#turtle mountain band of chippewa

[foulwitchknight]

https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/over-120-tribal-leaders-call-on-biden-to-grant-clemency-to-leonard-peltier

[follow-up-news]

Native American activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison on Tuesday, weeks after then-President Joe Biden angered law enforcement officials by commuting his life sentence to home confinement in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents. Peltier, 80, left Coleman penitentiary in an SUV, according to a prison official. He didn’t stop to speak with reporters or the roughly two dozen supporters who gathered outside the gates to celebrate his release. Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, was headed back to his reservation, where family and friends will celebrate his release with him on Wednesday and where the tribe arranged a house for him to live in while serving his home confinement. Throughout his nearly half-century in prison, Peltier has maintained that he didn’t murder FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams during a confrontation that day on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Native Americans widely believe he was a political prisoner who was wrongly convicted because he fought for tribal rights as a member of the American Indian Movement.

[mariacallous]

LAVEEN VILLAGE, Ariz. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday formally apologized to Native Americans for the “sin” of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated children from their parents, calling it a “blot on American history” in his first presidential visit to Indian Country.

“It’s a sin on our soul,” said Biden, his voice full of anger and emotion. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.”

It was a moment of both contrition and frustration as the president sought to recognize one of the “most horrific chapters” in the national story. Biden spoke of the abuses and deaths of Native children that resulted from the federal government’s policies, noting that “while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing” and that great nations “must know the good, the bad, the truth of who we are.”

“I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did,” Biden said. “The Federal Indian boarding school policy — the pain is has caused will only be a significant mark of shame, a blot on our record history. For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools.”

Democrats hope Biden’s visit to the Gila River Indian Community’s land on the outskirts of Phoenix’s metro area will also provide a boost to Vice President Kamala Harris’ turnout effort in a key battleground state. The moment gave Biden a fuller chance to spotlight his and Harris’ support for tribal nations, a group that historically has favored Democrats, in a state he won just by 10,000 votes in 2020.

The race between Harris and former President Donald Trump is expected to be similarly close, and both campaigns are doing whatever they can to improve turnout among bedrock supporters.

“The race is now a turnout grab,” said Mike O’Neil, a non-partisan pollster based in Arizona. “The trendlines throughout have been remarkably steady. The question is which candidate is going to be able to turn out their voters in a race that seems to be destined to be decided by narrow margins.”

Biden has been used sparingly on the campaign trail by Harris and other Democrats since he ended his reelection campaign in July.

But analysts say Biden could help Harris in her appeal with Native American voters — a group that has trailed others in turnout rates.

In 2020, there was a surge in voter turnout on some tribal land in Arizona as Biden beat Trump and became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1996.

Biden, whose presidency is winding down, had promised tribal leaders nearly two years ago that he would visit Indian Country.

For decades, federal boarding schools were used to assimilate children into white society, according to the White House. Not everyone saw the apology as sufficient.

“An apology is a nice start, but it is not a true reckoning, nor is it a sufficient remedy for the long history of colonial violence,” said Chase Iron Eyes, director of the Lakota People’s Law Project and Sacred Defense Fund.

At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system over a 150-year period that ended in 1969, according to an Interior Department investigation that called for a U.S. government apology.

At least 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them.

“President Biden deserves credit for finally putting attention on the issue and other issues impacting the community,” said Ramona Charette Klein, 77, a boarding school survivor and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. “I do think that will reflect well on Vice President Harris, and I hope this momentum will continue.”

Democrats have stepped up outreach to Native American communities.

Both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, met with tribal leaders in Arizona and Nevada this month. And Clinton, who has been serving as a surrogate for Harris, last week met in North Carolina with the chairman of the Lumbee Tribe.

The Democratic National Committee recently launched a six-figure ad campaign targeting Native American voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Montana and Alaska through digital, print and radio ads.

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is locked in a competitive race with Republican Kari Lake for Arizona’s open Senate seat, has visited all 22 of Arizona’s federally recognized tribes.

