Each November and year-round, we celebrate and recognize Native American Heritage Month. It is a time to honor the strength, wisdom, and enduring contributions of Indigenous peoples across this country. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on the injustices and systemic harms Native communities have faced—and continue to face—and to recommit ourselves to education and solidarity.

At CNM, we believe equity work begins with honest reflection. This month, we’re encouraging our network to explore, read, and listen to stories told by Indigenous authors, leaders, and creators. These powerful works come from within Native communities themselves, offering authentic perspectives that challenge, enlighten, and inspire.

Here are a few of our favorite resources, books, films, and podcasts that bring Indigenous history, art, and voices to life.

• Documentary: PBS American Experience: Native Americans Collection
  After centuries of encroachment, warfare and neglect, Native Americans remain a vital force in the life and culture of America. In this collection, explore stories celebrating and honoring the history and lives of Native Americans—throughout history and today.
• Podcast: All My Relations Podcast
  Hosted by Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip) and Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation), All My Relations dives deep into what it means to be Indigenous today. Through conversations on art, land, identity, and kinship, this podcast offers honest, generous storytelling that reminds us we are all connected.
• Podcast: This Land
  This Land is a, award-winning documentary podcast series that explores how a federal lawsuit over Native children threatens tribal sovereignty and civil rights.
• Book: The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk
  Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.
• Book: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes
  In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.
• Book: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe by Benjamin Madley
  Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.
• Book: When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry Edited by Joy Harjo
  United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology.
• Book: Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford
  After 500 years, the world’s huge debt to the wisdom of the Native Americans has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Native Americans to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.

Building a more equitable sector means learning from those who have long led with care, sustainability, and reciprocity. Taking time to watch, listen, and learn honors the voices that have led the way and allows their wisdom to shape how we show up in our own work.