Native American Representation in Children's Literature: Challenging the People of the Past Narrative, by Julie Stivers

Eds Note: Today, AICL is pleased to share a study done by Julie Stivers, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, School of Library and Information Science. Ms. Stivers shared the poster (below) with me earlier this week. I was reading Ed Valandra's article that day and sent it to her because her study confirms Vine Deloria Jr.'s observations about books published from 1968 to 1975 (Valandra's article is listed below in Additional Resources). Of those four years, Deloria wrote (p. 105-106):

...it seemed as if every book on modern Indians was promptly buried by a book on the "real" Indians of yesteryear. The public overwhelming[ly] turned to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and The Memories of Chief Red Fox to avoid the accusations made by modern Indians in The Tortured Americans and Custer Died for Your Sins. The Red Fox book alone sold more copies than the two modern books. 

Valandra continued:

In other words, the non-Indian literary world refused to consider Native peoples in a modern context, thus hindering the accurate depiction of contemporary Native issues.

Ms. Stivers studied children's books published since 2013. Her findings tell us that things haven't changed much. What gets published, matters. The writer's you read, and their viewpoints, matter. Please seek out Native writers! Think about their stories and what they choose to share. It matters. 

Thank you, Ms. Stivers, for giving AICL permission to share your excellent work on this project! 

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Native American Representation in Children's Literature: 

Challenging the "People of the Past" Narrative

by Julie Stivers

Are you a librarian...a teacher...or a parent?  Let’s think for a moment about the books we own that feature Native American main characters.  What are their settings?  In the past?  Modern day?  If the text does not make this clear—if, for example, there are anthropomorphic animals—what are they wearing?  Baseball caps and modern clothes or ‘leather and feathers’?

It was these questions that drove me to research the time settings of books featuring Native Americans for a Children’s Literature class assignment on content analysis.  Of the many problematic stereotypes in youth literature written about Native Americans, I chose to focus on examining the prevalence of the ‘people of the past’ narrative.  At face value, readers and librarians may think this is a harmless problem—which is, of course—what makes it so dangerous.  However, a predilection for featuring only Native American books that are set in the past puts forth a narrative that Native American people themselves are only of the past, allowing their present lives—and their sovereign rights—to be ignored.  This stereotype is damaging to the sense of self of contemporary Native youth.  A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children (Seale & Slapin, 2005) contains “living stories" which shed light on the negative impact stereotypes in literature are having on Native American youth.

This poster displays results from the content analysis of youth fiction books published since 2013 with Native American main characters.  75% of books written by non-Native authors were set before 1900, compared with only 20% written by Native authors.  Increasing the time period granularity makes the results even more striking.  No books by non-Native authors were set after 1950, whereas 75% of books by Native authors were, with 2/3 of books written by Native authors set in present day. 

Which books do we think are being put out by the Big Five publishers?  Overwhelmingly, those set in the past.  So, if we are relying on ‘mainstream’ review sources, ordering platforms, and book fairs, we will get a clearly biased view of Native Americans in our youth literature.  Only by seeking out offerings from independent publishers and learning from sites such as American Indians in Children’s Literature and Oyate can we successfully challenge the ‘people of the past’ narrative by collecting books about—and written by—Native Americans that reflect a wide range of experiences and settings.

Please note that this research makes no claims as to the quality or authenticity of the titles.  The presence of a book in a ‘pre-1900’ category does not preclude it from being an excellent example of literature featuring American Indians, such as How I Became a Ghost by Tim Tingle, praised by both Native reviewers and mainstream critics.  For this sample, however, there was a commonality for all well-reviewed books set in the past—they were all written by American Indian authors.

Additional Resources:

Seale, D. & Slapin, B. (Eds.). (2005).  A broken flute:  The Native experience in books for children.  Berkeley, CA:  Oyate.

Stewart, M.P. (2013).  “Counting Coup” on children’s literature about American Indians:  Louise Erdrich’s historical fiction.  Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 38(2), 215-235.

Valandra, E.C.  (2005).  The As-Told-To Native [Auto]biography:  Whose voice is speaking? Wicazo Sa Review, 29(2), 103-119.

Boccella Hartle, M. & Shebala, M. (2010).  When your hands are tied.  Documentary film.  http://www.whenyourhandsaretied.org/

THE CASE FOR LOVING by Selina Alko and Sean Qualls, but, what to do with what Jeter said about her identity?

Eds. note: See information about the second printing of the book, which was revised. 

New this year (2015) is The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko. Illustrations are by Alko and her husband, Sean Qualls.

The author's note tells us that Alko is a "white Jewish woman from Canada" and that Qualls is an "African-American man from New Jersey."

The story of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving resonated with Alko and Qualls. Their case went before the United States Supreme Court in 1967. Here's the synopsis posted at Scholastic's website:

For most children these days it would come as a great shock to know that before 1967, they could not marry a person of a race different from their own. That was the year that the Supreme Court issued its decision in Loving v. Virginia.

This is the story of one brave family: Mildred Loving, Richard Perry Loving, and their three children. It is the story of how Mildred and Richard fell in love, and got married in Washington, D.C. But when they moved back to their hometown in Virginia, they were arrested (in dramatic fashion) for violating that state's laws against interracial marriage. The Lovings refused to allow their children to get the message that their parents' love was wrong and so they fought the unfair law, taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court — and won!

The Loving case is of interest to me, too. We all ought to embrace its outcome. As the synopsis indicates, the story is about the love Jeter and Loving had for each other, and how, using the court system, laws against their desire to be married were struck down. We need to know that history. It is important. In her review in the New York Times, Katheryn Russell-Brown noted its strengths. She also said something I agree with:

Alko’s calm, fluid writing complements the simplicity of the Lovings’ wish — to be allowed to marry. Some of the wording, though, strikes a sour note. “Richard Loving was a good, caring man; he didn’t see differences,” she writes, suggesting, implausibly, that he did not notice Mildred’s race. After Mildred is identified as part black, part Cherokee, we are told that her race was less evident than her small size — that town folks mostly saw “how thin she was.” This language of colorblindness is at odds with a story about race. In fact, this story presents a wonderful chance to address the fact that noticing race is normal. It is treating people better or worse on the basis of that observation that is a problem.

As Russell-Brown noted, the "language of colorblindedness" doesn't work.  As a grad student in the 90s, I read research that found that the colorblind approach sent the opposite message to young children.

The Case for Loving also provides us with an opportunity to look at identity and claims to Native identity.

When I first learned that Alko and Qualls presented Mildred Jeter as part Cherokee (as shown in the image to the right), I started doing some research on her and the case. In some places I saw her described as Cherokee. In a few others, I saw her described as Cherokee and Rappahannock. That made me more intrigued! In the midst of that research, I also re-read Cynthia Leitich Smith's Rain Is Not My Indian Name and really appreciate--and recommend it--for lots of reasons, including how Smith wrote about Black Indians.

I continued my research on Jeter and found a particularly comprehensive source: That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia by Arica L. Coleman. It was published in 2013. Coleman's book has a chapter about Jeter.

Drawing from magazines, newspapers and court documents of that time and more recently, too, Coleman describes the twists and turns that impacted Mildred Jeter's identity. Most crucial to her chapter is information Jeter gave to her.

Jeter did not identify herself as Black. In an interview on July 14, 2004, she told Coleman (p. 153):

"I am not Black. I have no Black ancestry. I am Indian-Rappahannock." 

In The Case of Loving, we read about Mr. and Mrs. Loving going to Washington DC to get married, returning home to Virginia with their marriage license, and, being awoken late one night by the police who asked Richard what he was doing in bed with Jeter.

He pointed to their marriage certificate hanging on the wall.

The marriage certificate--an image of which is in Coleman's book--shows us columns for the male and female applying for the license. Here's the information in the female column:

Name: Mildred Delores Jeter
Color: Indian

She identified as Indian. In Central Point (that's the town they lived in), Coleman writes, there was a (page 161-162):

"racial hierarchy that granted social privileges to Whites, an honorary White privilege to Indians (i.e. access to White hospitals and the White only section of rail and street cars), and no social privilege to Blacks."

Isn't that fascinating? There's more. In 1870, Mildred's parents* the Jeter name was listed on census records as mulatto. By 1930, they* people with that name were identified as Negro. She was born in 1939. But, Coleman writes (p. 164):

The Jeter surname is also listed in the Rappahannock Tribe’s corporate charter (1974) as a tribal affiliate. Many claim, however, that the Jeters are descended from the Cherokee who allegedly began to intermarry with the Rappahannock during the late eighteenth century. According to one anonymous informant, “The situation regarding Indian identity in Caroline County is very complex. There was a time when many in the Rappahannock community believed that they were Cherokee because that was all they knew.” Neither Mildred nor her brother, Lewis Jeter, supported the claim that their father was Cherokee.

A 1997 article in the Free Lance-Star reports that she said she was Indian, with Portuguese and Black ancestry. In 2004 Coleman asked her about the Black ancestry, prefacing her question with a reference to the Rappahannock's historic association with Blacks, Jeter told Coleman that the Rappahannock's never had anything to do with Blacks.

That denial of Black ancestry is striking, particularly since the Supreme Court case was based on her being Black. If I understand Coleman's research, Jeter thought of herself as Indian when she married Loving. When their case went before the Supreme Court, she was regarded as Black. In the last years of her life, she said she was Indian. What was going on?

Her ACLU lawyers, Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, and Virginia's Assistant Attorney General, Robert McIlwaine--needed her to be Black. Her Indian identity had the potential to derail the arguments they were putting forth.

See, there was an act in Virginia called the "Racial Integrity Act" that was intended to preserve the purity of the White race. In early drafts of that act, white meant a person having only Caucasian blood. But that definition was replaced by the "Pocahontas Exception." The Racial Integrity Act was passed in 1924.

When I read "Pocahontas Exception" --- well, I think it fair to say that my eyebrows shot up and that I leaned towards the screen (reading an e-copy of the book)! What is THAT?!

The Pocahontas Exception allowed Whites to claim to be white, as long as they had no more than 1/16 of the blood of an American Indian.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was presiding over the Loving case. Presumably, he knew about her Indian identity and therefore asked about the Pocahontas Exception. I hope I am correct in my reading of Coleman's research when I say that Warren let it go when he heard McIlwaine's reply to his questions. The law, McIlwaine argued, did not apply to this case because Virginia had two populations of significance to its legislature: a bit over 79% were white and a bit over 20% were colored; therefore, the number of Native people (at less than 1%) was insignificant. Moreover (p. 170):

It is a matter of record, agreed to by all counsel during the course of this litigation and in the brief that one of the appellants here is a white person within the definition of the Virginia law, the other appellant is a colored person within the definition of Virginia law. 

Significant/insignificant are my word choices. McIlwaine didn't use them and neither did Coleman. They are words that resonate with Native people because research studies on race typically have an asterisk rather than data for us, because relative to other demographics, we are deemed too small to count. Indeed, a group of Native scholars have written a book about some of this, titled Beyond the Asterisk: Understanding Native Students in Higher Education. 

With intricate detail, Coleman documents how the news media was hit-or-miss in terms of what reporters said about Jeter's race. One day it was "negro" and the next--in the same paper--it was "half negro, half Indian" and then later on, it was back to "negro." In the final analysis, Coleman writes, writers generally describe her as an "ordinary Black woman" (p. 173).

In The Case for Loving, Alko uses "part African-American, part Cherokee" but I suspect Jeter's family would object to what Alko said. As the 2004 interview indicates, Mildred Jeter Loving considered herself to be Rappahannock. Her family identifies as Rappahannock and denies any Black heritage. This, Coleman writes, may be due to politics within the Rappahannock tribe. A1995 amendment to its articles of incorporation states that stated (p. 166):

“Applicants possessing any Negro blood will not be admitted to membership. Any member marrying into the Negro race will automatically be admonished from membership in the Tribe.”

