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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of indigenous short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

340+ Indigenous Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From folklores to modern tales of native people’s struggle to be heard, our indigenous stories have something for everyone.

Indigenous Short Stories – Page 10 of 23

Meant to be

Submitted to Contest #160

Meant to be. Am I mad? Am I losing my mind? I walk relentlessly during the day. The sun has dried up all but the occasional ever-decreasing waterholes. The whole area is a sea of cracks that have become deeper in the dried-up mud that was once a flowing creek. Yet I carry on. Seeking shelter here and there under an overhanging rock, or a dried bush.     I have to move by day. Night time brings terrors unimaginable. I often hear the screeching of unwary animals being taken before their time. ...

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Elijah the Water Diviner

Submitted to Contest #160

A man walked out of the Dead Mountain Wilderness area wearing the traditional robes of a shaman.  His name was Elijah Foster and he had been reported missing over fifty years ago.  His sudden appearance sent shock waves through the remote communities of the Mojave Desert in California. According to first hand accounts, Elijah appeared not to have aged a bit since his disappearance and he was confused and disoriented after his Rip van Winkle disappearance a half century before. His father was a Paiute shaman, a follower of Wovoka w...

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Once I was a Warrior

Submitted to Contest #154

At one hundred and five, the apache native White Buffalo sits in the reclining chair, looking out the nursing home window. He can’t see much, just the asphalt parking lot and a few blurry trees beyond. His failing eyes see a dot moving about in the sky and assumes it’s an eagle. “Tell me, friend eagle, when will the Great Spirit come and take me to the land of peace and plenty? I have lived too long and serve no purpose. These people here treat me like a living artifact, a credit to the nursing home. Even though I ...

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Reasons to Be Thankful

Submitted to Contest #149

The first thing I notice when I poke my head in the university's Indigenous Peoples' Appreciation Club is that there are only two members, one guy and one girl. The second thing I notice is that neither is Indigenous.They sit at adjacent desks in the corner of the classroom. The girl, whose platinum hair is brighter than the overhead lighting, poses for a selfie, closing one eye and flashing a peace sign Nixon-style. The guy preoccupies himself with a game of Pokémon Go, swiping violently at his phone screen and cursing his rotten luck. Rows...

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Almost a Year

Submitted to Contest #146

Sensitive content warning: reference to self-harm and suicide, reference to alcohol/substance abuse. Paige sat herself down on the rocky riverbank. Her legs dangled over the edge, swinging idle over the torrent of water flowing by, and by, and by… The sun had been making its slow descent, teetering down to dance along the horizon, the evening stretched out for a near-impossible number of hours by the northern latitude. Ducks splashed in the river, diving and rising to break through the water’s surface. A loon called in the distance, its ...

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1822, 1851, 1885

Submitted to Contest #145

Sensitive content: mild reference to violence, trauma.Good stone streets, good stone buildings. Not far off from the proper French cities home across the ocean. The wind whistled down the Saint Lawrence, carrying the sickly-sweet city scent along with it. The late summer sun shone bright, providing a comfortable afternoon heat. Shouts and clamor from the port echoed behind Denis, the ship that carried him from his old life now docked and still.He took in the sights, legs adjusting to solid ground again. He prayed as he walked, giving thanks ...

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Returning Home

Submitted to Contest #142

Returning Home People will think I’m crazy if I tell them what I am about to do. That would even include my husband. He understands a lot about me, but not in matters such as this. One day – maybe soon, he will. The house we are thinking of buying is just what we want in so many ways.  It’s old enough to be classy, but not so old that it needs or will soon need repairs done. It’s in the countryside, near town, so we won’t feel crowded like in the apartment we live in now, but still be close to town to easily go to see m...

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I Remember The Day When They Took Me Away...

Submitted to Contest #140

  "Tell us another story!" Cindy and Lewis asked their grandfather, once again. It was a night like any other night, the moon bright and the stars glowing against the dark sky. They sat up in Cindy's bedroom, the children on the pink-sheeted bed and Grandfather in the comfy hanging chair. Every night they would sit down and listen to his adventures.  "I think I've run out of happy stories. All that I still remember that I haven't told you yet are sad. Some of my stories are not quite ready for you to hear yet."&...

20 likes 9 comments 9
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The Warrior

Submitted to Contest #138

NOTE: This story and the characters in it are fictional. As are their thoughts, and their findings. HOWEVER, the threats to indigenous land by the Brazilian government are very much real. As is the suffering of the Awá people and the suffering of other indigenous peoples of the Amazon at the hands of illegal loggers.Night had fallen on the Amazon Rainforest.In a small clearing two days away from the nearest city, a seventeen-year old boy lay awake, staring up at the starry sky above. The other inhabitants of the clearing - sixty of them, the...

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Home of the Brave

Winner of Contest #135 🏆

A mom’s job is never truly finished—Elise knew this instinctively when her son was born. For at least the hundredth time, she sat next to his bed in that chair mending his quilt. There was no way of knowing, the day she bought it at a flea market, that it would become her son’s most valued possession. To call it a quilt stretched the definition as it was nothing more than a thousand pieces of oddly shaped swatches stitched together, layer after layer, until the whole of it was thick enough to hold in the warmth of a small boy's bod...

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Finding his Religion

Submitted to Contest #132

Max came from a very religious family, but the beliefs that his parents held so dearly were not such that he wanted to claim as his own. They were both deemed ‘survivors’ of a residential school that was run by strict Christian missionaries who strived to drive the Indigenous beliefs out of the hearts and minds of their students. That had worked with his parents, but not many others of their generation. They were regular church-goers who had forced him as a child to attend church services at least twice a week.  One Frid...

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The Indio

Submitted to Contest #131

We remember when he first came to town. The way his shoes were polished, shiny even. But it wasn’t his shoes we noticed first, it wasn’t the way his hair spiked up in the back or how he grimaced when he laughed so he didn’t show his crooked front tooth. "Indio," is what we whispered when he walked through the glass doors of John Adams Middle School. We had never seen a Mexican so dark. We knew he heard us whispering, when he walked in, but we couldn’t hide our disbelief. So dark, his skin the color of soil after a rainfall. “Is he black...

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Our Crazy Mother.

Submitted to Contest #131

This context contains sensitive material that refers to Mental Health, Abuse and Trama. There was a time in my life when I thought I had lost her forever; my mother Shannon was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder at the age of 18 right after giving birth to me. Which explains why there are five of us. Her impulsiveness led her to get pregnant four more times. I have always wondered how my life would have been if I was an only child. As an adult I have come to terms with the fact that I indeed had to share my life with four other humans, Grow...

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The Rice Moon

Submitted to Contest #129

Skish, skish.  Skish, skish.  Skish, skish, shkizzz.  He strained his leg muscles against the fine layer of ice that glazed the snow.  On powder, balance was easier, but on ice, he was able to glide further with each push.  His aunties laughed at him.  Skis were for white boys.  Natives snowshoed.  His mother hushed their taunts.  She was proud that he felt such connection to the land, and to the fish who gave their bodies to nourish people during the cold and hungry depths of winter.  In the...

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Holy Crap

Submitted to Contest #128

He was subdued now, sitting in a hard wooden armchair, alone in the room, his foot methodically kicking at the door in front of him making a dull thud as it hit the door, then a soft scraping noise as the sole of his runner slid down to the floor, over and over. Nobody could hear him anyway.  How long had he been in this room now? It was four, maybe five hours, paying his penance, but he snickered, "It was worth it" he thought. "Next one will be even better Father", he promised himself. The stink of incense stored in...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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