Joseph Bruchac – författare

Renowned author Joseph Bruchac tells a powerful story of a girl who learns more about her Penacook heritage while sheltering in place with her grandparents during the coronavirus pandemic.Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation—she’s there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There’s a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration.Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn’t go out to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories. And when Malsum, one of the dogs living on the rez, shows up at their door, Malian’s family knows that he’ll protect them too.Told in verse inspired by oral storytelling, this novel about the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the ways in which Indigenous nations and communities cared for one another through plagues of the past, and how they keep caring for one another today.**Four starred reviews!**Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction & Poetry HonorNPR Books We LoveKirkus Reviews Best BooksSchool Library Journal Best BooksChicago Public Library Best Fiction for Younger ReadersJane Addams Children’s Book Award FinalistNerdy Book Club Award—Best Poetry and Novels in Verse

Jacob Neptune, a wise-cracking, two-fisted Penacook private investigator with a checkered past, lives in upstate New York - four hundred miles from his tribal community on Abenaki Island. Then one night the phone rings. ""We . . . got . . . trouble,"" Neptune's cousin Dennis says from the other end. And trouble is where it all starts in this brilliant, often hilarious novel by acclaimed Abenaki storyteller Joseph Bruchac.Attacked by bikers before he can even board his plane, Neptune - ""Podjo"" to his friends - quickly begins to realize just how much trouble surrounds his people's ancestral home. Guided by his sense of duty to his homeland, he agrees to help protect Dennis and other Penacooks as they stage a takeover of a state campground on land that should have reverted to their tribe. But encroaching developers, government operators, and even fellow Penacooks eager to build a casino each pose a threat to the Abenaki lands - and all have reasons to want Neptune out of the picture.Podjo greets each challenge with self-deprecating humor - but it's difficult to shake his increasingly disturbing dreams, and an unsettled feeling when his return leads to a reunion with a long-ago love interest. As he and Dennis contend with hired guns, police, and security, a far greater threat appears: someone, or something, is brutally killing people in the woods. It will take all of Neptune's skills as a martial artist and the wisdom gained from tribal elders to battle the forces that threaten the sacred land - and his and his people's lives.Bruchac ratchets the tension from the first page to the last in this detective novel that pairs comedy and action with serious consideration of corporate greed, environmental destruction, cultural erosion, and other modern-day issues pressing Native peoples.

With a bang - or rather, a barrage - Jacob Neptune finds his remote cabin in the Adirondacks besieged by a gun-toting gang of murderous bikers. With the help of his supersized sidekick Dennis, the hard-headed, wise-cracking Abenaki private detective traces the source of his troubles to a former adversary who is now running an Indian casino.In short order, the friends are drawn into a dangerous mystery that will call upon all of Jake's skills as a martial arts expert, former special forces soldier, and - in the Abenaki tradition - a metoulin, one who can see beneath the surface of things through dreams and visions. Their investigation takes them to the Pacific Northwest, dead center in a vicious game involving tribal intrigue, a crooked casino, Chinese billions, a captive killer whale - and a series of murders and disappearances that may be linked to the monster known by Jake's people as Padoskoks, the giant underwater serpent.Like Chenoo, the first in the Jacob Neptune series, Padoskoks has an explosive start and keeps gathering speed, giving readers a glimpse of the ancient wisdom and Native customs swirling just under the surface as the action-packed plot barrels toward its natural, if startling, conclusion.

Abenaki children’s book icon Joseph Bruchac tells the stirring history of the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz by Native Americans, which established a precedent for Indian activismOn November 20, 1969, a group of 89 Native Americans—most of them young activists in their twenties, led by Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, and others—crossed San Francisco Bay under the cover of darkness. They called themselves the “Indians of All Tribes.” Their objective was to occupy the abandoned prison on Alcatraz Island (“The Rock”), a mile and a half across the treacherous waters. Under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie between the US and the Lakota tribe, all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal land was supposed to be returned to the Indigenous peoples who once occupied it. As Alcatraz penitentiary was closed by that point, activists sought to reclaim that land, and more broadly, bring greater attention to the lies and injustices of the federal government when it came to Indian policy.Their initial success resulted in international attention to Native American rights and the continuing presence of present-day Indigenous peoples, who refused to accept being treated as a “vanishing race.” Over the protestors’ 19-month occupation, one key way of raising awareness to issues in Native life was through Radio Free Alcatraz, which touched on: the forced loss of ancestral lands, contaminated water supply on reservations, sharp disparities in infant mortality and life expectancy among Native Americans compared to statistics in white communities, and many other inequalities. From acclaimed Abenaki children’s book legend Joseph Bruchac, this middle-grade nonfiction book tells the riveting story of that 1969 takeover, which inspired a whole generation of Native activists and ignited the modern American Indian Movement. The Occupation of Alcatraz had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and, with its visible results, established a precedent for Indian activism.