Birchbark's favorites from 2021

Firekeeper's Daughter

By: Angeline Boulley
Narrated by: Isabella Star LaBlanc
Length: 14 hours 13 minutes

“Firekeeper's Daughter is a wonder! We so rarely hear YA through an Indigenous people's voice and this book does it so very well. Main character Daunis Lorenzo Fontaine lives a fine line between her white French Canadian mother and her Ojibwe father in a complicated family dynamic. She is smart, hockey talented, driven, and tenacious as she... Read more

An American Sunrise

Poems

By: Joy Harjo
Narrated by: Joy Harjo
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo... Read more

The Night Watchman

By: Louise Erdrich
Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
Length: 13 hours 32 minutes

“The Night Watchman is an extraordinary book based on the life of Edrich's grandfather who was a night watchman at a jewel bearing plant as well as an activitist against Native dispossession. The other featured protaganist is Patrice Paranteau who you will quickly come to adore. The Night Watchman is one of Edrich's best works and I highly... Read more

The Removed

A Novel

By: Brandon Hobson
Narrated by: Gary Farmer, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, DeLanna Studi, Katie Rich & Christopher Salazar
Length: 7 hours 6 minutes

“In telling the story of a Native family in Oklahoma who lost a teenage son to a shooting, The Removed examines the power of inherited trauma and the strength of family to keep people together. The book is told in the voices of the various family members left after the death of their son/brother and explores the effects on their lives of their... Read more

Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids

By: Cynthia Leitich Smith
Narrated by: Kenny Ramos & DeLanna Studi
Length: 6 hours 11 minutes

Edited by award-winning and bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of intersecting stories by both new and veteran Native writers bursts with hope, joy, resilience, the strength of community, and Native pride. Native families from Nations across the continent gather at the Dance for Mother Earth Powwow in Ann Arbor, Michigan.... Read more

Black Sun

Between Earth and Sky: Book #1

By: Rebecca Roanhorse
Narrated by: Cara Gee, Nicole Lewis, Kaipo Schwab & Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Length: 12 hours 46 minutes

“An epic high fantasy that follows several different characters, throughout different points in time as they are all set to converge on the day of a solar eclipse. On this day, the fate of their world will be altered. An incredible story and great listen on Libro.fm, but definitely something you have to pay attention too or you will miss... Read more

Winter Counts

A Novel

By: David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

“Weiden’s book is a thriller with an important social and political message. Following a Lakota ‘enforcer’ who enacts extrajudicial punishment to fill the gaps in the legal system, Winter Counts is a twisty new addition to the growing Indigenous literature canon. Weiden’s exploration of the injustices of reservation life is vital. Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our... Read more

Empire of Wild

A Novel

By: Cherie Dimaline
Narrated by: Michelle St. John
Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

“Cherie Dimaline’s latest novel packs a wallop of a story. Absolutely stunning in every way, this latest offering follows the story of Joan, whose husband has disappeared, and her courage when confronted with truths and lies. She and her husband, Victor, live in a Métis community, close and tight knit. As Joan deals with the fallout of her... Read more

Little Big Bully

Penguin Poets

By: Heid E. Erdrich
Narrated by: Heid E. Erdrich
Length: 1 hour 51 minutes

Winner of the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

In a new collection that is "a force of nature" (Amy Gerstler), renowned Native poet Heid E. Erdrich applies her rich inventive voice and fierce wit to the deforming effects of harassment and oppression.

Little Big Bully begins with a question asked of a collective and troubled... Read more

There There

A novel

By: Tommy Orange
Narrated by: Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo & Kyla Garcia
Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

“Heartbreaking and necessary, this book is raw, powerful, and storytelling at its finest. It's a woven tapestry of the urban Indian experience as few outside these communities have seen it. Vignettes follow 12 people through time and space as they make their way to the Big Oakland Powwow. Each person has their own struggles with identity, life, ... Read more

The Beadworkers

Stories

By: Beth Piatote
Narrated by: Beth Piatote, various narrators, Christian Nagler, Fantasia Painter, Drew Woodson, Phillip Cash Cash & Keevin Hesuse
Length: 5 hours 14 minutes

Beth Piatote’s luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary worldTold with humor, subtlety, and spareness, the mixed-genre works of Beth Piatote’s first collection find... Read more

Buffy Sainte-Marie

The Authorized Biography

By: Andrea Warner
Narrated by: Andrea Warner & Buffy Sainte-Marie
Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

"Buffy Sainte-Marie is an icon and inspiration. This book is necessary—an authorized insight into the making of a legend." —Terese Marie Mailhot, author of Heart BerriesA powerful, intimate look at the life of a beloved folk icon and activist.Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this,... Read more

The Only Good Indians

By: Stephen Graham Jones
Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

“I am a person who doesn’t like to be scared. This book left me a little spooked, but in a way that made me smile because it’s so powerful and because the book’s so-called monster has good reason to be so. Stephen Graham Jones’ writing is rhythmic and cool, funny and tender, sometimes ruthless. This work of literary horror is about Blackfeet and... Read more

Earth Keeper

Reflections on the American Land

By: N. Scott Momaday
Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday
Length: 51 minutes

"Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose." — EsquireA magnificent testament to the earth, from... Read more

The Sea in Winter

By: Christine Day
Narrated by: Kimberly Woods
Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

American Indian Youth Literature Award: Middle Grade Honor Book! In this evocative and heartwarming novel for readers who loved The Thing About Jellyfish, the author of I Can Make This Promise tells the story of a Native American girl struggling to find her joy again.It’s been a hard year for Maisie Cannon, ever since she hurt her leg and could... Read more

Dog Flowers

A Memoir

By: Danielle Geller
Narrated by: Charley Flyte
Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history
 
“An honest, intimate, and heart-wrenching memoir that explores the fractured family, the damaging effects of alcoholism and poverty, and what it means to seek healing from the... Read more