Thursday, April 19, 2012

DIRECTORY TO REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY OR ABOUT INDIANS ON THIS BLOG

When I started this blog I was writing reviews of all the books about Indians that I had. Most of them are about Blackfeet, since that’s where I am. I gave the posts clever titles, so it’s not possible to use a search strip to find them reliably. This list is the proper titles of the books, but you can find them on the blog easily by using the date. The dates are on the right hand column of the blog which will expand when you use it.
In addition, I’m going to compile all the reviews into one document and then post that somehow as a pdf. Maybe I’ll sell it on a CD. Or just send it to anyone who sends me an email asking for it. When I first began to do this in 2005, there weren’t many local people on computers but by now many have caught on. When I get ALL my books reviewed on one document, I’ll probably “publish” -- meaning create a paper version -- maybe through www.lulu.com/prairiemary/.
This represents maybe half of the books on Indians/Blackfeet that I own and I still acquire more, but the Native American Literary Renaissance has passed. Some of those authors have aged out. Others are still writing, but what people want to read has changed. And habits have changed: what’s “in” now is short form work on small screens, including art/music and videos. What many people are watching is work by their friends. It is so easy and cheap to do, that half of what is on YouTube is not deep existential reflection on the meaning of life by cinematographers but rather something akin to kitten abuse. At the same time there is remarkable Indian material, much singing and dancing, some historical.
The best resources for books about Native Americans are still the used book websites like abebooks.com or alibris.com, but there is legislation afoot that will require royalties to be paid on re-sold books. This will take the cost up, but -- more than that -- will impose book keeping of such burdensome complexity and amount that probably the used books online will die. No one knows what it would do to used bookstores like Powells, which maintains a massive inventory of books by and about Indians.
There are many “kinds” of books about Indians, from academic work that rather obscure to Hollywoodized romantic fiction that seems impossible to discredit or suppress. The major need is now for intermediaries: brokers, agents, editors who really do know Native American books of all kinds, but no one would guarantee they would make any money or just how they would operate. If you google “Twelve Blackfeet Stories” by Mary Strachan Scriver, you will find it is sold all over the planet. There are no records of sales and I have never seen any payments from it. Lucky I didn’t write it to make money.
ALPHABETIZED BY TITLE
“[The] ACLU Handbook for the Rights of Indians and Tribes” 8/12/05
“American Character: the Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest.”
by Mark Thompson 8/9/05
“American Indian Holocaust & Survival”
by Russell Thornton 11/29/11
“American Indians in WWI: At War and at Home.”
by Thomas A. Britton 8/18/05
“American Indians and WWII: Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs” 8/28/05
by Allison R. Bernstein
“Black Elk”
by Joseph Epes Brown 9/8/08
“Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives” 10/24/06
by Bruno Nettle
“Blackfeet Heritage” (1907-09) 4/9/05
by The Blackfeet Heritage Culture Committee
“[The] Blackfeet
by Theresa Jensen Lacey 6/27/05
“[The] Blood People: a Division of the Blackfoot Confederacy” 4/14/05
Adolph & Beverly Hungry Wolf
“[A] Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life”
by Frank Pamsherim 8/10/05
“Catch Colt” 6/13/05
by Sidner Larson
“Children of the Fur Trade” Forgotten Metis of the Pacific Northwest”
by John C. Jackson 6/30/05
“Common and Contested Ground” 6/7/05
by Ted Binnema
“Daughters of the Buffalo Women”
by Beverly Hungry Wolf 9/15/05
“[The] Death of Jim Loney” 10/23/10
By Jim Welch
“[The] Education of Little Tree” 12/2/09
by Asa Carter
“Eight Bears: A Biography of E.W. Deming, 1860 - 1942” 8/15/05
by Thomas G. Lamb
“El Rancho Gumbo: Five Thousand Days in Montana Piegan Country”
by Abner M. Wagner 9/17/05
“Firewater”
by Hugh Dempsey 6/8/05
“[The] Foley Report”
by Michael F. Foley 3/7/07
“Fossil Legends of the First Americans” 6/15/06
by Adrienne Mayer
“HalfBreed: the Remarkable True Story of George Bird” 4/10/05
[A] Homemade Blackfeet History Book
compiled by G.R. McLaughlin and BHS 6/16/05
“Letters from the Rocky Mountain Indian Missions”
edited by Robert Bigart 5/1/07
“Logorrhea”
by Adrian C. Louis 12/8/06
“Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670 - 1870” 6/30/05
by Sylvia Van Kirke
“Modern Blackfeet”
by Malcolm McFee 6/10/05
“Montana Adventure: The Recollections of Frank B. Linderman”
edited by H.G. Merriam 12/23/09
“Montana 1911: a Professor and his Wife Among the Blackfoot” 4/23/06
by “Willy” Uhlenbeck, trans. and ed. by Mary Eggermont-Molenaar
“Mountain Men of the American West”
by James A. Critchfield 6/30/05
“Niitsitapisinni”
by Glenbow Museum 5/15/05
“One Small Sacrifice”
by Trace DeMeyer 6/8/11
“[The] Piikani Blackfeet” 6/29/05
by John C. Jackson
“Pikannie” Four Volume Compendium, Good Medicine
by Adolf Hungry Wolf 5/6/06
“Place Names of Glacier National Park” AKA “Let the Mountains Sing: Place Names of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park”
by Jack Holterman 6/12/05
“[The] Reservation Blackfeet” 4/12/05
by William E. Farr
“Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux”
by Joseph Epes Brown 9/8/08
“Scottish Highlanders, Indian Peoples: Thirty Generations of a Montana Family”
by James Hinter 6/30/05
“Shadows of the Buffalo: A Family Odyssey among the Indians” 4/14/05
Adolf & Beverly Hungry Wolf
“Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest”
by Joseph Kinsey Howard 6/15/05
“Viet Cong at Wounded Knee” 6/14/05
by Woody Kipp
“[A] Walk toward Oregon: A Memoir” 4/4/05
by Alvin Josephy Jr. see also 7-1-05
“With the Nez Perces: Alice Fletcher in the Field”
by E. June Gay 8/14/05

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