Native Authors--January Rogers and katherena vermette--On Pretendianism

Have you read news reports about false claims to being Native? Back in 2021 I started Native? Or, not? A Resource List of items I had read and thought others would find helpful. In 2023 I started a second list focused on challenges to groups in Vermont, in particular, because within children's literature, Joseph Bruchac is well known (I no longer recommend his books). 

Today I'm point you to Blood Sport by January Rogers and real ones by katherena vermette. Both are meant for adult readers but if you work with high school students, take a look. They might work in your classroom.

Written as a play, Blood Sport is a satirical comedy about Native identity and who can claim it. The Foreword is by Dr. Kim TallBear. I highly recommend that you read her work on this topic. Several items on my resource list are by her. In Blood Sport, we meet a gameshow host and contestants who answer questions about who they are. It is an intriguing treatment of the topic. 

My copy of real ones arrived a couple of days ago. In places where Native people talk about false claims, we often talk about children of those who make the claim. In vermette's book, there are two sisters whose father is Native. But their mother? Well, she's fabricated a claim. She knows it is not true and her daughters do, too. I've just started reading it and am definitely pulled into the story. A reporter has gotten in touch with the daughters, asking them about their mother's claim. 

Get both books! From what I've seen, Native readers are excited to read them. Excited doesn't feel like the appropriate word. The larger point is that false claims to a Native identity are not innocent. They are harmful to anyone who is taken in by a false claim, and harmful to Native people. Books like these two help us find words to talk about why pretendianism is--to use the word January Rogers used--a crisis. 

Highly Recommended: A GIRL CALLED ECHO OMNIBUS

A Girl Called Echo Omnibus

Written by Katherena Vermette (Red River Metis)

Illustrated by Scott B. Henderson (not Native); Colors by Donovan Yaciuk (not Native)

Published in 2023

Publisher: Highwater Press

Reviewer: Jean Mendoza

Review Status: Highly Recommended

You might have seen AICL's positive comments about katherena vermette's graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo. I guess I should clarify that this "Echo" has nothing to do with the mini-series currently getting a lot of attention! I haven't seen it yet.

Vermette's protagonist Echo is a socially isolated Metis teen in what is currently called Winnipeg, Manitoba. She finds herself abruptly pulled against her will into key events in the history of the Metis -- events which involved some of her direct ancestors. She meets them, witnesses their individual struggles, and is just as abruptly transported back to her present. Her time travels carry her through generations of traumas and (often short-lived) victories. The past echoes in her. 

Gradually, in her present time, she makes friends at school. She connects with her seemingly tireless and caring foster mother, and prepares for her mom to come home from what appears to be an inpatient facility of some kind.

If you've appreciated A Girl Called Echo as much as I have, you'll be pleased to know that in 2023, Highwater Press published A Girl Called Echo OMNIBUS -- a collection of all four books, with some new informational material, evocative end papers, a foreword by Dr. Chantal Fiola, and a critical essay by Brenda Mcdougall. The timelines, maps, and other information from the individual volumes are also part of the Omnibus, providing important context for Echo's experiences. It's available in paperback and as an e-book. 

The Omnibus is a visually pleasing, "one-stop" resource for fans of Echo, for educators, and for anyone who wants to better understand the history of the Metis in what is currently called Canada -- and how that history can play out in the hearts and minds of contemporary Metis, like Echo and her family. 

Portage and Main has also published a teacher guide for A Girl Called Echo, created by Anishinaabe educator Reuben Boulette. It's available as an e-book or in coil-bound soft-cover. 

You can view excerpts of it on the publisher's Web site -- highly recommended!

With the success of A Girl Called Echo, it's my fervent hope that we'll begin to see more graphic-novel explorations of Indigenous people's history of what's currently called the United States. -- grounded in the present as well as in accurate representations of the past.

Highly Recommended! A Girl Called Echo, Volume 4: Road Allowance Era

 

A Girl Called Echo, Vol.4: Road Allowance Era

Written by Katherena Vermette (Red River Metis)

Illustrated by Scott B. Henderson; Colors by Donovan Yaciuk

Published in 2021

Publisher: Highwater Press

Reviewer: Jean Mendoza

Review Status: Highly Recommended

This will be a "Short and Sweet"* recommendation of the fourth book in the "A Girl Called Echo" graphic novel series. Katherena Vermette, Scott B. Henderson, and Donovan Yaciuk have teamed up again for another chapter in the story of Echo, a time-traveling contemporary Metis teen. 