Harris started a recent campaign rally in Chandler, near where the Gila River reservation is located, with a shoutout to the tribe’s leader. Walz is scheduled to go to the Navajo Nation in Arizona tomorrow on Saturday.

The White House says Biden and Harris have built a substantial track record with Native Americans over the last four years.

The president designated the sacred Avi Kwa Ame, a desert mountain in Nevada and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon in Arizona as national monuments and restored the boundaries for Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

In addition, the administration has directed nearly $46 billion in federal spending to tribal nations. The money has helped bring electricity to a reservation that never had electricity, expand access to high-speed internet, improve water sanitation, build roadways and more.

Biden picked former New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland to serve as his Interior secretary, the first Native American to be appointed to a Cabinet position. Haaland is a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico.

She, in turn, ordered the comprehensive review in June 2021 of the troubled legacy of the federal government’s boarding school policies that led Biden to deliver the formal apology.

Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, said both Harris’ and Trump’s campaigns — and their allies — have put a remarkable amount of effort into micro-targeting in Arizona.

“They are pulling out every stop just to see if they could wrangle a few more votes here and there,” Reilly said. “The Indian community is one of those groups that Harris is hoping will overperform and help make the difference.”

[entheognosis]

Corey Lee Davis, Jr.,

Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The Mighty Red,” the title of Louise Erdrich’s rambunctious new novel, definitely refers to North Dakota’s Red River, around which much of it is set, and probably refers to a large, red-headed character named Hugo.

A central event in “Mighty Red” is the marriage of a young woman named Kismet, but will she end up with brash Gary or gentle Hugo? Most of the characters have something to say about that, including Kismet’s mom Crystal, a truck driver who hauls sugar beets and whom Erdrich— a Pulitzer Prize winner for “The Night Watchman,” National Book Award winner for “The Round House” and owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis — says is something of a stand-in for her.

Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who lives in Minneapolis, has written 20 books.

Q: What came first when you were dreaming up “The Mighty Red”?

A: The first character I really thought about was Hugo. He goes back about 10 years and just kept plodding back into my notebooks with his obsessions about geology and energy and with his hapless ardor. I guess a lot of this book is about hapless ardor. Here we are, wired to mate, yet relationships are so ridiculous and awkward and, if you are lucky, magical.

The goal in my books is never to get two people together and leave them marooned, but to explore the tension and idiocy in a relationship. I mean, love. When love gets to a critical madness, people get married to reduce the madness to manageable increments of madness — like who keeps track of the vacuum cleaner attachments? Who deals with the mice? Who mislabeled the electrical box? Forget nosegays and frothed milk. Dawn dish soap becomes the thing you can’t live without. Like Kismet, you may end up making three-egg breakfasts for your husband’s family and eating your own breakfast out in the garage.

Q: Like “ The Sentence,” “The Mighty Red” is set in the recent past. Lots of “Sentence” readers were struck by your ability to evoke pandemic-era behaviors (like sanitizing the mail) that we engaged in, quit and then promptly forgot. Is it tricky to capture a past that most readers lived through?

A: You’re right. We forget the details of what we live through. This book is set in 2008-2009. The first hint I had of the mortgage crisis was running into someone I knew who was shaking and distraught over losing the house into which she’d sunk all she owned. It was devastating and it was happening everywhere.

Something like this happens to my somewhat alter-ego Crystal. There are other books about why and how this huge con game exploded, but I wanted to write about the way 2008-09 affected a few families. I thought about this a lot, how close we came to a serious economic depression, and how bad it was anyway. Part of my research was listening to the archived late night call-in shows with Art Bell, “Coast to Coast.”

Q: Which Crystal listens to, as well. Any more research?

A: Then I really lost my mind diving into how Roundup Ready seeds were developed, also at that time. I couldn’t think about anything but herbicides and pesticides. I became a known conversation killer. A lot of farming is degenerative as opposed to regenerative, and obviously that’s got to stop. Most of the farmers I know are doing their best to use few chemicals and do right by their land. They are some of the smartest people I know.

