"Native Americans" category on Jeopardy

In 2011, one of the clues on Jeopardy was "The National Museum of the American Indian." None of the contestants selected a clue in that category until they had no choice:

NMAI (the National Museum of the American Indian) made a video of that episode. The image (above) is from their video.

On April 12, 2016, "Native Americans" was the category. Just like in 2011, contestants avoided it. Martie Simmons, snapped a photograph of it and put the photograph on Twitter and on Facebook. It is circulating widely in Native social media (a shout out to Martie for letting me use her photo):

One of the contestants responded to her:

What does this avoidance point to?  Fear of saying the wrong thing? Or, fear of their ignorance being on national TV? Or, fear of answering the question wrong and hurting their chance of winning?

The same thing happened in February of 2014, too. The category then was African American History:

This avoidance is, to say the least, disappointing. Frank Waln, a hip hop artist from the Rosebud Reservation responded to it, too, on Twitter. He said:

"This [is] what 100s [of] years of erasure and colonial propaganda masquerading as history does."

If you missed his interview on NPR's here & now on April 6, 2016, listen to it and his music, too.

Teachers and librarians: this points to a huge gap. Our job is clear. Start with getting books written by Native writers.

Update

Thanks to Todd, a librarian on YALSA, for pointing me to an archive of the clues for the Jeopardy episodes. Here's screen caps from yesterday's show:

If you roll over the dollar figure, the answer appears:
$200 - Cherokee
$400 - steamboat
$600 - lacrosse
$800 - Little Big Horn
$1000 - Navajo

Though some of the comments below are defensive or critical of my post, what I've seen on YALSA's listserv has been positive and helpful (like the link for the archive). It'd be interesting, next, to analyze the clues, but I'll leave that be, maybe, for another day.

National Museum of the American Indian: Newsletter for Teachers

Anytime you're in Washington DC, I hope you visit the National Museum of the American Indian. I was part of our tribal delegation when it opened several years ago. My daughter and I carry warm memories of that day. It was powerful and affirming in so many ways. I've worked with several people there, as well as attending some of their webcasts.

Today I want to point you to their newsletter for teachers. Five issues are available online. Here's a screenshot of the most recent one (Winter 2015):

Back in 2009, I wrote about When the Rain Sings: Poems by Young Native Americans that is featured in the newsletter for Winter 2015. In that second paragraph above, Renee Gokey pointed to the selection criteria developed at the American Indian Library Association for its Youth Literature Award, a rubric for evaluating books, and my page of Best Books.

Visit the NMAI site and read the newsletters! In the current one, you'll see two more wonderful books on the first page: Sweetest Kulu and House of Purple Cedar. 

The newsletter talks about Never Alone, too, which I haven't looked at, but know is highly regarded by many of my colleagues.

And--there's a note, too, about what is coming in the next newsletter: how to engage children in difficult topics, like Indian Removal.

"Indians at the Post Office"

The National Postal Museum has an exhibit up called Indians at the Post Office. The murals were made in the 1930s and 1940s and are part of a larger set, all created at the same time, as part of a public art program. The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is focusing on the murals with depictions of Native peoples in them. Most of them were done by artists who were/are not Native themselves. It is a fascinating exhibit. Dr. Jose Barreiro, Assistant Director of the History and Culture Research Museum Scholarship group of NMAI wrote that that the murals:

"incorporate the salient, stereotypical images that have confronted and continue to challenge contemporary American Indian people. Some of these are quite harsh, tending toward a punitive and degrading perception of Indian people."

Some of the murals were done by Native artists. Today on AICL, I'm sharing two of them. The one on top is by a non-Native artist. It reflects the stereotypical image Barreiro refers to. It wouldn't be hard to find similar depictions in children's books of that time period, would it? And of course--because some of those books are deemed classic, kids still see them and don't know/aren't taught that they're stereotypical. The one on bottom is by a Native artist. See the differences? In Bessemer's, there is a monolithic Indian.

