Native American Elders

In Native American tradition, everything has a spirit—even an illness or injury. “If we know how to listen,” teaches Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, “our health issues will often reveal the secret to their own healing.” On Native American Healing Meditations, Dr. Mehl-Madrona offers insights...

Against an unflinching backdrop of 1990s reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In this award-winning book, acclaimed author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Native American elder named Dan, who leads Kent through Indian towns and down forgotten roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and complex, unforgettable characters.

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny, and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges, and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood.

Renowned Native American expert Thomas Mails was chosen by the last surviving elders to reveal to the outside world the sacred Hopi prophecy and instructions at precisely the time in history when they are most urgently needed. The Hopi Survival Kit is the first full revelation of traditional Hopi prophecy. Many of its predictions have already been realized, but the most shattering apocalyptic events are still to occur. And though this may be a sobering realization, it is also our best defense. 

A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby’s extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby’s story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.

A work in progress since the 1970s, We Remember the Coming of the White Man chronicles the history of the Sahtú (Mountain Dene) and Gwinch’in People in the extraordinary time of the early 20th century. Chapters are transcripts of oral histories by 10 Elders about their recollections of the early days of fur trading, guns, and flu pandemic; dismay about the way oil and uranium discoveries and pipelines were handled on their land; and the emotional and economic fallout of the signing of Treaty 11.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Washington Post, Debutiful, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and LitHub Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch for Spring 2025 'This novel has all the ingredients of a Native American Succession' Sunday Times 'A blistering work' New York...

The ancient desert O’odham people’s creation stories parallel the path a young Guy Thornton takes to emerge from the “maze” he has made of his life. The novel opens in the center of the narrative as Guy, a down-on-his-luck Arabian horse trainer fresh out of prison, is getting drunk at the Wander On Inn. He spends the next several months living in the central Arizona desert with an elderly O’odham woman who seeks to teach him “tribe spirit,” while alternating chapters recount the past and his big break when the wealthy Frank Fielding hires him to tend to his champion Arabian ...