November is Native American Heritage Month. Celebrate a rich culture with these picture books.  

Book Recommendations

We are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom

Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all… When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people’s water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource. Inspired by the many indigenous-led movements across North America, this bold and lyrical picture book issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption.

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard

Using illustrations that show the diversity in Native America and spare poetic text that emphasizes fry bread in terms of provenance, this volume tells the story of a post-colonial food that is a shared tradition for Native American families all across the North American continent.

We Sang You Home by Richard Van Camp 

Gentle rhythmic text captures the wonder new parents feel as they welcome a baby into the world with this about sometime wishes really do come true. 

I Sang You Down From The Stars by Tasha Spillett-Summer

A Native American woman describes how she loved her child before it was born and, throughout her pregnancy, gathered a bundle of gifts to welcome the newborn.

Stolen Words by Melanie Florence

This picture book explores the intergenerational impact of Canada’s residential school system that separated Indigenous children from their families. The story recognizes the pain of those whose culture and language were taken from them, how that pain is passed down and shared through generations, and how healing can also be shared. Stolen Words captures the beautiful, healing relationship between a little girl and her grandfather. When she asks him how to say something in his language – Cree – her grandpa admits that his words were stolen from him when he was a boy. The little girl then sets out to help her grandfather regain his language

Encounter by Brittany Luby

Awakened gently by Sun, Sailor sets off to explore new lands where he meets Fisher, and although they speak and dress differently, they find they have much in common. Includes author’s note about the first encounter between a European explorer and a Native North American.

Awâsis and The World-Famous Bannock by Dallas Hunt

As young Awâsis searches for the ingredients to make Kohkum’s world–famous bannock recipe, they run into a variety of other-than-human relatives that help them along in their journey. Includes a pronunciation guide and Kohkum’s world–famous bannock recipe at the back of the book.

My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith

The sun on your face. The smell of warm bannock baking in the oven. Holding the hand of someone you love. What fills your heart with happiness? This beautiful board book, with illustrations from celebrated artist Julie Flett, serves as a reminder for little ones and adults alike to reflect on and cherish the moments in life that bring us joy. International speaker and award-winning author Monique Gray Smith wrote My Heart Fills with Happiness to support the wellness of Indigenous children and families, and to encourage young children to reflect on what makes them happy.

First Laugh:Welcome, Baby! By Rose Ann Tahe and Nancy Bo Flood

A Navaho family welcomes a new baby into the family with love and ceremony, eagerly waiting for that first special laugh.

Sweetest Kulu by Celina Kalluk

An Inuit mother sings to her Kulu–or baby–about animals and other elements in their Arctic world and the gifts they bring to the child, from the summer sun’s warm light to Arctic hare’s love, muskox’s power, and caribou’s patience.

In My Anaana’s Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok

Nadia Sammurtok lovingly invites the reader into the amautik–the pouch in the back of a mother’s parka used to carry a child–to experience everything through the eyes of the baby nestled inside, from the cloudlike softness of the pouch to the glistening sound of Anaana’s laughter.

When We Were Alone by David Alexander Robertson 

When a young girl helps tend to her grandmother’s garden, she begins to notice things that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully colored clothing? Why does she speak another language and spend so much time with her family? As she asks her grandmother about these things, she is told about life in a residential school a long time ago, where all of these things were taken away. When We Were Alone is a story about a difficult time in history, and, ultimately, one of empowerment and strength.

Thunder Boy Jr. by Alexie Sherman

Thunder Boy Jr. wants a normal name … one that’s all his own. Dad is known as Big Thunder, but Little Thunder doesn’t want to share a name.

When We are Kind = Nihá’ádaahwiinít’ı̨́́įgo by Moniquw Gray Smith  

This dual-language beautiful picture book looks at how the simple act of being kind, to others and oneself, affects all aspects of a child’s life. In English and Diné.

Hungry Johnny by Cheryl Minnema 

Johnny likes to “eat, eat, eat!” But he has to wait patiently before it is his turn. First, there is the long drive to the community center, then an even longer Ojibwe prayer, and then he still has to wait some more as the elders eat first. Hungry Johnny is a warm story about a young boy who – with the help of his loving grandmother – learns about gratitude, patience, and respect.

Did you know that Maryland archaeologists can date Native American culture back to over 11,000 years ago? 

This would have been when the first Paleo-Indians arrived from other parts of North America. They most likely arrived because they were exploring the area for hunting purposes. 

Approximately 3,000 years ago, Maryland was home to over 8,000 Native Americans consisting of over 40 different tribes. These first Marylanders farmed, fished, hunted and traded with other tribes as far away as 300 miles. Fast forward to 17th century Maryland and you would have encountered tribes such as: Accohannock, Assateaque,Choptank,Delaware, Matapeake, Nanticoke,Piscataway,Pocomoke, and Shawnee. 

