Best products from r/IndianCountry

We found 27 comments on r/IndianCountry discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 65 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

Top comments mentioning products on r/IndianCountry:

u/Honeykill · 8 pointsr/IndianCountry

Boozhoo/Aanii niijii! (Hello friend!) I am eastern Ojibwe and live far from home too. First, I'd like to share a couple pieces of personal advice as you head towards this learning. Then I'll get to resources :)

Most important: Be gentle with yourself! Learning our languages can be intensely emotional. Do not beat yourself up if you don't learn as fast as you want. Don't let discouragement get the better of you.

Be aware that learning Anishinaabemowin (outside of an immersion setting) will likely require you to learn some light linguistics. Making sure you're familiar with terms like verb, noun, preposition, etc. will help.

Also, this may be a surprisingly emotional journey for you. Not everyone has this experience, but a lot of people find learning their language washes up a lot of identity issues. I do not say this to discourage you. As I learn Anishinaabemowin, my identity is being affirmed so deeply. But the process of gaining affirmation is often uncomfortable, scary, or painful. It's all so, so worth it though.

Okay, resource time! We're fortunate to have a lot of options, some of which include:

Ojibwe Language Fix of the Day on Facebook. There are several fluent speakers and language teachers in this group. It's mostly people learning and asking questions. It's can be a good place for cultural learning as well.

Daga Anishinaabemodaa is an awesome text with beautiful illustrations. It's written in Minnesota/western Ojibwe. There's also a Soundcloud account that goes with this text! Daga Anishinaabemodaa translates approximately to, "Let's all speak Ojibwe please!"

There are many dictionaries for our language. You may want to call your band office to see if your community has its own dictionary, or if any of your neighbouring communities do.

The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is a good online resource, but it has a learning curve. It uses a lot of linguistics terms that go way over my head, and isn't terribly helpful for grammar. Sometimes you have to wrestle with search terms. The website also has history and cultural teachings available, which is great.

A good paper resource is the Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe frequently.

There are also apps available: Neechee for iOS, FreeLang for Android and in browser, Ogoki Learning Systems Ojibway on iOS and Google. I haven't used any of these yet. My friends have praised the FreeLang app.

I wish you all the best in your language learning journey :)

u/rojovvitch · 3 pointsr/IndianCountry

Mods: I'm not Native but I found these books immensely helpful when I had the same questions over the years. Please delete if this if it's not allowed.

If you want to know about America's indigenous people, go to the source. I suggest avoiding books written by non-Natives, although there are of course special exceptions. This is because history, research, and literature by non-Natives tends to have an underlying motive heavy with inaccuracies or romanticism. It's also written from a Eurocentricm perspective where European culture is the standard against which difference is measured. There is an excellent post over on /r/AskHistorians that breaks the difference down at length, which illustrates why these texts are often not representative of the people they're discussing. In particular, an indigenous perspective "places the emphasis of understanding on the actual relationship between two things" whereas a non-Native emphasizes the "understanding on the actual object rather than the relationship." The distinction is important and, in my experience, it's been difficult not to see the faults in non-Native written information afterward.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People is a really good place to start. Yes, it's written for young folks, however, it doesn't dress up American history and instead presents it as is. You can use this book as a springboard for other topics. A lot of American history books present a cleaned up narrative that glosses over the human atrocities in favor of "unity." You see this jargon time and time again, even recently. So You Want to Write About American Indians? is also excellent, even if you're not a writer because she breaks down many of the self serving reasons behind non-Natives' discussions of Native America. And Custer Died for Your Sins is a classic in this discussion. This book was probably the most instrumental in peeling the romanticism away from my worldview. The chapter Anthropologists and Other Friends is an honest, raw, and direct dressing-down of non-Natives "studying" Native populations. And Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science has been one of the foremost books I've read (aside from the first one I linked) that dismantled my understanding of history and colonized misconceptions we take as fact when it comes to the social and historical misrepresentations of cultural, racial, ethnic, and national ideas of America's indigenous peoples. All of these items were written by indigenous people, from varying different cultural backgrounds and tribes. There are over 560 different federally recognized tribes, and they all have their own cultural backgrounds, languages, and history. Everyone is different. Try and be mindful of that when it's otherwise easy to say, "Native Americans believe that/Native American beliefs say/etc/etc."

u/Pulelehua · 5 pointsr/IndianCountry

One I recommend is "Shark Dialogues" By Kiana Davenport.

