Carl Waldman's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES

Update:  July 22, 2010

Soon after I uploaded the information below, Carl Waldman wrote to me. We exchanged emails. I'm grateful for the exchange because it provides a learning moment for all of us. 

Waldman was incorrectly cited in Healy and Orenski's book about flags and the website about flags (see below). Waldman's encyclopedia does not say that Nambe is "of the Tiwa Nation, one of four tribes of Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande."  Waldman is cited a LOT in the flag book. I hope he goes through it and gets in touch with the authors. Anybody using either the flag book or website should use it with great caution.

I erred in assuming that the flag book was reliable in its citation of Waldman. Believing their citation of him was accurate, I was critical of him for those errors. Those errors, in turns out, are Healy and Orenski's---not Waldman's.

Since then, I've read through Waldman's entry on Pueblo Indians. Some things about it reflect socialization/education that teaches Americans that American Indians are exotic peoples. For example, he uses the word shaman. That word is generally used to describe spiritual leaders, but it isn't used to describe spiritual leaders in the world religions. I think words like that (ones that invoke the exotic) are not helpful because they diminish our religious ways of being.  

Another way in which Waldman inadvertently trivializes our ways is his description of a kiva. He says they are "ceremonial chambers or clubhouses." Ceremonial chambers is right, but clubhouses doesn't work at all. There are certain societies within our religion but they're not clubs.

A major concern with his entry is the order with which he presented the information. I'd prefer it start with present day information because I believe doing it that way goes a long way to displacing the idea that we no longer exist.

We generally use "Pueblo Revolt" rather than "Pueblo Rebellion" when talking about our movement against the Spanish in 1680. The Pueblo leader named Po'pay was from Ohkay Owingeh (formerly known as San Juan Pueblo) but worked from Taos in planning the revolt. 

Last, Waldman ends the section called "Later History" with this sentence: 

"Not all historic pueblos survived to modern times. Attacks by raiding tribes, such as the APACHE, NAVAJO and COMANCHE, took their toll as did diseases carried by Europeans and Euroamericans." 

Definitely, there were struggles with other tribes, but, it was warfare, persecution, and disease from Europeans and Euroamericans that had the greater impact on us. 


I'll stop here for now. Below is the original post.


A couple of days ago, my "Nambe" Google Alert included a link to a page at the site Flags of the World that has the flag of our tribe, Nambe, at the site. As I read the information provided about Nambe, I noted some errors. I asked my nephew, Will, to come over (I was at his house) to read the page. He's thirteen. Right away, he noted the errors, too.

I did some research and found that the site contains the same information in a book called Native American Flags, by Donald T. Healy and Peter J. Orenski. Let's take a look at the entry (on the site and in the book) for Nambe:

The 19,000-acre Pueblo of Nambe (NAA, 281) is home to about 400 members (REAI, 30) of the Tiwa Nation, one of four tribes of Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande (ENAT, 206-209). The others are the Keres, Tewas, and Towas.

Our pueblo is 19,000 acres in size. That information is correct. Healy and Orenski's source for that is Hirschfelder and de Montano's The Native American Almanac.

Home to about 400 members? Census figures change over time. We were that size at one time, but according to the 2000 census, we were about twice that size. We'll see what the 2010 census says.

The rest of the information is incorrect.  We are not "of the Tiwa Nation." There are not three others called Keres, Tewas, and Towas.  Those four words are language categories. Nambe's language is Tewa. There are nineteen pueblos in New Mexico, and, some of the pueblos speak Tewa, some speak Keres, some speak Tiwa, and some speak Towa. Some of the nineteen pueblos are located along the Rio Grande, but Nambe is not one of them. We are alongside our own river, the Nambe River.

The source for that incorrect material is Carl Waldman's Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes: Facts on File Library of American History, first published in 1988. It was revised in 1999 and received favorable reviews from School Library Journal, Library Journal, and Booklist. The reviews are available at Amazon. One of the Amazon customer reviews is from L. Hunter, a writer using the book:

I'm writing a fictional novel with a Native American character and needed help in knowing him and his background. I was impressed with how easy it was to look up information by tribe and get interesting tidbits, that if I so desired, I could research further. This is definitely a writer's dream. I feel confident writing about a character from any tribe with this book in my collection.

