In an interview she gave to Vermont Public Radio, Beth Kanell was asked about criticism of her book, Darkness Under the Water. She characterized the people who are critical of her inaccurate, melodramatic, sensationalized presentation of the Vermont Eugenics Project and its effects on the Abenaki people of Vermont as being "rubbed the wrong way" by what she did.
We are, in fact, talking about a genocidal program that she used as a backdrop for a murder mystery. We object to what she did because her melodrama has the effect of negating the truth of what actually happened.
Characterizing us as being "rubbed the wrong way" is another indicator that she lacks the depth and insight to understand that history, Native peoples, and our voices and work. She says she's bringing attention to this history, but she's only hurting the people she apparently wants to help.
We don't need her kind of help.
With this book she adds to the body of misinformation about who American Indians are---the sort of misinformation my students have to unlearn. With this book, she miseducates, and so do teachers who use the book in their classrooms.
Taxpayers reading this post.... some of your tax dollars are going towards undoing the sorts of things students "learn" in school.
Teachers reading this post... when your students take college classes in American Indian Studies, they feel betrayed by what you gave them, and they put what they learned from you in that "lies my teacher told me" framework laid out by James Loewen.
Those who listen to Vermont Public Radio... Ask the station to invite Doris Seale, or Judy Dow, or the author of the book Kanell cites as her primary source of information, Nancy Gallagher, to be interviewed on the station.
NOT bringing their perspective to the program is a lot like repeating what was done with the Eugenics Project itself. Ignoring and silencing the voices of Native people.
[Note: This book has been discussed here several times. Scroll down to the very bottom of this page and see the set of links there.]
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.
Showing posts with label Kanell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kanell. Show all posts
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
I read Beth Kanell's DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
A note from Debbie on July 15, 2024: I no longer recommend books or writings from Judy Dow or Joseph Bruchac. I made the decision to withdraw my recommendations based on a letter by Rick O'Bomsawin, Chief, Abenaki of Odanak and Michel R. Bernard, Chief, Abenaki of W8linak. Rather than remove the content specific to Dow, I am striking thru that content. It provides readers with a visual indication that Dow's work is of concern.
Details here: Leaders of Abenaki Nations request Educators stop making space for specific individuals in Vermont's "Abenaki" tribes
Details here: Leaders of Abenaki Nations request Educators stop making space for specific individuals in Vermont's "Abenaki" tribes
Original post (and content I struck thru) is below.
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My essay will center on the way the novel is described by its author, publisher, and reviewers. The novel is presented as "exploring a dark episode in New England history." That episode is the Vermont Eugenics Survey, but the novel doesn't actually do that.
Update: Dec 23rd, 2008---As I work on my review essay, I'm studying the Vermont Eugenics Movement. I came across a lecture that Nancy Gallagher and Judy Dow gave in March of 2007. The lecture is housed at the Center for Research on Vermont. Click here to view it.
Early on in the video, Gallagher says that she, as an academic, had done research on this eugenics movement, but feels that the stories need to be told strictly from the perspective of the families themselves, in their voices. I listened to her words and thought about how her words foreshadowed what has happened with Kanell's book.
Here's the description of the lecture:
The French-Indian people in Chittenden County lived in small neighborhood communities identified by names known only to them, and Moccasin Village in Burlington's Old North End was one of these. Despite repeated attempts at forced assimilation such as eminent domain, increased taxes, institutionalization, and eugenics, the Abenaki oral tradition of storytelling has allowed these communities and their ancestral traditions to endure beneath and within an external French-Canadian identity. Judy Dow, who has deep ancestral roots to Moccasin Village, and Nancy Gallagher, author of Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State, began collaborating in 2004 in an effort to document and restore to public memory the history of Abenaki culture in Winooski Intervale communities and in Vermont at large. In this program they present their findings on the various means of adaptation to social, political, environmental, and economic changes that enabled the Abenaki culture to survive.