I'm not impugning Jeter or her family. It seems to me Mildred Jeter Loving was caught in some of the ugliest racial politics in the country. As I read Coleman's chapter and turn to the rest of her book, I am unsettled by that racial politics. In the final pages of the chapter, Coleman writes (p. 175):

Of course, Mildred had a right to self-identify as she wished and to have that right respected by others. Nevertheless, viewed within the historical context of Virginia in general and Central Point in particular, ironically, “the couple that rocked courts” may have inadvertently had more in common with their opponents than they realized. Mildred’s Indian identity as inscribed on her marriage certificate and her marriage to Richard, a White man, appears to have been more of an endorsement of the tenets of racial purity rather than a validation of White/ Black intermarriage as many have supposed.

Turning back to The Case for Loving, I pick it up and read it again, mentally replacing Cherokee with Rappahannock and holding all this racial politics in my head. It makes a difference.

At this moment, I don't know what it means for this picture book. One could argue that it provides children with an important story about history, but I can also imagine children looking back on it as they grow up and thinking that they were misinformed--not deliberately--but by those twists and turns in racial politics in the United States of America.

Published in 2015 by Arthur A. Levine, I do not recommend The Case for Loving. 

~~~~~

Updates to add relevant items shared by others:

Kara Stewart pointed me to a news story from a Virginia TV station:
Doctor's quest to engineer a 'master race' in the early 1900s still hurting Virginia Indian tribes 

Kara's comment prompted me to search for information on the Racial Integrity Act. I found that the Library of Virginia has a page about it.


Update, March 18, 7:25 PM:
Just saying again---you must get a copy of Coleman's book. In other chapters, she talks about the Pocahontas Exception and how it was written to accommodate "the White elite who said they were descendants of the Indian princess Pocahontas and the English colonist John Rolfe." Here's one excerpt (p. 5):

It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term “white person” shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. 

*Update, March 23, 12:05 PM:
Professor Coleman read my review and noted an error in what I said. I've used the cross-out option to indicate what is wrong and inserted the correct information. Mulatto/Negro were specific to the Jeter name, not to Mildred's Jeter's parents.

THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY, by Adam Rex

Note on 2/20/2015: Children's literature scholar Perry Nodelman submitted comments that I am inserting in the body of this post, below the book list. Please read his thoughts on The True Meaning of Smekday. (See review of Smek for President, posted on May 7, 2015.)

__________

In 2007, Disney Hyperion published The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. Years ago, someone wrote to tell me it has Native content and wondered if I'd read it. I had not, but today I see that it is to be a movie. So.... here's my analysis of the book (note: I'm reading an electronic copy and using the copy/paste function on Kindle for Mac for page numbers I provide). I provide summary of the book in regular font, and use italics used to indicate my thoughts/analysis.

Let's start with the synopsis posted at Amazon:

It all starts with a school essay. When twelve-year-old Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, she’s not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens - called Boov - abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it “Smekland” (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod? In any case, Gratuity’s story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity’s mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion. Fully illustrated with “photos,” drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, genre-bending novel about an alien invasion.

As the story told in the school essay begins, it is Moving Day, 2013. We learn (later) that everyone is being relocated to Florida by the Boov (aliens), taken there in Boov rocketpods. People are behaving in crazy ways. Tip (the main character) sees a lady running down the street with a mirror as if she was chasing vampires. Then (p. 4),

I saw a group of white guys dressed as Indians who were setting fires and dropping tea bags down manhole covers.

Debbie's thoughts: I don't get why they're setting fires. Maybe that will make sense as I read further. They're dropping tea bags, too. Definitely a reference to the Boston Tea Party, but why are these white guys doing this? If people are behaving in crazy ways I could see individuals doing odd things, but a group of guys doing the same thing? 

A few paragraphs later, we learn that aliens called Boov arrived on earth on Christmas Day of 2012. By June they have taken over and decided that "the entire human race" would have happier if they were all moved to an "out-of-the-way state where they could keep out of trouble" (p. 6).

Debbie's thoughts: This is definitely a colonization story. It parallels the invasion (yeah, I know some of you don't think it was an invasion) of the Americas and subsequent decisions to remove Native peoples from our homelands to Indian Territory or onto reservations. I wonder if there is an interview of Rex, somewhere, wherein he talks about why he chose colonization of the Americas as the basis for this story?

In The True Meaning of Smekday, the initial place for removal is Florida. Tip decides to drive there instead, taking her cat, Pig, along. Recall from the synopsis that her mom was taken on Christmas Eve, so, Tip is traveling alone.

Tip meets up with a Boov alien named J.Lo who becomes her sidekick. He tells her that they've named the planet Smekland because “Peoples who discover places gets to name it” (p. 28). When Tip tries to tell him it is called Earth, he smiles condescendingly. He also tells her the aliens don't like humans celebrating their holidays, so they (the aliens) replaced them with new ones. Christmas is now Smekday. The alien leader is Captain Smek, who discovered this "New World" (p. 30) for them. Hence, places and holidays are named after him.

Debbie's thoughts: I'm wondering how Rex is going to wrap all this up. He's making intriguing parallels to history.

The letter that Tip is preparing for future readers is supposed to tell them what it was like to live during the invasion. In her account of how the Boov conquered the human race, Tip describes a message from the Boov:

A. The Boov had discovered this planet, so it was of course rightly theirs.
B. It was their Grand Destiny to colonize new worlds, they needed to, so there really wasn't anything they could do about that.
C. They were really sorry for any inconvenience, but were sure humans would assimilate peacefully into Boov society.

Debbie's thoughts: Note the use of "discover" and that discovery means ownership, the use of "Grand Destiny"--which is otherwise Manifest Destiny, and the use of "assimilate" which for Native peoples, took the form of "kill the Indian and save the man." So far in Rex's story, no killing or war or disease either, which is a considerable departure from the parallel he's constructed so far.

When the Boov move into the towns, they praise Captain Smek "for providing so many pretty, empty houses in which to live" (p. 60).

Debbie's thoughts: Use of "empty" echoes a lot of writing and stories that characterize the Americas as empty, virgin, plentiful land that nobody was using. You see that a lot in Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. What makes Rex's book different from Wilder's is that in her book empty land was presented as a fact, while the colonization theme in Rex's book implicitly tells us that this emptyness had prior owners and was being taken.

On TV, Smek calls humans "the Noble Savages of Earth" (p. 63) and shows footage of the Boov making treaties--not with world leaders--but with ordinary people.

Debbie's thoughts: Rex using "Noble Savages" --- readers get that the humans are not really savages, but I wonder if Rex's use of it has enough weight for readers to see the use of "savage" to describe Native peoples, or Iraqi's as savages is also wrong (see my post about American Sniper)? Regarding treaties, this is definitely intriguing! People who know Native history know that there are many "treaties" that were made with people who had no authority to make treaties.  

When Tip and J.Lo get to Florida, they don't see anyone. Tip recalls (p. 92)

"people in concentration camps in World War II, told by Nazi soldiers to take showers, and the showerheads that didn't work, and the poison gas that tumbled slowly through vents until every last one was dead."

Debbie's thoughts: Because this is a humorous story, some of the references to history--like that one--are jarring. If you read only the paragraphs before and after that passage, you won't find the humor that characterizes the tone of the book. 

In Florida, there is a Mouse Kingdom. Tip finds other kids there and learns from them that the Boov decided they wanted Florida for themselves because the aliens found out they like oranges. They chose another state to send humans to: Arizona.

Debbie's thoughts: Again--if you know Native history, you'll recognize that decision, too. The oranges are a parallel for gold or other resources that were/are on Native lands. Learning of the resources prompted the government to take aggressive action against Native peoples. 

Tip and J.Lo head to Arizona. J.Lo is wearing a ghost costume to disguise his alien identity, thereby protecting him from the Gorg, another alien race that wants the earth and seeks to displace the Boov. On the way they pass a sign for Roswell. Tip notes that it is known as a site where a spaceship crashed. J.Lo wants to go to Roswell to see the spaceship, even though Tip tells him people think it isn't true. Then J.Lo tells her that maybe it was a Habadoo ship and moves right to telling her a joke about a Habadoo, a Boov, and a KoshzPoshz. But, Tip's mind drafts off and she doesn't laugh at the joke. J.Lo asks her (p. 204)

"You are not a fan of ethnical jokes, ah? Look, is okay if I tells it, I am one-sixteenth Habadoo--"

Debbie's thoughts: J.Lo thinks that Tip finds the joke inappropriate, but J.Lo thinks it is fine for him to tell it because he is of one of the groups in the joke. This is, of course, the on-going debates about ethnic jokes and who can tell them, but it also strikes me as relevant to this story overall. If Rex was Native, might I be responding differently to the humor and tone he uses?

When they get to Roswell, New Mexico, they meet a group of people. A woman introduces herself as Vicki Lightbody. Tip introduces herself as Grace, and J.Lo as her little brother, JayJay (who, through Tip's quick actions is disguised as a ghost). They head to Grace's apartment, which is across the street from a UFO museum. Others they meet include adults named Kat, Trey, and Beardo.

Tip tells the group she plans on continuing to Arizona. She's seen lots of abandoned cars they could borrow if necessary (theirs was in need of repair). In particular, Tip mentions a turquoise truck someone was driving (p. 228):

"You saw Chief Shouting Bear," said Beardo. "He's a...he's just an eccentric old junkman that lives around these parts. He's kind of a town legend."

"Ha--yeah. The Legend of the Crazy Indian," said Vicki. Then she looked sideways at J.Lo and me and added, "No offense."

"For what?" I asked. "We're not Indians. Or crazy."

I am one-sixteenth Habadoo," said J.Lo.

Debbie's thoughts: First, I don't much like that name, "Chief Shouting Bear." Naming and names are important to people, no matter their heritage, but there's quite a few examples of white writers using Native and Asian names as fodder for jokes. Second, why does Vicki say "no offense" after saying "legend of the crazy Indian"? Did she think Tip is Indian because of her dark skin? Remember--Tip is biracial. Third, J.Lo's response is intriguing. He uses a fraction and a word. The way that sentence is constructed could easily be spoken by someone who is claiming Native identity, not as a way of life, but as a piece of who they are. But why would J.Lo--the alien--say that? What does he know about Native identity and the blood quantum terminology he uses?

The legend they are talking about is this: in 1947, Chief Shouting Bear found a flying saucer. According to the legend, he had been in Roswell in the Air Force during WW2 and was kicked out of the military for believing in UFOs. Now, he keeps that flying saucer in his basement, runs a junkyard, and uses the flying saucer as a way to make some money.

Tip sets off to find Chief Shouting Bear's house because she wants to see the flying saucer. His house is in the midst of a junkyard. When she and J.Lo get there, she is peering over a fence surrounding the junkyard when she hears "That's where the UFO stopped" and looks down "to see a thin, dark man, like a strip of jerky--the Chief" (p. 252). He is wearing a red cap with flaps and a strap (p. 252):

"He otherwise wore the same clothes as anybody else--no buckskin or beads or anything. I'm probably an idiot for even mentioning that."

Debbie's thoughts: I like what Rex did there, acknowledging a stereotypical expectation and pushing back on it. Here's the illustration of the man.

Rex's drawing of "the Chief" in shirt and jeans

Chief Shouting Bear takes Tip and J.Lo to see the spaceship. Tip sees it is made of papier-mache and not really a spaceship but pretends it is, thereby occupying Chief Shouting Bear so that J.Lo can go look for the telecone booth they've been looking for. She snaps a photo of the spaceship, and Chief Shouting Bear looks at her, puzzled that she seems to think it is an authentic spaceship.

While Tip, J.Lo and Chief Shouting Bear are looking at the telecone booth (the Boov are also searching for it), Vicki Lightbody and Kat show up, prompting Chief Shouting Bear to call out (p. 261):

"DON'T STEAL MY LAND, JERKS!" 

and

"YOU PALEFACED DEVILS!" 

Debbie's thoughts: There isn't any context (yet) for the shouting that he does. I've read a lot and don't recall any Native character calling a white person a devil. I've certainly seen white characters use that word to describe Native ones. I'm not sure what to make of Chief Shouting Bear using that word.

As Tip gets get ready to leave, Chief Shouting Bear asks Tip to come back tomorrow with her car so they can trade it for the telecone, but Vicki says that Tip and J.Lo were going to spend the day with her. Chief Shouting Bear says

"LET 'EM COME, INDIAN GIVER! I WON'T KEEP 'EM ALL DAY." 

Debbie's thoughts: Why is he using that phrase, "Indian giver" in his remarks to Vicki? 

Vicki replies, argumentatively, that it is dangerous for them to be around rusty junk. Chief Shouting Bear says that rusty junk will be all that is left soon, and then shouts (p. 262):

"HAWOOOO WOO WOO WOO." 

His dog, Lincoln, sits at his feet and "howled with him." Chief Shouting Bear says "JERKS" to Vicki and Kat, and Vicki tells him he could have a more positive outlook.

Debbie's thoughts: "Howled" bothers me. And the dog howling with him? Also not cool. This is war whooping straight out of Hollywood, and though we might see a dog joining its owner in making noise, this particular person and his dog howling are problematic because of the long history of characterizing Native people as animal-like. It seems to me that Rex takes two steps forward in this book and then one step back. 

The next day, Tip and J.Lo head to Chief Shouting Bear's place. They talk about people who seem to be crazy. Tip says that maybe Chief Shouting Bear wants people to think he is crazy. When they get to his house and are visiting with him, Tip asks about his shouting, saying (p. 273):

"You didn't raise your voice once when it was just the three of us. [...] But then Vicki and Kat show up and you're all 'GO AWAY, TREATY-BREAKER! DON'T...UM...DON'T--"

Chief Shouting Bear cuts her off:

"I never said 'treaty-breaker."

Their conversation continues:

"Yeah, well, that was the basic theme, anyway."

"I only usually shout at the white people," he said. "Tradition. I've got no beef with you."

"I'm half white," I said, folding my arms.

"Hrrm. Which half?"

I blinked. "Uh...dunno. Let's say it's from the waist down."

Chief Shouting Bear nodded. "Deal. I only hate your legs."

Debbie's thoughts: It is Chief Shouting Bear's tradition to shout at white people? That strikes me as inadvertently making light of actual Native traditions, none of which include shouting at white people. Chief Shouting Bear asking Tip "which half" is akin to the things I've heard a lot of Native people say in response to someone who claims they are part Native. It is a cynical response because Native identity doesn't work that way. Nobody is of this or that identity in a partial way. I should probably re-read the parts of Alexie's book to see how he handles that "part time Indian" in the title of his book.  

The two shake hands on that deal (that Chief Shouting Bear only hates Tip's legs). Tip introduces herself using her real name (Gratuity) and Chief Shouting Bear tells her his name: Frank. She is surprised by that name (p. 274):

"Oh," I said. "I thought...I heard..."

"You heard my name was Chief Shouting Bear," he said. "It doesn't matter. You can call me whatever you want, Stupidlegs."

Debbie's thoughts: I love that Rex is giving us a real name: Frank. Having the character introduce himself with that name humanizes him. With it, he seems to be distancing himself from the name that others call him (Chief Shouting Bear). That isn't a name he acknowledges as his own. With his "call me whatever you want" remark, he also seems to be telling us that such names are easily--but not appropriately--used as a means of belittling someone.

J.Lo hands "the Chief" a card that explains he is in costume as a show of solidarity with his Boovish cousins in their fight against the Gorg.

Debbie's thoughts: There aren't quotation marks around the words "the Chief" in the book. I'm using them there and throughout the remainder of my summary, because rather than call him Frank, or Chief Shouting Bear, Rex defaults to "the Chief." Why? I would have loved it if whenever Tip thinks or speaks about him, she uses his name (Frank). Using "the Chief" moves him back out of a real person and to a dehumanized entity. 

The "Chief" read the card aloud in a monotone voice and then hands it back, saying (p. 275):

"Nothing wrong with that," he said. "Hell, I wore a feather headdress for a while in the sixties."

