Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in November with some of the new Smiley Library titles listed below. As a reminder, we continue to offer Books to Go: select a title, place it on hold, and pick it up at an outdoor appointment.
Besides checking out our items, you may also want to explore online the Library of Congress “Living Nations, Living Words” project. It features a sampling of work by 47 Native Nations poets through an interactive ArcGIS Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection.
Joy Harjo writes, “For my signature project as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, I conceived the idea of mapping the U.S. with Native Nations poets and poems. I want this map to counter damaging false assumptions—that indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible or are not seen as human. You will not find us fairly represented, if at all, in the cultural storytelling of America, and nearly nonexistent in the American book of poetry.”
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In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association meeting in Lawrence, Kans., formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge issued a proclamation on Sept. 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens. The year before this proclamation was issued, Red Fox James, a Blackfoot Indian, rode horseback from state to state seeking approval for a day to honor Indians. On December 14, 1915, he presented the endorsements of 24 state governments at the White House. There is no record, however, of such a national day being proclaimed.
The first American Indian Day in a state was declared on the second Saturday in May 1916 by the governor of New York. Several states celebrate the fourth Friday in September. In Illinois, for example, legislators enacted such a day in 1919. Presently, several states have designated Columbus Day as Native American Day, but it continues to be a day we observe without any recognition as a national legal holiday. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”) have been issued each year since 1994. (source: NativeAmericanHeritageMonth.gov)
Smiley Library new fiction and non-fiction
- We are the land : a history of native California / Akins, Damon B.
- The Apache diaspora : four centuries of displacement and survival / Conrad, Paul
- “The chiefs now in this city” : Indians and the urban frontier in early America / Calloway, Colin
- Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry / Harjo, Joy
- Poet Warrior: A Memoir / Harjo, Joy
- Black snake : Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and environmental justice / Todrys, Katherine Wiltenburg
- Standoff : Standing Rock, the Bundy movement, and the American story sacred lands / Keeler, Jacqueline
- The taking of Jemima Boone : colonial settlers, tribal nations, and the kidnap that shaped America / Pearl, Matthew
- Cheyenne summer : the battle of Beecher Island : a history / Mort, T. A. (Terry A.)
- Willie Boy & the last western manhunt / Trafzer, Clifford E.
- The hunt for Willie Boy : Indian-hating and popular culture / Sandos, James A.
- The Lumbee Indians : an American struggle / Lowery, Malinda Maynor
- Blood and treasure : Daniel Boone and the fight for America’s first frontier / Drury, Bob
- The Apache wars : the hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the captive boy who started the longest war in American history / Hutton, Paul Andrew
- Go home, Ricky! : a novel / Kwak, Gene
- The sentence : a novel / Erdrich, Louise
- The healing of Natalie Curtis / Kirkpatrick, Jane
- Crooked hallelujah / Ford, Kelli Jo
- The removed / Hobson, Brandon
- The only good Indians : a novel / Jones, Stephen Graham
- There there / Orange, Tommy
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Eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers / Skeets, Jake
- An Afro-Indigenous history of the United States / Mays, Kyle – coming soon
- Native women changing their worlds / Cutright, Patricia J.
- Diné bizaad : speak, read, write Navajo / Goossen, Irvy W.
- The Cherokee syllabary : writing the people’s perseverance / Cushman, Ellen
- Tracks that speak : the legacy of Native American words in North American culture / Cutler, Charles L.
Heritage Room items (available by appointment for use in the Heritage Room)
- News from native California, quarterly periodical
- American Indian culture and research journal, quarterly periodical / University of California, Los Angeles, American Indian Culture and Research Center.
- Heritage keepers, periodical / Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Inc., Banning, Calif., Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians of the Morongo Reservation, California.
- Handbook of North American Indians / Sturtevant, William C.
- Strong hearts & healing hands : Southern California Indians and field nurses, 1920-1950 / Trafzer, Clifford E.
- San Bernardino County Museum Association quarterly / San Bernardino County Museum Association
- West of slavery : the Southern dream of a transcontinental empire / Waite, Kevin (Historian)
Young Readers’ Room
- Notable native people : 50 indigenous leaders, dreamers, and changemakers from past and present / Keene, Adrienne – coming soon
- Everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask / Treuer, Anton
- The Marshall Cavendish illustrated history of the North American Indians / Oakley, Ruth
- Sisters of the Neversea / Smith, Cynthia Leitich
Young Adult (located in our Teen Underground area on the lower level)
- Firekeeper’s daughter / Boulley, Angeline
- An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People / Reese, Debbie
- Apple: Skin to the Core: a Memoir in Words and Pictures / Gansworth, Eric
- Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band / Staebler, Christian (YA Graphic Novel)
September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic American Heritage Month.
For more information, visit 
My telepathic powers tell me you are skeptical about these alleged “cool” prizes. Would a voucher for Open Door Escape Games for you and your friends excite you? How about a gift card to A Shop Called Quest comic bookstore? Would you enjoy a close-up look at the disturbing micro-organisms that surround you with your very own cell phone microscope? Does your mouth water at the mention of a refreshing pint of gelato from Happy Camper Creamery? Are you craving the special variety of brain freeze only a scoop of Salted Caramel from À La Minute can deliver? Is your stomach pitifully lacking a breakfast burrito from Burger Town U.S.A. right at this very moment?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then join the Dig Deeper Summer Reading Program immediately. All of these prizes and more are on the line exclusively for teens. To get started, simply visit the Young Readers’ Room at A.K. Smiley Public Library, pick up a Teen Reading Log, grab some books, and let your eyeballs do the rest. You could also download the reading log from the Teens’ page of our website (
My sixth sense indicates you are slowly coming around to this whole Summer Reading Program idea, but you still don’t know what to read. Teens, we’ve got you covered! From anime to career idea guides, the Teen Underground, located in the basement level of the Library, has something for you.
Teens, I don’t need a Magic 8-Ball to tell you that letting your eyeballs loose on some good books this summer may result in a win-win for you; not only will you be transported/enlightened/made brilliant by the pages you consume, but you may also end up with a mouth full of smoothie from Badger Bowls (yet another one of our cool prizes). Of course the rewards of reading transcend a paleta from Nicho’s Ice Cream or a street taco from Taco Shack (cool prizes numeros once y doce), but I predict you are open to a chance at having it all. You have two weeks left, teens…read with us! And I promise I will now stop reading your minds.
The grand prize is a $100 shopping spree at Gerrards Market in Redlands!