Beginning with the fateful meeting of a nineteenth-century Yankee sailor and the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chief, and sweeping over a century and a half of passionate, turbulent Hawaiian history, Shark Dialogues takes its place as the first novel to do justice to the rich heritage and cruel conflicts of the beautiful and beleaguered islands and their people. Surreal, provocative, erotic, magical, meaningful, and supremely wise, it is a tale of islanders and invaders, of victors and victims, of queens and whores, of lepers and healers. And at its center are Pono, the magnificent pure-blooded matriarch and seer, and her four mixed-blood granddaughters seeking to come to terms with the contradictions of their ancestries and the hungers of their hearts. Their loves, their hates, the bonds joining them, and the furies possessing them are interwoven with ancient legends and lore of the islands whose past offers their salvation and whose future is their fate. Kiana Davenport has written a major contribution to the literature of the Pacific Rim—a great reading experience both brilliantly contemporary in its form and timeless in its illumination.

https://www.amazon.com/Shark-Dialogues-Kiana-Davenport/dp/0452274583

u/some_random_kaluna · 1 pointr/IndianCountry

Her first fantasy book was called Demon Drums. It's off Amazon for $4.

Carol took care with some aspects of Polynesian culture. In Hawai'i, an emphasis is placed on song and oral tradition as well as writing in native culture, so when Carol's characters want to cast a spell in her books, they don't point magic wands. They sing and gesture like dancers. They whisper into their hands and place it into the water for water magic, or they sing into the air for storm magic, or they hum a song while applying salve to make wounds heal better. I think it's actually cool the way she depicts it and her worldbuilding, and some other well-known authors have commented that Carol has been criminally ignored. Not even Hawai'i knew much about her, and they normally celebrate locals who make it big. I haven't read many authors who's attempted to branch outside of the "wand casts magic missile" version of magic in fantasy, probably because it's hard to do. I might copy her someday in that regard.

Full disclosure: my mother and some of my friends took her writing course. A couple were Hawaiian. They all said she was a hard teacher, had her favorites, and was apparently gunshy of anyone who had talent approaching hers, as many teachers do. She was hired because UH liked the prestige of hiring published authors as all colleges do. But she was more geared toward academia than writing, and I wasn't aware of anything she published while she was teaching. I understand she died a few years ago.

u/Forty-Eighter · 2 pointsr/IndianCountry


An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Osceola and the Great Seminole War: A Struggle for Justice and Freedom by Thom Hatch

I've personally become very interested in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 which ended colonial occupation of native lands in New Mexico for a period of 12 years. Here's a short article on it from the Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanties and here is a podcast from r/askhistorians briefly covering the subject AskHistorians Podcast 038 - Pueblo Revolt of 1680. I've just ordered a copy of [The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico](https://www.amazon.com/Pueblo-Revolt-1680-Resistance-Seventeenth-Century/dp/B0118255A8/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1477984977&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=Knaut%2C+Andrew+L.+The+Pueblo+Revolt+of+1680%2C+Norman%3A+University+of+Oklahoma+Press%2C+1995.+14.](https://www.amazon.com/Pueblo-Revolt-1680-Resistance-Seventeenth-Century/dp/B0118255A8/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1477984977&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=Knaut%2C+Andrew+L.+The+Pueblo+Revolt+of+1680%2C+Norman%3A+University+of+Oklahoma+Press%2C+1995.+14.)

"This site contains the entire English translation of the The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, originally compiled and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published by The Burrows BrothersCompany, Cleveland, throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. Each file represents the total English contents of a single published volume. The original work has facing pages in the original French, Latin or Italian, depending on the author." - Quote from linked site

The Jesuit Journals are very biased and full of ignorant assumptions on the part of the missionaries but also offer a glimpse of what they saw when they arrived and how things went (from their perspective of course).

I've missed many other amazing and probably obvious choices but these are just some that I personally find particularly interesting or informative. I hope you, and I, get some good leads for more reading material.

Edit: fixed link

u/Zugwat · 9 pointsr/IndianCountry

FOR CULTURE AND HISTORY:


I know this may seem a little odd at first, but I'd recommend checking out children's books such as this for a gist of the different cultural groups and you get a decent image of what they're like.

