Highly Recommended: MII MAANDA EZHI-GKENDMAANH / THIS IS HOW I KNOW, written by Brittany Luby; illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley [and a note about translators]

Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh

This is How I Know

Written by Brittany Luby (Anishinaabe descent)

Illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley (Ojibwe, member 

of Wasauksing First Nation)

Translated by Alvin Ted Corbiere and Alan Corbiere (Anishinaabe 

from M'Chigeeng First Nation)

Published in 2021

Publisher: Groundwood Books

Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewer: Debbie Reese (Nambé Owingeh)

****

Hidden in the dense branches of the spruce tree in my back yard, a mother cardinal sits on a nest. We've peeked in on her and the hatchlings a couple of times, but then I come inside and look online for videos of cardinal nests. Watching videos rather than the nest in our yard gives this cardinal family the safety that my presence must surely interrupt. From afar, I watch as the male and female cardinals fly here and there, gathering food that they then take to the nest. 

I think that a combination of spring flowers, a growing vaccinated population, and the life in that tree are impacting the warmth I feel as I read Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh (This is How I Know). 

"This is how I know" is a refrain that structures Luby and Pawis-Steckley's picture book. On the title page we see the full title, in Anishinaabemowin, and then in English. That ordering of language is on the cover, too, and is what you'll see on every page. 

I want you to notice, on the title page, the names of the translators: Alvin Ted Corbiere, and Alan Corbiere. They are a father and son from M'Chigeeng First Nation. For this and every book, I'd like to see the names of translator's on the cover. Individuals who speak and write an Indigenous language are--for many--more significant than the story a book tells. I don't mean to cast a shadow on this book. I like it very much, as the "Highly Recommended" tag demonstrates. I'm speaking more to book designers who make decisions about what goes where, in books they publish.

During the pandemic, many tribal nations made sure that those who speak their language were among the first to receive Covid vaccines. Though the US and Canadian governments tried very hard to eradicate us in every way, we resisted--and we resist, now. Across tribal nations, language programs are thriving because of people like the Corbiere's who translated this book. So--editors/designers--I hope you'll revisit your treatment of translators. 

Now, back to the book! The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education, Wisconsin-Madison selected it for their Book of the Week on April 26. 

It begins with these words near the bottom of a page, surrounded by white space:

Aaniish ezhi-gkendmaanh niibing?

How do I know summer is here?

Facing those words is a large illustration of blueberries. Over the next pages, we learn about the things the child and their grandparent see that tell them summer is here. Gorgeously illustrated pages follow. We see Loon, Luna Moth, Bumblebee, Screech Owl, and a stunning sunset with texture and depth. Beneath that sunset, we read:

Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh niibing.

This is how I know summer. 

Turning the page, we're again in a white space as we begin a new section where the child and their grandmother will see the things of fall. And again, for winter, and then for spring. On those pages for spring, there's a seagull and a robin, sitting on the eggs in their nests. 

As I began this review, I recognized the illustrator's name. Two days ago when I wrote about Angeline Boulley's Firekeeper's Daughter, I talked a bit about Sharice Davids and her book, Sharice's Big Voice, due out soon. I mentioned the illustrator for her book. It is the same person who did the illustration's for Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This is How I Know. Looking at their website, I see outstanding work that has a lot more detail than I see in this book and wonder about the decisions that went into these. Take a look at his site! 

Order a copy of Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This is How I Know for your classroom and library, and ask for it at your local bookstore and public library. 

Highly Recommended: Cherie Dimaline's THE MARROW THIEVES

I first came to know Cherie Dimaline's writing last year, when I read "Legends are Made, Not Born" in Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An LGBT and Two-Spirit Sci Fi Anthology. The character she writes about in that story is named Auntie Dave. 

I wrote, then, that I had to "just be" with Auntie Dave and that story for awhile. There's a quality in Dimaline's writing that reached from the page, into my being. 

That's the case, too, with The Marrow Thieves. I paused again and again as I met and came to know 16 year-old French, and then the people who would become his family: Miig, Wab, Zheegwon, Tree, RiRi, Minerva, Chi-Boy, and Slopper. 

Later, French will meet and fall in love with Rose. On page 32, there's a line about her that squeezes my heart. "We had a future and a past all bundled up in her round dark cheeks and loose curls." 

French (sometimes called Frenchie; his given name is Francis) and the rest are on the run, running away from "the Recruiters." Here, I'll share the description from the back cover:

Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The Indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. 

In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden.... but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves. 

The hunters in Dimaline's story are "the Recruiters." They're the ones French and all the others are hiding from, running from. The Marrow Thieves begins when French is 11, being chased by those Recruiters who want to take Indigenous people to schools to take their marrow. That's a specific reference to the residential schools of the past, where so much was taken from Native children. It is one of many points in The Marrow Thieves where--painfully or with exquisite beauty--Dimaline's story resonates with me. It will resonate with other Native readers, too, especially those who are Anishinabe. Several tribal nations are mentioned in here, too.

