Research Guides: Native American Heritage: Readings and Resources

SIU System Land Acknowledgement Statement

The Southern Illinois University System respectfully acknowledges the Indigenous peoples and lands on which our colleges reside. We exist on and serve regions that includes the traditional homelands and territories of The Illinois Confederacy, including the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa; and the Kiikaapoi (Treaty of Edwardsville, 1819), Myaamia, Aakiiwaki (Sauk), Meskwaki (Fox), Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Kaw, Missouria, Quapaw, Ponca, Omaha, Osage, Onödowáʼga (Seneca), O-ga-xpa Ma-zhoⁿ, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, and others. We are honored and grateful to reside on Native land. We are committed in word and deed to enhancing relationships, equity, and the rights of Indigenous communities. We are resolved to strengthen their sovereignty and self-determination to protect and preserve their language, culture, spiritual traditions, and relationships with land and people.

SIUS Land Acknowledgement Statement from the Office of the Vice President of Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Full text with links to supplementary materials about the Native peoples on whose land the campuses of the SIU System stand today.

Free Resources Online

American Indian & Alaska Native Recipes
Recipes for American Indian and Alaska Native dishes collected by the USDA's MyPlate program.
Collections Search, National Museum of the American Indian
Search or browse by category "one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego."
Ganyáhde: Cultural Resources for the Seneca–Cayuga Nation
Collection of legends and traditions, along with government and historical documents from the Seneca-Cayuga Nation.
The Illini Confederation: Lords of the Mississippi Valley
Brief overview of the history of the nations of the Illini Confederation with links to source materials and related topics. Created by an instructor from John A. Logan College.
The Illinois Indians
Older website providing a historical and cultural overview of the Native nations who lived in Illinois before colonization. Created by the Illinois State Museum.
Indigenous Health Research Dashboard
"[O]nline platform for exploring published research studies, currently focused on contemporary research since 2020 to the present, updating regularly, on diseases and conditions that significantly impact Indigenous health."
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: A Guide to Resources at the Library of Congress
"[O]verview of resources at the Library of Congress that relate to Native communities in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean."
Inoca (Ilimouec, Illinois, Illini, Peoria) Ethnohistory Project: Eye Witness Descriptions of the Contact Generation, 1667 - 1700
Collection of annotated primary source materials "about the Inoca as they existed at the Grand Village of the Illinois (11LS13) during the last half of the seventeenth century" gathered by a professor an students from Parkland College.
Native American Artists, National Gallery of Art
Digital collection from the National Gallery of Art highlighting the works of Native American artists.
Native Americans and the American Revolution
Part of an "exhibition series highlighting National Archives records that document major milestones and critical historical context to the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War, and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence" this collection highlights how the "American Revolution aligned and divided Native American communities just as it did British North American colonists. The stories presented reveal that whether Native Americans sided with the Rebels, Redcoats, neither, or both, the actions of tribes and their leaders were primarily motivated by a desire to preserve their land and autonomy."
Native Land Digital
Interactive world map showing Indigenous lands, languages, and treaty cessions. Search an address to see from which native peoples formerly lived there.
Omaha Indian Music Collection, Library of Congress
Hundreds of digitized recordings of Omaha traditional music collected beginning in the 1890s and through to the present day. Includes written contextual material.
Resource Database Center, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS)
Extensive collection of archival materials, research articles, reference sources, media articles and videos, oral histories, and teaching materials related to the operation and effects of U.S. Native American Boarding schools and the policies behind them.
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Retracing the Bell Route: An Archive of Cherokee Removal
Storymap and resource archive related to the Bell Route of the Trail of Tears, a path traveled by about 650 Cherokee people from October 1838 to January 1839 as they were removed from Georgia to Oklahoma. At least 23 of them died. Resources collected include documents about the individual Cherokee and their lives before their removal, the logistics of their travel, and what became of them once they reached Oklahoma.
Sullivan-Clinton Campaign
In 1779, George Washington ordered two generals under his command, Sullivan and Clinton, to lead roughly 25% of the colonial army against the Iroquois Confederacy, including the Onödowáʼga, ordering the British-allied natives "not merely be overrun but destroyed." This online archive summarizes the military campaign and its aftermath.
Umoⁿhoⁿ Indian Heritage, University of Nebraska Lincoln
Collection of photographs, images of artifacts, scholarly texts, writings in Omaha, and tribal information.
United Illinois and Wabash Land Companies Collection
This website, maintained by the University of Oklahoma contains documents, such as letters and maps, related to the United Illinois and Wabash Land Companies which were set up to buy land from Native Americans living in the Illinois region.

Nonfiction Materials in the Library

Clyde Warrior: tradition, community, and Red Power by McKenzie-Jones, Paul R.
"The phrase Red Power, coined by Clyde Warrior (1939–1968) in the 1960s, introduced militant rhetoric into American Indian activism. In this first-ever biography of Warrior, historian Paul R. McKenzie-Jones presents the Ponca leader as the architect of the Red Power movement, spotlighting him as one of the most significant and influential figures in the fight for Indian rights."
Fox Texts by Jones, William
Weighty collection of Meskwaki legends and samples of the Meskwaki language.
Miami Awakening = Myaamiaki eemamwiciki by Osawa, Sandy Sunrising; et al.
Documentary film providing " ... a comprehensive look at the language and culture revitalization efforts of the Miami Tribe. ... captures moments of transition as myaamia people gain traditional knowledge and share it withink their homes and communities; features interviews with community elders, families, youth, and tribal educators as the Miami Tribe continue to reclaim their heritage and rebuild as a community."
People of the Ecotone: environment and indigenous power at the center of early America by Morrissey, Robert Michael
"Robert Morrissey offers a human and environmental history of this bioregion from the fall of Cahokia (13th-14th century CE) through the mid-18th century, probing the complex rise and fall of the Illinois, the Meskwaki, and the Myaamia peoples, then among the most powerful native peoples in the interior, and perhaps on the continent. Morrissey views their histories through a long-term lens of environmental shifts over millennia, as changes in climate meant shifting bison geographies, and tribes that adapted their cultures to become pedestrian bison hunters. But rather than focusing on an individual tribe, Morrissey centers a dynamic zone. Rather than concentrating on the rupture of colonialism, the book concentrates on events that shaped Indigenous motivations well before first contact, and continued to do so profoundly right through the mid-18th century."
Standing Bear Is a Person by Dando-Collins, Stephen
"The only book about the landmark 1879 trial of the first Native American to be recognized legally as a person."

Fiction by Native American Authors and/or Featuring Native American Characters

Probably Ruby by Bird-Wilson, Lisa
"[A]n audacious, brave and beautiful book about an adopted woman's search for her Indigenous identity."
The Mighty Red by Erdrich, Louise
"[A] novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them."
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Hokeah, Oscar
"A young Native American boy in a splintering family grasps for stability and love, making all the wrong choices until he finds a space of his own."
Bad Cree by Johns, Jessica
"Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was within her all along? John's visceral writing takes us from dreams to a waking nightmare and asks us to find the universal in the personal, uncovering shame, doubt, and denial as she tracks a family's attempts to come to grips with loss."
Sisters of the Lost Nation by Medina, Nick
"A young girl hunts for answers about a string of disappearances, all while being haunted herself in this heart-pounding thriller with a mythological twist, from debut author Nick Medina."

Morris Library

Native American Heritage: Readings and Resources

SIU System Land Acknowledgement Statement

Free Resources Online

Nonfiction Materials in the Library

Fiction by Native American Authors and/or Featuring Native American Characters

Attribution and Sharing