Then, if you find a particular area/culture/tribe/etc. that catches your eye after checking through some of these type of books I'd recommend trying to find some more detailed resources on them. This can be history books put out by your tribe of choice, anthropological studies, and collections of their legends.


FOR MODERN SOCIAL ISSUES:

This sub is rather helpful in encountering issues encountered in the modern era. Websites like indiancountrymedianetwork.com tend to be rather helpful informing people of issues affecting Indigenous communities across the Americas.

u/belliniandscreech · 1 pointr/IndianCountry

No way! That's so cool! I actually just started reading a different book recently - [Nez Perce Women in Transition, 1877-1990] (https://www.amazon.com/Nez-Perce-Women-Transition-1877-1990/dp/0893011886) by Caroline Adams. In it, I saw someone captioned that I thought might be a relative of yours! I'll take a picture and message you.

And aw, thanks for letting me know! I am still working on one of the older replies. I hope your plate is full of happy things! :)

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm sure OP will appreciate it, and I'll be adding it to my reading list too!

u/Snapshot52 · 2 pointsr/IndianCountry

Nice links! Fun fact: I'm related to the Pinkham's.

Also, I have received your PM (the most recent) and will reply soon. Just got lots of things on my plate. :)

Another good suggestion is The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

u/thefloorisbaklava · 2 pointsr/IndianCountry

Moundville's Economy is an earlier work (1991), but fanscinating. It's a precontact major mound city near Tuscaloosa, AL (maybe you are already familiar with it) that had divisions of labor, possibly clan-based. It was part of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy.

For Creek stories/oral history, Totkv Mocvse/New Fire: Creek Folktales by Earnest Gouge, into Muscogee Creek and English is great.

For an broad general overview, I would read Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 14: Southeast. I was going to recommend buying it used but it's running for $100 to $250 used, so maybe visit a library instead?

u/notacrackheadofficer · 0 pointsr/IndianCountry

You can lead a horse to water.....
CFR planned a New World Order before 1942, and the “UN began with a group of CFR members called the Informal Agenda Group.” They drafted the original UN proposal, presented it to Franklin Roosevelt who announced it publicly the next day. At its 1945 founding, CFR members comprised over 40 of the US delegates.
https://books.google.com/books?id=oGAeijPHiTYC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=Informal+Agenda+Group&source=bl&ots=x8zzTy-Bre&sig=WWBFUUl3u93eBaYiPLH_YuyWegk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiejY2ug7PRAhUMzGMKHcbPAfYQ6AEIcjAW#v=onepage&q=Informal%20Agenda%20Group&f=false
..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Committee_on_Postwar_Foreign_Policy
.... http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/global_tyranny/global_tyranny03.htm
..... https://www.amazon.com/United-Nations-Conspiracy-Robert-Lee/dp/0882792369
.... https://books.google.com/books?id=BFHJMfMtiKsC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Informal+Agenda+Group&source=bl&ots=PKJvViZEue&sig=XERtSHn44toqGoKZ0tRP7_ctOIs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiejY2ug7PRAhUMzGMKHcbPAfYQ6AEIUTAM#v=onepage&q=Informal%20Agenda%20Group&f=false
Look and see, or hilariously pretend that wealthy people do not conspire with each other.
There are many books on the UN's origin, and you seem to have read none of them.
Heve you read the chapter on eugenics in the original UNESCO founding document? Written by the top euginicist of his time? Feel free to shade your eyes and look away. Nothing to see.

u/Trips_93 · 3 pointsr/IndianCountry

If you're looking for inspiration, these two books are great places to start:

https://www.amazon.com/State-Native-Nations-Conditions-Self-Determination/dp/0195301269

https://www.amazon.com/Rebuilding-Native-Nations-Strategies-Development/dp/0816524238/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TF9GCDSDMVKDAX8FZ04B

Check your local library, they may also have those books. If you live on Rosebud Sinte Gleska should have them, or they can get them on loan from one of the other SD universities.

u/mongycore · 2 pointsr/IndianCountry

I just checked, it is free in Canada via Amazon.ca HERE, so grab it while you can.

And if there are any UK folk, Amazon UK has it up too for download.

u/HapaBoy1997 · 16 pointsr/IndianCountry

If you're interested in Sci-Fi, there's Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. It's about a Post-Apocalyptic Navajo society with Native american monsters wandering the South-west. Here's the amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Trail-Lightning-Sixth-Rebecca-Roanhorse/dp/1534413499