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Are you a teacher who has used a curriculum about Native Americans? Debbie has started analyzing one on AICL. Take a look! Her comments can help you think critically about whatever curriculum you use. Her analysis got me thinking about a phrase I've seen in non-fiction books to describe Indigenous societies before colonization: "hunter-gatherer." It's used to differentiate between groups that mainly "lived off the land" and those that grew crops or kept animals. It's not usually explained very well.
As a kid, I pictured "hunter-gatherers" wandering in the woods hoping to come across something edible to collect or kill. It seemed like an exhausting life, always having to find the next meal. In my mind, people who grew gardens and row crops didn't need to go looking for food. (Though I figured they'd still pick huckleberries if they found some, because who wouldn't?) Nothing in textbooks or children's literature I saw dismantled those mistaken ideas, and it's embarrassing how long it took me to replace them with a more accurate picture.
That's one reason it's good to see two 2025 picture books from Portage and Main Press that give a clear, respectful sense of what's involved in collecting food from the land (and water) to feed families and the community. Observation, intergenerational knowledge, ingenuity, and hard work kept the people fed, and continue to do so today.
Dad, Is It Time to Gather Mint? is for ages 5-9. The protagonist is a contemporary Native child, Joshua. Joshua learns from his dad about when, where, and how to find foods that have sustained his Omushkego Cree and Anishinaabe communities over time. Plants, fish, and mammals couldn't just be taken all year round. What Joshua likes most of all is picking mint so his mom can make mint iced tea, but he has to wait until summer for that. Meanwhile, he and his dad go on walks each season, and dad shows him what to look for.
I like the way several two-page spreads show what Joshua learns, and what he does to help. Here are pages about fall:
On the left, Dad explains the peoples' seasonal food sources. On the right, Joshua has hooked a white fish, one of the foods of fall.
The illustrations show his delighted engagement as he soaks in what Dad teaches him. But what he wants most of all is to be able to gather wild mint for tea. Spoiler alert: that day comes at last.
Herring to Huckleberries is suitable for slightly older children; I would think middle grades and up. It follows the experience of a girl from the Tla'amin Nation, one of the Coast Salish nations in what is currently known as British Columbia. In her author's note, Betty Wilson comments that the book shares her memories of growing up in the 1950s, when, during each season, she would go with her grandparents and other relatives to collect foods that would sustain them all year.
Throughout the book, text and pictures give a sense of how large the gathering operations could be, and how much knowledge was involved. Yes, the people caught herring when the fish showed up in the bay -- and they used a specially-designed rake. They also sank cedar branches in the water so the herring would lay eggs on them. They then gathered the branches full of eggs, peeled the eggs off to eat fresh, or hung the full branches up on drying racks so the eggs would dry, to be used later. They dried the whole fish, too.
Children reading these two books will never be burdened with the inadequate ideas I had about what it means to "hunt and gather"! Both Dad and Herring emphasize the science, community effort, and complexity of the knowledge involved. Dad features a map of the region where Joshua's family lives, and a recipe for mint tea. The back matter of Herring includes an eagle's-eye-view map of the Tla'amin homelands, and detailed descriptions of 12 of their important traditional foods.
I also love that both books integrate specific Indigenous languages of the protagonists. In Dad, selected words in Anishinaabemowin and Omushkegomowin are part of the text, with English equivalents in the margins. Herring is a dual language book; the story is told in the author's native Ayahjutham and English on the same 2-page spreads, like this:
Some young readers will be intrigued to see that the orthography of Ayahjutham is very different from English. Here's how the name of that language is written:
At AICL, we're strong believers that Native children benefit from knowledge about their Indigenous language, and that all children benefit from knowing about languages other than what they speak at home! Both Dad and Herring support this by providing vocabulary lists and pronunciation guides in the back matter.
And teacher guides for both books are available from Portage and Main.
There are so many opportunities for conversations with children here, whether they're Native or not. Younger kids may be very surprised that not everybody has gotten their food from Safeway or Jewel. They may want to talk about foods they would be willing to work for, as Joshua and ošil do. What do they notice about the variety of foods shown in the books -- does it create a balanced diet? Do they or any of their family members fish, hunt, trap, or collect wild foods like mushrooms or berries? Is the activity random, or does a person have to "know what they're doing" in order to have success? What's it like for them -- do they enjoy it, or feel like part of something important? Is it even possible to find wild foods where they live now? How could they find out what wild food resources would have been available in their area 70 years ago, or longer? Betty Wilson comments that many of the foods her community gathered in the 1950s are no longer available. What might have happened to those foods?
Food sovereignty is an increasingly important topic for Native people. High schoolers may know that the US government officials provided or withheld food to keep Native communities "in line". They may have heard that settlers' foods, heavy on sugar and carbohydrates, have created health problems that Native Nations now deal with. Food sovereignty addresses those issues, and more. Picture books like Dad, Is It Time to Gather Mint and Herring to Huckleberries can help older kids explore the historical and cultural significance of communities being able to think critically about diet and supply themselves with food.
Dad, Is It Time to Gather Mint and Herring to Huckleberries are strongly recommended! They can be important additions to a curriculum about Native Americans, and useful in teaching about the relationships between human well-being and the foods we eat.
