This is a Lib Guide to help educators patrons, and librarians find some great resources for teaching about American Indians, First Nations and Indigenous Peoples.
Apple Starkington is half white and half Turtle Mountain Chippewa. She is not sure what world she belongs in. Her American Indian mother is deceased. Her father and stepmother send her to the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation for the summer to stay with her grandparents so that she can learn more about her Indian heritage. This is a wonderful coming of age novel
This is a fictionalized account based on a real person Mary Musgrove. She was the daughter of a English man and a Muscogee Creek woman. In Brown's novel, she is the daughter of a Creek chief and is born in 1700 Georgia. Brown traces five generations of her family
From Google Books:
By tracing her struggles with colonists in Georgia, and then the lives of her two sons (one born to a white trader and the other to a Cherokee warrior), Brown’s novel creates a gripping panorama of the American Indian experience in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His narrative spans colonial rebellion, the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War—in which Mary’s descendants fought on both sides of the conflict.
Fifteen-year-old Peter LaSavage is part Norwegian and Chippewa. He does not know much about his father other than he was half-Indian. Pete questions his identity and then finds a half wolf half dog that reminds him of himself. He is not sure what world he belongs in until he meets his long lost grandfather from his deceased father.
Fifteen-year old Gabe Rogers is a Texas boy who moves to Canada's Northwest Territory to be with his father. Raymond Providence is a First Nations Dene. They are roommates at a boarding school. Gabe boards a bush plane to get a tour of the area. Raymond boards the same plane along with his great-uncle Johnny Raven to return to his village, The plane has engine problems and the pilot dies. Gabe, Raymond, and Johnny Raven are trapped in the Canadian wilderness in the winter. Will they survive? This adventure story is similar to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet but it talks about the old ways of the Dene people and the myth of the raven plays an important role in the story.
Many American Indians families wound up in California due to the Indian Relocation Program in the late 1950's to early 1960's. Most civil rights books always talk about African Americans and we never hear the voices of American Indians. The main character Regina Petit struggles with her identity and experiences racism for the first time.
Annette Boardhead is half-white and half Nootka. She was raised in a Nootka village, and wins a scholarship to a prestigious high school in Victoria. She has to learn the ways of the white world and deal with discrimination. She goes back to her village for semester break and discovers that she has changed and is not sure where she fits in.