14 books like We Are Dancing for You

I love this book because of how beautiful and hopeful it is. The author pulls together amazing stories from her life to gradually weave an understanding of the meta-crisis we find ourselves in. I was captivated by the way she contrasts her family’s indigenous American culture with our modern approaches to both science and the economy.

I love Robin’s prose, which is exquisitely written. But perhaps what I value the most is the fact that she writes with optimism, giving me the courage to get up every day and think about how to put her wisdom into practice.

This brilliant book summarizes the history of Indigenous people in this country. It was written by a person with Indigenous heritage who participated in global Indigenous movements for over four decades.

I wish I had had this book accessible when I studied Native American history long ago with Western Cherokee Professor Dr. David Edmunds. 

This award-winning book provides a new way to understand Native people and why they have struggled so tenaciously for their human rights, even in a country that promotes itself as the world’s beacon of democracy. I recommend it unequivocally to everyone.

Ka’m-t’em both describes how communities can heal from colonization, and is itself a product of that healing. This book brings up so many emotions: shame around White violence, hope to build a community of support for Indigenous peoples, and longing for a decolonized future. The chapters featuring youth voices at the end of the book are particularly moving, as we hear from teenagers in their own words as to why they are willing to fight for their identities, and what everyone can do to help.

Michelle Jacob’s book taught me about how we can blend scholarship with practice on a personal level. Her book gives me hope that humans are creative, resilient, fierce creatures who can find their way through oppression. Through personal stories, I learned both about Yakama cultural survival, and see many general lessons for other minority communities around the world. 

Yes, history is important. This is a recurring theme in my courses, because if we don’t know how we got here, then our efforts to address the urgent problems we face will be hampered by our inability to understand the root causes of those problems. 

Public intellectual Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz once again does us a great service with her latest book in revealing the deep roots of racist oppression against citizens and noncitizens. She explodes the foundational myth of the United States as nation of immigrants, showing how this country is instead defined by settler colonialism—the efforts to destroy Indigenous civilizations to build a new, permanent society with the exploited labor of enslaved Black people, and migrant workers of all kinds. Her book crucially helps us understand how Native people and immigrants are not opposed to each other, but are instead subjugated by the same forces and thus share struggles for… show more.

I could not bear to put this book down. Each time I reached the end, I started again from the beginning. It lived on my bedside table for months. It was only after three readings that I could let it go.

Gregory Day had drawn me right into the places and times of early settler colonialism; his characters formed, against the odds, a way of life that was creative—poetic, musical, sensual, and, above all, ecological. They listened to the earth and found their place as part of it, belonging to it and belonging to the Earth. 

Starting with the public claim that Canadian society exhibits social indifference to the racialized and gendered violence connected to murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, Granzow interrogates the presumed absence suggested the word indifference, showing that it hides something present and active: a social investment and authorization of this violence as part of the maintenance of the settler-colonial state.

Looking at the city of Edmonton historically, ways that this investment – or commitment – has materialized are elaborated, including a policing initiative (Project Kare) that collects demographic information on individuals expected to be subject to (colonial) violence and the former Charles Camsell Hospital that incarcerated Indigenous peoples from where many disappeared. This impacted my thinking on the contradictions inherent to the notion of care and the place I call home.

Our whole family loves this book about an Indigenous child’s smoking ceremony. As a white settler-colonial family in Australia we are keen to read and learn from Indigenous authors and the publisher, Magabala press, are outstanding in the quality of the books they publish. The simple yet effective computer-created artwork gives an intimate insight into the importance of the first lesson of law, connecting to Country, which leads to great conversations and reflection. The inclusion of Indigenous words within the story adds to the depth of sharing with the audience and allows the voices of the women to be heard beyond those who usually attend such an important rite of passage. A real treasure. I wish it came as a board book as our copy has had to be taped together many times!

I loved this book because it provided a geographic perspective that deepened my understanding of how Native people in the Lower Chaco of Paraguay are mobilizing to reclaim their land. Like Indigenous people throughout the world, the transition to ranching pushed these people off their homelands and made them dispensable peons.

Refusing to give up, the Enxet and Sanapaná employed international advocates to pressure neoliberal politicians to return their lands. I was so impressed by Correia’s years of participant observations and the insights he provides into the Native peoples’ changing world.

What would we do in a world lacking police, prisons, surveillance, borders, wars, nuclear weapons, and capitalism? Well, we might survive. We might sustain life on this little blue dot a little longer. That—in contrast to the status quo—ought to be sufficient. We might, in addition, do a lot more than sustain life. We might transform the lives of billions of people, including each person reading these words. We might have lives with less fear and worry, more joy and accomplishment, more control and cooperation.

But, of course, the question might be asked in the sense of “Wouldn’t the criminals get us, and the forces of law and order be imperiled, and evildoers take away our freedoms, and sloth and laziness deprive us of updated phone models every few months?” As a way to begin answering those concerns, I recommend this tremendous resource of a book which surveys seven candidates… show more.