016.

Graber, Jennifer.  The Gods of Indian Country. Religion and the Struggle for the American West.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Harjo, Suzan Shown (Cheyenne/Hodulgee Muscogee), ed.  Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2014.

Hass, Kristin Ann.  Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2024.

Graeber, David, and David Wengrow.  The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Grandin, Greg.  The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.  New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019.

Grann, David.  Killers of the Flower Moon.  New York: Doubleday, 2017.

Grenier, John.  The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hämäläinen, Pekka.  Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America.  New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022.

Harriot, Thomas.  A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: The complete 1590 edition with the 28 engravings by Theodor de Bry, after the drawings of John White and other illustrations.  New York: Dover Publications, 1972; originally published in 1590.

Hinsley, Curtis M.  Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981.

Hixson, Walter L.  American Settler Colonialism: A History.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Horseman, Reginald.  Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Inskeep, Steve.  Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab.  New York: Penquin Press, 2016.

Isenberg, Andrew C.  The Destruction of the Bison.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Jacobs, Margaret D.  After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America’s Stolen Lands.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.

Jennings, Francis.  Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.

Kersey, Harry A.  “The Havana Connection: Buffalo Tiger, Fidel Castro, and the Origin of Miccosukee Tribal Sovereignty, 1959-1962.”  American Indian Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2001).

Kiser, William S. The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025.

Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Muscogee heritage) and Teresa L. McCarty.  “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons for Democracy from a Century of Native American Education.  New York: Teachers College Press, 2006 (Outstanding Book Award, American Educational Research Association).

Madley, Benjamin.  An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Merrill, James H. “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians.”  The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3 (July 2012): 451-512.

Miller, Robert J., Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrent, and Tracey Lindberg.  Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Nabokov, Peter.  Native American Testimony: An Anthology of Indian and White Relations: First Encounter to Dispossession.  New York: Harper & Row, 1978.  Preface by Vine Deloria, Jr.

O’Brien, Jean M.  Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Ostler, Jeffrey.  The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

_____.  Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the Unites States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

Prucha, Francis Paul.  American Indian Policy in the Formative Years: The Indian Trade and Intercourse Acts, 1700-1834.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.

Reséndez, Andrés.  The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America.  New York: Mariner Books, 2017.

Reyhner, Jon, and Jeanne Eder (Dakota Sioux).  American Indian Education: A History.  Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.

Richter, Daniel K.  Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

_____.  “Whose Indian History?”  William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 2 (April 1993): 379–93.

Saunt, Claudio.  Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2020.

Shoemaker, Nancy, ed.  Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women.  New York: Routledge, 1995.

Silver, Peter.  Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.

Sleeper-Smith, Susan, and Juliana Barr, Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe Nation), Nancy Shoemaker, and Scott Manning Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk Nation), eds.  Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Stephanson, Anders.  Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right.  New York: Hill & Wang, 1995.

Starita, Joe.  “I am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice.  New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010.

Trafzer, Clifford E., ed., in association with the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution).  American Indians, American Presidents: A History.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2009.

Treuer, David (Ojibwe/Minnesota Chippewa Tribe).  The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present.  Minneapolis: Birchbark Books, 2019.

Vizenor, Gerald (White Earth Objibwe).  Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Wallace, Anthony F. C.  Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

_____.  The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians.  New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Warrior, Robert Allen (Osage), ed.  The World of Indigenous North America.  New York: Routledge, 2015.

West, Elliott. The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story.  New York: Oxford University Press 2009.

Witgen, Michael (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe/Chippewa).  Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

Wolfe, Patrick.  “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.”  Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4), December 2006: 387-409.

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Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States (June 2019 photo)

(3) Poetry, memoirs, stories, and novels (writers of Native American heritage)

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