Indigenous Voices: Poetry, Art, Music, Literature and More

Explore indigenous voices in poetry, art, music, and literature at the DePaul University Library. These are just a few of the recently published books and music you’ll find in our collections at the John T. Richardson Library and the Loop Library. Ask a Librarian for help using library resources to find more indigenous voices in the arts, as well as in research, the news, scholarship, primary sources, and more.

Two recent anthologies explore themes of community, identity, trauma, and individual experience through a diverse array of contemporary fiction, prose, poetry, essays, and oral traditions reshaped into the written word: you can find My Life: Growing up Native in America at the Richardson Library and The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature at the Loop Library. And another new, award-winning book of poetry, mother by m.s. RedCherries, is a fictional account based on the writer’s own experiences of returning to her birth family and the Northern Cheyenne reservation where she was born after being raised by her adoptive family.

In our vinyl record collection, check out Joe Rainey’s first-full length album, Niineta, which fuses Pow Wow music with loops, beats, and electronic effects. A Red Lake Ojibwe, Rainey grew up in Minneapolis and spent his youth making field recordings and participating in Pow Wows as a singer, dancer, and drummer. On this album, his recording samples and powerful vocals are layered with the beats of producer Andrew Broder to “take Pow Wow music to places it’s never been before.”

Also look for new titles in our Unwind the Mind: Popular Reading Collection, including bestseller By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Cherokee writer and activist Rebecca Nagle who recounts her own family history, generations of land theft by the American government, and the story of a 1999 murder that took place on Muscogee Nation tribal land. Defense attorneys argued that the case fell outside of the state of Oklahoma’s jurisdiction, eventually leading to a Supreme Court ruling that upheld much of Oklahoma as tribal land, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation. Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty, another bestseller, is a collection of insightful, tender, and darkly humorous linked short stories about being Penobscot in the twenty-first century.

And finally, An Indigenous Present is a vibrant compilation of the creative practice of more that sixty contemporary artists, musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, architects, writers, photographers, designers, and more. At nearly 450 pages, this book is full of images of the artwork, film stills, performances and music scores of Native North American practitioners interspersed with essays, interviews, and reflections. Highlighting individual practice and acknowledging shared histories, it showcases “diverse approaches to Indigenous concepts, forms, and mediums.”