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Jan 18, 2009 - Note:
There are several posts here on this blog, about DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER. I'm arranging them here, chronologically. Be sure to read comments to each entry.
December 5, 2008 - Seale and Dow essay on DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
December 6, 2008 - A reader responds to Seale/Dow review
December 17, 2008 - Slapin's Open Letter to Kanell
December 18, 2008 - Kanell's Response to Slapin's Open Letter
December 19, 2008 - I read Beth Kanell's DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
January 3, 2009 - "Darkness Under the Water: Questions and Comments" by Beverly Slapin
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Kanell response to Slapin's Open Letter
In response to Slapin's Open Letter (click here to read it), Kanell wrote to her webmaster (Alexie) saying:
Appended to her note was a list of questions. The two that Slapin discussed in her Open Letter are gone from the new list.
Alexis posted the new list right away, and Kanell wrote to Slapin by email to let her know of those changes. She copied me on that email and followed it with another email, asking me to post her questions to my blog as a stand-alone post, giving them the same exposure that I gave to Slapin's.
I've given her request a lot of thought because one of the new questions is no better than the ones she took off. The new question reveals, to me, a lack of insight to the reasons Native people object to the ways that we and our histories are presented in children's books. She wanted to do good with her book, but she missed the mark. She's stated that her own Jewish history makes it possible for her to present a Native story. But, over and over, there are examples that her Jewish identity did not translate to insight to Native story.
Do I post her questions, as she requested, and address the new problem she created? If I do, am I being mean to her?
On the one hand, it feels mean and aggressive to keep pointing out that lack of insight. On the other hand, each new instance provides an opportunity for me to point out how lack of insight results in a problematic passage.
By 'each new instance' I mean each time she posts to the child_lit listserv. On that listserv, a contentious dialogue has been taking place for almost two weeks. Each time she posts to child_lit, her response contains errors.
For example, she has argued there that the state of Vermont has recognized the Abenaki. In fact, the state of Vermont has recognized the Abenaki as a minority. That's very different from being recognized as a tribal nation. I don't think Kanell understands the distinction. Native peoples across the country know the difference, and, I wish more citizens of the U.S. did, too.
This blog exists to provide my perspective on the words others write. My responsibility, as I see it, is not to any author, but to what he or she writes, and, to the readers of that author's words. My goal is not to beat up on an author, though it will feel that way to the author. My goal is to educate the author, the publisher, the reviewer, the teacher, parent, and librarian so that the entire field of children's books that have images of American Indians moves from one that is fraught with error to one that is does an accurate job of presenting who we are.
With that as my framework, here is question #11.
"...you know about an even more frightening and terrible project..." she wrote.
Hitler was defeated. As a result of that defeat, we know the horrors of the Holocaust. A lot of allies stepped in to stop what he was doing.
Nobody stepped in to stop what was happening to American Indians in what became the United States. There are no museums that document what happened to us in the way that Holocaust museums do.
I read question 11 and think back to my own history as a Pueblo Indian. Slaughter, persecution, efforts to "kill the Indian and save the man."
Though I'm sure it is not her intention, Kanell writes as though there are none of us left that would object to question 11. Surely she doesn't mean to do a hierarchical presentation of genocide. But just as surely, she doesn't understand how a Native person would read that question.
I object. And, we object. Thanks to electronic listservs and blogs--we can reach people we couldn't reach before.
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January 18, 2009 - Note:
There are several posts here on this blog, about DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER. I'm arranging them here, chronologically. Be sure to read comments to each entry.
