The Bone Tribe

The sixth book in the Birchbark House series, spanning one hundred years in the life of one Ojibwe family, by award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich. In this first book about Anak, she grapples with the devastating effects of the near extinction of the buffalo population while navigating her identity. Thirteen-year-old Anakwad prefers to split logs and help her father and uncle collect buffalo bones instead of cooking and learning to do beadwork at home.
With the buffalo population decimated by white settlers on the Great Plains, Anak and her Ojibwe family have resorted to the gruesome, toiling work of selling the animals' bones to the white men who run the bone yard to make ends meet. But when Anak discovers that her reservation's graveyard has been disturbed, she learns the devasting truth behind the bone yard. Meanwhile, an old enemy is silently lurking--one that puts Anak's entire reservation in serious danger.