Debbie's thoughts: Here, I infer that Frank is calling the headdress a costume that he wore in the 60s. It makes me wonder what tribe Frank belongs to. If he was of a Plains tribe, he wouldn't call the headdress a costume. 

While "the Chief" looks over Tip's car, the Gorg arrive, hunting for cats (the Gorg are allergic to cats). "The Chief" scoops Pig up and heads to the house, telling Tip and J.Lo to hide under the car while he runs off to hide Pig and the telecon booth. A Gorg finds Tip and J.Lo and asks where the telecon booth is. Tip plays dumb, and the Gorg asks her (p. 278):

"ARE YOU LOUD BEAR CHIEFTAIN?"

When she says "who" he replies:

"CHIEFTAIN LOUD BEAR MAN!"

Debbie's thoughts: More play with Native names. No doubt, readers find that hilarious--but that hilarity is less likely to be shared if it is your people or culture whose names are mocked like that.

The Gorg grills her until Chief Shouting Bear appears, telling it to leave her alone. The Gorg swung one of its arms, striking "the Chief" and knocking him out. Then he tears "the Chief's" house to the ground, looking for the telecon booth. It finds the basement door, enters, and when it reappears, it takes off, into the sky. Chief Shouting Bear is still knocked out. Tip sees he is bleeding. He needs more than she can do for him, so they get him into the car and go to Vicki's apartment which is next to a UFO museum. There, Kat and Trey ease "the Chief" out of the car. He comes, too, but his speech is slurred. Vicki asks if he had been drinking.

Drinking? Is that a realistic response to someone who has a bleeding head wound? 

Tip is furious with that question and glares at Vicki. Beardo tells Vicki that Chief Shouting Bear got hit by one of the Gorg, and she replies (p. 285):

"Don't you look at me like that. I was just asking is all. Indians drink--I saw a special about it."

They carry Chief Shouting Bear into the museum where he asks them for ice and whiskey.

Debbie's thoughts: Indians drink? A special? This idea, affirmed by a special--interesting that Rex brings forth that "drunken Indian" stereotype, but having Chief Shouting Bear ask for ice and whiskey affirms the stereotype. Disappointing. 

Leaving Trey to care for Chief Shouting Bear, Tip and J.Lo head back to the junkyard and figure out that "the Chief" really did have a spaceship, but that he had put papier-mache all over it to conceal it.

Tip and J.Lo resume their trip to Arizona, ending up in Flagstaff, where Tip tries to find her mom at the Bureau of Missing Persons. During this time in Flagstaff, they live in their car on the outskirts of town and use shower and bathrooms on the university campus.  Everyday, Tip goes back to the Bureau to talk to a guy named Mitch to see if they've found her mom. One day nobody is there because everyone is at a meeting where Boov representatives are speaking to people that have gathered on the campus quad. Tip and J.Lo head over there. J.Lo points out Captain Smek. He's one of the Boov reps, and is talking about the Gorg (p. 317):

"They are a horrible sort," Smek was saying, "and will not show the Noble Savages of Smekland the respectfulness that you have enjoyed from to the Boov. The Gorg are known acrosst the galaxy as the Takers, and they canto only take and take and take!"

He continues:

"We knows of the Gorg and Smekland leaders yesterday," said Smek. "The Gorg have probabiles made for you some fancy promises. Do not be believing them! They lie! They will enslave your race, just as to they have done so many others! They will destruct our world!"

The speech ends with:

"In closing," said Captain Smek, "the Boov are beseeching you: do not give up to the Gorg our world because of petty grudgings! Fight with us--" [...] "Fight alongside us," Smek said, "for a brighter, shiny Smekland!"

Then he repeats the speech in Spanish.

Debbie's thoughts: The occupier that has forced all the people to relocate is now telling them that another occupier won't respect or treat them well. 

Tip hears people around her grumbling about what Smek has said. Smek and the other Boov leave the stage, and Mitch, tries to get them to show respect to Smek. But he also then tells Tip that the Boov are on their way out and that they ought to ally themselves with the Gorg. Then he tells her that a Native American gentleman was looking for her at the hospital. She takes off for hospital and when she runs into his room, shouts "Chief!"

Debbie's thoughts: Again, why isn't she calling him Frank? 

Once in his room, "the Chief" tells her (p. 321):

"Mr. Hinkel," said the Chief, jerking his head toward the sleeping man. "He thinks Indians like me ought to live somewhere else. Likes to tell me about it a lot."

Tip replies that maybe he'll be leaving soon, but "the Chief" says he doubts that, because Hinkel was badly beaten by someone who thinks gay people like him ought to live somewhere else.

Debbie's thoughts: I am trying to sort through Rex's decision to make one oppressed people, embodied by Hinkel, be the one that is being racist towards another oppressed people. It is, of course, plausible, but it doesn't sit well with me. 

Tip realizes that "the Chief" had greeted her as Stupidlegs, and had called J.Lo "Boov." She had thought that "the Chief" believed J.Lo was her little brother.  J.Lo tells her that "the Chief" found out the truth when they were trying to hide the telecloner (back in Roswell). Tip is afraid that "the Chief" will tell someone that J.Lo is a Boov, but he shrugs and says (p. 322):

"When you're Indian, you have people tellin' you your whole life 'bout the people who took your land. Can't hate all of 'em, or you'd spend your whole life shouting at everyone."

Debbie's thoughts: With that, "the Chief" is saying that the Boov are just like the white people, but that he can't let hate consume his life. I need to think about that some more.

Tip realizes that his shouting (we also learn that he is 93 years old) was a way to make people think he was crazy so they wouldn't keep looking for the real spaceship.

While "the Chief" is in the hospital recovering, Tip reads to J.Lo. One of the books she reads to him is Huckleberry Finn. 

Debbie's comments: I wonder if, in the back story for this part of the story, Rex noted that Twain used "injun"?

When "the Chief" is better, he is moved to an "old folks' home" where Tip continues to visit him. On one visit, he tells her he had been sent to New Mexico after World War Two and that he had hated it because of where he was sent (p. 325):

"To a training ground in Fort Sumner. Didn't like it there--lot of bad history for my people. You know I grew up near here? On the res."

"Yeah, you said. So you're...Navajo, then?" I'd been learning a bit about the area.

"Prefer the name Dine, but yes."

Debbie's thoughts: So here, finally, we learn his tribe and what their own name for themselves is (Dine). But what is that bad history? Will kids who read the book wonder enough to look it up? And, a note to writers: the spelling we use is rez (with a z) not res. 

Unhappy being at Fort Sumner, "the chief" asked to be transferred, and that is how he ended up at Roswell. There, he learned the city wanted to build a water tower on a parcel of land, so he bought that land, which meant that the city would pay him rent for building the water tower on his land. The UFO crashed into that tower, but on its way down, it also crashed into a scientific balloon (p. 326):

The tower was totaled, and the city abandoned it--they never much liked our arrangement anyway. Somethin' about paying an Indian for land that rubs white folk the wrong way."

Debbie's thoughts: This sounds about right. Far too many people think that the U.S. government "gives" Native people things, not knowing (or disregarding) that these things (education and health care, for example) were negotiated between Native heads of state and U.S. heads of state during treaty or contract negotiations. I'll also take a minute to note that a LOT of people think we don't pay taxes. We do! Thus, I can imagine people not liking their tax dollars going to pay rent to an Indian landowner. 

"The chief" tells Tip that people knew about the balloon crash but the government was being hush-hush about it because it was top-secret. "The chief" tried to tell people he had a flying disk and an alien in his basement but people thought he was nuts. When they finally came to investigate, he was tired of them and played "the crazy Indian bit."

Tip learns that her mother is living near Tucson in a casino. Mitch passes on this info (p. 335):

"She's living in the Papago lands south of Tucson, in the Diamond Sun Casino."

Debbie's thoughts: Oh-oh. Papago? Hmmm... The people who were known by that name have, for a long time now, been known as the Tohono O'Odham. 

Tip learns that the description Mitch has been using in the search for her mom is wrong (p. 336):

"She's thirty," I offered. "Dark hair. Daughter named Gratuity."

"Black," said Mitch.

I coughed. "Black?"

"I'm sorry," said Mitch. Do you prefer African American?"

"Uh, no, I prefer you call her white, actually, because that's what she is."

"The file says she's black."

"Are you really arguing with me about this?"

Mitch looked tired. "I wrote down 'black,'" he said.

"I didn't tell you to write that," I answered, and then I could see the whole thing. "Have you been telling everyone to look for a black woman this whole time?"

Debbie's thoughts: I like seeing that conversation. Biracial kids and their parents are familiar with assumptions like the one Mitch made. Mitch doesn't answer Tip's question. He moves on. 

Mitch looks up the Diamond Sun Casino and finds it is in Daniel Landry's district (p. 337):

"Daniel Landry's district is far south of here," he said, "on some former Indian land."

"Indian land? Like a reservation?"

"That's right."

"Is this Dan guy an Indian?"

"I don't think so, no. I'm pretty sure he's white. He wasn't a governor or anything before, but he's really rich, so I imagine he's a good leader."

"Uh-huh. But he's white," I said "The Indians elected a white guy?"

"Well...I don't know. I imagine all the other people elected him. It's mostly white folks living on the reservation now."

I frowned. "And the Indians are okay with this?"

"What do you mean?" 

"Well...it was a reservation," I said. "It was land we promised to the Native Americans. Forever."

Mitch looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. "But...we needed it," he said.

Debbie's thoughts: Wow. Where to start?! Glad that the issue of land, and land being taken, is raised. But the way that conversation is laid out is a bit problematic. The way it is presented suggests that the reservation land was taken from an unnamed tribe. At one time in history, all of that land was Indian land. Today, a lot of reservations are what we call "checkerboard(s)" due to encroachment on reservation lands. See page 39 of Matthew L.M. Fletcher's article, Reviving Local Tribal Control in Indian Country for an in-depth look.  

As they head south to Tucson, Tip thinks (p. 340):

We all gained Arizona by coming here, but for the people who already lived here, we could only take something away.

Debbie's thoughts: I am glad Tip thinks this; I wonder how much readers of the book sit with that thought? 

Once they get to the casino, Tip and J.Lo go inside a tent where Tip's mom is supposedly leading a meeting. Inside, they see a redheaded man on stage with the microphone (p. 344):

"I have the stage! All I'm saying is, now that we've all had to leave our real homes, we got a chance to get America right! There can be a place for the Saxon Americans, and a place for the coloreds, and a place for--shut up!" 

Debbie's thoughts: His 'shut up' is in response to the boos coming from the audience. His hate-filled words are ones we hear, today, spoken aloud. It is good that he is booed. 

Then, Tip sees her mom take the stage. Her mom says (p. 345):

"I know, I know," she was saying. "You have every right. Just like he has the right, right? You don't have to like what he says, but letting him say it makes us Americans, and treating people the way we'd like to be treated makes us human, doesn't it? That's how I was raised, anyway."

Debbie's thoughts: Tough to read what she says. Yes, of course, we defend freedom of speech, but "makes us Americans" sounds like American exceptionalism, and "makes us human" sounds kind of like the golden rule (turn the other cheek), when I think we have the responsibility to call out hate speech. 

While inviting people in the crowd to speak, she spots Tip. Reunited, the three leave the tent and enter the casino where slot machines were pushed together to make walls for peoples homes. Tip learns that her mom was among political leaders who met with the Gorg to talk about the Gorg's demands. The Gorg plan to rid the planet of the Boov. They'll let humans have Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, but if the humans were found anywhere else, the Gorg would shoot them. Further restrictions include not using air vehicles and they can't have cats.

Debbie's thoughts: Most people may be unfamiliar with the fact that, when reservations were created, many of them were heavily policed. To leave, you had to get permission from the reservation agent. If you left without permission, you were "off the reservation" and could be shot. I wonder if Rex knew that history when he wrote that part of the book? 

Tip's mom introduces her to Daniel Landry. They'd just come from the airport where Landry needed her to translate for the new settlers who are Mexican families.

Debbie's thoughts: I'm curious about the Mexican families. He didn't say Mexican American. Remember--Tip is now in Arizona, down near the border, so maybe they are Mexican families being relocated to Arizona, but I don't recall the relocation plan including people in Mexico. 

Tip and J.Lo learn that the Gorg are taking over. J.Lo tells Tip that the Gorg "will take peoples for slaves and furniture and kill the rest." The Gorg had done this to the Voort.

Debbie's thoughts: Slaves. Hmmm... I wonder if Rex knows that many Native peoples from the eastern tribes were enslaved? Is that information the source of his reference to slavery? Or, is it specific to African peoples and enslavement of them? Is he mixing behaviors of oppressors?

Tip goes to visit Landry in his office. He tells her the Gorg have a lot to offer to humans. Tip mutters "Nothing that wasn't ours already." But Landry tells her the Gorg are driving away the Boov and that the Gorg "are giving back the whole Southwest." He tells her that humans are fighting Boov and Gorg, but the best thing is for everyone to be good and obedient to the Gorg, and that they'll leave soon anyway. He says (p. 374):

"Their whole society is based on paying and feeding old Gorg by making new Gorg and conquering worlds. They have to keep making more and more, sending them out in every direction. They're stretched too thin. Sooner or later they'll have too many Gorg and not enough resources, and the whole operation will implode."

Tip doesn't buy it. Back home in the casino, J.Lo tells her that the Gorg aren't stretched thin, and that because they can do telecloning, they won't run out of resources. The two keep talking and figure out that the Gorg clones are less-stable than the ones from which they were made. When her mom gets home, Tip asks her about the clones sneezing, but her mom doesn't recall any of that. And, her mom tells her that the Gorg are going to give them a cure for cancer, to be presented as a surprise at a big gathering.

There's a knock at the door, and it is "the Chief." Tip introduces him to her mom, saying "His real name is Frank." They invite him to eat dinner with them. After dinner, Tip walks "the Chief" out to his truck, where he tells her that some of his friends and cousins are "comin' down from the res" (p. 380).

Debbie's comments: I don't think 'from the res' is necessary. It is implied. And I'll note again, that it ought to be 'rez' (with a z) rather than res (with an s).

Chief Shouting Bear tells Tip that he is getting people together, people that they can trust. Tip asks (p. 380),

"Do you know some of the Papago Indians around here?"

"Tohono O'Odham," said the Chief. "The Tohono O'Odham Nation. Papago is derogatory. Means 'bean eaters.' And yeah, I know a few."

Debbie's comments: Glad to see that response to Tip's use of Papago! 

When the Gorg take Tip's mom, Tip and J.Lo note that they are sneezing and figure out that the Gorg hunt and kill cats because they are allergic to cats. They come up with a plan to fight the Gorg using that information.

They finally drive the Gorg away, and Tip, J.Lo and her mom head back to the casino. There, they (p. 419):

...find the Chief sitting atop his truck with Lincoln, looking out over the southern horizon at the big red ball that was slowly sailing away.

"Ha!" I heard him shout. "That's what you get, jerks."

Debbie's thoughts: The big red ball is the Gorg. He's shouting at them now, too. In the end, the Native character shouts at Gorgs and White people.

In the closing pages, some time has passed. Tip reports about stories from around the world, about people that had fought against the Gorg. Among them are "the Israelis and Palestinians, who managed to work together, for a change," and, "a group of Lost Boys living under Happy Mouse Kingdom" (p. 421).

Debbie's thoughts: Wondering how Israeli or Palestinian readers read that line, and, wondering how the Lost Boys are dressed... 

Here's what Tip says about "the Chief":

Frank Jose, the Chief, died this past spring. He was ninety-four. He said it was his time and mine had overlapped more.

Debbie's thoughts: Rex dropped Papago in the story early on and came back to it later, correcting its use. I wish he'd done that here, dropping "the Chief" from Tip's way of thinking about him. Nowhere do I see backstory or story itself that says Frank Jose was a leader of the Dine (Navajo) people; hence, calling him "the Chief" is incorrect. As I read this book, there were times when I thought that Rex seems to know so much! He critiques so much, and yet, leaves this and other things intact. Why? His character knows better, doesn't she?

Update: Feb 14

And... the Native character dies?! With that ending, we're definitely in that space where Indians are gone, extinct, etc. In the story, Rex names two different Native Nations, but without an individualized presence, I think they're invisible to the reader. 

(A bit more to say about the end of the story.)

The Gorg are gone, but the Boov remain for a year, relocating people and signing treaties and then they leave, one year later.

Debbie's comments: Relocating people to their original homes? Who are they signing treaties with? They leave? The colonizers leave?! That is definitely a departure from what actually happened with Native peoples. Check out this video that shows you what happened:

