Sign up! California Indian Ed for All offers a free series of On-line Book Club meetings with Native Authors

This Thursday (September 12), I am giving a webinar in California Indian Ed for All's online book club series. These webinars are open to the public, and there is no charge for them. They start this week and go all the way to June of 2025. They are live/online from 3:30 to 5:00 Pacific Time. Sign up! 

If you teach courses in children's literature or social studies or literature or history or library services for youth (getting a bit carried away there, but I do think anyone whose work has to do with Native peoples and children should join), consider asking your students to sign up. I think you just need to register once and you'll be enrolled in all of them. A few days prior to each event you'll receive an email with a link to join in. (Note: I don't know if the webinars will be recorded and made available later.)

If you are a teacher, librarian, or parent, please sign up! You'll hear directly from authors of books you can use in your classroom. Knowing them through the webinars will help you impart more substance to the children you work with. 

As you look through the schedule, you'll see children's book authors but you'll also see books from scholars whose books will help you become more knowledgeable about Native peoples. Being more knowledgeable helps you become more adept at teaching children and adults, and they help you see problems like bias and stereotyping.

Sept 12 - Debbie Reese, Selecting and Using Children's Books about Boarding Schools

Sept 26 - Jean Pfaelzer, California: A Slave State

Oct 17 - Traci Sorell, We Are Still Here: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know, Being Home, and Contenders

Oct 24 - Christine Day, We Still Belong, The Sea in Winter, and I Can Make This Promise

Oct 31 - Debbie Reese, Children's Books about Native Youth and their Hair

Nov 7 - Laurel Goodluck, Forever Cousins, Rock Your Mocs and She Persisted: Deb Haaland

Dec 19 - Cynthia Leitich Smith, Hearts Unbroken, Jingle Dancer, and Sisters of the Neversea

Jan 16 - Michaela Goade, Berry Song, Remember, We Are Water Protectors, and Being Home

Jan 23 - Deborah Miranda, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Feb 13 - Cutcha Risling-Baldy, We are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

Feb 20 - William Bauer, California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History

Feb 27 - William Bauer, We Are the Land: A History of Native California

Mar 13 - Debbie Reese, Children's Books about Native People in the Sciences

Mar 20 - Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Understanding Stereotypes and Native Americans, Part One: Master Narratives and Root Myths

Mar 27 - Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Understanding Stereotypes about Native Americans, Part Two: Modern Myths

Apr 17 - Carole Lindstrom, We Are Water Protectors, My Powerful Hair, and Autumn Peletier: Water Warrior

April 24 - Monique Gray Smith, My Heart Fills with Happiness, When We are Kind, and You Hold Me Up

May 8 - Laurel Goodluck, Fierce Aunties and Too Much: My Great Big Native Family

June 5 - Debbie Reese, Learn about New Children's Books by Native People

Here's screen caps of the schedule. Each one shows photos of the authors and a list of the books they'll be talking about. They are arranged according to months. Share this post with everyone you know! 

Not Recommended: STORIES CALIFORNIA INDIANS TOLD by Anne B. Fisher

Several readers have asked me about Stories California Indians Told by Anne B. Fisher, illustrated by Ruth Robbins. It came out in 1957 from Parnassus Press in Berkeley, California. 

Whenever I am asked about a book, the first questions I pose are these: Who wrote it? When did it come out? What are the author's sources? What verb tense is used? I also consider the title and what it conveys. 

I'd like everyone to pose those questions, too. 

With this book, we see a problem right away in the title. The problem is the word "told." It implies the stories are not being told today. Switch that past tense word for its present tense form: tell. If the title was Stories California Indians Tell, it conveys a living people. I am not suggesting a simple change in a verb in the title would make this book acceptable. 

As far as I am able to ascertain, the author and illustrator of the book are not Native. 

Its publication date is 1957. What awareness did the author and her editor have, about Native peoples and how we feel about representation? Native people knew we were being misrepresented but did not have access to tools we have today (social media). Since then, the publishing world has become more informed and I doubt this book would get published. 

In the book's Forward, I see that the source is Dr. C. Hart Merriam, who "wrote the tales down just as they were told to him by Indian story-tellers." Merriam then told the stories to Fisher (the author), who "turned them into stories for children and young people." One option a researcher can do is look for the source material and compare the source with how it was adapted (in this case, by Fisher). What was left in? What was not used? But when doing that particular kind of study, you'd need to see how reliable the source (C. Hart Merriam) was. In previous studies I've done, I've found those sources lacking. People who gathered the source material were outsiders looking in, not understanding what they were observing. They sometimes forced their own interpretations on what they observed. 

The Forward is written by an anthropology professor at San Francisco State College. His name: Adan E. Treganza. In the forward, several specific tribal nations are named by geographical location. All through there, however, are past tense verbs. Treganza uses "stories" and "myths" and "tales" to describe the contents of the book. In the final paragraph, Treganza writes that the characters in the myths do things that "appear to be impossible." He continues (p. 6): 

California Indians, like all other people, were imaginative and attempted to explain in their myths the world of nature around them. Animals, reptiles, or insects were often given the ability to think and speak like humans and to exert almost unlimited physical powers. Yet these stories were very real to Indian children and adults, as real as our own legendary tales are to us." 

At the moment, I'm looking at verb tense again. The stories "were" real. Are they not real anymore? It pains me to write something that should be obvious to everyone, but, Native peoples in California tell stories, today. Do they tell the ones in this book? I'm doubtful. Let's look at the first one.

The first story in Stories California Indians Told is "How California Was Made." In it, "the Medicine Man of the Gabrielino Indians" sees leaves falling, which signals that "the time for story telling was here." He paints his body, puts on a headdress, went outside of his hut, and called out "Come sit around the fire and I will tell you a story." From all the huts around his, Indian men and their wives and the Indian boys and girls came running. The people loved stories and they loved Medicine Man to tell them." The story he tells is about how the Great Spirit made land using several turtles, who he told to get in a long north-south line, head to tail, with the three at the southerly end placed more towards the east. "You'll make a wonderful California!" he told them. 

The story goes on but I'll pause there so we can critically analyze the information summarized above. 

In the first story in this book, we're asked to believe that a Native man whose people have lived on this continent since time immemorial is telling his people their creation story -- and calling their land by a name outsiders gave to that land. 

When you search the etymology of the word California, you'll find many sites saying it is from a Spanish novel published in 1510. What did Native peoples of the state currently known as California call that land before Europeans invaded their lands? The story says "Gabrielino" Indians, but what did that particular group call themselves, originally, in their own language? By focusing on "Gabrielino" and "California" we can see the problem. This is outsider perspective, and as such, is not something that should be used to teach anybody about the original peoples of California. 

And what the heck -- all the people in this village came running to hear the story?! Creation stories are sacred. 

In short, Stories California Indians Told is not recommended. 

I encourage educators to read and use On Indian Ground edited by Joely Proudfit as a resource! It'll help you make informed decisions about old and new books.