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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 5 of 23

Endless Road to Preserve the Land

Submitted to Contest #239

I am putting myself back in the selfie that I took on the last turbulent day I was at Serenity lodge in Guyanese wilderness. it used to be my refuge in the later months of 2014. In the selfie, I am lying in a striated hammock with my feet crossed in front of me on the porch of a thatched hut. I can almost hear the chirping of birds all around me, and a rustle in the thatched roof from little lizards chasing each other. An occasional breeze gives me a slight shiver down my spine. A whiff of sauteing onions in the kitchen makes me hungry. ...

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Just Deserts

Submitted to Contest #239

It is impossible to resist a hitchhiker on a road to nowhere. And that was exactly what my cousin Shane’s wedding to Raven the following morning was going to be.It was strange that we all gathered to wish them well when none of us would be there in two years when the ineluctable breach of the sacrament was ratified by the divorce judge after Shane’s degenerate, pathological gambling resulted in the foreclosure of Raven’s overpriced Bungalow-style home in Boulder City, which she would naively agree to mortgage to the hilt to bail him out, set...

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the Unusual Vase

Submitted to Contest #239

The Unusual VaseMatt awoke with a start to the banging on the door of his Airstream.  He never had visitors at 6:00 in the morning.  Heck—he never had visitors and that was planned.  His Airstream was parked behind his small cabin/studio.  Yet someone was here and by the loud and incessant knocking, they were anxious to see him.            He yelled, “Hold on to your britches, I’ll be there in a minute.”  He hastily pulled on his pan...

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RETURN TO COUNTRY

Submitted to Contest #238

‘Bring him to me,’ said Kurdaitcha, their executioner, I …           ‘Yes,’ said Papinijuwari. ‘Then I will feed on his dead body.’            The spirit group were affronted and convened a meeting. They had intervened but the old bike man still lusted for their sacred objects and kept his ways. There was a more immediate concern because a woman had accepted ancestral bones removed from their burial place above the river. The return ...

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Race to Rebel Creek

Submitted to Contest #235

      A horse was essential out here simply because how d***ed far everything was from everything else.            Lieutenant Nathaniel James Beaty kicked up his horse to a brief trot to catch up with his companions. Despite the official rank given to him by the State of ________, he was actually a junior member of the group as this war party had no army to command. 22 officers and NCOs moving incognito across the scorching hot prairies into the far west i...

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Everything In Heaven Is Already Here on Earth

Submitted to Contest #232

Nora walked home through the snow with the ingredients she had bought to make her daughter a thick brown stew, as she always did around this time of year. She passed the frozen statue of a famous explorer in the town square, up to its shins in snow, with his rusting copper features illuminated by the glare of lighting from the stores. Her daughter, Astrid had been born on the official start of winter, the 27th November, although the wintery darkness was always present for more than two weeks in the lead up to the da...

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A tragedy as beautiful as it was terrible

Submitted to Contest #232

The tranquil lab was violently disrupted by the piercing ring of my phone. I quickly snatched it, knowing who was texting, my heart hammering. A digital drum roll building up to the defining milestone of my life's work. On the screen, the numbers displayed something unbelievable. My fruit flies, tiny symbols of my toil, had surpassed our most aggressive estimates for their lifespan, flourishing into their fifth year. They had defied time, living thirty times longer than usual, still buzzing in their enclosures showing no sign of age. New...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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The Great Hot White

Submitted to Contest #232

CW: Brief descriptions of violenceThe harsh winter wind had deepened in severity, the gushes feeling colder, and gaining force, each blow by feeling like a scorned slap against the boys now ruddy cheeks. He sniffed, pulling the snot back into his nose before it became icicles. He couldn't see ahead of him, or behind him, a raging tempest of white encompassing him. A faint orange glow emerged out of the white behind him, with it talk that was muffled by the wind. The boy knew he had to go faster. The boy looked at his father, who laid on the ...

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He Promised His Grandfather

Submitted to Contest #232

He Promised his Grandfather Eighteen-year old Fred promised his grandfather that he would do this. The promise he made was to keep the fire going all night, from roughly eight o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning.   Now part of his mind was wishing that he had not done so. The sky was totally dark, and he had seen enough scary movies that he worried that his often active imagination might run a little wild on him, with vampires, trolls and the like appearing out of nowhere. And it was a cold winter’s night.&nb...

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Souls in the Sky

Shortlisted for Contest #232 ⭐️

Zack Kaudjak was crossing the open snow laced fields of the Yukon River with his fourteen dog Iditarod sled team as the sun began to set below the birch tree line at three in the afternoon.  The days were short during the first week of March which meant the temperature would be dropping nearly forty degrees below zero.  He was prodding the team hoping to make it to the Galena rest stop by dinner time. Wrapped in a thermal body wrap, seal skin gloves, mukluks, his extremities still felt the impact of the cruel wind as his sled dippe...

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The Blackberry Do-Over

Submitted to Contest #231

The Blackberry Do Over Sixta the gardener came today. She is Quechua but doesn’t wear the native clothing that many still do here in the Sacred Valley of Peru. The Quechua are descendants of the Incas. The older generation, the parents and grandparents of adult children, often speak only Quechua. Sixta is first the generation that learned Spanish in order to better integrate into the rapidly approaching Western world. Her children are now learning English and the Quechua language and culture are being slowly forgotten. These people are sm...

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Keeping hope alive

Submitted to Contest #231

The lights turned red the instant she reached the crossroads. Instead of trying to beat the red light this time, Leila sighed and braked abruptly. She couldn’t afford any more fines. The countdown timer digitally displaying 45 seconds to zero would take forever, the 30-year-old thought fleetingly. She would just have to sit tight. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man, who looked indigenous. He was propped up on a lamppost and a young girl, perhaps around 8 years old, was clutching his leg. The hunched-...

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The Death of Kuvé Hwanuk

Submitted to Contest #231

Accustomed as we are to cell phones, CNN, video games, it is difficult for us to conceive that, in one of the most remote regions, in the 18th century, José Hwanuk considered himself a relatively fortunate and modern person. Educated as a neophyte at the Nuestra Señora de Los Dolores Mission in the Northern Territory, he had surpassed the expectations of the friars. He had become a skilled worker. To such a degree that, overcoming the reluctance of his advisors, Father Granados himself had taught him to read and write. All reluctance quickly...

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Polar Night

Shortlisted for Contest #227 ⭐️

“Give me that thing” Chunhui grabs the cigarette from Bobby’s hand. There is a moment where their fingers touch, the warmest feeling in Alaska’s Northern Slope, and then it is gone. “No need to get handsy,” Bobby says to her. His voice is a dead whisper against the sweeping brown coastline, but she can hear him. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the dried-out vertebrae of a bowhead whale. “You wish, cheechako.” Her lips are around the filter now, pursed in a way he has never seen. Bobby is glad to be under six inches of parka- hi...

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Quivira

Submitted to Contest #223

Often the information is out there, finding it simply means asking the right questions and taking the time to look. ` The question James was asking was about pre-Indian settlement of his hometown of Quivira. Indeed, what he had previously found was this region appears to have been completely blank before 1850 when the Indians came from the west. Popular records available on the internet put American settlement at 1857 but they were wrong as James saw graves dating as early as 1840. All children, a James assumed these were the kids of early s...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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