~~~~~~~~~~

Some current thoughts. I may add more, later.

As I reflect on Adam Rex's book, I think of it in layers. At the top is the words on the page and the ways Rex succinctly addressed things like names of tribes.  Beneath that top layer is one that constitutes what the characters know, or don't know, about Native peoples, nations, and history. There's so much misinformation out there. Rex bats down a lot but leaves other things as-is.

And beneath that layer is the premise for the story. Invaders come to the earth and start doing to humans the very things that European invaders did to Native peoples. A lot of what happened is not included in the story Rex tells. Warfare, bounties, disease, death... None of that is in Rex's story. All of that was devastating. Rex's story is not. The True Meaning of Smekday is viewed by readers and critics as funny and entertaining. Should it be? Should the colonization of a people--any people--be used as humor? Personally, I can't see similarly horrific historical events being turned into a funny story. Would we do that to the Holocaust? To slavery? But---I wondered---are there such books?

I asked that question on several listservs. Thus far, people are unable to offer a title in which this occurs. On child_lit, Tad Andracki offered some words that I found helpful. There are books for young readers where an individual's suffering due to oppression has moments of humor, but there aren't any where a peoples suffering is treated with humor.

We are, of course, talking about what is/is not appropriate content for a children's book.

One last thought: I think the ethnic joke J.Lo tells has a far broader application than its role within the story. Who can, with humorous tones, tell a story about a peoples suffering? If a Native writer had done this book, might I feel different about the tone?

This is a very long post, and if you've made it all the way here, thank you. I'm walking away from the book for now but will, no doubt, be back with updates and corrections to typos, etc. There's so much more to address than the notes I've shared thus far.

Update

In my request for similar titles, I received the following suggestions. Ones marked with an asterisk are characterized as problematic because they aren't serious enough, rather than ones whose tone is humor.  I'm grateful to all those who suggested titles. Though I haven't read most of these books, synopsis/reviews of them indicate that while some suggestions are about a serious topic, they aren't meant to be funny in tone.

