There's a Book for That: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples
On August 9, we honor International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a day chosen in recognition of the first meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations held in Geneva in 1982.
According to the UN, “There are an estimated 476 million indigenous peoples in the world living across 90 countries. They make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but account for 15 percent of the poorest. They speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures. Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment…We need indigenous communities for a better world.”
In commemoration of indigenous cultures throughout the world, please acquaint yourselves with the following recent and acclaimed books:
Published for the first time on the Penguin Classics U.S. list, the bestselling modern classic Māori coming-of-age novel that inspired a multiple-award-winning film starring Academy Award–nominated actress Keisha Castle-Hughes.
During the dark days of the Bolsonaro administration, British journalist Dom Phillips set out to accomplish an ambitious goal: through research, interviews, and site visits deep in the rainforest, he would emerge with a book answering the question—how can we save the Amazon? While traveling by boat in the Javari Valley, Dom and Bruno were brutally murdered by a group of environmental criminals. Unwilling to see her late husband’s work be for naught, Dom’s widow, Ale, and his literary agent assembled a team of expert writers, journalists, and activists to complete his work, with each tackling one unfinished chapter and grappling with the challenge of interpreting his field notes and discovering his conclusions. How to Save the Amazon, therefore, is a book both by and about Dom Phillips, his quest for answers, and his search for hope.
AN ECONOMIST AND SMITHSONIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492. We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the “Old World” encountered the “New”, when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others—enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders—the reverse was true: they discovered Europe.
In stunning full color and accessible text, a graphic adaptation of the American Book Award winning history of the United States as told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples—perfect for readers of all ages.
An acclaimed young poet explores her identity as a twenty-first-century Indigenous woman. Poem by poem, Tibble carves out a bold new way of engaging history, of straddling modernity and ancestry, desire and exploitation. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), her debut volume, Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms.
The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America. Mays uses a wide array of historical activists and pop culture icons, “sacred” texts, and foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence and Democracy in America. He covers the civil rights movement and freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and explores current debates around the use of Native American imagery and the cultural appropriation of Black culture. Mays compels us to rethink both our history as well as contemporary debates and to imagine the powerful possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity.
Travel along Melbourne’s twisting Yarra River in a glorious celebration of Indigenous culture and Australia’s unique flora and fauna.
Amazonia: Anthology as Cosmology is devoted to Amazonia, its peoples, allies, and nonhuman spirits, and their myriad material and immaterial practices, from certain cosmopolitics and visual languages to past and present forms of resistance. In all their various lines (and circles) of ecological and epistemological thought, the artists, elders, writers, theorists, shamans, curators, poets, and activists whose ideas, images, and struggles compose this book, are concerned with Amazonia as both a place and a point of view.
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology
An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn’t working–and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.
The story of Hawaiian cooking, by a two-time Top Chef finalist and Fan Favorite, through 100 recipes that embody the beautiful cross-cultural exchange of the islands. Through stunning photography, poignant stories, and dishes like wok-fried poke, pork dumplings made with biscuit dough, crispy cauliflower katsu, and charred huli-huli chicken slicked with a sweet-savory butter glaze, Cook Real Hawai‘i will bring a true taste of the cookouts, homes, and iconic mom and pop shops of Hawai‘i into your kitchen.
Meet the people of the world and find out about some of the fascinating cultures that make up our global community. From Spaniards to Samoans, and the Miao to the Miskitu, this fully updated edition of DK’s popular Encyclopedia of People will take you on a worldwide tour of continents, peninsulas, and islands to discover what life is like for the billions of people on our planet.
Winner of The Booker Prize
“This book is just amazingly, wondrously great.” —Alice Walker
In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.
For more on these and related titles visit International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
To find out more about this year’s UN theme Indigenous Peoples and AI: Defending Rights, Shaping Futures click here.
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