Three Essential New Reads to Honor This Year’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Heartbeat of wounded Knee

Recognizing the history, contributions, and path forward for the indigenous communities of North America requires all of us to look past the disassociated narratives that we’ve been presented in conventional history books. Instead, to honor the culture and people of Native America, we can look to diversity of narratives told by the people who have lived them and are living them today. 

If you have the day off this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, check out one of these three (or maybe all three) of these books to get your read on. 

3Heart Berries by Terese Mailhot

“Heart Berries” by Terese Mailhot BELatina

While not quite fresh off the press, this 2018 memoir by 36-year-old First Nations writer and professor Terese Mailhot offers readers a glimpse at the systemic injustice in which her community on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia had to endure, and how the effects of those experiences bore out in the narrative of her life. A New York Times reviewer in 2018 described the book as “a sledgehammer” of narrative power, citing what is perhaps Mailhot’s central question from within her memoir: “How could misfortune follow me so well, and why did I choose it every time?” 

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