*Boyne, John. The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas

Briggs, Raymond. The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman

Briggs, Raymond. When the Wind Blows

Clark, Henry. The Book That Proves Time Travel Happens

Dallas, Sandra. Tallgrass

De Brunhoff, Jean. The Story of Babar

Hardinge, Frances. The Lost Conspiracy

Houston, James D. and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Farewell to Manzanar

Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche

Jinks, Catherine. Pagan's Crusade

Marsden, John. The Rabbits. Illustrated by Shaun Tan.

Oppenheim, Joanne. Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference

Spiegelman, Art. Maus

Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma. Illustrated by Diane Sudyka

Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer

*Wild, Margaret. Let the Celebrations Begin! Illustrated by Julie Vivas

Yansky, Brian. Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences

*Yolen, Jane. The Devil's Arithmetic


On 2/20/2014, I added Perry Nodelman's insightful comments here, in the body of the post. They were submitted in two parts as indicated:

Thanks, Debbie, for getting me interested in this book, which I hadn’t read before you alerted me to it. For the most part, i enjoyed reading it, and I have lots to say about it––enough to go past the number of characters allowed in a comment, so I’ve divided my response into two comments.

Part 1: I think that Rex does some very clever things in terms of paralleling the alien invasion with what happened between imperialist invaders and Indigenous people in North America and elsewhere. I think, though that Rex's main interest throughout appears to be in exploring the humor of the situation, and while that means there’s often clever and funny satire that emerges from the colonialist parallels, that doesn’t happen consistently. Sometimes the novel is a colonial satire, and sometimes it isn’t.

For instance, it seems that the appearance and character of the alien Gorg has satiric implications: they have the uniformity, the self-centered self-importance, and the obsessive single-mindedness of totalitarian overlords, like Hitler or the British raj or the European settlers of North America. But there is no satiric implication that I can find in the fact that the other aliens, the Boov, have a sizeable number of feet. It’s just a joke, just something that defines them as alien.

Similarly, i think, what happens sometimes resonates in terms of the history of relationships between Indigenous North Americans and European colonists and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes, much worse, it resonates in what I see as negative ways that I suspect Rex wasn’t even aware of.

I think that happens, for instance, with the portrayal of Chief Shouting Bear. Aspects of it are cleverly satiric. I like how the Chief slyly manipulates stereotypes of angrily politicized Native Americans in order to keep people from interfering in his life. He creates a safe space for himself by pretending to be something that confirms other people's negative stereotypes and makes those other people want to avoid him. But while the distance between the stereotype and the real, clever, kind man who hides behind it seems to imply the falsity of the stereotype, it also in an odd way also confirms the stereotype: the novel never suggests that there aren’t a lot of angry Native Americans who shout too loudly about their land and their rights, etc. Nor does it suggest that the anger is justified and even necessary, or that is anything but just silly and laughable. Indeed, the novel seems to be sending up the supposed silliness of politicized Native people who want to make others aware of their rights at the same time as it seems to be expressing concern about how powerful outsiders oppress people and deprive them if their rights. The novel is just too interested in making jokes and being funny to be consistent enough to be effective as satire. As a result, it undermines its own satire. 

Part 2: My main concern with the novel, though, is that while it makes significant points about how colonizers oppress others, points that seem modeled on the history of European settlers and Indigenous North Americans, it finally seems to want to dismiss the significance of that history and invite readers of all sorts to believe that the past is the past, what’s over is over, and that since we’re really all alike we should be forgetting our differences (and apparently the history behind those differences) and just treat each other as equals and get along. Gratuity, the protagonist who is telling what happened, implies that sort of tolerance message when she says, “The Boov weren’t anything special. They were just people. They were too smart and too stupid to be anythng else.” And the Chief agrees: “When you’re Indian, you have people telling you your whole life ‘bout the people who took your land. Can’t hate all of ‘em, or you'll spend your whole life shouting at everyone.”

The novel also undermines its colonialist satire by identifying a number of other forms of oppressions of weaker people by more powerful ones: women by men, children by adults, etc. Even Gratuity herself has to acknowledge at one point that maybe she’s too bossy and should stop oppressing others. As a result, the specific history and issues of Native Americans become just one example of a more general attack on mean bullies who take advantage of weaker people; and the solution to that particular situation as well as all other situations and relationships is just being nice to others and treating them all as equals.

To me, that reads like a massive copout, a way of avoiding the important political and historical issues that still control and limit far too many lives. And like, for instance, a lot of multicultural rhetoric, it works to erase the ongoing significance of the specific history of Indigenous peoples—what makes their situation different from those of all the other groups who now live together in countries like the US.

One final point: for someone who spends a lot of time attacking and making fun of imperialists blind to the equal humanity of people they see as different and inferior to themselves, Rex himself, quite unconsciously, I suspect, makes a hugely imperialistic mistake. He asserts that the Boov force all the inhabitants of Earth to move to Florida, and then, changing their minds, to Arizona. But he then says nothing about how the Earthlings from, say, Europe or Africa, are going to manage to get to Florida. And when Gratuity arrives in Arizona, there is no mention of people who speak Swahili or Chinese, no mention of there being disputes involving people from different countries or continents, no mention of orders given in any languages other than English and Spanish. In fact, Rex has simply assumed that the Earth = the USA. All the humans who are not American are simply erased. It’s only in one sentence towards the end that Rex hints that maybe the Boov had rounded up other people in other parts of the world in different detention areas closer to where they live--a weird thing to suddenly tell readers about when we’ve been asked all along to assume that all humanity had ended up in Arizona. This is unconscious American imperialism at its finest, and as a Canadian, I found it exceedingly annoying.

All things considered: I think that The True Meaning of Smekday is often a very funny novel, and often a cleverly satiric one. But while it certainly has the potential to give readers of all ages a lot to think about, I find myself saddened by the ways in which it sets up parallels that allow for shrewd commentary on American Indian history and politics and then squanders the opportunity to pursue that commentary in favor of jokes and a kind of obvious and dangerous message of thoughtless universal equivalence and tolerance. 

Time Magazine's Almost All White list of 100 BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Let's take a look at Time Magazine's list of 100 best young adult books of all time. Here's how they compiled that list (adding this info a couple of hours after I loaded this post):

To honor the best books for young adults and children, TIME compiled this survey in consultation with respected peers such as U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate Ken Nesbitt, children’s-book historian Leonard Marcus, the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, the Young Readers Center at the Library of Congress, the Every Child a Reader literacy foundation and 10 independent booksellers. 

Ninety-one are by white authors. Nine are by authors of color. Two of the nine authors of color have two books on the list (Myers and Yang):

• Sherman Alexie
• Isabel Allende
• Walter Dean Myers
• Marilyn Nelson
• Pam Munoz Ryan
• Mildred D. Taylor
• Gene Luen Yang 

With only seven authors of color on the list, I think it is fair to say that Time Magazine has put together an Almost All White list. People who study children's books know that my "all white" refers to Nancy Larrick's article from the 1960s, in which she noted that the books in her library were almost all white. Over 50 years ago, she made that observation. We're still there, aren't we? Dismal. Depressing.

Focusing on Native depictions in the books, there's one book on it that doesn't reduce Native people to caricatures or stereotypes (Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian). It stands alone.  Several books on Time's list have problematic content regarding Native people:

• Alcott's Little Women (character doing "Indian war whoop" and passage about "Indian in full war costume)
• Anderson's Tiger Lily (see review)
• Block's Weetzie Bat (see review)
• Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (when Ole Golly blushes, the text reads that she looked "exactly like a hawk-nosed Indian)
• Green's The Fault in Our Stars (see review)
• Meyer's Twilight (see review)
• Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia (characters go to museum to see dinosaurs and Indians; diorama of Indians hunting buffalo is "three dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings)
• Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond (talk of fighting Indians and wolves)
• Twain's Huckleberry Finn (see review)
• Wilder's Little House on the Prairie (see reviews)

Next time you weed books in your library, consider replacing some of those books (above) with some excellent books by/about Native people. This page of Best Books includes ones that I recommend, and ones that have won the American Indian Library Association's book awards.

For your convenience, here's Time's list of young adult books, and here's my analysis of their top 100 children's books.

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 
Allende, Isabel. City of the Beasts
Alexander, Lloyd. The Book of Three
Alexander, Lloyd. The Chronicles of Prydain
Anderson, Jodi Lynn. Tiger Lily
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak
Anderson, M.T. Feed
Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Block, Francesca Lia. Dangerous Angels (the Weetzie Bat Books)
Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Bosch, Pseudonymous. Secret (series)
Bradbury, Ray. The Illustrated Man
Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker. For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Castellucci, Cecil. Boy Proof
Cleary, Beverly. Beezus and Ramona
Clements, Andrew. Frindle
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games
Cooper, Susan. The Grey King
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War
Crutcher, Chris. Whale Talk
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dahl, Roald. Danny the Champion of the World
Dahl, Roald. Matilda
DiCamillo, Kate. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
DiCamillo, Kate. The Tiger Riding
Donnelly, Jennifer. A Northern Light
Fitzhugh, Louise. Harriet the Spy
Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain: A Story of Boston in Revolt
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl
Funke, Cornelia. The Thief Lord
Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars
Green, John. Looking for Alaska
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies
Goldman, William. The Princess Bride
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hardinge, Frances. The Lost Conspiracy
Hinton, S. E. The Outsiders
Hughes, Richard. A High Wind in Jamaica
Jones, Diana Wynne. Dogsbody
Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth
Key, Watt. Alabama Moon
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace
Konigsburg, E. L. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
LeGuin, Ursula. A Wizard of Earthsea
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
L'Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time
Leviathan, David. Every Day
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild
Lowry, Lois. The Giver
Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars
McKay, Hilary. Saffy's Angel
Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight
Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables
Morpurgo, Michael. Private Peaceful
Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels
Myers, Walter Dean. Monster
Nelson, Marilyn. A Wreath for Emmett Till 
Ness, Patrick. The Knife of Never Letting Go
Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls
Nix, Garth. Sabriel
O'Brien, Robert C. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
Palacio, R. J. Wonder
Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia
Paterson, Katherine. Jacob Have I Loved
Paulsen, Gary. Hatchet
Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Pullman, Phillip. The Golden Compass
Pullman, Philip. His Dark Materials
Raskin, Ellen. The Westing Game
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Yearling
Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter (series)
Ryan, Pam Munoz. Esperanza Rising
Sachar, Louis. Holes
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye
Scott, Michael. The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Sis, Peter. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain
Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pon
Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me
Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Mysterious Benedict Society
Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Thompson, Craig. Blankets
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit
Tolkein, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings
Travers, P. L. Mary Poppins
Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn
Whaley, John Corey. Where Things Come Back
White, E.B. Charlotte's Web
White, T. H. The Sword in the Stone
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie
Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese
Yang, Gene Luen. Boxers and Saints
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief

A Peek at American Indians in Children's Fiction Published from 1955-1965

Nancy Larrick's article, The All White World of Children's Book, was published in 1965. I wondered what I might find if I did a search in the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database, using "Indian" as the search term and limiting the search for fiction published from 1955 to 1965. What, I wondered, were her options for books about American Indians? She was, for those who don't know, looking particularly at depictions of African Americans and was very troubled by what she found. Hence the title of her article "all white."

I ran the search and got 337 titles. I am pasting the results below. As you scroll through the list, you'll see duplicates and you'll see books that obviously don't belong on the list (for example, The Elephant that Galumphed).  

Some observations:

There aren't any authors on the list that I recognize as being Native.