But they are running businesses. Sugar is a dirty business. However, sugar is delicious. At the end result of all those herbicides and petrochemicals and semi trucks and processing is pure, white, sparkly, granulated sugar. It is integral to our food chain now, it hits the pleasure centers in your brain like rocket fuel, and even having written this book I still love cake and ice cream.

Q: Many novels address climate crisis but I can’t recall one that makes it as easy to relate to as, for instance, the passage about the effort that goes into re-establishing prairie. Is it important to you to personalize for readers what we’ve done to our planet?

A: I wanted people to read this book, so to keep things cheerful I only sprinkled the dire stuff into the trauma of a wedding. You know — Absurd Proposal, Strange Vows, Violent Wedding Dinner, Questionable Marriage, Aftermarriage. Maybe the real bond is with the land and sky. The book is also a love letter to the Red River Valley, where I grew up. The valley along the river has changed drastically during my life and I wanted to know why. I wasn’t looking for simple answers or heroes and villains (except Hugo, hero). Nothing lines up that way.

Q: The title character of the book, or at least one of them, is a river, which you describe as “everything.” Can you talk about how living in a river valley shapes these people?

A: Are you asking whether there is a character trait that people who live along and depend on a river share? Or a lake? I don’t know — maybe love of walleye? Certain members of my family and I have been conducting a longitudinal study of who — aside from my brother Ralph — makes the best fried walleye in the Upper Midwest. We have a long way to go, but so far the Creekside Supper Club (Red Lake walleye) comes closest to the sine qua non of walleye (without which life is meaningless) on a good night at the Sky Dancer Casino (Lake Winnipeg walleye) in the Turtle Mountains. If people want to write to the Minnesota Star [Tribune] with the results of their own studies, that would be great. Just don’t contact me about this. I can’t let any extraneous information spoil the parameters of my own investigation.

Q: I can’t wait to see that striking cover in stores. I know it’s designed by your daughter, Aza Abe, who has done many of your covers. How important are covers to you, as both a writer and bookseller?

A: Covers tell the bookseller and the reader how much a publisher cares about the book. (An author usually doesn’t get much say.) I love how covers can be art that wasn’t created for the book and yet be all about the book. When I am bowled over by a new novel in manuscript, and then the final cover isn’t good enough for the book, I’m so upset.

I’m beyond lucky to have my daughter Aza Abe, a remarkable woman and tremendous artist, as the cover artist. I’m so grateful that she and I were able to start working together. Every one of her covers is stellar and says something about the book that can only be said visually. A reader should turn back and forth from the text to the cover and always find something to think about. That always happens with her images.

Take this particular cover. Aza’s image is about the origin of the Red River, where three rivers come together and flow north. The river is white because it’s sugar. The earth is deep black with gold flecks because good soil is the earth’s wealth. The letters are strong and bold because that’s the river, too.

Q: You never seem to judge your characters. Has that always been crucial to your work? Do you have other “rules” for writing?

A: A lot of being a writer is getting out of your own way. I try to simply report on what the characters are doing and thinking. If I make a judgment, it is in the voice of a character reflecting on what they’ve done. It’s not that I’m so high-minded, it’s more that it’s intrusive for a writer to make a judgment. And the reader is bound to wonder why, if you, the writer, have such a poor opinion about your character, why not just redeem them? I am opposed to redemption in a book. Maybe that’s a rule, but I break that rule if it needs breaking.

Q: What surprised you most in writing this novel?

A: The arrogant wealthy jock, Gary, surprised me. What a jackass. But then as I wrote him, I began to discover how vulnerable he was, how ridiculous, how haunted. He became my favorite character to write.

Q: Gary — and much of “The Mighty Red” itself — is really funny. Readers are going to get a bang out of these people (one line I’m thinking of is, “She loved Hugo with that superb kind of love a mother has for a male child, a love that is deeper and more pure for knowing that he’ll more than likely turn out a fool.”). Obviously, writing a novel is hard work, but was it fun to hang with these characters?