Here are four of the many reasons to recommend it:

First: Katherena Vermette is Red River Metis, and her story is about Red River Metis people -- historical and contemporary -- in what is currently called Canada. Pivotal, and often traumatic, moments (such as the execution of Louis Riel, and government-sanctioned destruction of Metis communities) are given an Indigenous focus they don't receive in typical history classrooms. As with the previous Echo books, Vermette includes a timeline and other Metis-specific resources to deepen the reader's understanding of Echo's experiences when she travels to the past, and to help create a through-line to her current distresses. 

Second: Meeting one's forebears while time-traveling is a prospect that intrigues writers and consumers of speculative fiction. It may be presented as comedy (e.g., the Back to the Future films), or as drama (as in Octavia Butler's devastating Kindred). Road Allowance is primarily dramatic, though it has some very sweet, tender moments. I appreciate that Vermette keeps Echo from interacting directly with the major historical figures. That would have been a mess. Instead, what's foregrounded is the Metis: how they lived, what they hoped for, what they endured, and how the past may be present in a Metis child and her family, today. 

Third: One of my favorite things about this fourth volume is that it shows Echo and her contemporary family healing from whatever trauma led to Echo's mother being in an institution. Mother hugs daughter. Echo smiles big.  An ancestor tells her she is beautiful. A school friend listens to her expressions of anger and pain, and offers a helpful perspective. And Echo finds that she can decide when she will go to the past, and when she will go home.

Fourth: The story is thought-provoking even though Echo's far from the only fictional character ever to be what Vonnegut called "unstuck in time." For me, an especially lovely bit for thought lies in ways to think about the protagonist's name. Intergenerational trauma reverberates in Echo, at school and at home. She embodies the idea of "echoes of the past." But, when she interacts with her ancestors during their times, she also embodies what I think of as echoes of support or hope from future generations to the forebears who needed reasons to carry on in the face of racism, dispossession, betrayal, and genocide. 

We hope you'll share the whole series, including Volume 4: The Road Allowance Era, with middle schoolers and teens you know. Though it's set in what's currently called Canada, the Indigenous people didn't make the border, and the experiences on either side of it run parallel, when they don't directly intersect.

*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.

The Monster That Eats Villages: White Anti-Indigenous Raceshifting in Canada

by Jean Mendoza

Pre-COVID, when Durango and I took road trips with our grandkids, they often asked to hear our storytelling CDs by Dovie Thomason (Lakota/Kiowa Apache). One of her creepiest stories, from Wopila: A Giveaway, is a tale that begins when some men, on the way home from hunting, hear a baby's cry. One man follows the sound, and returns to the group carrying an infant. The others are wary about this, but he insists that they take the baby to their village. 

There, the child is welcomed and given to a young woman to raise. But that night, she notices something strange about the sleeping child: echoes of human cries and screams seem to emanate from him. Soon, it's (quietly) determined that the "baby" is actually Iya, a shape-shifting monster that gains access to villages by trickery, then swallows them whole. 

I won't spoil Dovie's gift by giving away the ending. But I do want to talk about how that story intersects with some scholarly reading I've been doing.

Darryl Leroux's Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity (University of Manitoba Press, 2019) takes a close look at a particular set of non-Native people who claim Native identity. 

As you may already know, that phenomenon has been around a long time on what's currently called North America. The perpetrators tend to be white, and have a variety of motivations for their claims. Some "admire" Native people and view Nativeness as a space where they can somehow belong just because they want to. For some, it's a career boost. It helps them to stand out from other white people in otherwise crowded fields. Maybe it helps them get a job in academia or with a Native nation, or garners them extra attention as an artist, novelist, or speaker. Sometimes the motives (and the individual's confidence that they won't eventually get called out) are hard to figure out, as with white writers like Joseph Boyden, "Jamake Highwater," and John Smelcer who have falsely claimed to be Indigenous. Recently, Native and mainstream media covered a case of faux-Indigenous identity with an especially sick twist: a white person essentially created the persona of a Native scholar, and posted on social media under that identity for several years. This masquerade became public knowledge (though some, especially Native scholars, had long suspected it) when the perpetrator decided to kill off the alter-ego via COVID, and the "death" couldn't be confirmed.

Then there are the faux-"tribal" organizations that a white person in what's currently the United States can join, often for some amount of money. Many of these provide cover for non-Natives seeking personal gain, such as through lucrative government contracts that give priority to businesses owned by BIPOC.

Those fakeries are not a part of Leroux's research. Though they are examples of what he calls "raceshifting," what Leroux has studied takes the identity fraud to a whole different level. Leroux is not Native, by the way. He's looking at what amounts to a movement, in which large numbers of French-descendant white Canadians have begun "self-Indigenizing" with very particular anti-Indigenous goals. This practice, Leroux says, has been growing by leaps and bounds for the past 20 years. Though it's not confined to white-presenting people of French descent or to Canadians, his primary focus is on people who claim to be "Eastern Métis" (or sometimes "Quebec métis), a category that Leroux notes has no real historical basis.