I see that James Fenimore Cooper is on it several times. I'm thinking we can likely credit him with being responsible for a wide range of stereotyping. Good Indians, bad ones, ones who disappear into the mists of time...

Looks like there are several stories of whites who befriend Indians, and, stories of whites who are captured by Indians...

And how 'bout that Bread and Butter Indian by Anne Colver? Interesting title, don't you agree? Wondering what that one is about, I did a quick look-see at Google Books, learned that the illustrations are by Garth Williams! Here's the cover:

And here's the summary of the book:

A little girl named Barbara befriends a hungry Indian, offering him the bread and butter. Later she is kidnaped by a strange Indian. The story describes how the "bread-and-butter" Indian comes to her rescue.

What do you think? Is that Indian on the cover the hungry one? Or the strange one!

Some books on the list make me shudder because they are over-the-top in how they present Native characters (borrowing Rudine Sims Bishop's words about early books about African Americans) as objects of ridicule. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Check out Syd Hoff's Little Chief, the lonely Indian boy with an upside-down feather who finds friends among a wagon load of white kids:

Little Chief was/is an early reader. I don't think its still being published. Thank goodness for that, but believe it or not, Benchley's Red Fox and his Canoe, illustrated by Arnold Lobel, is still being marketed and used as an early reader. Here's an illustration from Red Fox and his Canoe:

Another one still in publication is Good Hunting, Little Indian by Peggy Parrish. But wait! The title is now Good Hunting, Blue Sky! I'll have to see if I can find the older copy so I can compare text and illustrations. For now, here's the covers. The original publication was in 1962, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. The one with a new title has new illustrations, by James Watts.

Here's a page from inside Good Hunting, Blue Sky:

I'll wrap this up for now and do more analytical work with the list. One thing I'll probably do for a more closely aligned comparison, is limit the search to the specific years of Larrick's study. She looked at books published in 1962, 1963, and 1964.

Before I close, though, I'm going to suggest that no child in your classroom or library gains anything useful by reading Little Chief or Good Hunting, Blue Sky.  Please consider setting them aside.

Sources cited:

Bishop, Rudine Sims. (2012). "Reflections on the Development of African American Children's Literature," Journal of Children's Literature, 38(2), pp. 5-13.

Larrick, Nancy. "The All White World of Children's Books," Saturday Review, September 11, 1965, pp. 63-65+

________________________________________________

CLCD Search

Use your browser's save and print functions to save or print this report.
Use the Back button to return to your search results.Search was for: The word Indian (All Fields).
Singular and plural forms were searched.
Search restricted to books published between 1955 and 1965.
Only works of fiction were retrieved.

