Missy Whiteman's Video: Indigenous Holocaust

Stunning video and commentary about boarding schools... Created by Missy Whiteman, titled Indigenous Holocaust. If you teach Shirley Sterling's My Name Is Seepeetza, consider using this video along with it.

Brianne Grant's thesis on Education in YA Lit

Back on July 9th, 2007, I blogged about Brianne Grant's article "Opening the Cache of Canadian Secrets: The Residential School Experience in Books for Children."

Today, I point you to Grant's thesis: Where Hope Lives: An Examination of the Relationship Between Protagonists and Education Systems in Contemporary Native North American Young Adult Fiction.

She considers educational systems as portrayed in four novels:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
• The Porcupine Year, by Louise Erdrich
• Good for Nothing, by Michel Noel
• No Time to Say Goodbye: Children's Stories of Kuper Island Residential School, by Sylvia Olsen, written with Rita Morris and Ann Sam

I'm partway through it (gotta stop and do some writing of my own) and look forward to sitting down with it when I have more time. Her thesis may prove perfect for my History of American Indian Education course next spring.

Barbara Cooney's MISS RUMPHIUS

Though it is much loved and winner of an American Book Award, every time I think of Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius, the image that I recall is not the lovely lupines she walks amongst... Instead, I remember the page with three Indians. Did you see them?

Update: Try really hard to remember them... and if you can't, I've uploaded the page at my Images site.