A: Yes, most days I’m lying on the floor, just wiped out, but it’s worth it on the days I’m laughing my head off.

Q:“The Mighty Red” is tough but hopeful. Do you find your way toward hope in the act of storytelling or is it in you already and that’s what pulls the story toward hope?

A: I don’t see the point of writing a book that doesn’t hold out hope. Things are getting so dire that, no matter how annoying and crazy-making we all are, we have to pull together. We need to work on a livable world. Nihilism just strikes me as lazy, and pretentious. Anyway, it’s the serious people who are leading with hope in these times.

Q: I don’t want to spoil it for readers but that last paragraph is such a knockout. What was the hardest part of “The Mighty Red” to get right? Or the easiest?

A: Chris, I’m so glad you liked the end! It was the one and only page in this whole book that was easy to write. I just wrote it down and didn’t change a word. And then I cried.

©2024 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Feb., 18, Sumterville, FL – This morning, Leonard Peltier was released from over 49 years of wrongful incarceration.  Mr. Peltier is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and will reside on his tribal homelands in North Dakota.

Upon Peltier’s request, NDN Collective is bringing him home to the Turtle Mountain community. NDN Collective and partners built upon five decades of organizing and led the advocacy that secured Peltier’s release. Tomorrow, the organization is hosting a celebratory event and community feed to welcome Peltier back to his homelands.

“Today I am finally free! They may have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit!” said Leonard Peltier. “Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom. I am finally going home. I look forward to seeing my friends, my family, and my community. It’s a good day today.”

[dertaglichedan]

Biden commutes sentence of Indigenous activist who murdered two FBI agents: ‘Cruel betrayal to the families’

One of Joe Biden’s final acts as president Monday was to grant clemency to an Indigenous activist convicted of fatally shooting two FBI agents execution-style in the head in 1975.

Leonard Peltier, 80, had been serving two life sentences behind bars but will now carry out the remainder of his time at home instead. He had been part of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

“It’s finally over – I’m going home,” Peltier said after being granted clemency, according to a statement shared by NDN Collective, an Indigenous activist group.

“I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me,” he said.

Peltier’s commutation was part of a wave of clemency Biden granted on his way out of the White House. The outgoing president also issued pre-emptive pardons to his brother James and other relatives, members of the since-defunct House select Jan. 6 Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci and more.

The move involving Peltier left law enforcement reeling.

The now 80-year-old Peltier was wanted for the attempted murder of a Milwaukee police officer at the time, although the two agents didn’t know that. Peltier and three others were arrested for fatally shooting the G-men. He was convicted in 1977.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Adria R. Walker at The Guardian:

On Friday, Joe Biden formally apologized for the United States government’s role in running at least 523 Indian boarding schools. His remarks were given at the Gila Crossing community school outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and marked his first visit to Indian country as president.

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program,” Biden said. “But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened – until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologize. That’s long overdue.” “Federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history,” he said. “For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention.” Indian boarding schools were run with the express goal to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man”, a phrase coined by the army officer Richard Henry Pratt, who founded Carlisle Indian boarding school, the first federally run Indian boarding school. From 1819 to 1969, in what Biden called “one of the most horrific chapters in American history”, the US government directly managed or funded Indian boarding schools in nearly 40 states. The schools, at which formal education was limited, forcibly and systematically stripped Indigenous children of their culture by removing them from their families and communities, forbidding them from speaking their languages and, typically violently, punishing them if they resisted.

A US Department of the Interior report released earlier this year found that at least nearly 1,000 Indigenous children died in the schools. Sexual violence was commonplace. Dr Denise K Lajimodiere, an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, wrote that the “boarding school era represented a deliberate policy of ethnocide and cultural genocide and human rights abuses”. “Some of our elders who are boarding school survivors have been waiting all of their lives for this moment,” said Stephen Roe Lewis, the Gila River Indian community governor. “If only for a moment on Friday, this will rise to the top, and the most powerful person in the world, our president, is shining a light on this dark history that’s been hidden.” No president has ever apologized for the abuses that tens of thousands of Indigenous children faced in the schools.

