Native American Heritage Month 2024 Reading List

Honor and celebrate Native American Heritage Month and beyond by enjoying these books recommended by the osteopathic medical education community!

American Indian Health and Nursing

Margaret P. Moss, PhD, JD, RN, FAAN

The average life expectancy of a male born on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota today is somewhere in the mid-40s, the lowest life expectancy of all peoples not only in the United States but the entire Western Hemisphere. Written by and for nurses, this text addresses the profound disparities in policy, healthcare law and health outcomes that affect American Indians, and describes how these disparities, woven into the cultural, environmental, historical and geopolitical fabric of American Indian society, are responsible for the marked lack of well-being among American Indians.

Trauma and Resilience in the Lives of Contemporary Native Americans: Reclaiming Our Balance, Restoring Our Wellbeing

 Hilary N. Weaver

In recent decades, there has been increasing attention on how trauma, both historical and contemporary, shapes the lives of Native Americans. This book uses a trauma-informed lens to examine Native American issues with the understanding that even when not specifically seeking to address trauma directly, it is useful to understand that trauma is a common experience that can shape many aspects of life.

The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle

Malinda Maynor Lowery

As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. How and why did the Lumbees both fight to establish the United States and resist the encroachments of its government? Their fight for full federal acknowledgment continues to this day, while the Lumbee people's struggle for justice and self-determination continues to transform our view of the American experience. Readers of this book will never see Native American history the same way.

Medicine Women: The Story of the First Native American Nursing School

Jim Kristofic

In this detailed history, Jim Kristofic traces the story of Ganado Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Kristofic's personal connection with the community creates a nuanced historical understanding that blends engaging narrative with careful scholarship to share the stories of the people and their commitment to this place.

Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel (Earth Quest)

Kenneth Meadows

To Native Americans, "medicine" is more than a means for treating illness—medicine is the vitality and power that exists in all of nature. This new edition of Meadows' bestseller draws on the secret teachings of native shamans and provides new techniques for tapping your own personal medicine.

Native American Ethnobotany

Daniel E. Moerman

Native American Ethnobotany is a comprehensive account of the plants used by Native American peoples for medicine, food and other purposes. The author, anthropologist Daniel E. Moerman, has devoted more than 25 years to the compilation of the ethnobotanical knowledge slowly gathered over the course of many centuries and recorded in hundreds of firsthand studies of American Indians made over the past 150 years. This research documents Native American use of 4,029 kinds of plants with a total of 44,691 usages.

You Are the Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance 

Asha Frost

The Medicine you have been searching for lives within you. Follow the path of the 13 Ojibwe Moons with Animal Spirits and Ancestors as your guides as you unlock your connection to your own unique, inherent healing power. Through storytelling, ceremonies and Shamanic journeys, learn to apply ancient wisdom to your life in ways that are respectful and conscious of the stolen lands, lives and traditions of Indigenous peoples.

AACOM thanks Aisha Ali, MHRM, AACOM research analyst, for sharing these recommendations. View additional book and film recommendations by accessing our 2023 collection.