To be clear: there are peoples with legitimate Métis identity. If what I say here is incorrect in any way, I hope Métis readers will jump in and correct me. Their homelands mainly are considered to be in what are currently known as Canada's Western provinces, and parts of the northern US. Their culture and language are based on kinship relations between early French-speaking settlers and the Plains Cree, Salteaux, Assiniboine, and Dene peoples. Métis in French is equivalent to the English word "mixed." According to what I've read about the language (Michif), it combines elements of French, Cree, and some Ojibwe, and has a complex grammar and syntax. It is considered an endangered language. 

The true Métis identity comes with a history of struggle, bloodshed, and heroism. You can find some of this history woven into the graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo by Katharena Vermette. We've recommended Echo books on AICL. 

But the self-Indigenizing "Eastern Métis" have no interest in that history. They do not claim to be descendants of people stolen from their Indigenous families by boarding schools, "adopting out", or other government policies and practices. They're not trying to find a way home. If they were, Leroux points out, First Nations have mechanisms for dealing with their circumstances.

Instead, these raceshifters tend to be openly contemptuous of Indigenous peoples. They hold (one might say they cherish) negative stereotypes and blatantly white supremacist beliefs about First Nations. They have no interest in traditions (unlike white New-Agers in the US), or in revitalizing endangered Native languages. French is the only language they express concern about preserving.

Their sole interest lies in Native rights -- specifically, in getting those rights for themselves. Hunting and fishing rights are particularly important to a number of the raceshifters. In fact, Leroux found, hunting and fishing organizations are where a great many of them got to know each other.  Some have met through white-rights groups. Leroux found them openly, actively committed to opposing Indigenous land and territorial negotiations. They make no secret of these goals -- not in online forums, in court, nor in their conversations with Leroux. You might say they are deeply and proudly committed to making sure the part of the world they're in stays as colonized as possible.

They have no real understanding of the background of the legal relations between Canada and First Nations and Métis, nor do they care about it. What they know is that the First Nations people seem to have some things they feel should be theirs (e.g., the right to hunt or fish freely in certain places over which Indigenous people -- with good reason -- have jurisdiction). They saw that the quickest way to get those things would be to claim Indigenous ancestry.

So how do these proudly white-presenting raceshifters go about making themselves Indigenous? 

They can't simply claim that Great-Grandma was an Ojibwe princess; that doesn't work any more. Instead, Leroux found, they use circuitous genealogical and legal-system maneuvers. They comb through genealogies -- readily available partly because of the long-standing French Canadian interest in European heritage. They manage to trace their lineages to a few specific 17th-century women. Those women's birth records, marriage records, etc. indicate that they were French immigrants to what is now called Canada. But (sometimes with the help of genealogists of questionable repute) the raceshifters concoct Indigenous identities for the women, "discovering" that this or that ancestor from the 1600s was Ojibwe, Wendat, or some other Native identity --even when records clearly show that the supposed forebear was born in France, to French parents. Often with encouragement from others on online forums, aspiring "Eastern Métis" sidestep or ignore or flat-out lie about evidence that in fact their ancestry is purely European. Some have gone so far as to claim that there were obviously TWO persons named X in a given area in the 1600s, and THEIR ancestor of that name was Indigenous. 

All of this might be comical if the raceshifters didn't pose a threat to the political well-being of First Nations/Métis peoples. The (white) "Eastern Métis" number in the thousands. One of their manufactured "tribal" identities has some 20,000 members. There may be enough of them to turn the heads of elected officials who need Métis votes. Leroux recounts a situation in which they worked hard to mobilize local residents against the Innu and Mi'kmaq First Nations. Raceshifters may even get elected to office themselves, with direct power over the interpretation of First Nations' rights. 

Leroux's Raceshifting Web site includes a map showing the locations of faux-Metis organizations, and lists the court cases they've been involved in. In none of those cases were the fakers seeking greater rights for actual Indigenous people. Invariably, they saw those rights as illegitimate, and sought to erode them.   

At first, I was reading Distorted Descent in the end-of-the-day calm when I could take in Leroux's careful scholarship and the complexities of his research (not having encountered words like "haploid" for many years). But after a certain point in the book, I was so angry and horrified it was hard to fall asleep. My dreams were populated by monsters and I was unable to shout to spread an alarm. 

