Established in 2006 by Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical analysis of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books. Dr. Jean Mendoza joined AICL as a co-editor in 2016.
A reader wrote to ask me if I've seen Journey on a Runaway Train, which is book one in a new set of books about the Boxcar Children. That series was created by Gertrude Chandler Warner. Journey on a Runaway Train is a 2017 title, written by Dee Garretson and JM Lee.
The description is a clear indicator why someone might ask me about it:
In this all-new very special mini-series, the Aldens have been recruited by a secret society to return lost artifacts and treasures to their rightful locations—all around the world! After finding a painted turtle figurine, the Aldens are introduced to the Silverton family and Reddimus Society, a secret guild whose mission is to return lost artifacts and treasures to the sites they were taken from. The Aldens board a private train to New Mexico to return the turtle to its original home, and they encounter enemies of Reddimus along the way! The trip is a success… but instead of returning home, there’s a last-minute change in plans. The Boxcar Children must continue the mission for the society and deliver more things, all around the globe!
My reaction to that: oh dear.
In the US, there is a law about returning remains and artifacts to the Indigenous people they belong to. That law is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation (NAGPRA) Act, enacted on November 16, 1990. It came about due to the work of Indigenous people.
So... who is in the "Reddimus Society" in this new series? That matters to me because if not done carefully, this story could be a wreck of appropriation, misrepresentation and erasure.
Poking around a bit, I see that the Boxcar children are headed to Acoma Pueblo. Again: oh dear!
How did the authors of this story decide that the turtle belongs at Acoma?
I'll see if I can get a copy of the book. When I do, I'll be back with a review.
Eds note: AICL is pleased to share this review of nipêhon/I Wait. The review is by Alia Jones. Her blog is Read It Real Good.
****
nipêhon/I Wait by Caitlin Dale Nicholson and Leona Morin-Neilson is a follow up to their 2008 book Niwechihaw/I Help. This time, instead of a little Cree boy following his grandmother to pick rosehips, we meet a little Cree girl out with her grandmother and mother to pick wild yarrow.
This story is simple and the words are few and powerful and sweet; Nôhkom (grandmother) does something, then her granddaughter follows suit and finally the girl’s mother follows along. Everyone is connected. The story begins with Nôhkom standing outside their motorhome, getting her tools and bags ready to head out for the day. The little girl and her mother wait. I love how the author breaks her storytelling format to add some humor; after they pray, Nôhkom picks yarrow and granddaughter picks yarrow...but mom? The illustrations show us that she takes a moment to softly blow a bunch of yarrow flowers and then they wait for her!
Caitlin Dale Nicholson’s acrylic illustrations are thoughtful and gorgeous. I love how they dominate the page, with the story’s text taking up only a small space at the bottom. Her illustrations bring the reader along with the family on a warm summer day, where the greens and yellows of the grasses are vibrant against the blue sky. I really like how we can see the canvas underneath the paint; I think it gives the illustrations a really nice raw charm.
Every block of text in the story, from the jacket flaps to the acknowledgements at the back of the book, are written first in romanized Cree (Y dialect), then in Cree syllabics and finally in English. Niwechihaw/I Help did not include Cree syllabics. The inclusion of syllabics in this book is wonderful; it’s great for Native and non-Native kids to see. It’s also an important addition for young (and old!) Cree language learners.
nipêhon/I Wait is a very pretty celebration of Cree womanhood, family and joy! The little girl learns traditional ways from her elders all while having fun on a beautiful summer day (there’s a cute puppy too!). There’s even a recipe in the back of the book for yarrow tea. While preparing to write this review, I did some research on yarrow and enjoyed some tea with my own mother. Here is some of what I learned about yarrow and I encourage you to learn about it too:
Yarrow (Wâpanewask) is a traditional medicine with many, many uses; it’s well known as women’s medicine and is good for cleaning the blood. The flowers can be dried then crushed into powder and used as trap bait for lynx or marten. It’s also used as a smudge to keep mosquitoes away. [1] The whole plant can be used from the roots to the leaves; chewed roots help relieve muscle sprains or strains and the leaves, when placed on wounds, can stop bleeding. Yarrow tea treats headaches, fever, hemorrhoids, nausea, colds, influenza, and more. [2]
Thank you to author/illustrator Julie Flett for sharing with me a memory tied to sweetgrass and for the Cree and Métis resources she shared as well. I recommend watching this beautiful short film created by her cousin Shannon Letandre called Nganawendaanan Nde'ing (I keep them in my heart):
Like the family in nipêhon/I Wait, Shannon spends time with her family (her grandfather in particular) collecting traditional medicine (weekay). In the film, she reflects on how she keeps her culture, family and traditions with her though she no longer lives at home, on her family’s land.