AUTHOR	TITLE	YEAR	PUBLISHER	ISBN	ANNOTATIONS
Harrington, M. R.	The Indians of New Jersey; Dickon among the Lenapes,	1963	Rutgers University Press		First ed. published in 1938 under title: Dickon among the Lenape Indians.;
Cooper, James Fenimore	The deerslayer : or, The first war-path	1962	Collier Books
Stoutenburg, Adrien.	The mud ponies : based on a Pawnee Indian myth	1963	Coward-McCann
Kendall, Lace.	The mud ponies : based on a pawnee Indian myth	1963	Coward-McCann
Ward, Nanda Weedon.	The elephant that ga-lumphed,	1959	Ariel Books.		After a series of misadventures a noisy baby Indian elephant learns to walk quietly. Grades 1-3.;
Adams, Audrey	Karankawa boy.	1965	Naylor Co.
Adams, Audrey.	Karankawa boy.	1965	Naylor
Allen, T. D.	Tall as great standing rock.	1963	Westminster Press
Allen, Terry.	Tall as great standing rock	1963	Westminster
Cooper, James Fenimore	The last of the Mohicans : a narrative of 1757	1956	Scribner		While guiding a small party of English settlers to the protection of a fort during the French and Indian War, Hawkeye, a frontier scout, and his two Indian friends, the remaining braves of the Mohican tribe, struggle against the evils of Uncas who desires a white maiden for his wife.;
Cooper, James Fenimore.	The deerslayer, or, The first warpath	1963	New American Library
Cooper, James Fenimore	The last of the Mohicans	1957	Washington Square Press
Annixter, Jane.	Buffalo chief	1958	Holiday
Annixter, Jane.	Buffalo chief	1958	Holiday
Annixter, Jane.	Buffalo chief	1958	Holiday
Annixter, Jane.	Buffalo chief	1958	Holiday
Annixter, Jane.	Buffalo chief	1963	E. M. Hale
Annixter, Jane.	Windigo	1963	Holiday House
Armer, Laura (Adams)	Waterless mountain	1963	D. McKay Co.
Armer, Laura Adams.	Waterless mountain	1959	David McKay
Armer, Laura Adams.	Waterless mountain	1959	McKay
Arnold, Elliott.	White Falcon	1958	Knopf
Arntson, Herbert E.	Two guns in old Oregon	1964	Watts, F.
Whipple, Mary Anne	The first Californians	1962	Shinozaki Shorin		Title on cover: The first Californian.;
Overholser, Wayne D.	The Meeker Massacre,	1964	Cowles	0402141016 ; 9780402141013	Two boys, one Indian and one white, become involved in the growing conflict between an inflexible Indian agent and a Ute tribe.;
Baker, Betty.	Killer-of-death	1963	Harper & Row
Baker, Betty.	Killer-of-Death.	1963	Harper & Row
Baker, Betty.	Little Runner of the longhouse	1962	Harper & Row	0005091829 ; 9780005091821
Baker, Betty.	Little Runner of the longhouse.	1962	Harper	0060203412 (lib. bdg.) ; 9780060203412	A young Indian boy, too young to join the older boys in part of the New Year celebration, celebrates his own way with his family.; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level K-2; Reading Level 2; Title Point Value 2; Lexile Measure 430; 0430; 00 01 02; 020; 002;
Baker, Betty.	Little Runner of the longhouse.	1962	Harper
Baker, Betty	Walk the world's rim.	1965	Harper & Row	0060203811 (lib. bdg.) ; 9780060203818	Bibliog; As they journey to Mexico, Chakoh, a young Indian boy, and Esteban, a Spanish Negro slave, become friends and teach each other their ways;
Baker, Betty.	Walk the world's rim	1965	Harper & Row	0064400263 ; 9780064400268	Bibliography: p. [169];
Balch, Glenn	Little Hawk and the free horses.	1957	Crowell
Balch, Glenn	Spotted horse.	1961	Crowell
Baldwin, Clara.	Little Tuck.	1959	Doubleday		An undersized frontier lad, anxious to grow up and share the chores and fun of his big brothers, catches his own turkey, helps shear sheep, finds honey, befriends an Indian, and kills a bobcat.;
Baldwin, Clara.	Little Tuck.	1959	Doubleday		An undersized frontier lad, anxious to grow up and share the chores and fun of his big brothers, catches his own turkey, helps shear sheep, finds honey, befriends an Indian, and kills a bobcat.;
Ball, Zachary	Joe Panther	1961	E. M. Hale		In an endeavor to earn money for school, an industrious Seminole becomes a deck hand on a tourist boat and accidently is involved in a smuggling ring.;
Bannon, Laura.	Hop-High, the goat.	1960	Bobbs-Merrill		A Navajo Indian family comes back from town with a new stove and a naughty, spoiled goat that causes many troubles before he becomes useful as leader of the flock of sheep.;
Bannon, Laura.	Hop-High, the goat.	1960	Bobbs-Merrill		A Navajo Indian family comes back from town with a new stove and a naughty, spoiled goat that causes many troubles before he becomes useful as leader of the flock of sheep.;
Bealer, Alex W.	Picture-skin story	1957	Holiday
Beatty, Patricia	Indian canoe-maker	1960	Caxton Printers
Beckhard, Arthur J.	Black Hawk.	1957	J. Messner		Includes bibliography.; A biography of Black Hawk, the Sauk Indian who became chief of his tribe in 1788 and whose refusal to yield his tribal lands to the white man resulted in the Black Hawk War.;
Beckhard, Arthur J.	Black Hawk.	1957	J. Messner		Includes bibliography.; A biography of Black Hawk, the Sauk Indian who became chief of his tribe in 1788 and whose refusal to yield his tribal lands to the white man resulted in the Black Hawk War.;
Beebe, B. F.	Coyote, come home.	1963	D. McKay Co.		A coyote, orphaned as a pup, is rescued and befriended by an old Apache seeking companionship, and provides the aged Indian with loyalty and affection which protects them both.;
Beebe, Burdetta Faye.	Chestnut cub	1963	McKay
Benchley, Nathaniel.	Red fox and his canoe / (paper)	1964	Harper & Row	0064440753 ; 9780064440752	A young Indian boy receives a larger canoe along with some unforseen complications.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Lower Grade; Book Level 2.2; Accelerated Reader Points 0.5; Accelerated Vocabulary, Recorded Voice Quizzes; 00 01 02 03; 022; 000; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 260; 0260; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level K-2; Reading Level 3; Title Point Value 2; Lexile Measure 260; 0260; 00 01 02; 030; 002;
Benchley, Nathaniel.	Red fox and his canoe	1964	Harper & Row	0060204761 ; 9780060204761	A young Indian boy receives a larger canoe along with some unforeseen complications.;
Benchley, Nathaniel	Red fox and his canoe.	1964	Harper & Row		A young Indian boy receives a larger canoe along with some unforseen complications.;
Benchley, Nathaniel	Red fox and his canoe.	1964	Harper & Row		A young Indian boy receives a larger canoe along with some unforseen complications.;
Benchley, Nathaniel	Red fox and his canoe	1964	Scholastic Book Services		A young Indian boy receives a larger canoe along with some unforseen complications.;
Berry, Erick.	Valiant captive ...	1962	Chilton Co.
Berry, Erick	Valiant captive; a story of Margaret Eames, captured in 1676 by the Indians from the New Settlement, which later became Framingham, Massachusetts	1963	Chilton
Booker, Jim.	Trail to Oklahoma	1959	Broadman Press
Borland, Hal Glen	When the legends die. (paper)	1963	Lippincott	0553113380 ; 9780553113389
Borland, Hal Glen.	When the legends die	1963	Lippincott	039700303X: ; 9780397003037
Borland, Hal, Glen	When the legends die	1963	Lippincott	0553257382 (pbk.) ; 0881030570 (Econo-clad) ; 9780553257380 ; 9780881030570	Cover: A Bantam starfire book.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Upper Grade; Book Level 5.2; Accelerated Reader Points 13; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 09 10 11 12; 052; 013; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level 6-8; Reading Level 6; Title Point Value 20; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; 06 07 08; 060; 020;
Borland, Hal	When the legends die	1963	Bantam Books
Borland, Hal	When the legends die.	1963	Lippincott
Borland, Hal	When the legends die.	1963	Lippincott		An orphaned Ute Indian boy wins stardom on the rodeo circuit, but becomes disillusioned by the new ways and searches for his identity in the old ways of his ancestors.;
Borland, Hal	When the legends die	1964	Bantam Books	0553257382 (pbk.) ; 0553226428 (pbk.) ; 9780553257380 ; 9780553226423	"A Bantam Starfire book."; An orphaned Ute Indian boy wins stardom on the rodeo circuit, but becomes disillusioned by the new ways and searches for his identity in the old ways of his ancestors.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Upper Grade; Book Level 5.2; Accelerated Reader Points 13; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 09 10 11 12; 052; 013; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level 6-8; Reading Level 6; Title Point Value 20; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; 06 07 08; 060; 020;
Borland, Hal	When the legends die	1964	Bantam Books	0812416945 (Cover Craft) ; 0553257382 (pbk.) ; 0881030570 (Econo-clad) ; 0881030570 (Econoclad) ; 9780812416947 ; 9780553257380 ; 9780881030570 ; 9780881030570	Cover: A Bantam starfire book.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Upper Grade; Book Level 5.2; Accelerated Reader Points 13; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 09 10 11 12; 052; 013; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level 6-8; Reading Level 6; Title Point Value 20; Lexile Measure 850; 0850; 06 07 08; 060; 020;
Borland, Hal	When the legends die	1965	Bantam Books		An orphaned Ute Indian boy wins stardom on the rodeo circuit, but becomes disillusioned by the new ways and searches for his identity in the old ways of his ancestors.;
Bowers, Gwendolyn.	Journey for Jemima.	1960	Walck, H.Z.
Breedlove, Caroline H.	Billy Black Lamb	1958	U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs		"Developed in the Workshop in Navajo Education, Arizona State College, Flagstaff, Arizona, May 26-June 6, 1958.";
Brick, John.	Captive of the Senecas.	1964	Duell
Brick, John.	Captives of the Senecas.	1964	Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Brick, John.	Captives of the Senecas.	1964	Duell
Brick, John.	Eagle of Niagara; the story of David Harper and his Indian captivity.	1955	Doubleday
Brick, John.	Tomahawk trail.	1962	Duell
Buff, Mary (Marsh)	Dancing Cloud : the Navajo boy	1957	Viking
Buff, Mary (Marsh)	Dancing Cloud, the Navajo boy.	1957	Viking Press
Buff, Mary	Dancing Cloud, the Navajo boy.	1957	Viking Press
Buff, Mary.	Hah-Nee of the Cliff Dwellers [by] Mary and Conrad Buff.	1956	Houghton Mifflin
Bulla, Clyde Robert.	Indian Hill	1963	Crowell
Bulla, Clyde Robert.	John Billington, friend of Squanto.	1956	Crowell		A young Pilgrim boy is always causing trouble for Plymouth Colony until one day his mischief results in more friendly relations with the Indians.;
Bulla, Clyde Robert.	John Billington, friend of Squanto.	1956	Crowell		A young Pilgrim boy is always causing trouble for Plymouth Colony until one day his mischief results in more friendly relations with the Indians.;
Bulla, Clyde Robert.	John Billington, friend of Squanto	1956	Crowell		A young Pilgrim boy is always causing trouble for Plymouth Colony until one day his mischief results in more friendly relations with the Indians.;
Butterfield, Marguerite Antoinette	Little Wind	1963	Lyons & Carnahan
Butterfield, Marguerite Antoinette	Morning Star,	1963	Lyons & Carnahan
Carroll, Ruth	Tough Enough's Indians,	1960	H. Z. Walck		While Pa is off fighting a forest fire, Beanie and his brothers and sisters go off to hunt fire-wood, find refuge from the fire under a waterfall, and seek help from a Cherokee Indian family.;
Carroll, Ruth	Tough Enough's Indians,	1960	H. Z. Walck		While Pa is off fighting a forest fire, Beanie and his brothers and sisters go off to hunt fire-wood, find refuge from the fire under a waterfall, and seek help from a Cherokee Indian family.;
Carse, Robert	Friends of the wolf; a novel.	1961	Putnam
Chandler, Edna Walker.	Charley Brave.	1962	A. Whitman
Chandler, Edna Walker.	Cowboy Sam and the Indians	1962	Beckley-Cardy
Chandler, Edna Walker.	Cowboy Sam and the Indians	1962	Benefic Press
Chandler, Edna Walker.	Cowboy Sam and the Indians	1962	Benefic Press
Christensen, Gardell Dano.	Buffalo Horse	1961	Nelson
Christensen, Gardell Dano.	Buffalo kill	1959	Nelson
Christie, Caroline.	Silver Heels : a story of Blackfeet Indians at Glacier National Park	1958	Winston
Clark, Ann (Nolan).	Little Indian basket maker	1957	Melmont Pubs.
Clark, Ann Nolan	Little Indian pottery	1955	Melmont
Clark, Ann Nolan.	Medicine man's daughter	1963	Farrar, Straus
Clark, Electa.	Osceola, young Seminole Indian.	1965	Bobbs-Merrill		Bibliography: p. 198.;
Clymer, Eleanor	Chipmunk in the forest	1965	Atheneum Pubs.
Coatsworth, Elizabeth,	Indian encounters : an anthology of stories and poem/	1960	Macmillan,
Coatsworth, Elizabeth.	Indian encounters : an anthology of stories and poems	1960	Macmillan
Colver, Anne.	Bread-and-butter Indian	1964	Holt
Conrader, Constance.	Blue wampum.	1958	Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Cooper, James Feinmore.	The last of the Mohicans	1964	Parents' Magazine
Culp, John H.	The bright feathers.	1965	Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Nevin, Evelyn C.	The river spirit and the mountain demons	1965	Van Nostrand
Davis, Russell G.	Chief Joseph, war chief of the Nez Percâe	1962	McGraw-Hill
De Leeuw, Cateua	Fear in the forest	1960	T. Nelson		A young orphan boy, whose father was killed by marauding Indians, manages to overcome his morbid fear of the forest when he joins a pack-horse train which travels through the dense forests of Ohio. ;
Dick, Trella Lamson.	Bridger's boy	1965	Follett
Dolch, Edward W.	Once there was a dog	1962	DLM Teaching Resources		Short tales about dogs from the folklore of Poland, Africa, Korea, Yucatan, China, and the American Indian.;
Dolch, Edward W.	Once there was a dog,	1962	Garrard Pub. Co.		Short tales about dogs from the folklore of Poland, Africa, Korea, Yucatan, China, and the American Indian.;
Dolch, Edward W.	Stories from Alaska	1961	DLM Teaching Resources		Folk tales representative of the northernmost state of the United States, from its two native peoples, the Indians and the Eskimos.;
Downey, Fairfax Davis	General Crook: Indian fighter.	1957	Westminster Press
DuBois, Theodora.	Tiger burning bright.	1964	Ariel Bks.
Dwight, Allan.	Guns at Quebec.	1962	Macmillan
Simms, William Gilmore	The Yemassee; a romance of Carolina.	1964	Twayne Publishers
Edmonds, Walter Dumaux.	Wilderness clearing	1963	Dodd		In a wilderness clearing in Western New York State when Indian attack threatened and the British attack was expected, sixteen year old Dick Mount proved to Maggie Gordon that he could meet peril.;
Emmons, Della Gould.	Leschi of the Nisquallies.	1965	T. S. Denison
Wood, Kerry	The great chief, Maskepetoon : warrior of the Crees	1959	Canadiana Co. Ltd.
Evans, Katherine	One good deed deserves another.	1964	A. Whitman		A story of a robber who plans to repay a good deed with evil, but who is tricked by a small boy, based on a theme that is common in animal tales told by Indians of the Southwest and Mexico.;