"Early Indian Life on Analostan Island"
by Auriel Bessemer, Arlington, VA Post Office

"Grand Council of 1842"
by Walter Richard West Sr., Cheyenne Nation, Okemah, OK Post Office 

Lest you think I'm making an unfair comparison because of the two different time periods being depicted, here's one that depicts a treaty signing in 1830. It, too, was done by a non-Native artist. As with the one by Bessemer, there is no variation in the way the Native people are depicted.

"Signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek"
by S. Douglass Crockwell, Macon, MS Post Office

Want to see more? I viewed the images above at "History or Bunk?: 20 New Deal Murals Depicting American Indians" at the website for Indian Country Today Media Network. If your post office has a mural that depicts Native people, I'd love to see a photo if you have the means to take one. If not, I'd still love to hear about it.

American Indians and "Double Jeopardy!" (yeah, the game show)

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) publishes a blog that is loaded with terrific information. In January, they uploaded a series of images and a video of an episode of Jeopardy. The reason? One of the categories was "National Museum of the American Indian."

The surprise (or maybe not a surprise) was that the contestants chose EVERY OTHER ITEM IN EVERY OTHER CATEGORY. Finally, they had no choice. They had to select an item in the "National Museum of the American Indian" category. Does that blow you away? Jeopardy contestants know a lot of stuff... But they avoided that category. Watch the video NMAI put together.



As you saw, the contestants did ok with the clues in the NMAI category. But they were definitely afraid to go there... 

Want to see more? Read "Double Jeopardy" at the NMAI site, and click around while there! You'll learn a lot.

American Indians/American Presidents

Last semester, Matt Gilbert gave me a book called American Indians/American Presidents: A History. Published by the Smithsonian, it looks to be quite promising, and something libraries ought to get. I say "looks to be" because I've not had time to read or study it. I'm drawn to the photographs.... 

The book is full of photographs. Richard Nixon in a headdress? Wondering why he's in a headdress?!

The book includes an introduction by Clifford E. Trafzer, followed by:

1. "Native Nations and the New Nation, 1776-1820," by Robert W. Venables
2. "Native Nations in an Age of Western Expansion, 1820-80," by Donna Akers
3. "Dark Days, American Presidents and Native Sovereignty, 1880-1930," by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
4. "From Full Citizenship to Self-Determination, 1930-75," by Duane Champagne
5. "The Era of Self-Determination: 1975-Today," by Troy Johnson

As I look at the photographs, I like that they're straight-up black and white. They have not been reproduced in that sepia tone that we've come to associate with the past in a romantic way (or at least that's what it seems to me.) Some are in sepia, but I'm guessing they were originally preserved that way. A lot of photo software programs allow users to turn photos into sepia, and it seems to me people do that a LOT with Native photos. Its an aesthetic choice, but I don't like it. I think its one of the ways that representations of American Indians are done to frame us in the past, or, in a timeless way.

Check out Matt's blog, Beyond the Mesas. Reading what he writes provides you with the opportunity to become deeply knowledgeable about the Hopi Nation, thereby becoming a more-informed librarian or teacher. Being more-informed will help you better-select children's and young adult literature.

Poems: WHEN THE RAIN SINGS

The National Museum of the American Indian has published some excellent books. Sometime back I wrote about their Do All Indians Live in Tipis?

Today I point you to another one. When the Rain Sings is a book of poems written by young Native people from several tribal nations: Ojibwe, Lakota, Omaha, Navajo, Cochiti/Kiowa, O'odham, Yaqui, Hopi, and Ute. When the Rain Sings was first published in 1999. The story behind the book is included in this new edition, which is dedicated to Lee Francis, the founding director of Wordcraft Circle. Through the committed work of Lee Francis and others, we've got more Native writers than ever before.

Most of the poems in When the Rain Sings are paired with an item at the museum. Rainbird Winters' poem "Manido Mashkimod (Spirit Bag)" is about bandolier bags. Alongside it is an Ojibwe bandolier bag.