Descendants of these Native American tribes still live in Maryland today. And other tribes not native to Maryland, such as the Lumbee who came to the Baltimore area after World War II. In a recent census, “more than 40,000 individuals in Maryland identified themselves as being Native American or part Native American” (American Indian Tribes Today – Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail (US National Park Service). The State of Maryland formally recognizes the following three tribes: the Piscataway Indian Nation, Piscataway Conoy Tribe, and the Accohannock Indian Tribe.

What are the origins of National Native American Heritage month?  

In 1912, Dr. Arthur Caswell Parker from the Seneca Nation convinced the Boy Scouts of America to celebrate a First Americans’ Day. This is one of the first recorded attempts to honor and give recognition to the Native Americans in the twentieth century. In the following years, both Native American and non-Native Americans urged local, state and federal governments to designate a special day or week on the calendar to celebrate Native Americans. It wasn’t until 1976 that Native Americans were recognized nationally by a United States President. President Gerald Ford proclaimed October 10th-16th as Native American Awareness Week. 

Fast forward to the year 1987, and American Indian Week was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and Congress. Finally, in 1990 President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month. This tribute would be used “to honor the contributions, achievements, sacrifices, and cultural and historical legacy of the original inhabitants of what is now the United States and their descendants: the American Indian and Alaska Native people.” In 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed November as National Native American Heritage Month.

Below is a small excerpt from President Obama’s Presidential Proclamation in 2010:

“For millennia before Europeans settled in North America, the indigenous peoples of this continent flourished with vibrant cultures and were the original stewards of the land. From generation to generation, they handed down invaluable cultural knowledge and rich traditions, which continue to thrive in Native American communities across our country today. During National Native American Heritage Month, we honor and celebrate their importance to our great Nation and our world.”

Join us now in celebrating National Native American Heritage Month and engage, discover and learn more about Native American history, culture, and viewpoints from the library materials below!

Book Recommendations 

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes’ distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. (adapted from jacket)

Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, either in her hometown or on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of college, but when her family is struck by tragedy she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, a new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. When Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she reluctantly agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source of a new drug. How far will she go to protect her community, if it threatens to tear apart the only world she’s ever known? (adapted from jacket)

Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI By David Grann

Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. (adapted from jacket)

Code Talker by Chester Nez

“Chester Nez, one of the twenty-nine original code talkers, offers his memoir of his American life before, during and after World War II.  It is a treasure, and so is he.” – Jeff Bingaman (former U.S. Senator)

There There by Tommy Orange

“Not since Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Orange’s There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. “We all came to the powwow for different reasons. The messy, dangling threads of our lives got pulled into a braid–tied to the back of everything we’d been doing all along to get us here. There will be death and playing dead, there will be screams and unbearable silences, forever-silences, and a kind of time-travel, at the moment the gunshots start, when we look around and see ourselves as we are, in our regalia, and something in our blood will recoil then boil hot enough to burn through time and place and memory. We’ll go back to where we came from, when we were people running from bullets at the end of that old world. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, that we’ve been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.”

Navajo Code Talkers of World War II  

During World War II, a group of Native American Marines devised an unbreakable code that helped the United States maintain the upper hand in many battles and, eventually, led to the surrender of Japan in 1945. This documentary provides insights into the lives of these war heroes in regards to their service on behalf of the United States and the Navajo Nation. Filmed on location in key places such as Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guam, and Saipan, these six World War II veterans will complete a true journey of remembrance as they recite wartime stories and deliver history in its purest form. (from back cover)

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a leading researcher in the field of biology, Robin Wall Kimmerer understands the delicate state of our world. But as an active member of the Potawatomi nation, she senses and relates to the world through a way of knowing far older than any science. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she intertwines these two modes of awareness–the analytic and the emotional, the scientific and the cultural–to ultimately reveal a path toward healing the rift that grows between people and nature. The woven essays that construct this book bring people back into conversation with all that is green and growing; a universe that never stopped speaking to us, even when we forgot how to listen.  (provided by publisher)

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.  In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history… Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. (adapted from jacket)

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

For fans of Before We Were Yours and Where the Crawdads Sing, a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Ordinary Grace. 1932, Minnesota-the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own. Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. (adapted from jacket)

Winter Counts by David Weiden

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop. (adapted from jacket)

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

One of the most revered novelists of our time-a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life-Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction-at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture. (adapted from jacket)

Native American History For Dummies written by Dorothy Lippert, Ph. D., Stephen J. Spignesi

This straightforward guide breaks down their ten-thousand-plus year history and explores their influence on European settlement of the continent. You’ll gain fresh insight into the major tribal nations, their cultures and traditions, warfare and famous battles; and the lives of such icons as Pocahontas, Sitting Bull, and Sacagawea. (adapted from jacket)

Cherokee America by Margaret Verble

It’s the early spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as “Check,” a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check’s mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community–and painfully expel one of their own. (adapted from jacket)

The New World

Set amidst the first encounter of European and Native American cultures during the founding of the Jamestown Virginia settlement in 1607. Tell the classic tale of Pocahontas and her relationships with adventurer John Smith and aristocrat John Rolfe. This woman’s journey of love lost and found again takes her from the untouched beauty of the Virginia wilderness to the upper crust of English society as we witness the dawn of a new America. (from back cover)

Native American Culture By Various Authors

Even as contact with European cultures eroded indigenous lifestyles across North America, many Native American groups found ways to preserve the integrity of their communities through the arts, customs, languages, and religious traditions that animate Native American life. (adapted from jacket)

Native American History for Kids: with 21 Activities by Karen Bush Gibson

Examines the history and culture of Native Americans, with activities ranging from deciphering Navajo codes from World War II to making jerky.