On Friday, President Joe Biden gave a formal apology for the US Government’s role in creating boarding schools for Native Americans by calling it “a blot on American history.” The boarding schools served to forcibly assimilate Native Americans and abuse if they resisted assimilation.

[pierranesi]

not me reading this the day after my funny little Mormon post did numbers. anyway happy birthday to the turtle mountain band of chippewa indians and not to real-life guy arthur v watkins

[youthchronical]

Native American Activist Leonard Peltier Released From Prison

Leonard Peltier, a Native American rights activist held for nearly half a century for the killing of two F.B.I. agents, was released from a federal prison in Central Florida on Tuesday morning. Mr. Peltier, 80, will serve the remainder of his two life sentences in home confinement in North Dakota, where he is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The commutation of Mr. Peltier’s…

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Snow on the Turtle Mountains

The hummocky highlands that straddle the border between the U.S. state of North Dakota and the Canadian province of Manitoba are called the Turtle Mountains. They are modest-sized for mountains, part of a plateau that rises just 600 to 800 feet (180 to 240 meters) above the surrounding plains.

However, the increased elevation results in an additional 10 inches (25 centimeters) of precipitation per year, enough to support hardwood forests rather than grasslands. (A process called the orographic effect enhances precipitation at higher elevations when topography forces passing air upward and causes water vapor to cool and condense into clouds.)

The forests stand out in this snowy view of the plateau, captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite on January 3, 2025. Forests cover about half of the plateau, appearing darker than the surrounding snow-covered wetlands, farmland, and grasslands. Trembling aspen, bur oak, balsam poplar, and green ash dominate, providing habitat for a variety of animals including fox, weasel, badger, deer, marten, and moose.

Stagnant glaciers sculpted the plateau’s many kettle lakes and prairie potholes during the last ice age. As debris-covered blocks of ice slowly melted, they left the surface pockmarked with small depressions. The resulting wetlands cover about a quarter of the plateau and support populations of turtles, frogs, salamanders, several types of fish, waterfowl, and other aquatic birds.

Wildlands cover much of the plateau, but signs of human activity are visible as well. About a quarter of the area has been cleared and converted to farmland, which appears as bright snow-covered areas in its center and southwest. About 5,000 people live on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, home to a band of Chippewa, on the southeastern part of the plateau near Belcourt.

The rectangular borders of the densely forested Turtle Mountain Provincial Park in Manitoba are also visible in the northern third of the plateau. In the winter, the park has become a destination for cross-country skiing, ice fishing, snowmobiling, and sledding—at least for the cold-tolerant. Chilly weather prevailed when MODIS acquired the image. Temperatures averaged minus 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 21.5 degrees Celsius) at the nearby Devils Lake Regional Airport Station on January 3, according to Weather Undeground.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

[profeminist]

“my tribe just became the first tribe in ND to legalize same sex marriage and i’m -”   

- jaycee jo

Turtle Mountain tribe passes marriage equality vote

“BELCOURT, N.D. – The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa tribal council voted Thursday to amend the tribe’s code to effectively broaden the definition of marriage.

The vote changes the tribe’s definition of marriage from husband and wife to spouse.

Thursday morning, LGBTQ2+ advocacy groups marched in Belcourt ahead of the vote, in support of expanding the language to be inclusive of same-sex couples.

The vote will also allow unmarried tribal members to adopt”.

[tlbodine]

Native American Authors of Dark Fiction

Since my Black Horror Writers post was so well-received, I thought it would be a good idea to make a similar list for Native American authors. No Sherman Alexie or N. Scott Momaday here (although they’re good too) -- here are some contemporary authors you probably haven’t heard of but who you should totally be supporting. The list is a bit of a mix of horror, sci-fi, fantasy and contemporary fiction, but I’ve focused as usual on darkly imaginative stories. Enjoy! 

