To celebrate Indigenous traditions, languages and stories during Native American Heritage Month, we're highlighting some University Libraries resources and recommended reads.

Indigenous History in the Borderlands LibGuide

Indigenous History in the Borderlands LibGuide* is the third in a series of libguides focused on the history of marginalized groups in the U.S./Mexico borderlands including Akimel O'odham, Apache, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Havasupai, Hopi, Hualapai, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Paiute, Quechan, Seri, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, Yavapai, and Zuni. (Photo from the libguide below.)

*LibGuides are subject guides created by librarians that pull all types of information about a particular subject or course of study.

Databases

North American Indian Drama contains 250+ plays from American Indian and First Nation playwrights

American Indian Newspapers provides access to 200+ years of Indigenous journalism from the U.S. and Canada

American Indian Movement (AIM) and Native American Radicalism includes FBI documentation on AIM and informant reports and materials

Research guides

American Indian Studies

Information from Non-Dominant Perspectives

You can also find more American Indian Studies resources in the A-Z Database guide. 

The University of Arizona Press recommendations

Restoring Relations Through Stories by Diné author Renae Watchman

Watchman explores the power of story from both the Diné, in the four sacred mountains in Dinétah in the southwestern U.S., and the Dene, in Denendeh, Canada, to forge ancestral and kinship ties across time and space.

Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them by Kelly S. McDonough

McDonough addresses Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography.

Indigenous Health and Justice edited by Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen

Contributors demonstrate how Indigenous Peoples, individuals, and communities create their own solutions. Chapters focus on challenges created by the legacy of settler colonialism and the solutions, strengths, and resilience of Indigenous Peoples and communities in responding to these challenges. 

Hopis and the Counterculture by Brian Haley

In Arizona, you can find a lot of misguided appropriation of Indigenous symbols and culture. Haley covers how the Hopi became icons of the followers of alternative spiritualities and reveals one of the major pathways for the explosive appropriation of Indigenous identities in the 1960s. 

Caracoleando Among Worlds by Silvia Soto

The contemporary literary movement of Maya writers of Chiapas and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or EZLN) insurgency in Mexico are intricately intertwined. Soto provides an in-depth analysis of poetry, short stories, and one of the first novels written by a Maya Tsotsil writer of Chiapas alongside close readings of the EZLN’s six declarations of the Lacandon Jungle. (Publication date: Nov. 5, 2024)

Books That Matter recommendation

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke, is a thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. 

All Our Relations is one of the Native American / Indigenous books in our Books That Matter collection which includes 100+ titles that support our commitment to social justice and antiracism. Chosen by staff and students, the collection is located on the second floor in Main Library on a "working" bookshelf. Books are rotated and cover many different identities, histories, and genres ranging from autobiographies to comic books. Stop by to browse and/or borrow.