One moment that made my heart swell is when the group has come to an abandoned hotel. After months of sleeping on the ground in tents, they cautiously enter the hotel, and then later, enthusiastically say good night, each in their own rooms, on beds. For the first time, French and Rose are curled up together. They're startled when they hear little Ri say "French, can I sleep with you guys?" and then a minute or two later, Slopper (he and Ri are the two children in the group) appears and says "Move over, French. I can't sleep." They drift off to sleep. That's how it is.

There's a passage in The Marrow Thieves that, for me, embodies what matters for any society. French thinks about how, when a people don't have their youngest and their oldest, they are without deep roots, and without an acute need to protect and make things better.

That's a key piece of why this story is one I'm carrying. It is about caring, about love, about how people can continue, and will continue.

There's so much more to say. About... song. About Miggs and Isaac, about Ri, about Minerva, about French.  But I'll stop and let you be with these achingly dear characters.

I highly recommend The Marrow Thieves. I ordered my copy from Canada. Published by Dancing Cat Books (an imprint of Cormorant Books), it isn't available in the US till later this year.

Worry and Wonder, by Marcie Rendon, in SKY BLUE WATER: GREAT STORIES FOR YOUNG READERS

Marcie Rendon's "Worry and Wonder" is a short story in Sky Blue Water: Great Stories for Young Readers, edited by Jay D. Peterson and Collette A. Morgan. Here's a screen cap of the cover and a partial listing of the Table of Contents:

Published in 2016 by the University of Minnesota Press, Worry and Wonder is one of those stories where a character is going to be with me for a long time. I could call Worry and Wonder a story about the Indian Child Welfare Act--or, "ick waa waa." That's what Amy is calling it when the story opens. She's a seventh grader, sitting in her social studies class, doodling "ick waa waa" on her notebook as her teacher talks about the environment, and the importance of water.

Amy's  thinking back to the day before, when she'd been in court and the judge said she'd have to wait another three months before going to live with her dad. Amy's "ick waa waa" and images she draws by those words capture her frustration with ICWA. In those three months, however, she spends more and more time with her dad.

Are you wondering about ICWA? In the story, Amy's dad tells her about it:

He explained that ICWA stood for the Indian Child Welfare Act. He told her how in the 1950s and 1960s Indian children were taken from their families and placed with white families. How those children had grown up and fought to have federal legislation passed so that Indian kids, if they needed to be placed in foster care, would be placed with Indian families, like the home Amy was in, and how it was federal law, tribal law, that the courts and the tribes had to try and find immediate family for children to be reunited with, which is why the courts had found him and told him to come home to raise Amy.

Some of you know that ICWA was in the news in 2016. Five years ago, a Choctaw child was placed with a white foster home in California. Since then, her Choctaw father had been trying to get her back, but the white family had been fighting to keep her. In the end, her father prevailed. In March, when child services went to pick up the six-year-old child, the home was surrounded by media and protestors who thought the white family ought to be able to keep her. That family turned the case into a media frenzy, with one major news source after another misrepresenting ICWA, tribal sovereignty, and tribal citizenship. Right around then, I read Emily Henry's The Love That Split the World. In it, a white couple finds a work-around to ICWA and adopts a Native infant. That character's Native identity is central to that story, which draws heavily from a wide range of unattributed an detribalized Native stories that guide that character. As you may surmise, I do not recommend Henry's novel.

The case of the Choctaw child and Emily Henry's young adult novel were in my head as I started reading Rendon's story of Amy.

Rendon--who is White Earth Anishinabe--gives us a story that doesn't misrepresent ICWA or Native identity, or nationhood. My heart ached for Amy as I read, and it soared, too. Rendon's story is infused with Native content. Some, like the water ceremony, are explicit. That part of the story is sure to tug on the heart strings of those who are following the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's fight to protect their water from Big Oil. There are other things in the story, too, that Native readers will discern.

Rendon's Worry and Wonder 

is filled with mirrors for Native readers. 

From start to finish, Rendon's short story is deeply touching. I highly recommend it and look forward to more from her. In my not-yet read pile is Murder on the Red River, due out in 2017 from Cinco Puntos Press. It may be one of the books I'll recommend as a crossover (marketed to adults, but one that teens will enjoy).

Above I showed you a partial listing of the Table of Contents. I've yet to read Anne Ursu's story, but I look forward to it. Her character, Oscar, in The Real Boy is like Amy. In my heart. Get a copy of Sky Blue Water. 