Stephen Graham Jones A Blackfeet author of horror and crime fiction, SGJ is both prolific -- with more than 20 books to his name -- and magnificently talented. You might want to start with Mongrels, which gives a fresh spin on the werewolf genre, or you can skip ahead to this year's release The Only Good Indians -- a heart-pounding supernatural thriller with a classic slasher pace.

Owl Goingback An author of horror and crime fiction for adults and children, Goingback specializes in stories that are high-horror, low-gore. Start at the beginning with Crota, which won a Stoker for "Best First Novel," or jump to the present with the Stoker-award-winning "Coyote Rage."

Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing for children and young adults, Smith is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. If you like urban fantasy, you'll probably enjoy her Tantalize and Feral series, which give you all the shapeshifter/vampire/angel goodness you could ask for. If you'd rather go for something more classically Native, try Rain Is Not My Indian Name, a contemporary coming-of-age type novel.

Cherie Dimaline A Métis writer and activist hailing from Canada, Dimaline considers herself first and foremost a writer of Indigenous stories. Her books aren't shy about exploring themes of colonialism and genocide -- consider The Marrow Thieves, a dark dystopia about Indigenous people who are hunted and harvested for the properties of their bones. Or you might enjoy Empire of Wild, which draws on the Métis story of the Rogarou - a werewolf-like creature with a rich folklore history tracing through the mixed heritage of the Métis people.

Waubgeshig Rice An Anishinaabe writer from the Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Rice is a journalist and author of dark fiction. Start with Moon of the Crusted Snow, which is a brooding post-apocalyptic thriller set in Canada.

Rebecca Roanhorse OK, Roanhorse is kind of a controversial listing here. Some critics take issue with the way she portrays fictionalized, fantastical reimaginings of traditional mythology from a culture she is not intimately part of (she married a Navajo man and claims some Ohkay Owingeh ancestry but there's some dispute about that). But a lot of people (especially young readers) think her books are badass and really give a face to their experiences. I'll leave it up to you to decide. You'll probably want to start with Race to the Sun, which is this year's novel, but Trail of Lightning and Black Sun are much-loved fan favorites, too. If you'd rather just enjoy her writing without venturing into the argument about her use of cultural elements, she also writes Star Wars books.

Darcie Little Badger A scientist and author from the Lipan Apache tribe, Little Badger is a member of the Indigenous Futurism movement, imagining Native characters in sci-fi settings that honor historical and cultural perpsectives. She's also noteworthy for her LGBT+ inclusion. She's mostly known for short fiction and comic books, but she does have a novel this year -- Elatsoe, set in an alternate version of America filled with ghosts and magic.

Tommy Orange A member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations of Oklahoma, Orange is a pretty new name on the scene. His book There There is more literary, having been a Pulitzer finalist in 2019, so you might not be as into it if you're primarily a genre reader. But it's a hard-hitting contemporary narrative twisting together multiple stories, and a downright ambitious debut. Keep an eye on this one.

Daniel Wilson A robotics engineer and New York Times best-selling author, Wilson is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He writes Asimov-style hard sci-fi about robots, which he's more than a little qualified to do! Start with Robopocalypse, which is an action-packed horror-scifi romp.

Drew Hayden Taylor A Canadian playright and author with Ojibwe heritage, Taylor likes to joke about his mixed-race background. His writing covers a whole spectrum from plays, short stories and even graphic novels. If you're looking for a book, The Night Wanderer is a good choice -- a vampire Gothic set on a reservation.

Louise Erdrich A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Erdrich is widely acclaimed as an author in the Native American Renaissance. Like Tommy Orange, her books are more on the literary side of things, but there's plenty to enjoy for genre fans as well. For my money, I say start with Future Home of the Living God, which is a dark dystopian apocalypse about evolution running backwards and a woman struggling to keep her baby safe.

As always, reblog with your recommendations and suggestions for any names I left off the list!