100 Books Like Walking the Clouds

Among the more insidious and tragic consequences of colonialism and its assimilationist policies is the eradication of indigenous conventions around gender and sexuality. In many indigenous communities, gender and sexuality do not operate in as binary as a fashion as they do in European societies.

Highlighting these historical and contemporary possibilities for what we might call queer identities (or “two-spirit” in some communities), is Joshua Whithead’s breathtaking “Indigiqueer” anthology, Love After the End. Contributors amend the provocation, the future is indigenous, to consider how the future is also queer or indigiqueer. 

Weaving between the traditional and the contemporary, the past and the future, the ancestral and the posthuman, these tales of queer joy, love, and thriving remind us of what was lost and what is still possible as we strive toward mass decolonization.

I can think of no other book that so exquisitely inhabits the tension between indigenous knowledge traditions and science than Rae Mariz’s (Indigenous Pacific) marvelous clifi novella, Weird Fishes.

Inspired by marine science and the storytelling traditions of Hawai'i, Mariz’s world is a feast of bubbling colors and more-than-human senses that inspire an extraordinary empathy for all the wondrous beings with whom we share this planet. Weird Fishes reads like a parable and an aquatic mystery, a magnificently crafted voyage that leads the novella’s cephalopod scientist protagonist (Ceph) to the startling discovery that humanity is behind the growing disruptions to marine ecology.

How do we thrive together? Or does the survival one society hinge on the extermination of the other? Is co-existence possible for beings with such radically different natures and senses? These are the questions that will linger in your gills well after the last pages are turned.

In Latin America, the long shadow of Iberian imperialism and the racist caste system it left behind continue to dampen or mute expressions of indigeneity in our communities.

Speculative Fiction for Dreamers is a welcome countermeasure against this suppression of indigenous languages, myths, and traditions in Latin American storytelling. The contributors weave a tapestry of more-than-indigenous futurity, that is chimeric and cyborgian, a meshwork of continents and cosmovisions that blueprint futures and alternate presents in communion with ancestral pasts.

From Samy Figaredo’s Taíno-inspired play, to Ernest Hogan’s short story set in new Aztlán, the stories, comics, and poems in this anthology provide a Latin American perspective on indigenous speculative fiction.

Not all indigenous languages have a corresponding alphabet or writing system. For example, many North American indigenous languages are now represented in a Romanized alphabet, but traditionally these languages were spoken and the stories they contained were transmitted by oral tradition.

In the case of my Taino ancestors, stories were also told with pictographs or petroglyphs. I conclude my list of indigenous futurist books with stories that are told graphically, in the form of Moonshot, a collection of comics edited, written, and illustrated by indigenous storytellers and artists.

Edited by Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe & Métis) and Michael Sheyahshe (Oklahoma Caddo Nation), the imagery is striking, conjuring colorful mythoscapes and slipstream futures with indigenous people at the forefront, redefining science and technology along the way. One story features a protagonist in a wheelchair, raising questions about ableism in SF and the possibility for “Crip” Futures and Indigenous Futurism to be… show more.

Andrés Reséndez estimates that between 2.4 and 4.9 million Indigenous Americans were enslaved between 1492 and 1900, a statistic that will shock many people, as the history of Native enslavement in the Americas barely seems to have touched the popular imagination.

This book, accessibly written but based on meticulous research, is absolutely essential reading, as it returns this ‘other slavery’ to its rightful place in our understandings of Indigenous, American, and global history.

Barry Lopez is also an author that defies choosing among his many great books about nature, including the renown Of Wolves and Men. Less known is his collection of sixty-eight tales of Old Man Coyote, the Trickster, carefully gathered from forty-two Native American tribes. One might understandably take issue with reading a white man’s version of Native American stories, but give Barry a chance to explain himself in the introduction to the book. Of course, nothing can replace the great oral tradition of Native American storytelling, but short of the real thing, this collection will help you understand the wit and wisdom of the Trickster character.

Historians have written moving accounts of the discovery and settlement of the American West, but Alvin Josephy in The Patriot Chiefs tells the same story from the “other side,” meaning from the point of view of the many Indian chiefs who tried to stop the advance of first, the American colonies, and then, the American nation. One by one, their lives and their struggles light up before the reader. Although I read the book years ago, Josephy’s vivid portraits of Hiawatha, King Philip, Popé, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, Black Hawk, Crazy Horse, and Chief Joseph stay alive in my imagination to this very day. Their stories, like those of every daring explorer and hardy pioneer who made their way west, must be remembered as part of the great story of America.

This is the kind of book you get lost in. My favorite stories almost always include a trail—a journey. And the path followed by Lewis and Clark is, of course, more than just a journey.

I loved experiencing this excursion through the perspective of the heroic young mother. If it weren’t for her, the expedition would have been doomed. I’m long overdue for another read of this book, and I’m looking forward to diving back into it one of these days.

Vine Deloria, Jr., was one of the most influential Native American authors, and this is one of his most significant books. I was greatly moved by Mr. Deloria’s candid discussion of how white people screwed the Indians.

Mr. Deloria not only gives numerous illustrations of wrongdoing, but the book contains a section on how white people can try to make amends. Although this book is now 50 years old, it is a major contribution to American Indian literature. It helped shape my thinking about how our country has treated (and mistreated) Native Americans.

This may be the most honest autobiography I’ve ever read. Means spares no one, especially not himself.

What made this book memorable to me is its intimate look into the heart of Means, as he relates his successes and failures in meeting the challenges of being an American Indian. Means traveled a painful and tortuous road to finally become a significant leader of the late twentieth-century Indian movement for recognition, reparation, and self-determination.