Centering and Featuring Native Languages

In 2007 I saw a graphic that--at the time--I felt was terrific. I shared it everywhere. Created by the Tulsa City-County Library, it had the word 'read' in the center. Around it was the word 'read' in several different Native languages. 

Then last week, I watched a video of Dawn Quigley and Joaquin Munoz, speaking at the Indigenous Teacher Education Program at the University of Arizona, College of Education. Most of you know Dawn as a Native author, but she's also a professor. Click through and listen to the entire lecture. Professors Quigley and Munoz have terrific information to share! In his remarks, Munoz talks a bit about Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves. He's co-author on an excellent article you can download about her book: Ni keehtwawmi mooshahkinitounawn: Lifting Up Representations of Indigenous Education and Futures in The Marrow Thieves

In one portion of her remarks, Dawn talked about having a critical lens. That is what AICL is about: bringing a critical lens to the ways that Native peoples, cultures, languages, stories and songs are represented. 

Dawn closed her presentation by sharing the 'read' graphic and saying that "the English word 'read' should not be in the middle." Just before that, she said it is an amazing graphic. It is! I love seeing Native languages. I am guessing that she--like me and so many others--think Native languages should be more visible. And, she's right to say that the English word should not be in the middle! If we want to center our languages, we have to bring that critical lens to the 'read' graphic. 

So--here's my decentering of that graphic. I put the Tewa word for 'read' in the center (Tewa is the language we speak at Nambé). [Update on June 17th: Sue Anderson from the Tulsa City-County Library wrote to say "We are happy to give permission for others to use this image, provided they credit the Tulsa City-County Library and leave our tagline on the graphic."]

Earlier this year when signing bookplates for An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, for Young People I wrote our word and my Tewa name on the top half of the bookplate, and on the bottom half, I wrote 'read' and signed 'Debbie Reese.' (If you happen to have one of those, could you please take a photo of it and send it to me? I didn't take a photo of the bookplates before sending them on to Minnesota for their Indian Education conference.)

Adding on June 6th, a photo of the bookplate! 

Kú'daa, Odia Wood-Krueger, for the photo!

Related to how Native languages are treated in books, we wrote about that in An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, for Young People. In our "A Note To Readers," we said:

For a long time, textbooks and other print media have put non-English words in italics. Setting words apart in that way signals that English is the normal way to speak and write and other languages are “different.” But many people now see this use of italics as a way of “othering” languages and the people who speak them. We are strong advocates for the shift away from italics. You will not see Native words in italics in this book.

When you read Dawn's books, you'll see that she does not italicize Ojibwe words her characters use, except when she's explaining a word to the reader. Look at this passage on page 3 of Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend when Jo Jo is on her way to school:

Mama usually walks with me, but today my kokum was going to. Kokum is another way to say "grandma" in the Michif language. She moved in with us after my moushoom died last year. 

A page earlier, we learned from Jo Jo that moushoom is their word for grandpa. When you read Eric Gansworth's books, you'll see that he used italics--for German words--in If I Ever Get Out of Here. Here's a passage from page 13 where his main character, Lewis, is visiting George, a white boy that Lewis is becoming friends with. Lewis loves music and is looking at albums on the shelves at George's house (p. 14):

"You like the Beatles?" I said. "We had pretty much all of their albums, but when my brother moved out, he took most of the later ones with him."

"We have them all," George said. "My dad's a huge Beatles fan. When we lived in Germany, he took me down to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, because that's where they got their start. My Mutti about busted a blood vessel." 

"'Mutti'?"

"Sorry, German, it's like 'mom.'"

And when you read Brian Young's Healer of the Water Monster, you'll see he uses Navajo words for numerals in the chapter titles: 

These are definitely signifiers of change in children's book publishing! In my lectures and workshops, I encourage teachers to modify texts they use with students in their classrooms. I encourage them to give students reasons for the modifications and I also recommend they make modifications in front of students so that students can learn that books are not sacred. Words in them can be crossed out, and new ones inserted or added somehow to visually signify a shift. With my modification of the 'read' graphic, I'm decentering English. Said another way, I'm centering or featuring Tewa. 

I'm going to write to the staff at Tulsa City-County Library to let them know of my modification and ask if they might let us all use their original graphic, overlaying 'read' with a Native language -- either our own or one spoken by the people a library's homelands are located on. You can also make your own large poster and ask Native people in your service area how they say 'read' in their language. 

Highly Recommended: JO JO MAKOONS, THE USED-TO-BE BEST FRIEND by Dawn Quigley; illustrations by Tara Audibert

 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

Jo Jo Makoons, The Used-to-Be Best Friend

Written by Dawn Quigley (Citizen, Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe)

Illustrated by Tara Audibert (Wolastoqey)

Published by Heartdrum

Publication Year: 2021

Reviewed by Debbie Reese

Review Status: Highly Recommended

****

Today's Short and Sweet Rec is for Dawn Quigley's Jo Jo Makoons, The Used-to-Be Best Friend. For starters, here's the description of the book (from the publisher):

Hello/Boozhoo—meet Jo Jo Makoons! Full of pride, joy, and plenty of humor, this first book in an all-new chapter book series by Dawn Quigley celebrates a spunky young Ojibwe girl who loves who she is.