Teachers who use the book will find the teaching guide helpful. It is on the "Ideas for the Classroom" page created by NMAI. There you can see three of the poems in the book. The book is available from NMAI for $14.95.

As I write about When the Rain Sings, sitting in my house in Illinois, listening to the rain on this cool spring morning, I wish I was home at Nambe. There, the rain has a delicious smell...

CD: Native Writers Read Their Work

Available from the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) at the Smithsonian Institution is a wonderful CD called Pulling Down the Clouds: Contemporary Native Writers Read Their Work.

All year long, visitors to the museum can view the exhibits, but there are also opportunities to listen to Native writers, scholars, and musicians.

Pulling Down the Clouds includes the following writers, reading their work:

N. Scott Momaday
Louise Erdrich
Sherwin Bitsui
Ofelia Zepeda
Karenne Wood
Simon Ortiz
Jim Northrup
Joy Harjo
M. L. Smoker
Duncan Primeaux
Debra Magpie Earling
Tomson Highway
LeAnne Howe
Nora Marks Dauenhauer
Susan Power

Quite a list, eh?!

Debra Magpie Earling.... She's got a terrific YA novel that I've not yet blogged. Her novel is called Perma Red. You recognize Joy Harjo's name? She wrote the picture book, The Good Luck Cat. Simon Ortiz? The People Shall Continue. LeAnne Howe---I've written recently about her new book, Miko Kings. And Louise Erdrich, author of Birchbark House and The Game of Silence.



None of them read from their work for children, but they are gifted writers, and if you do author studies with your students, you may find the CD useful. It is available from the NMAI's on line store. Click here to get there.
.

DO ALL INDIANS LIVE IN TIPIS?

Are you a teacher wondering if all Indians live in tipis? If so, order a copy of the book Do All Indians Live in Tipis?: Questions and Answers from the National Museum of the American Indian. It isn't a children's book, per se, but its content is certainly accessible to upper elementary readers, and, it will prove useful to teachers developing lesson plans about American Indians.

In the foreword, founding director Rick West (Southern Cheyenne and member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma) writes:

Before I became the founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian, I was a practicing attorney, and sometimes, when I hear the odd--and even offensive--questions that almost every Indian must bear, I want to rise up and shout, "I object!"

The introduction is by Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee). She writes:

In 1963 President John F. Kennedy said, "for a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians are the least understood and the most misunderstood of us all." Regrettably, this statement is as true today as it was more than forty years ago. Many negative stereotypes persist.

She goes on to say that summer visitors to the Cherokee Nation include tourists who wanted to know "Where are all the Indians?" To which she'd reply "They are probably at Wal-Mart!"

West and Mankiller's words set the state quite nicely for a volume consisting of about 100 questions, grouped into these categories:

• Identity
• Origins and Histories
• Popular Myths
• Clothing, Housing, Food, and Health
• Ceremony and Ritual
• Sovereignty
• Animals and Land
• Language and Education
• Love and Marriage
• Art, Music, Dance, and Sports

Here's a sample of the questions:

• Why was the Navajo language chosen for military code in World War II? Were all Indian "code talkers" Navajo?
• Did all tribes have totem poles? Does anyone still carve them?
• How many Indians lived in the Western Hemisphere when Columbus arrived?
• Why is the word Eskimo sometimes offensive?

Published by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and HarperCollins, I paid $14.95 for the book at Pages for All Ages, our local independent bookstore. With "Native American Month" approaching in November, you will find it a useful volume.

And, as always, consider moving your lesson plans about American Indians OUT of November; teaching about American Indians only during that month contributes to the mistaken idea that we are only a people of the past, long vanished. That is not the case. We are still here.

Get your copy at the National Museum of the American Indian giftshop, or, from Louise Erdrich's independent bookstore, Birchbark Books.