It seemed to me that in those dreams, the faux-Métis were the monsters -- like the evil Iya in Dovie's story, they disguise themselves in order to destroy and devour. Their unapologetic contempt for actual First Nations and Métis peoples, their self-justification, their racism, their trickery, and their ultimate goals, are infuriating and terrifying. Now I read Leroux's book in the full light of day, in small doses. Horror has never been a good genre for me, and Distorted Descent is, to me, a real-life, research-based horror story.

So why talk about this academic work on AICL? Because I have no doubt that before long, someone who claims to be "Eastern Métis" will write a children's book in what purports to be an authentic Métis voice. Readers, educators, librarians: be wary. Be informed. 

By all means, read Vermette's A Girl Called Echo series! And buy Dovie Thomason's CDs, and go see her in person when the COVID monster is vanquished.  

I'm not done reading Distorted Descent yet. Not wanting to make any unwarranted negative judgments in this post, I skimmed the conclusion to see if at least some of Leroux's subjects found a conscience and moved toward more ethical behavior.  I am sorry to say that -- as is the case with the monster Iya -- the antagonists in this story have no redemption arc.

RECOMMENDED: Red River Resistance: A Girl Called Echo, V.2

Red River Resistance: A Girl Called Echo, Volume 2 

Written by Katherena Vermette (Metis)

Illus. by Scott B. Henderson. Colors by Donovan Yaciuk 

Published in 2019

Publisher: Highwater Press

Reviewed by Jean Mendoza 

Status: Recommended

Red River Resistance is the second graphic novel in Katherena Vermette's A Girl Called Echo series. The Metis teen protagonist of Volume 1 (Pemmican Wars) is still quiet, still spends a lot of time with earbuds in, listening to her music, but she's becoming less isolated. She is befriended by a classmate named Micah. She gets involved with the school's Indigenous Student Leadership group, under the guidance of teachers Mr. Bee and Mx Francois. She plays in the snow with her foster family. And she smiles a bit. But powerful dreams and daydreams still take her into the Metis history of what is currently called Canada. This time, her dream episodes are set in 1869-70, when political machinations in Canada focused on pushing Indigenous and Metis people further and further west. Metis leader Louis Riel is a central figure in the dream events Echo experiences. 

The first Echo book established that Echo is in foster care because her mother is in some sort of facility (mental health care? halfway house?). We can guess that historical or intergenerational trauma may be affecting the family. Echo's dreaming translates facts she learns in class into stories of her Metis ancestors. More than once, Echo wakes with tears streaming down her face. She feels the impact of historical events viscerally, (re)living hopeful and joyous moments as well as the pain of betrayal and shattered hopes, displacements, departures, and violence witnessed.  

Though it's not the story's only "message," teachers and others who work with young people need to be mindful that children and their family members may be affected in the present by what happened during earlier stages of settler-colonization. Intergenerational trauma may not be easily recognizable, but it's real. It can be a factor in depression, loneliness, child neglect, and other problems that are generally considered mental health issues, and the effects of those are communicated from generation to generation through actions and beliefs.

The more time I spend with this book, the more I appreciate the author's and the illustrator's & colorist's craft:

• Character development. Echo's teachers, Mr. Bee and Mx Francois, are believable and rounded-out, though Mx Francois (pronouns they, them, their/s) hasn't yet had as much to say as Mr. Bee has. Mr. Bee, for example, stands in front of a classroom of benignly disengaged students and talks about what he loves: history. Notice how he seems to just assume his dozing, note-passing students are getting what they need from the information he's sharing. 
• Detail in the graphics. Take time to read the screen on Echo's mp3 player. Notice the subtly pleased looks on the faces of the two teachers as they watch Echo and the other students talking together after the Indigenous Leadership bake sale. And spend a moment with the panel that shows the exhilaration Echo and her friend feel when they believe, briefly, that Louis Riel's efforts have succeeded -- wow!    
• Things that pique interest: Such as -- Echo's foster mom -- what's her story? She has a houseful, including a child with special physical needs (seen in Pemmican Wars). Yet she treats Echo with great concern and respect, and when Echo seeks her out after a very bad dream, she seems surprised but her from-the-heart response is perfect. 
• The back matter. A detailed Red River Resistance timeline and the Metis List of Rights from 1870 helped me better understand Mr. Bee's lectures and Echo's dreams. Both were essential, in fact.

A particular strength of the Echo books is that so far, Katherena Vermette has not had Echo interact directly with real historical figures in her dreams. Her relationships of the past are with people about her age, who seem to be her guides (Marie in Pemmican Wars, Benjamin in Red River Resistance.) I hope that trend continues. It's much more effective, in my opinion, to have her be primarily an observer, than to imagine fake dialogue between a 21st century middle schooler and someone such as Louis Riel.

Something to watch for: Volume 3 of A Girl Called Echo is due out in February 2020!

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.