Jo Jo Makoons Azure is a spirited seven-year-old who moves through the world a little differently than anyone else on her Ojibwe reservation. It always seems like her mom, her kokum (grandma), and her teacher have a lot to learn—about how good Jo Jo is at cleaning up, what makes a good rhyme, and what it means to be friendly.

Even though Jo Jo loves her #1 best friend Mimi (who is a cat), she’s worried that she needs to figure out how to make more friends. Because Fern, her best friend at school, may not want to be friends anymore…

And now, the Short and Sweet Rec:

First: It is a first! By that, I mean that it is the first Native-authored early chapter book series that I know of! If you have children, you know what these "early" books are about. They're the ones that kids who are starting to read on their own look for, and then hold close to their hearts because of the sense of accomplishment, confidence, and joy that independent reading delivers. What sets this one apart from all others is that it is about an Ojibwe kid. I've seen far too many early reader books with stereotypical words and illustrations of Native people. Books like that hurt a Native reader and they misinform a non-Native reader. They do a lot of harm. But this book... it makes my heart soar! We've got an Ojibwe girl in the present day, living her life, which leads to my second point.

Second: Native children who grow up with their Native communities say things. They do things. They know things. All those things are unique to their specific community. In Jo Jo Makoons you will see Ojibwe words that Jo Jo uses, just because they're part of her life. Instead of grandpa, she says Mooshoom. And right there on page 3 when you first see "Mooshoom" you also get Jo Jo, talking to the reader in the way that people talk to each other (p. 3):

Do you wanna know what mooshoom means? It means "grandpa" in the Michif language. 

Just before that passage, Jo Jo tells readers "My name is Jo Jo Makoons Azure." But she also asks readers if they want to know how to say that sentence, in her language:

Try saying: "Jo Jo Makoons Azure nindizhinikaaz." 

Jo Jo acknowledges that some will feel challenged by the "big last word" and reminds them that they learned how to say Tyrannosaurus rex, and that they can also learn how to say nindizhinikaaz. 

Third: On page 6, we read that Jo Jo's mooshoom died the year before and that her kokum (grandmother) moved in with them. That is very common within Native communities. Grandparents are a significant presence in the life of Native children--and Jo Jo's kokum is a big part of her life. 

Fourth: This last is, perhaps, coincidental. When I first read Jo Jo Makoons (I've been recommending it in just about every workshop and lecture I've done this year), the final paragraphs of chapter one did not stand out but they sure do now! In them, Jo Jo hears her mom and kokum talking about Jo Jo's cat needing shots. Jo Jo remembers back to the summer before, when she needed shots. Her kokum told her (p. 9):

My girl, shots help you to be healthy. There are many sicknesses out there, and shots give good protection.

Obviously, that stands out to me now because across the U.S., children are getting shots to protect them from COVID. I hope that little bit there helps kids know these shots are necessary for their well-being. I don't know what Quigley intended when she wrote that passage but it strikes me as more of the care that permeates the world of Jo Jo and her family. It feels a bit like concentric circles of care. 

As I write this review, newspapers are filled with reports of parents challenging books that make them uncomfortable. At present we are seeing a terrific growth of diversity in what is being published and embraced by educators, librarians, and readers. Diversity feels like a threat, to those who are unsettled by it, but I hope that books like Jo Jo Makoons -- with the care infused throughout it -- can help those parents see that care of each other, and care of community, is central to the well-being of everyone.

Get a copy! Feel that care. And share it with others.  

______

*A Short and Sweet Rec is not an in-depth analysis. It is our strategy to tell you that we recommend a book we have read. We will definitely refer to it in book chapters and articles we write, and in presentations we do. Our Short and Sweet Recs include four reasons why we recommend the book.

Apple, Echo, and the Importance of “More Than One Book"

Two Native high school girls, two unique stories about not fitting in, and about trying to make sense of Indigenous heritage/ancestry when something has disrupted their place in a Native community....

Most regular readers of this blog won’t need to be convinced that it takes more than one story about a group of people to adequately portray that group’s experience. Still, we know that in classrooms and in library collections across North America, the pickings are usually slim when it comes to books by and about Native people. So “the danger of a single story” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns about is very real.

Right now I’m revisiting that point -- yet again -- via two recently published books with contemporary Native teen girl protagonists. Dawn Quigley’s (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) debut novel Apple in the Middle (2018) is set in Minnesota and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. The protagonist, Apple, meets her Native family members for the first time, the summer after her sophomore year in high school.

Katherena Vermette’s A Girl Called Echo: Pemmican Wars (2017) is a graphic novel. Echo, the main character, is 13 years old. She is Metis, as is Vermette. The story is set in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Apple’s mother, who was Turtle Mountain Chippewa, died after giving birth to her. Apple grew up with her dad and stepmother (both white), in their upper middle class suburban world, where she feels like she never quite fits. She carries a sense of guilt for her mother’s death. She’s a bit prickly, and more than a bit socially awkward. Since an incident of open racism during grade school, she has tried to look as white as possible. Her father’s reluctance to tell her about her Native family hasn’t helped. As a narrator, Apple has a lot to say. She can be rude, impulsive, and loud, with a biting sense of humor, but she begins to dial it all down somewhat as she gets to know her Turtle Mountain relatives.