I hope you’ll take time to enjoy the beautiful book nipêhon/I Wait, a cup of warm yarrow tea and the lovely short film Nganawendaanan Nde,'ing (I keep them in my heart).
[1] Sagow Pimachiwin Plants and Animals Used by Mikisew Cree First Nation for Food, Medicine and Materials: Public Version (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Indigenous
Environmental Resources), 58.
[2] Belcourt, Christi, Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use (Saskatoon, SK:
Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2007), 65.
A blog post with my analysis of the Native content in Justina Ireland's Dread Nation is in process. For now, here's a record of the tweets I sent out on Twitter. The first one went out on the morning of April 28 and the last one on the evening of April 29th, 2018. I've inserted tweets from Cynthia Leitich Smith that I think are helpful. (Update on May 2: I'm inserting numbers for each tweet to help with further analysis and conversation, and I'm inserting additional comments for some of the tweets). 1. Last week I finished reading Justina Ireland's DREAD NATION. I found many parts--including the Author's Note--unsettling and alarming. Thursday I got an email from a young woman who had read it and was very upset with the Native content. 2. Because the book is doing so well, she wrote to me because the book's success made her doubt her own reading of it. The young woman is Native. I wrote back to her right away to tell her that my notes look much like hers. 3. One major problem is author using “well meaning” to characterize the creation of the boarding schools.
Update on May 1, 2018: Debra J. and Tanita Davis submitted comments about "well meaning." Both think that Ireland was being sarcastic. In the author's note, the word is not set off in italics or with quotation marks. Either one would convey sarcasm. Maybe that can be done in a next printing of the book. Several Native readers did not catch its sarcasm. I didn't, either.
4. Because the description said "Native and Negro Education Act" I expected a lot of content specific to Native people. There isn't much, overall, and what is there is... not great.
Update on May 2: In 1819, Congress passed the "Indian Civilization Act" which provided funds to Christian missionaries who would establish missions to "civilize" Native people.
5. And some of it is bad. A lot of historical fiction that could and should include Native people but doesn't, is a problem of omission. This is a different kind of problem. 6. For Native people, there's been wave after wave of government efforts to get rid of us. Some were straight up "kill them" and there are the assimilation ones which sought to kill us off as nations of people by killing our identity as Indigenous people. 7. Mission and boarding schools were designed to "civilize" and "Christianize" us. In author's note, Ireland wrote "This exploitative school system became the basis for the fictional combat school system in the alternative historical timeline of Dread Nation." 8. She goes on to say "Because if well-meaning Americans could do such a thing to an already wholly subjugated community in a time of peace, what would they do in a time of desperation?" There's a lot wrong in that sentence. 9. There's the "well meaning" (which I hope you should not be characterized that way, alone); there's the "already wholly subjugated community" (a collapsing of hundreds of Native Nations into a singular group); and there's "a time of peace" (peace, for what nation?) 10. When people make errors in fiction, it is not hard to say "this is an error of fact". Because Dread Nation is an alternative fantasy, it seems like there's a buffer of sorts. An author is in fantasy space, so in theory, anything goes.... but...
Update on May 2:Dread Nation is alternative history. In the tweet directly above this update, I said "alternative fantasy" but meant something more like "fantasy with alternative history."
11. I kept having to read and re-read passages to try to make the logic of what the author was doing, work, in this alternative space. I couldn't do it. It was (and is) a mind warp of some kind for me to be trying so hard to do that. 12. Hmmm.... would I get it if I wasn't an Indigenous woman who knows all this history--not from a history book but from family stories? 13. On page 17 we learn about Congress funding "the Negro and Native Reeducation Act" that created these combat schools. During that time period, people said "Indian". At the boarding schools, students were treated like if they were in the military, but... 14. ... they weren't given training in weapons or fighting. The military character of the schools was uniforms they were forced to wear. At some they were marched here and there. People in the dorms were/are "matrons". 15. Today at the schools, kids talk about this or that student being AWOL. They ran away, a lot, then. 16. On p 33 of Dread Nation: "I [Jane] heard that in Indian Territory they tried to send Natives from the Five Civilized Tribes to combat schools but they quickly figured out what was what and all ran off. The Army was too busy fighting the dead to chase them..." 17. "... so the government gave up and just focused on us Negroes." Knowing the real history, that's a kick in the gut.
