Following an extraordinary debut—17th place in the 1911 Boston Marathon—Penobscot Indian Andrew Sockalexis returned to run a spectacular Boston Marathon on a muddy, rainy course on April 19, 1912. Only twenty years old, running just his third marathon ever, he came in second and narrowly missed breaking the record time for that course. The greatest number of Native Americans ever to represent the United States occurred when Andrew Sockalexis joined Louis Tewanima and the legendary Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. As the American favorite to win the marathon, Sockalexis finished a gallant fourth on a brutally hot day that saw half the participants drop out and one runner die of heat stroke. Ed Rice chronicles the tragically short life of Sockalexis—he died at the age of twenty-seven from tuberculosis—focusing on his running and the races that earned him recognition from the sports community and made him revered at home.

The revised edition adds two new and exciting young basketball players to the roster of outstanding Native athletes already included in the book. Shoni Schimmel, a tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon, has earned the nicknames “The Umatilla Thrilla” and “Showtime” in the world of women's basketball. To people in Indian Country, Shoni is an absolute hero. Kenny Dobbs, aka “The Dunk Inventor,” is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and has toured the globe with the National Basketball Association as a celebrity dunker for sold-out shows. The biographies of all thirteen athletes describe the hard work, determination and education it took to accomplish their dreams and become the champions they are.

Native women have filled their communities with strength and leadership, both historically and as modern-day warriors. The twelve Indigenous women featured in this book overcame unimaginable hardships––racial and gender discrimination, abuse, and extreme poverty––only to rise to great heights in the fields of politics, science, education, and community activism. Such determination and courage reflect the essence of the traditional Cheyenne saying: “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” The impressive accomplishments of these twelve dynamic women provide inspiration for all. B/W photos. Featured individuals: Ashley Callingbull Burnham (Enoch Cree Nation) Henrietta Mann, PhD (Southern Cheyenne) Ruth Anna Buffalo (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation) Elouise Pepion Cobell (Blackfeet) Loriene Roy, PhD (Anishinabe, White Earth Reservation) Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk Nation) Roberta Jamieson (Kanyenkehaka, Six Nations-Grand River Territory) Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna) Elsie Marie Knott (Mississauga Ojibwe) Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee ) Heather Dawn Thompson (Lakota, Cheyenne River Sioux Emily Washines (Yakama Nation with Cree and Skokomish lineage).

Learn about the life events and aspirations that shaped the voices of ten influential Native writers, whose novels, short stories and plays encompass the soul of Native life. Learn how these writers draw from personal experience to create situations and characters that are entertaining and poignant. Featured writers include: Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) Marilyn Dumont (Cree/Métis) Joseph Boyden (Cree/Métis) Louise Erdrich (Ojibwa) Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) Tomson Highway (Cree) Maria Campbell (Métis) N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa/Cherokee) Nicola Campbell (Interior Salish of Nle7kepmx Tim Tingle (Choctaw) [Thompson] and Nsilx [Okanagan]/Métis) Many individuals portrayed in the Native Trailblazers series surmounted adversity and humble beginnings in their journey for personal success. The Trailblazer books feature positive role models for Native students while providing non-Native students with a view of Indigenous people today.

Presents stories of courage, determination, and resistance to multinational corporations and disastrous government policies that are harming the planet and describes how eleven Native people work to save the environment.

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman’s full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to trap beaver. At twenty he “discovered” the Great Salt Lake. At twenty-one he was the first to paddle the Bighorn River’s Bad Pass. At twenty-two he explored the wonders of Yellowstone. In the following years, he led trapping brigades into Blackfeet territory; guided expeditions of Smithsonian scientists, topographical engineers, and army leaders; and, though he could neither read nor write, mapped the tribal boundaries for the Great Indian Treaty of 1851. Enzler charts Bridger’s path from the fort he built on the Oregon Trail to the route he blazed for Montana gold miners to avert war with Red Cloud and his Lakota coalition. Along the way he married into the Flathead, Ute, and Shoshone tribes and produced seven children. Tapping sources uncovered in the six decades since the last documented Bridger biography, Enzler’s book fully conveys the drama and details of the larger-than-life history of the “King of the Mountain Men.” This is the definitive story of an extraordinary life.

Farooq Kathwari’s extraordinary life began in politically divided Kashmir, where his family was separated by government decree. He had to leave home as a refugee, helped his mother survive shock therapy, joined student activists in street demonstrations, and faced down a gun-wielding security officer—all by the age of seventeen. Forced to become self-reliant, Kathwari journeyed to the United States, talked his way into a bookkeeping job, and earned a degree from NYU graduate school. He launched his first entrepreneurial venture selling Kashmiri crafts out of his Brooklyn apartment. When Kathwari’s best customer, the iconic furniture maker Ethan Allen, needed fresh leadership, he was asked to become its president. He transformed the company and become one of America’s most successful—and admired—CEOs. Meanwhile, spurred by the tragic loss of his teenaged son in war, Kathwari dedicated himself to the cause of peace in Kashmir and around the world. He hosted meetings with diplomats, shuttled messages between heads of state, and worked with global leaders on issues from human rights to refugee resettlement. Brimming with drama, insight, and unexpected humor, Trailblazer recounts a unique life story, offering readers not just an engrossing journey but also the wisdom of an exceptional leader. ​From Trailblazer— "When the American journalist told me he hoped to report the truth about the Kashmir uprising, I decided to help. “The government people won’t let you see what is really happening,” I said. “Why not let me take you around?” It was foolish of me to make such an offer. I knew I was risking retribution by the security forces. But I was a headstrong, independent young man. I wanted the truth to get out, and I would do what I could to help that happen."

In November 1528, almost a century before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the remnants of a Spanish expedition reached the Gulf Coast of Texas. By July 1536, eight years later, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490–1559) and three other survivors had walked 2,500 miles from Texas, across northern Mexico, to Sonora and ultimately to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca’s account of this astonishing journey is now recognized as one of the great travel stories of all time and a touchstone of New World literature. But his career did not begin and end with his North American ordeal. Robin Varnum’s biography, the first single-volume cradle-to-grave account of the explorer’s life in eighty years, tells the rest of the story. During Cabeza de Vaca’s peregrinations through the American Southwest, he lived among and interacted with various Indian groups. When he and his non-Indian companions finally reconnected with Spaniards in northern Mexico, he was horrified to learn that his compatriots were enslaving Indians there. His Relación (1542) advocated using kindness and fairness rather than force in dealing with the native people of the New World. Cabeza de Vaca went on to serve as governor of Spain’s province of Río de La Plata in South America (roughly modern Paraguay). As a loyal subject of the king of Spain, he supported the colonialist enterprise and believed in Christianizing the Indians, but he always championed the rights of native peoples. In Río de La Plata he tried to keep his men from robbing the Indians, enslaving them, or exploiting them sexually—policies that caused grumbling among the troops. When Cabeza de Vaca’s men mutinied, he was sent back to Spain in chains to stand trial before the Royal Council of the Indies. Drawing on the conquistador’s own reports and on other sixteenth-century documents, both in English translation and the original Spanish, Varnum’s lively narrative braids eyewitness testimony of events with historical interpretation benefiting from recent scholarship and archaeological investigation. As one of the few Spaniards of his era to explore the coasts and interiors of two continents, Cabeza de Vaca is recognized today above all for his more humane attitude toward and interactions with the Indian peoples of North America, Mexico, and South America.

A biography of the young Omaha Indian woman who became the first Native American woman to graduate from medical school.

Presents the wisdom of twelve Native American elders who reminisce about their past and the ways in which their native culture can be preserved and passed down to future generations.