Of her sense of not fitting in, Apple says, “I call it the Ping-Pong effect because you’re the ball, and nobody ever wants you in their space. Have you ever felt like that? Never really belonging anywhere, but trying your darndest to run between two lives only to find you’re always stuck in the middle.”

Apple may feel that she's constantly running, but Echo’s days in Pemmican Wars seem to involve just putting one foot in front of the other, with tremendous effort.

Unlike Apple, Echo is nearly silent. She’s emotionally isolated at school and in her foster placement, and moves as if something is draining all her energy. She spends most of her time with her earbuds in: Guns n Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers. The only time we see anything like a smile on her face is when she finds some graphic novels about Metis history on a library shelf. She’s in a new school and knows nobody, though her history teacher seems to “see” her. When she falls asleep, she dreams herself into events from First Nations history, and it’s in those dreams that she seems to feel most alive -- and where she has a friend.

Her mother stays in some kind of institution – rehab or mental health facility, maybe – which hints at why Echo is in foster care. Echo opens up slightly when she visits her mom. She speaks, asks questions about their family's Metis background, tells her mom what she is learning. The history class, the dreaming, and her relationship with her mom may be what eventually help her find her place. (That's "eventually" because Echo doesn’t find resolution in Pemmican Wars. Vermette’s second Echo book is due out in December, and we can hope that things will be looking up for her protagonist.)

The changes Apple and Echo go through in their respective stories are very different from each other, though both characters move toward a stronger sense of who they are, and what being Indigenous means (or can mean) to them, as they deal with racism, school, family issues, and so on. Young people deserve to get to know both of them.  Their stories belong on the same shelves (and in the same gift bag!) with Cynthia Leitich Smith’s 2018 release, Hearts Unbroken, whose protagonist Louise faces the effects of personal-level and community-wide racism while navigating peer relationships and romance during senior year. 

Three brand-new, strong Indigenous female teen main characters -- now there's a gift for your students, your teen patrons, your children, and your grandchildren!

(Recognition is due Katherena Vermette’s collaborators on Echo – illustrator Scott B. Henderson and color artist Donovan Yaciuk. Because Echo speaks so seldom, it’s on the illustrations to convey key details about her life. And they do so with subtlety and grace! For example, the letters WPG on the front of a bus Echo rides signal that she's in Winnipeg. Or so I'm told.)

--Jean Mendoza

UPDATE 10/29/19: Last week, @debraj1121 commented on Twitter that although she liked Apple in the Middle, she was concerned about negative mentions of "voodoo." One of Apple's distorted ideas about Native people is that they practice what she thinks of as voodoo, which evidently both intrigues and frightens her. Apple's grandmother pushes back on that mistake, calling voodoo "nonsense" and enlightening Apple about their family's actual beliefs.

Reading the Twitter conversation that followed, I realized 1) how much I need to learn, and 2) it's important to make a statement here about how voodoo appears in Apple in the Middle.

Voodoo is widely misunderstood in mainstream Western culture, and is portrayed in horror films and the like, as a kind of magic that can be used to hurt someone or cause chaos. It's often racialized (practitioners shown as African, Afro-Caribbean, or African-American, and scary). Popular (mis) representations reveal little if anything about the actual cosmology, a complex belief system with origins in Africa. It probably had a powerful role in sustaining many people who were enslaved and brought to the continents currently called the Americas. It has many believers in Haiti and elsewhere, and is more correctly called Vodou or Voudon.

I was dismayed to realize that, focused as I was on Apple's ignorance about Native people, I had scarcely noticed the mention of voodoo in the book.  @debraj1121's tweet got me started looking into what "voodoo" really is. Beyond the very general statements above,  I can't be a reliable source of information; still building a sense of what's trustworthy. One scholarly exploration that I'm finding helpful is "Haitian Vodou and Voodoo: Imagined Religion and Popular Culture" by Adam M. McGee, which focuses not on the actual religion but on how it has been sensationalized in the mainly-White popular imagination.

Anyway, part of Apple's growth as a character involves putting aside misunderstandings about Native people. Authors often do that by having events or other characters interfere with the character's ignorance or mistaken ideas. Apple's grandmother's contradiction (voodoo is "nonsense") falls short.
Author Dawn Quigley has said on Twitter that she honors and values @debraj1121's insights,  and has contacted the publisher of Apple in the Middle about the problem. 

If you've read or shared Apple in the Middle, recognize that voodoo is a real religion and that in the Western imagination it has been heavily colonized by powerful and persistent misrepresentations in films, stories, etc. 

Also on 10/29/19 -- A large and growing number of previously-White-identified people in eastern Canada have begun coopting First Nations identity by being spuriously designated "Eastern Metis." (For more information, see Darryl Leroux's book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity,  and his Web site Raceshifting.) We want to note that A Girl Called Echo author Katherena Vermette and her character Echo are of the Metis nation in Manitoba, not the pretender group.