December 5, 2008 - Seale and Dow essay on DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
December 6, 2008 - A reader responds to Seale/Dow review
December 17, 2008 - Slapin's Open Letter to Kanell
December 18, 2008 - Kanell's Response to Slapin's Open Letter
December 19, 2008 - I read Beth Kanell's DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
January 3, 2009 - "Darkness Under the Water: Questions and Comments" by Beverly Slapin
Hi Alexis,
Beverly Slapin, copied above, has provided strong reasons for removing the original questions 10 and 11 from the discussion questions for The Darkness Under the Water, immediately. I suspect it works better for you to have the entire list at once, to replace the page -- yes? So I'm pasting a revised list onto here. Beverly, if you have time and energy to add to these, or adjust them, I'd value your experience in making the list both wiser and stronger. Thank you.
Appended to her note was a list of questions. The two that Slapin discussed in her Open Letter are gone from the new list.
Alexis posted the new list right away, and Kanell wrote to Slapin by email to let her know of those changes. She copied me on that email and followed it with another email, asking me to post her questions to my blog as a stand-alone post, giving them the same exposure that I gave to Slapin's.
I've given her request a lot of thought because one of the new questions is no better than the ones she took off. The new question reveals, to me, a lack of insight to the reasons Native people object to the ways that we and our histories are presented in children's books. She wanted to do good with her book, but she missed the mark. She's stated that her own Jewish history makes it possible for her to present a Native story. But, over and over, there are examples that her Jewish identity did not translate to insight to Native story.
Do I post her questions, as she requested, and address the new problem she created? If I do, am I being mean to her?
On the one hand, it feels mean and aggressive to keep pointing out that lack of insight. On the other hand, each new instance provides an opportunity for me to point out how lack of insight results in a problematic passage.
By 'each new instance' I mean each time she posts to the child_lit listserv. On that listserv, a contentious dialogue has been taking place for almost two weeks. Each time she posts to child_lit, her response contains errors.
For example, she has argued there that the state of Vermont has recognized the Abenaki. In fact, the state of Vermont has recognized the Abenaki as a minority. That's very different from being recognized as a tribal nation. I don't think Kanell understands the distinction. Native peoples across the country know the difference, and, I wish more citizens of the U.S. did, too.
This blog exists to provide my perspective on the words others write. My responsibility, as I see it, is not to any author, but to what he or she writes, and, to the readers of that author's words. My goal is not to beat up on an author, though it will feel that way to the author. My goal is to educate the author, the publisher, the reviewer, the teacher, parent, and librarian so that the entire field of children's books that have images of American Indians moves from one that is fraught with error to one that is does an accurate job of presenting who we are.
With that as my framework, here is question #11.
11. If you have studied World War II or the history of the Jews in the world, you know about an even more frightening and terrible project that began in the 1930s to eliminate one group of people and to make another group of people more powerful. Where did this happen? Do you think there is a connection to Molly's story? How could you find out more about this?
"...you know about an even more frightening and terrible project..." she wrote.
Hitler was defeated. As a result of that defeat, we know the horrors of the Holocaust. A lot of allies stepped in to stop what he was doing.
Nobody stepped in to stop what was happening to American Indians in what became the United States. There are no museums that document what happened to us in the way that Holocaust museums do.
I read question 11 and think back to my own history as a Pueblo Indian. Slaughter, persecution, efforts to "kill the Indian and save the man."
Though I'm sure it is not her intention, Kanell writes as though there are none of us left that would object to question 11. Surely she doesn't mean to do a hierarchical presentation of genocide. But just as surely, she doesn't understand how a Native person would read that question.
I object. And, we object. Thanks to electronic listservs and blogs--we can reach people we couldn't reach before.
--------------------------
January 18, 2009 - Note:
There are several posts here on this blog, about DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER. I'm arranging them here, chronologically. Be sure to read comments to each entry.
December 5, 2008 - Seale and Dow essay on DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
December 6, 2008 - A reader responds to Seale/Dow review
December 17, 2008 - Slapin's Open Letter to Kanell
December 18, 2008 - Kanell's Response to Slapin's Open Letter
December 19, 2008 - I read Beth Kanell's DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
January 3, 2009 - "Darkness Under the Water: Questions and Comments" by Beverly Slapin
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