Native American Young Adult Books You Need to Read

After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.

This is the story of Joe and what happened to his mother and how that dreadful event impacted him and his father and their family. Readers will find rich details of Ojibwe culture and the complex (and unjust) shadow of US politics as it impacts life on a reservation here as well.  "The Big Read" book for 2021. 

In the face of constant poverty and lack of opportunities on his Spokane Indian reservation, nerdy cartoonist Junior makes the decision to leave the reservation to attend the all-white public school where he is the only Native-American and subject to constant bullying and stereotypes. His cartoons, present throughout the book, help him to cope and understand.

Global warming takes away the ability for people to dream, and it is causing them to go crazy. The bone marrow from indigenous North American people holds the cure, but death will result when the marrow is taken.

Secret Path by Gord Downie and illustrator Jeff Lemire tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago. 

Grades 4 - 6: Nathan has his own reasons for wanting to spend the summer with his grandmother on Navajo lands, instead of going to Las Vegas with his father and his father’s girlfriend. He doesn’t realize that befriending a sick water monster in the desert will lead him on a journey beyond the world he knows. Along the way spiritual challenges interact with family, social and environmental issues, in a story that continually chooses hope over despair.