Marcie Rendon's POWWOW SUMMER: A FAMILY CELEBRATES THE CIRCLE OF LIFE (2013)

Back in the 1990s when I started graduate school, I read Marcie Rendon's Powwow Summer: A Family Celebrates the Circle of Life. Originally published by Carolrhoda Books in 1996, I'm delighted to see that it is back in print. This time, it is a paperback published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Here's the cover:

Isn't it gorgeous? Powwow Summer is full of solid information about Native people of today. Its text and photographs are what captivated me when I first read it. It wasn't another book about long-ago-and-far-away-tribeless-stereotypical-Indians. As I turned each page, I learned a lot.

See, I'm tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo, in northern New Mexico. I grew up there. From my parents, grandparents, and elders, I learned about us and how we do things. That means the material things we do (cooking traditional foods) and the spiritual things we do, too (our dances are a form of prayer). My photo albums have photos of Nambe kids playing outside, helping their grandma's cook, and, photos of them in traditional clothing. I know a lot about who we are.

Marcie's book taught me about her people, which are the Anishinaabe (I met Marcie several years ago. See my review of her play, "SongCatcher: A Native Interpretation of the Story of Frances Densmore"). The text and photographs in Powwow Summer provide a depth of information that is tribally specific.

Marcie asks questions that help the reader frame the information within their own family context (p. 3):

Does your family have a ritual of going to church or synagogue every weekend? Does someone in your family play a sport, and do the rest of you attend to cheer that person on?

If you're looking for top notch books to add to your shelves this month (November is Native American Month), include this one. (Note: Back in 1996 when I launched American Indians in Children's Literature, one of the first books I wrote about was Powwow Summer.) 

The details:
Title: Powwow Summer
Author: Marcie Rendon
Illustrator: Cheryl Walsh Bellville
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Year: 2013

Marcie Rendon's SongCatcher

A few weeks ago, I met a woman whose work inspires me on many levels. That woman is Marcie R. Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. That's her in the image to the left, and isn't that an awesome poem overlaid on the pic?

As regular readers of American Indians in Children's Literature know, I am highly critical of the uncritical use of stories collected in the late 1800s and early 1900s by people who thought we (American Indians) were about to go the way of the dinosaurs. By that I mean vanish from the face of the earth. Go extinct. Cease to exist.

The people doing the collecting were not Native. The collectors worked for the Smithsonian. Some (most?) of them didn't know much about what they were looking at when they turned their non-Native eyes on Native people going about our lives. The result of that was a whole lot of misinterpretation.

And, in the name of research and science, those collectors would try to gain access to things the tribes didn't want them to see. Frank Hamilton Cushing was notorious about that. He was out at Zuni. Elsie Clews Parson was at Nambe and amongst the Pueblos, and she did some pretty outrageous things, too. Going where she wasn't wanted, recruiting informants, and then, calling one of them a liar in one of her reports. To Parson, I'd say "how do you know it was just one person who lied to you?!"

And that is why I'm so excited by Marcie Rendon's "SongCatcher: A Native Interpretation of the Story of Frances Densmore." It is a play, published in Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater. Edited by Jaye T. Darby and Stephanie Fitzgerald, the anthology was published by the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. Available in paperback, the cost is $25.

Marcie's play is about a collector named Frances Densmore. I'd love to see it on stage!

The setting is present day. A young Native man named Jack and his Native girlfriend Chris are the main characters. Chris was raised with her Native community. Jack was not. He knows he's Native, and he goes to powwows and hangs out with Native people. He wants to know more, though, about his own tribe, and he especially wants a song of his own. Bill is an older Native man who visits with Jack and Chris in their apartment. Like Chris, Bill was raised knowing his community. Both Chris and Bill tell Jack that the song will come to him, that he has to listen for it.

Jack is impatient and rather than listen patiently, he decides to find a song. To find it, he turns to Frances Densmore's books and recordings.

Jack's activity (learning his heritage from a book) is not ok! All through his research process, Spirit Woman is near him, trying to give him a song. She's on stage, but he can't see her. He (and Chris and Bill) also can't see Frances Densmore when she is on stage. She's there a lot. Anytime Chris or Bill are talking, she goes right beside them, notebook in hand, and writes down what she hears them saying.

I'll stop, there, and let you get the play and read it yourself. As the play progresses, fascinating things are revealed. Marcie's play is a page-turner! If you are a writer that uses the Smithsonian archives (the Bureau of American Ethnography), don't do it! Or, at the very least, read Marcie's play before you do...

SongCatcher can be used in high school and college classes in English, Theater, Creative Writing, History, and of course, Anthropology. If your school has classes in Social Justice, use it there!

Later this week, I hope to find time to write about Marcie's play, The Rough Face Girl, comparing it to Rafe Martin and David Shannon's retelling of that story. I'll say this much. He got it wrong.