Update on May 2: See tweet #47 for info on why I said "kick in the gut". Also relevant to seeing "Five Civilized Tribes" on page 33 are two other facts. That phrase refers to five nations: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole. Make time to watch the Trail of Tears episode in the PBS series, We Shall Remain. Amongst the things you'll learn there, is that some Indigenous people had slaves.
18. Backing up a bit to page 19, that passage abt Miss Preston (she runs the combat school) having had a Sioux lover and that she keeps an eagle feather in his memory... is perplexing. Jane thinks it isn't true. That's good but what does that bit do for the arc of the story?
Update, May 2: Someone asked for detail on what I meant by "that's good." I appreciate the question. The entire passage is this: "There were whispers that Miss Preston had taken a Sioux lover while out west and that she keeps an eagle feather in his memory, but I don't believe any of that." I think Jane is saying she doesn't believe Miss Preston had the Sioux lover. But--the passage is here. If it is going nowhere, it could have been deleted. I wonder if we'll learn in book two that Miss Preston did, in fact, have a Sioux lover?
19. I'd really like input from other readers. I come into this reading from a specific place, and because she's an author who understands far more than most writers do abt power/racism, I'm feeling a bit lost. 20. I'm feeling that way, too, about the Custer part. Getting bit by a zombie used to take days for the person who was bit to become a zombie, but, there's a new strain that the scientists are calling the Custer strain. 21. This new strain makes the person who is bit turn into a zombie much quicker: "It's named after Custer's stunning defeat in Cleveland at the hands of his own infected men, of course."
Update, May 2: In tweets 42-46, I circled back to my question about the Custer passage.
(hitting pause for now; more later). 22. Back and picking up thread. I'll come back to the Custer part later. One thing that lingers in my head, from the start, is who are these dead that rise, in the first place? All the land was/is Indigenous land. The dead that rise when this rising of shamblers (zombies) begins... 23. These dead who are rising from the land... some would be the soldiers who were fighting in the Civil War, and squatters/invaders/settlers... but this land would have thousands of years of Indigenous peoples who died pre 1492. 24. Native people fought in that war, too, by the way. But setting that aside for now, let's talk about Daniel Redfern. He's the only Native character in the story. When Jane first sees him, she notes how he's different from the Indians in the stories she reads. 25. I am glad to see that, for sure. Jane wonders if he went to the boarding school in Pennsylvania. Later (p. 163) Jane asks him what tribe he's from. He says "I doubt you've heard of us, my people don't exactly get featured in the weekly serials." 26. Lenape is his nation. Jane asks him if Redfern is a Lenape name, and "His lips tighten. 'No, it was the name given to me by a teacher at the school I was sent to when I was six." That doesn't quite work. 27. There are many accounts of Native kids being given an English name at the schools. My Hopi grandfather had a Hopi name, but when he went to boarding school they gave him this name: Rex Calvert. The point was to erase Indigenous culture. To 'kill the Indian.' 28. Why would a teacher at the school Redfern went to give him "Redfern" as a name? 29. Did this guy arrive at the school when he was six, with a Lenape name that, when translated into English, became Redfern? Maybe. But it would have taken a lot of work to make that happen. That teacher (or someone else there) would have to know the Lenape language. 30. But remember--these schools, for real, were meant to 'kill the Indian.' Kids, for real, were beaten for speaking their own languages. That changed later, for sure, and it is possible that this was a kind teacher but... 31. ... Daniel says that "They took me from my family, cut my hair, beat me every time they felt like it, and sent me to work for the mayer when I was eighteen." So--my effort to make his name, Redfern, work... fails. 32. There's a thread from yesterday that has bearing on my analysis of any book. In a nutshell, it is that #OwnVoices writers aren't writing a textbook and that they want to make things up and have fun. 33. Ethnographic writing in fiction is something that Native writers have said 'no' to for a long time, too. I understand all of that. 34. I don't like ethnographic writing either. It is a fact for most of us in the US that for all our lives (and those of our parents, grandparents, etc), we've read White-centered fact and fiction forever. That's the Center of US publishing. 35. As I sit here and think about sci fi and fantasy and how important the knowledge we bring to a viewing or a reading matters, that scene from Galaxy Question comes to mind... the one where the aliens have been watching TV shows that got beamed into space... 36. ... and they thought all that was real. Remember? The captain said something about Gilligan's Island and the alien said "those poor people." I cracked up. I got it. I knew it was just a show. Our collective knowings made that story work. 37. My primary concern is as an educator who is also Native. We (Native ppls), have borne the brunt of bad, misinformed, well-intentioned, deliberately misleading, politically-biased writing for hundreds of years. 38. What we're striving for, I think, is a point in Knowing, where readers know who Native people are, and can spot the playful or artful worldbuilding that any writer does with a Native nation's people, as that writer's craft at work.
