Cultural Resource Bibliography

 Biography of Lakota medicine man John (Fire) Lame Deer . An intimate sort of look at Lakota culture and comtemporary life, with a good portion of Native humor included.(Indigenous Culture and Worldview) 

The first autobiography of Mary Crow Dog, a Lakota activist involved in the tumultuous events of the 1970s. This story provides a good look at reservation life and one person’s journey back to her Lakota culture and how her story reflects the journey of others on a similar path.(History/Literature) 

The author focuses on ending stereotyping of Native Americans. He assaults both anti-Native prejudice and liberal sentimentality and strives to re-write some of the histories with an eye on a fuller story. There are no good guy/bad guy stories, here, so that even the most tragic stories are told with an interest in how people behaved under the stress of cultural assault, rather than condemning the assaulters.(which he does but it isn’t his focus) So, for example, along with the Trail of Tears story, he tells of the black slave revolt on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma.

A comprehensive study of the devastating effects of the residential boarding schools to which five generations of Native American children were subjected between 1880 and 1980.Churchill exposes the genocidal nature of this aspect of the U.S. goverment’s assimilationist policies towards Native Americans, and introduces the reader to a factor quite familiar to those who work in Indian Education, transgenerational trauma.(History/Native American Studies)

Indigenous stories and activities for teaching about nature by looking at the night. Includes night time observational activities, stargazing and appropriate traditional stories to complement these activities. Contains valuable lessons about the natural world.(Science/Indigenous Oral Tradition)

This book contains traditional stories combined with complementaryactivities that together can be used to teach students about their role as humans in the Ecology of planet Earth. Using a holistic approach, this curriculum makes important connections between Environmental Studies,Social Studies, Science and other content areas. 

This is a curriculum for teaching children their interdependence with all living things through the use of traditional Indigenous stories and complementary activities.(Academic applications include Wildlife Ecology and Environmental studies, using an holistic/experiential approach.

An interdisciplinary curriculum for teaching about plants and the environment using activities and traditional stories from many Indigenous nations. Subjects studied include :Botany, Plant Ecology, Global Warming and the Natural History of many North American plants. Features a holistic approach well-suited to many Native learners.

The story of a Gorilla who tries to save mankind from its most self-destructive impulses: to conquer other people,to manage/control nature, to view itself as having dominion over the earth and to place higher value on material posessions than on life itself. Ishmael is a gifted teacher who has the advantage of seeing things from outside of the perspective of the mentally colonized victims of “civilization”…(Indigenous Worldview/Culture/Philosophy) 

 A collection of famous speeches by noted Native American leaders given between 1758 and 1910. Many good examples of this aspect of the Indigenous oral tradition.(Indigenous Oral Literature/History)