Slapin's review of Berk and Dunn's COYOTE SPEAKS

[Note: This review may not be used elsewhere without written permission of its author, Beverly Slapin. Copyright 2008 by Beverly Slapin. All rights reserved.]

Note from Debbie: I haven't read this book yet. In her review, Beverly references Berk and Dunn's source notes. It sounds like they used the same archived collections that Pollock used for her (deeply flawed) story about Turkey Girl. I wrote about that book in the January 2007 issue of Language Arts. When my copy of Coyote Speaks arrives, I'll post my thoughts.

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Berk, Ari, and Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Muskogee/Seminole), Coyote Speaks: Wonders of the Native American World. Abrams, 2008, grades 5-up

An Ojibwe friend and colleague who is a storyteller and linguist has said that it takes a roomful of people several generations to know a story. By this, she means that to know a story, you have to know the language and lifeways and history and cosmology from which it originates, you have to know its purpose, you have to know when, where, why and how to tell it, you have to know that it’s alive and may contain spiritual power that has to be respected. And you have to know that, if someone tells you a story or you see a printed version of it, that doesn’t mean it’s yours to retell. As Cree-Métis elder and storyteller Maria Campbell has said (and I paraphrase here), just because we offer you a cup of tea doesn’t mean we’re giving you the teapot.

Traditional stories and spiritual power are not something to play around with. I cannot say this strongly enough: Many aspects of the world of the spirits are frightening and dangerous; those who work with spiritual power don’t talk about it in public. Moreover, there are powerful stories—including some now in print—that were never meant to be shared with the public. They’re dangerous. Because they’ve been previously published doesn’t make them safe to “retell” publicly. If you misuse this power, if you tell certain stories at the wrong time or in the wrong context, you’re inviting illness or imbalance in yourself and/or the world.

According to Berk and Dunn’s source notes, they gathered and rewrote stories, mostly from material published in the early 1900s, that would “greatly benefit from sensitive retellings.” In doing so, their stated goal was to “return some sense of poetry and orality to these stories.” This is an oxymoron: you can’t restore orality to something that’s in print by publishing a more “sensitive” version.

Beyond this, Coyote Speaks is an odd mixture of travelogue (“imagine…ancient objects, amazing journeys, mysterious symbols, and magical stories”), sweeping generalizations (“[M]any Native American tribes note the passing of years not numerically, but by recording and remembering important events and ideas symbolically.”), trivialization (“Crows and ravens frequently appear in many Native stories as tricksters and shapeshifters.”), speculation (“Representations of birds take many forms in art and artifacts and can sometimes hold similar meanings in tribes of the various regions.”), conjecture (“The soul catcher was the most important item used by shamans during curing ceremonies.”), illogical comparisons (“Hunger and power were the same.”), and weak analogies (“Unlike grocery shopping, hunting was a dangerous business!”).

Accompanying Berk’s and Dunn’s retellings and other textual matter are reproductions of centuries-old objects, mostly from the Werner Forman photographic archives. Many of these objects are sacred and need to be returned to their rightful owners. One of them, in full color, is a medicine mask, accompanied by a full-page description and interpretation of its use, all in the past tense. In 1995, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy publicly issued a policy on False Face medicine masks. It states in part, that “there is no proper way to explain, interpret, or present the significance of the medicine mask,” and that to reproduce, photograph or illustrate a medicine mask contributes to the desecration of its sacred image and violates its sacred function. To see the medicine mask and the other sacred objects represented here gives me the creeps.

Carolyn Dunn is an accomplished poet and writer, and her poems in this book are beautiful. And there is luminous art in a variety of media by contemporary Native artists: L. Frank (Tongva/Ajachmem), Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara), Tom Dorsey (Onondaga), S.D. Nelson (Lakota), Tony Abeyta (Diné), W. Richard West, Sr. (Cheyenne), Fred Kabotie (Hopi), Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), and Hazel Merritt (Diné). But the good material is not enough to save this poorly conceptualized, poorly implemented, and fatally flawed book. Coyote Speaks exploits the peoples on whose lands and in whose cultures and communities the stories reside, and exploits the children—including Indian children—who will read it and think they’re learning about Indians.