A Kid’s Guide to Native American History: More than 50 Activities

Hands-on activities, games, and crafts introduce children to the diversity of Native American cultures and teach them about the people, experiences, and events that have helped shape America, past and present. Nine geographical areas cover a variety of communities such as the Mohawk in the Northeast, Ojibway in the Midwest, Shoshone in the Great Basin, Apache in the Southwest, Yup’ik in Alaska, and Native Hawaiians.

We Are Still Here! By Traci Sorell

A group of Native American kids from different tribes presents twelve historical and contemporary time periods, struggles, and victories to their classmates, each ending with a powerful refrain: we are still here.

Websites Used 

• American Indian Tribes Today – Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail (US National Park Service)
• The First Marylanders | VisitMaryland.org
• Presidential Proclamation–National Native American Heritage Month
• Indigenous Peoples of the Chesapeake
• National Native American Heritage Month

October is Filipino American Heritage Month! You may ask, why October? Well, October was chosen because it is the month in which the first Filipinos arrived in what is now Morro Bay, California, in 1587. That is over 400 years ago! To celebrate the contributions and influences Filipino Americans have made to the United States the U.S. Congress officially recognized October as Filipino American History Month in 2009. 

To help you celebrate this special month, we have provided a list of children’s books below about Filipino Americans and their culture! Happy Reading!

Corazon Aquino by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara and Ginnie Hsu

In this book from the critically acclaimed Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Corazon Aquino, the first female president of the Philippines. Little Cory was a shy, studious child with a great sense of justice. As a young woman and wife, she and her family felt compelled to speak out against the unjust leader who was ruining their country. Showing bravery, reliability and honesty, she led the revolution that ended the dictator’s rule and went on to become the president of the Philippines.

Filipino Children’s Favorite Stories by Romulo, Liana

A collection of well-loved myths and tales from the Philippines. Many of the tales have been told by mothers to children over the centuries and cover classic childhood themes, such as the forces of good versus evil, children versus adults, the weak versus the strong, and others.

Tucky Jo and Little Heart by Patricia Polacco 

A fifteen-year-old soldier in World War II meets a sweet young girl in the Philippines who helps him remember what he is fighting for as he helps her and others of her village avoid starvation, and many years later she returns his kindness.

Abadeha: The Philippine Cinderella by Myrna J. De LA Paz

In this version of Cinderella, set in the Philippines, Abadeha endures abuse by her stepmother before being helped by the Spirit of the Forest and becoming the bride of the island chieftan’s son.

Filipino Celebrations: A Treasury of Feasts and Festivals by Liana Romulo

Brimming with vivid illustrations and rich cultural background, Filipino Celebrations makes major festivals such as Holy Week, Independence Day, Christmas and New Year come alive, together with family celebrations such as weddings, birthdays, baptisms, and a girl’s debut into society.

When Lola Visits by Michelle Sterling

For one young girl, summer is the season of no school, of days spent at the pool, and of picking golden limes off the trees. But summer doesn’t start until her lola–her grandmother from the Philippines–comes for her annual visit. When Lola visits, the whole family gathers to cook and eat and share in their happiness of another season spent together.

Cora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore

When all her older siblings are away, Cora’s mother finally lets her help make pancit, a Filipino noodle dish. Includes recipe for pancit.

United To Strike : A Story Of The Delano Grape Workers by Molly Zenk

The Delano Grape Strike brings Filipino and Mexican farm workers together, but threatens Tala Mendoza’s relationship with her best friend.

Any Day With You by Mae Respicio 

During the summer before seventh grade, Kaia, who enjoys living in Southern California, visiting the beach with her family, and creating movie make-up effects, makes a film with her friends to win a contest and hopefully prevent her beloved great-grandfather from moving back to the Philippines.

Blackbird Fly by Erin Entrada Kelly

Apple has always felt a little different from her classmates. She and her mother moved to Louisiana from the Philippines when she was little, and her mother still cooks Filipino foods and chastises Apple for becoming “too American.” When Apple’s friends turn on her and everything about her life starts to seem weird and embarrassing, Apple turns to music. If she can just save enough to buy a guitar and learn to play, maybe she can change herself. It might be the music that saves her… or it might be her two new friends, who show her how special she really is.

We Belong by Cookie Hiponia Everman

Through a bedtime story to her daughters, a woman weaves together her immigration story and Filipino mythology

Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz

After surviving a fire in which her father dies, Nora and her mother live in a cemetery, but when her mother disappears and a loan shark steals her savings, Nora finds support from her cemetery neighbors to earn some money and search for her mother.