I hope that L. Hunter isn't using that information about Nambe. Waldman's encyclopedia is a good example of incorrect sources that unfortunately get used again and again, in non-fiction and fiction. I've written about reliable sources here.  If you have a copy on your shelf, and your tribal information is incorrect, please let me know and I'll add it to this blog post.

Encyclopedic Resources for Projects on American Indians

Many librarians and teachers write to me, asking for reliable sources on American Indian culture, history, etc. They seek these resources in order to support student research projects.

As many of you know, there are a LOT of materials available on American Indians, but, many (I'd say most) are outdated and/or biased in ways that continue to present American Indians as victims, savages, or tragic heroes.

I'm really glad people are seeking other materials. I trust they'll use these materials to write materials for teachers to use, and if you're a writer, I hope you use these materials so that you do not replicate errors and stereotypes.

So! Here's my suggestion on how to proceed.

There are two excellent encyclopedias, both published in the 90s, both infused with the work of Native scholars, and more updated viewpoints of Native peoples. Both have entries written by Native scholars, political leaders, tribal leaders. Each entry is supported with "for further reading." Order each one for your library (note on May 22, 2019: a used copy of these books is far superior to most of what you'll find available, new). When a class is doing a particular research project, look it up in both encyclopedias. See what the entry says, who wrote it, and what their sources were. Look for additional items by the author of the entry, and look for their sources, too. The two encyclopedia's are:

• Davis, Mary B. (1996) Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.
• Hoxie, Frederick E. (1996) Encyclopedia of North American Indians. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

ALSO, get these three books. They are also excellent and teachers/librarians/students will find them helpful.

• Francis, Lee. (1996) Native Time: A Historical Time Line of Native America. New York: St. Martin
• Champagne, Duane. (1994) Chronology of Native North American History. Detroit: Gale Research
• Champagne, Duane. (1994) Native America: Portrait of the Peoples. Detroit: Visible Ink Press

Using the Internet:

Go to Lisa Mitten's website. Lisa is in the American Indian Library Association, and maintains a webpage with links to homepages of Native Tribes/Nations. Those maintained BY the tribe are marked with a drum icon. Here's her page:
http://www.nativeculturelinks.com/nations.html

FINALLY, when using the web, make sure students go to Elaine Cubbins website BEFORE they start using the web to find material on American Indians. She, too, is in the American Indian Library Association. Her page is about evaluating webpages with Native content.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ecubbins/webcrit.html

All these resources are listed somewhere here on my blog. The encyclopedias and books are at the bottom of my recommended books list, and the websites are listed in the section of my page called "Excellent Websites about American Indians."


Update, May 8, 2008...

An excellent set of books for elementary-middle school use is called "American Indian Contributions to the World," edited by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield. There are five books in the set (the cover of one is shown above):

• Food, Farming, and Hunting
• Trade, Transportation, and Warfare
• Science and Technology
• Medicine and Health
• Buildings, Clothing, and Art

Or, you can order it in a single volume, under the title Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the world: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. The single volume, also by Keoke and Porterfield, was published in 2003.

Update, April 9, 2011

Read the websites, scholarship and research of people in American Indian studies! See "Native Professional Associations and Journals" on the left (scroll down). Today (May 22, 2019) I am listing them here:

• American Indian Culture and Research Journal
• American Indian Library Association
• American Indian Quarterly
• Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures
• Journal of American Indian Education
• National Congress of American Indians
• National Indian Education Association
• Native American Journalists Association
• Wicazo Sa Review

Update, November 30, 2014

Do not use the online "Native American Encyclopedia." Wondering why? Here's my review:
Is that Native American Encyclopedia website any good?


Update, July 13, 2017

• Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press, 2014.
• Mankiller, Wilma, and Rick West. Do All Indians Live In Tipis?: Questions and Answers from the National Museum of the American Indian (2007).
• Treuer, Anton. Everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask. Borealis Books, 2012.