—Beverly Slapin

Thanksgiving Greeting Cards and Amelia Bedelia

While out shopping at Target for a birthday gift this morning for my little buddy Santi, I paused at the greeting card section to see what the Thanksgiving cards look like this year.

Only one of the 200+ cards had the Pilgrim/Indian theme.

I can't say the same for new Thanksgiving books. At the university bookstore, children's section, about half the books were the Pilgrim/Indian story, including a 2008 Amelia Bedelia called Amelia Bedelia Talks Turkey. In it is that feel-good Pilgrim/Indian meal that student unlearn as they get older. Sad, sad, sad.

Event: American Identity in Children's Literature

On Saturday, December 13, 9:30 am - 2:30 pm, I will be in Chicago at the Newberry Library, participating in a symposium called American Identity in Children's Literature. Here's the blurb from the Newberry website:

Four scholars will discuss the development of ethnic or multicultural children’s literature, which seeks to diversify the all-white world of children’s literature. Following thirty-minute presentations drawn from their respective specialties of Jewish, Latino, American Indian, and African American children’s books, they will form a panel to discuss with each other and with audience members such issues as authenticity, audience, self-esteem, and presentations of social conflict and cultural differences that make this field so important and so contested.

The program is as follows:

9:30 am Welcome

9:40 am June Cummins-Lewis, San Diego State University, "All-of-A-Kind Americans? Becoming a Jew in Sydney Taylor's America"

10:10 am Debbie Reese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Indians as Artifacts: How Images of Indians Are Used to Nationalize America's Youth"

10:40 - 11:00 am Break

11:00 - 11:30 am Michelle Martin, Clemson University, "Little Black Sambo and the Complicated History of African American Children's Books"

11:30 - 12:00 pm Phillip Serrato, San Diego State University, "Trying to Forget Pedro and Juanita: The Emergence of Chicano/a Children's Literature"

12:00 - 1:30 pm Lunch break

1:30 - 2:30 pm Panel discussion with the speakers and the audience

The Newberry is located at 60 West Walton Street in Chicago. Click here to get directions. There is no admission charge, and no reservations are necessary to attend the symposium.

Cynthia Leitich Smith interviews Drew Hayden Taylor

Click on over to Cynsations to read Cynthia's interview of Drew Hayden Taylor. He wrote a young adult novel that I came across last March. I've yet to blog it, but do recommend it, especially for fans of vampire stories. His novel is called The Night Wanderer.

In the interview, he says:

"...I took a European legend and indigenized it.

Simply put, its the story about an Ojibway man who, 350 years ago, made his way to Europe and was bitten by a vampire. He spent all those years wandering Europe, feeling homesick but unwilling to return as the monster he'd become. But finally, unable to stop himself, he makes his way back to where his village once was in Canada, and it's now a First Nations community. He takes up residency at a bed-and-breakfast, in the basement apartment. In that same house is a sixteen-year-old girl, Tiffany, who is having problems with her white boyfriend, father, and herself. Eventually, both their lives intertwine, and things happen!"

He indigenized a European legend. That word, indigenize, has been coming into greater use in recent years. I've written an article called "Indigenizing Children's Literature." Published this month in the electronic journal called Journal of Language and Literacy, the abstract reads:

In this article the author situates the analysis of two popular children’s books in theoretical frameworks emerging from American Indian Studies. Using a new historicist lens, she discusses Anne Rockwell’s (1999) Thanksgiving Day and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s (1935/1971) Little House on the Prairie and suggests that these books function as obstacles for the understanding of the Other in American and global society.

I welcome your critique of the article, and suggest you read Drew's novel. If you want to learn more about him, visit his website.

"Focus On" column at School Library Journal (Nov 2008)

Two years ago, the University of Illinois's Board of Trustees voted to rid UIUC of its mascot, "Chief Illiniwek." Students and alums who embrace the mascot are hosting a rally this weekend. Their rally made an already full month (November is Native American month) even more taxing. So much that I didn't post something earlier that I'd meant to.

