A.K. Smiley Public Library Blog

Serving the City of Redlands, California since 1894

Books, periodicals for all ages in honor of Native American Heritage Month 2023

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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in November with some of the Smiley Library titles listed here. As a reminder, there is no charge to place a book on hold. Just browse below and click on titles in which you are interested!

970 Native American Heritage Month Stock Photos, Pictures ...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. In 2021 the United States designated the federal holiday of Columbus Day to also be observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

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)

Of Local Interest

  • Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. Published in 1884, it features a Scottish-Native American orphan girl, and takes place in Southern California. The Ramona Pageant, which still takes place in Hemet, California, is derived from this character.)
  • The hunt for Willie Boy : Indian-hating and popular culture, by Redlands historians James A. Sandos and Larry E. Burgess. A scholarly and ethno-historical examination of an actual incident which took place in Southern California in 1909, and which was the focus of 1960 novel Willie Boy & the last western manhunt and its 1969 film adaptation, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.” The authors provide compelling research to correct the facts, and to vindicate the Paiute-Chemehuevi Indian called ‘Willie Boy.’

New Fiction

New Non-Fiction

New Biography

Heritage Room items (available by appointment for use in the Heritage Room)

Did you know that the Library’s Special Collections department, the Heritage Room, holds a Carnegie Indian Collection? It began in 1910 with a gift from industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to honor his friend Albert K. Smiley. It includes rare and selected volumes primarily on the Native American tribes of California and the Southwest.

Recently added to the Heritage Room’s Non-Fiction Indian collection is a publication which features the Smiley brothers’ work as Quakers, and that of others, in attempts to achieve Native American justice:

Albert K. Smiley served as a commissioner on the Board of Indian Commissioners from 1879 to 1912, the year he died. He founded the Mohonk Indian Conference in 1894 and nominated the presiding officers each year after that until 1912.

Heritage Room periodicals, books

Young Readers’ Room (YRR)

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Older Fiction and Non-Fiction

Young Readers’ Room

Young Adult (located in our Teen Underground area on the lower level)