National Native American Heritage Month is recognized each year in November. It is a time to honor the traditions, languages and stories of Native American and Alaska Native communities and ensure their rich histories and contributions continue to thrive with each passing generation. Listen to these recommended audiobooks during Native American Heritage Month and all year long.

The Berry Pickers

Written by Amanda Peters

Performed by Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch

Published Recorded Books

National Bestseller

2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner

Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

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Praise for The Berry Pickers!

 

Exposure (Rita Todacheene, Book 2)

Written by Ramona Emerson

Performed by Charley Flyte

Published by Recorded Books

In the follow-up to the National Book Award–longlisted Shutter, Navajo forensic photographer Rita Todacheene grapples with a fanatical serial killer—and the ghosts he leaves behind.

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Watch the official audiobook trailer!

Praise for Exposure!

 

Fire Exit

Written by Morgan Talty

Performed by Darrell Dennis

Published by Recorded Books

Finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Finalist for 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award

Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.

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Watch the official audiobook trailer!

 

The Art Thieves

Written by Andrea L. Rogers

Performed by DeLanna Studi

Published by Recorded Books

From the author of the Walter Award–winning Man Made Monsters comes a stunning work of Cherokee Futurism—an Apocalyptic-Time Travel-Love Story—which conjures our futures in startling life: the ones that we are headed towards, and the ones we can still work towards.

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Watch the official audiobook trailer!

 

Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe

Written by Darcie Little Badger

Performed by Kinsale Drake

Published by Recorded Books

Bookpage Most Anticipated YA of 2024

This prequel, centered on Ellie’s grandmother, deepens and expands Darcie’s one-of-a-kind world and introduces us to another cast of characters that will wend their way around readers’ hearts.

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Praise for Sheine Lende!

 

 

Mascot

Written by Traci Sorrell and Charles Waters

Performed by various narrators

Published by Recorded Books

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023

A New York Public Library Best Book of 2023

A National Public Radio “Books We Love” title of 2023

In Rye, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, people work hard, kids go to school, and football is big on Friday nights. An eighth-grade English teacher creates an assignment for her class to debate whether Rye’s mascot should stay or change. Written from several points of view, this novel in verse asks, “What happens when a mascot is seen as racist, but not by everyone?”

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Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults

Written by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Performed by Monique Gray Smith

Published by Tantor

“Both an urgent, essential call to action and an uplifting love letter.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.

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The Rediscovery of America

Written by Ned Blackhawk

Performed by Jason Grasl

Published by Tantor

Winner of the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction

Finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Award in History

Winner of 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction

Winner of the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize

Named a best book of 2023 by New Yorker, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble

Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.

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Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science

Written by Enrique Salmón

Performed by Kaipo Schwab

Published by Tantor

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath—known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara—has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón builds on this concept of connection and highlights eighty plants revered by North America’s indigenous peoples.

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Living Resistance

Written by Kaitlin B. Curtice

Performed by Kaitlin B. Curtice

Published by Tantor

“Readers will find abundant wisdom in this accessible guide.”– Publishers Weekly

In an era in which “resistance” has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors’ holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.

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Invisible No More

Edited by Raymond Foxworth and Steve Dubb

Performed by Jason Grasl

Published by Tantor

Invisible No More is a collection of stories by Native American leaders, many of them women, who are leading the way through cultural grounding and nation-building in the areas of community, environmental justice, and economic justice.

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The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History

Written by Joseph Marshall

Performed by Joseph Marshall

Published by Highbridge

The Journey of Crazy Horse is the true story of how one man’s fight for his people’s survival roused his true genius as a strategist, commander, and trusted leader. And it is an unforgettable portrayal of a revered human being and a profound celebration of a culture, a community, and an enduring way of life.

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Fry Bread

Written by Kevin Noble Maillard

Performed by Kevin Noble Maillard

Published by Dreamscape

Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal

A 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner

Fry bread is food. It is warm and delicious, piled high on a plate. Fry bread is time. It brings families together for meals and new memories. Fry bread is nation. It is shared by many, from coast to coast and beyond. Fry bread is us. It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference. Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family.

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Thunder Song

Written by Sasha LaPointe

Performed by Sasha LaPointe

Published by Dreamscape

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.

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