It is the "Focus On" column that I wrote for School Library Journal. It was a pleasure working with them. I threw a hard ball in my opening paragraphs, and thought they would object, but they didn't. Click here to go to the column and see the list of books I recommended. Below is one paragraph from the column. Click on APA and ASA to read their statements.

America’s collective refusal to let go of stereotypical images of Indians is costing all of us. In 2006 and 2007, respectively, the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) passed resolutions centered on images of Indians used as mascots for athletic teams (see p. 56 for URLs). Both associations called for an end to the use of this imagery, citing research studies that show that the mascots are harmful to the self-esteem of Native children, and, conversely, create a sense of superiority in non-Native children. I invite you to look at those mascots and compare them to images of Indians in classics like Little House on the Prairie. Indian mascots on a playing field and Indians in classic and popular children’s books are similar. If we take the APA and ASA resolutions seriously, we must take action. That means teaching children to recognize and critique stereotypes, and it means providing them with literature that offers realistic Indian characters.

(Note: at the bottom of the column is a piece called "Media Picks" by Phyllis Levy Mandell. I do not know the items she included there, so please don't think I agree with Mandell. I may, but I may not, once I see the items she recommends. A safer bet for acquiring media is to get those available at Oyate. I know the work Oyate does, and trust their recommendations. Click here to see their VHS and DVD collection.

Reflections from students

In my course at UIUC, students are reading children’s books about American Indians. They’re also reading reviews in mainstream journals, customer reviews at Amazon, and, reviews in A Broken Flute. Below is a response to the assignment, written by Rachel Moyer, posted to our class blog (it is private, not public). I post this today with permission of both women.

This frazzled post was inspired by a discussion I had with Rachel Storm after class this afternoon. She's always provocative so I want to give her her propers.

I think what a lot of people in class today acknowledged about the children's books they assessed is that the sacred stories depicted in them are wildly inaccurate. Some of them are blatantly incorrect while others subtly, subversively present misinformation. I've noticed that some people have wondered what the "real" or "authentic" sacred stories actually are, as opposed to the inaccurate ones we read about in books categorized by dominant culture as Indian folklore.

While I think other cultures and religions are fascinating, sometimes even intriguing, I don't understand why we (and here I use we meaning non-Native people) expect to have access to, let alone expect to understand other peoples' sacred creation stories. These are complicated, profoundly meaningful original stories (not myths or superstitions or fables, etc.) that we (as non-natives or as persons removed from that particular First Nation) would not be able to grasp unless they were simplified or translated or condensed - which are the very criticisms of why sacred stories as children's books do not usually work in an unproblematic way.

While I think it's understandable, even wonderful that many of us are curious about Native cultures and religions (plural!) - I certainly am - I think we also need to be respectful enough, humble enough to acknowledge that these sacred stories create and are emergent from languages and places and peoples that we do not necessarily know, meaning that we should not feel entitled to all of the complexities of the "real" story even when we've identified a mainstream book is problematic or inaccurate. We shouldn't need even more proof to demonstrate that these books are offensive or unfair.

"Living Stories" at Oyate

New at the Oyate website is a page full of stories written by Native people. Stories worth reading--especially this month--because they speak to the need to teach children that we're very much part of today's society. Books often taught in schools are hurtful. In these stories, for example...

One parent writes about The Courage of Sarah Noble, and my daughter writes about reading Caddie Woodlawn.

It's not just books, though...

A child writes about a school reenactment of the Gold Rush, and another writes of feeling invisible in class.

Teachers, librarians, parents! Please read these stories, and think of them when you develop lesson plans and order books. Consider removing older books from your shelves. It is important to study attitudes towards others, but students need accurate information first. Let's provide children with books that accurately portray American Indians, and let's use those outdated and biased books in social studies or history lessons specifically designed to look at bias.

Oyate is a good source for books and other materials you can use as you set aside books like The Courage of Sarah Noble, or Caddie Woodlawn, or Little House on the Prairie, or Sign of the Beaver...

Critical reviews of those books, plus reviews of outstanding books, are in two excellent volumes, both available at Oyate. A Broken Flute, The Native Experience in Books for Children, and, Through Indian Eyes, The Native Experience in Books for Children.