Tweets from Cynthia Leitich Smith, @CynLeitichSmith:
Yes. On a related note, in certain cases, the use of front and/or back matter can be helpful to authors in clarifying our fantastical frameworks.
E.g., In Feral Curse and Feral Pride (books 2 & 3 of the Feral trilogy), I used the author's note to make clear "the shape-shifter fantasy elements...are not inspired by or drawn from any Native...traditional stories or belief systems."
I'd suggest considering forward matter for stories in which the fantastic shift is the focal element of the story--to lay it all out from the start (as opposed to my example wherein the concern was more about misconceptions that may have arisen from reading other books).
39. I will stress that there are writers who are trying very hard to do right by marginalized peoples. This is way different than, say--anything that a racist like Custer would write. 40. So, back to say a bit more about the alternative history treatment of Custer in DREAD NATION. To refresh: a new strain of the plague that makes victims turn into zombies faster is named after Custer. The professor who names it that, is racist. 41. He thinks there's something about Negroes and Indians that makes them more resistant to the plague.
42. Here's what he said about naming the new strain: "It's named after Custer's stunning defeat in Cleveland at the hands of his own infected men, of course." 43. I read and re-read that part and couldn't make sense of it, so I asked two people with expertise in literature and history. They both said the same thing: that he's being depicted as such a fool that his own men took him down. 44. I'd really like to hear from other readers on how they interpreted that line about him. In my conversation with the two people I asked how Lakota people might feel about his death being depicted in this way. 45. In fact, he was killed by Lakota and Cheyenne men when he attacked a village. Custer thought he was going to have a victory, but it was the other way around. It was an important victory... it is commemorated, today. 46. There's a video of it here. Go watch it and then imagine how the people in it would feel if they read that line in Dread Nation. 47. Also: I appreciate the person who wrote to me privately to ask why that part about kids running away from boarding school and not being chased by Army was, as I wrote "a kick in the gut." 48. As I noted, Native kids ran away from the schools. More info: many died as they tried to get home. The school administrators called them deserters and tried to find them. As Brenda Child writes in BOARDING SCHOOL SEASONS... 49. ... (I highly rec that bk, by the way; I taught it in AIS 101 courses when I taught at UIUC), rewards were offered to people who would capture the kids who had run away. Railroad workers were asked not to let kids get on the trains. 50. Parents were notified when their child had run away, and then their wait began. Would their child make it home safely? Some Native communities would take the kids in, hiding them from administrators. In BOARDING SCHOOL SEASONS, Brenda Child quotes from docs: 51. "Superintendent Peairs at Haskell [...] complained that the Iowa Indians "harbor the Indian boy runaways and do everything to assist them in avoiding arrest." (Kindle location 1378). 52. So, that's what I meant when I read, in Dread Nation, that the Army chased Negro kids but not Native ones. 53. On page 139, we read that Confederates surrendered and that "President Lincoln would issue the Writ of Concession..." that made slavery illegal. That happened on Jan 1, 1863. But... any time I read Lincoln's name in nonfiction or fiction, I wonder if the writer knows... 54. .. what Lincoln did on December 31, 1862? Do you know that on that day, the largest mass execution in the US took place? Info here: 55. I hope you went over and read that news item about the executions. If you did, you know that history of that time was not a time of peace. Native Nations and the US were at war. There was a lot going on that isn't depicted in DN. 56. No book can "do it all." That's a given. But I will say this: I get tired of the pretty constant erasures of us in historical fiction (and in alternative history). The author of Dread Nation was trying not to do that erasure. 57. And as you likely know, readers love Jane. I see the many reasons why. Because of her, some might say "this book is not for you, Debbie" (so back off). But, I think the author DID want it to work for Native readers, too.
Update on May 12, 2018: Last weekend, Justina Ireland and I exchanged a series of tweets that began when I saw her sharing an article about the outing system in government boarding schools. In short, she incorrectly named the funding for the schools. In the exchange (and through other sources) it became clear to me that the reason her book fails in its representations of Native peoples is because she relied heavily on archival research. The "primary sources" she used are items in government archives--that are heavily biased. Though she lists several books about boarding schools, by Native writers, it seems to me that she did not read them carefully. I am working on a post about that, and the book itself, and noting here to, that I do not recommend Dread Nation.