Evans, Katherine	One good deed deserves another.	1964	A. Whitman		A story of a robber who plans to repay a good deed with evil, but who is tricked by a small boy, based on a theme that is common in animal tales told by Indians of the Southwest and Mexico.;
Evans, Katherine	One good deed deserves another.	1964	A. Whitman		A story of a robber who plans to repay a good deed with evil, but who is tricked by a small boy, based on a theme that is common in animal tales told by Indians of the Southwest and Mexico.;
Fall, Thomas	Edge of manhood	1964	Dial Press
Fall, Thomas.	Edge of manhood	1964	Dial Press
Fernald, Helen Clark.	The shadow of the Crooked Tree.	1965	McKay
Fiedler, Arkady	Orinoko.	1961	Iskry
Firethunder, Billy.	Mother Meadowlark and Brother Snake : an Indian legend	1963	Holt
Fisher, Clay.	Valley of the Bear : a novel of the North Plains Sioux	1964	Houghton
Foltz, Mary Jane.	Awani	1964	Morrow
Franklin, George Cory.	Indian uprising	1962	Houghton
Franklin, George Cory.	Indian uprising	1962	Houghton
Franklin, George Cory	Pioneer horse	1960	Houghton
Franklin, George Cory	Pioneer horse	1960	Houghton
Friskey, Margaret Richards	Indian Two Feet and his horse	1959	Children's		LOCATED IN PICTURE BOOK SECTION;
Friskey, Margaret	Indian Two Feet and his horse	1959	Childrens Press	0516035010 ; 0590424297 (Scholastic : pbk.) ; 9780516035017 ; 9780590424295
Furman, A. L.	Young readers nature stories.	1959	Lantern Press		Nine short stories about animals, like coyotes and raccoons, or men in encounters with them, as an Indian boy in a buffalo hunt, a ranch boy seeking to separate the ranch's horses from a band of wild horses, or a boy who cared for an injured sea gull.;
Gage, Wilson.	Secret of the Indian mound	1958	World Pub.
Garst, Shannon	James Bowie and his famous knife.	1955	J. Messner		A biography of a famous Indian fighter and reputed inventor of the defensive Bowie knife, from his childhood on the Louisiana bayou to his death defending the Alamo.;
Garst, Shannon	John Jewitt's adventure.	1955	Houghton Mifflin		Based on the journal of John Jewitt, published in 1807.;
Garst, Shannon	John Jewitt's adventure.	1955	Houghton Mifflin		Based on the journal of John Jewitt, published in 1807.;
Garst, Shannon	Red eagle	1959	Hasting House
Garst, Shannon.	Red Eagle	1959	Hastings House
Gendron, Val.	Behind the Zuni masks	1958	Longmans
George, Jean Craighead.	La tierra que habla / (paper)	1959	Ediciones, Alfaguara	084410728X ; 9780844107288
Giles, Janice Holt.	Johnny Osage / by Janice Holt Giles. --	1960	Houghton Mifflin	0395077354 : ; 9780395077351
Giles, Janice Holt.	Johnny Osage / by Janice Holt Giles.	1960	Houghton Mifflin
Giles, Janice Holt.	Johnny Osage	1960	Houghton
Gipson, Fred	Savage Sam	1962	Harper & Row Publishers		The son of Old Yeller helps his owners escape from the Apaches in East Texas during the 1870's;
Gipson, Fred.	Savage Sam.	1963	Pocket Books
Grant, Bruce	Pancho : a dog of the plains	1958	World Pub
Gringhuis, Dirk.	Young voyageur	1955	McGraw
Haines, Francis.	Red Eagle and the Absaroka.	1960	Caxton Printers
Hall, Gordon Langley.	Peter Jumping Horse at the stampede	1961	Holt
Hall, Gordon Langley.	Peter Jumping Horse at the stampede	1961	Holt
Hall, Gordon Langley.	Peter Jumping Horse	1961	Holt
Harris, Christie.	West with the White Chiefs	1965	Atheneum Pubs
Hayes, John F.	Buckskin colonist	1960	Copp Clark
Hays, Wilma Pitchford.	Easter fires	1959	Coward-McCann	069830067X ; 9780698300675	A fictional account of the first Indian tribes to hear and accept Christianity and of the great fires they lit to celebrate Easter.;
Hays, Wilma Pitchford.	Easter fires	1959	Coward-McCann.
Hays, Wilma Pitchford	Easter fires	1959	Coward-McCann
Hazletine, Alice Isabel	Red man, white man; legends, tales and true accounts of the American Indians,	1957	Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Heiderstadt, Dorothy.	Marie Tanglehair	1965	McKay
Heiderstadt, Dorothy.	Marie Tanglehair	1965	McKay
Heinzman, George.	Only the earth and the mountains, a novel of the Cheyenne Nationa. --	1964	Macmillan
Henderson, Le Grand	How baseball began in Brooklyn	1958	Abingdon		A humorous story giving one version "of how baseball was started. It all happened when Pieter Denbooms and his nine brothers met up with nine Canarsie Indians." McClurg. Book News.;
Henty, G. A.	With Wolfe in Canada.	1961	Walker		When young James Walsham leaves England unexpectedly in 1755 and finds himself in America fighting in the French and Indian War, he discovers that he must still contend with the treachery of his old rival.;
Hill, Monica	Rin Tin Tin and the lost Indian	1956	Simon and Schuster
Hoff, Syd.	Little Chief	1961	Harper	0004292669 ; 9780004292663	An Indian boy's kindness encourages a group of frontiersmen to settle in the same green valley as the Indians.;
Hoff, Syd	Little Chief,	1961	Harper		An Indian boy's kindness encourages a group of frontiersmen to settle in the same green valley as the Indians.;
Hoffine, Lyla.	Jennie's Mandan bowl	1960	McKay
Hood, Flora Mae.	Something for the medicine man.	1962	Melmont Publishers
Hood, Flora Mae.	Something for the medicine man	1962	Melmont Pubs.
Howells, Anne Molloy	Captain Waymouth's Indians.	1956	Hastings House		Published in 1968 under title: Five kidnapped Indians.;
Hurley, William.	Dan Frontier goes exploring.	1963	Benefic Press		Dan Frontier helps Ranger Jack Finley explore the wooded land inhabited by Indians near the Ohio River.;
Hurley, William.	Dan Frontier goes exploring.	1963	Benefic Press		Dan Frontier helps Ranger Jack Finley explore the wooded land inhabited by Indians near the Ohio River.;
Hurley, William.	Dan Frontier scouts with the Army.	1962	Benefic Press		Dan Frontier becomes an army scout when Indians threaten to attack Fort Detroit.;
Hurley, William.	Dan Frontier scouts with the Army.	1962	Benefic Press		Dan Frontier becomes an army scout when Indians threaten to attack Fort Detroit.;
Icaza, Jorge	Huasipungo. The villagers, a novel.	1964	Southern Illinois University Press
Icaza, Jorge	Huasipungo	1960	Editorial Losada
Furman, A. L.	Young readers nature stories.	1959	Lantern Press		Nine short stories about animals, like coyotes and raccoons, or men in encounters with them, as an Indian boy in a buffalo hunt, a ranch boy seeking to separate the ranch's horses from a band of wild horses, or a boy who cared for an injured sea gull.;
Saurel, Louis.	Le Hardouin chez les Hurons	1960	âEditions Fleurus		Pour enfants.;
Jackson, Helen Hunt	Ramona, a story.	1959	Printed for the members of the Limited Editions Club at the Plantin Press
James, Harry Clebourne	Hopi Indian butterfly dance	1959	Melmont Pubs.
Karney, Beulah.	The listening one.	1962	Day
Keith, Harold	Komantcia. --	1965	Crowell
Keith, Harold	Komantcia. --	1965	Crowell
Keith, Harold	Komantcia. --	1965	Crowell
Keith, Harold	Komantcia	1965	Crowell
Keith, Harold	Komantcia.	1965	Crowell
Keith, Harold	Komantcia	1965	Thomas Y. Crowell		Captured by Comanches at fifteen, a sensitive Spaniard learns to accept their way of life and becomes a leader among them.;
Kjelgaard, Jim	Wolf Brother	1957	Holiday House		An Apache brave who has been educated among the white men returns to his tribe, now confined to the reservation, and is forced, by an unfortunate meeting with an American Army sergeant, to take refuge with an infamous renegade band.;
Kjelgaard, Jim	Wolf Brother.	1957	Holiday House		An Apache brave who has been educated among the white men returns to his tribe, now confined to the reservation, and is forced, by an unfortunate meeting with an American Army sergeant, to take refuge with an infamous renegade band.;
Kjelgaard, Jim	Wolf Brother	1962	E. M. Hale		An Apache brave who has been educated among the white men returns to his tribe, now confined to the reservation, and is forced, by an unfortunate meeting with an American Army sergeant, to take refuge with an infamous renegade band.;
Kubaésta, Vojtéech	The Day of the bison hunt.	1962	Bancroft & Co.		Caption title.; Ill. signed: V. Kubasta.; Lower cover is a double-page which opens into a pop-up color illustration of an Indian village with tepees, a totem, and men in ceremonial costumes.;
La Farge, Oliver	Laughing Boy	1957	Houghton Mifflin	00812416031 (Covercraft) ; 9780081241608
Lampman, Evelyn (Sibley)	Navaho sister	1956	Doubleday
Lane, Neola Tracy.	Secret of the silver spoons.	1963	Bobbs-Merrill		Paul tries to establish his grandmother's true identity by locating the silver spoons she remembers hiding when she was a little girl.;
Lauritzen, Elizabeth M.	Shush'ma,	1964	Caxton Printers		Bibliography: p. 188.; The life and habits of a bear reflect her sensitivity to the loss of peace and harmony on the land that is home for her and the Navajo. Based on documented information.;
Hoffmann, Eleanor	The charmstone	1964	McNally and Loftin		Shuku, son of Chief Islay of Helo, fights the plots of his wicked stepmother, Ojai, and her equally wicked son, Mogi.;
Leckie, Robert	Danger at Mormon Crossing	1959	Simon and Schuster		While on a camping and hunting trip in the Idaho mountains, Sandy Steele and his friends become involved in a mystery concerning their Indian guide.;
Lenski, Lois	Little Sioux girl,	1958	Lippincott
Lomask, Milton.	Cross among the tomahawks	1961	Douleday
Longstreet, Stephen.	War in the golden weather	1965	Doubleday
James, Harry Clebourne	A day in Oraibi, a Hopi Indian village	1959	Melmont Pubs.
Stinetorf, Louise A.	A charm for Paco's mother	1965	Day
James, Harry Clebourne	A day with Honau, a Hopi Indian boy.	1957	Melmont Publishers
MacLeod, Robert.	The medicine bull.	1963	Day
Marriott, Alice Lee.	The black stone knife. Illustrated by Harvey Weiss.	1957	Crowell
Marriott, Alice Lee	Black stone knife	1957	Crowell
Marriott, Alice Lee	Black stone knife	1957	Crowell
Marriott, Alice Lee	Indian Annie : Kiowa captive.	1965	McKay
Marriott, Alice Lee	Indian Annie, Kiowa captive.	1965	McKay
Marriott, Alice Lee	Indian Annie: Kiowa captive	1965	McKay
McGaw, Jessie Brewer.	Little Elk hunts buffalo : as Little Elk tells it in Indian picture writing	1961	T. Nelson
McGiffin, Lee	Pony soldier.	1961	Dutton
McNamee, James.	My Uncle Joe	1963	Viking
Molloy, Anne Stearns Baker	Captain Waymouth's Indians.	1956	Hastings House		Published in 1968 under title: Five kidnapped Indians.;
Montgomery, Rutherford George	The capture of West Wind. --	1962	Duell, Sloan and Pearce
O'Dell, Scott	Island of the blue dolphins [sound recording]	1960	Recorded Books	1556904673 ; 9781556904677	Unabridged.; Narrated by Christina Moore; Tells the true story of an American Indian girl who lived alone on an island for eighteen years.;
O'Dell, Scott.	Island of the blue dolphins [sound recording]	1960	Recorded Books		Unabridged.; Tells the true story of an American Indian girl who lived alone on an island for eighteen years.;
O'Dell, Scott	La Isla de los Delfines Azules	1964	Noguer	8427931085 (pbk.) ; 9788427931084	Translation of: Island of the Blue Dolphins.; Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Middle Grade; Book Level 5.4; Accelerated Reader Points 6; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 04 05 06 07 08; 054; 006; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 1090; 1090;
O'Dell, Scott	La Isla de los Delfines Azules	1964	Noguer	8427931085 ; 9788427931084	Translation of: Island of the Blue Dolphins.; Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Middle Grade; Book Level 5.4; Accelerated Reader Points 6; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 04 05 06 07 08; 054; 006; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 1090; 1090;
O'Dell, Scott	Island of the Blue Dolphins.	1960	Dell
O'Dell, Scott	Island of the Blue Dolphins.	1960	Houghton Mifflin	0395069629 ; 9780395069622	Records the courage and self-reliance of an Indian girl who lived alone for eighteen years on an isolated island off the California coast when her tribe emigrated and she was left behind.; Reading Counts-Scholastic; Interest Level 6-8; Reading Level 6; Title Point Value 12; Lexile Measure 1000; 1000; 06 07 08; 060; 012;
O'Dell, Scott	Island of the Blue Dolphins.	1960	Houghton Mifflin
O'Dell, Scott	Island of the Blue Dolphins.	1960	Houghton Mifflin
Nicholson, John D.	The white buffalo,	1965	Platt & Munk
Rhoads, Dorothy.	The corn grows ripe	1956	Viking		Tigre, a twelve-year-old Mayan boy living in a modern-day village in Yucatâan, must learn to be a man when his father is injured.;
Conrad, Joseph	The nigger of the "Narcissus"	1965	Printed by the Ward Ritchie Press for the members of the Limited Editions Club		Limited ed. of 1,500 copies, signed by the artist.; Issued in slipcase.; Newman & Wiche. Great and good books,; 372; Limited Editions Club. Bibliography of the fine books published by the Limited Editions Club, 1929-1985,; no. 372;
Allsopp, Joy.	The tale of Teddy the toucan : a story for children	1960	Govt. Information Services		"This story is one of a series of stories based on some of the legends of the Amerindian tribes of British Guiana.";
Parish, Peggy.	Good hunting, Little Indian	1962	Young Scott Bks.
Patrick, Pearl Haley	O'po of the Omaha. Illustrated by Dan Jacobson.	1957	Caxton Printers
Provan, Eldoris Angel.	Drummer for the Americans.	1965	Chilton Bks.
Provan, Eldoris Angel.	Drummer for the Americans.	1965	Chilton Books
Radau, Hanns.	Illampu : adventure in the Andes	1961	Abelard-Schuman
Radau, Hanns.	Illampu : adventure in the Andes	1961	Abelard-Schuman
Rainbow, Elizabeth.	Concha and the silver star	1965	Duell
Ramâirez, Pablo.	Wa O'Ka,	1961	Bobbs-Merrill		A young Indian brave accomplishes three seemingly impossible tasks to win the chief's daughter for his bride.;
Ranney, Agnes V.	Flash of Phantom Canyon.	1963	Criterion Bks
Ray, Ophelia.	Daughter of Tejas.	1965	New York Graphic Society Pubs.
Ray, Ophelia.	Daughter of the Tejas.	1965	New York Graphic Societ Pubs.
Reilly, Robert T.	Massacre at Ash Hollow	1960	Bruce Pub. Co.
Ressler, Theodore Whitson.	Treasury of American Indian tales	1957	Association
Richter, Conrad.	The light in the forest.	1963	Bantam Books
Roberts, Helen M.	Mission tales,	1963	Pacific Books
Roberts, Kenneth Lewis	Northwest passage	1961	Doubleday
Roberts, Kenneth Lewis	Northwest passage	1963	Fawcett Crest/Ballantine,	0449213838 (pbk.) ; 9780449213834	Saga of French and Indian war heroics in which Major Robert Rogers is the leader of the Rogers' Rangers.; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 1010; 1010;
Robinson, Barbara.	Across from Indian Shore	1962	Lothrop
Robinson, Barbara.	Trace through the forest.	1965	Lothrop
Rowland, Florence Wightman.	Pasquala of Santa Ynez Mission	1961	Walck, H.Z.
Davis, Russell.	The Choctaw code	1961	Whittlesey House
Cooper, James Fenimore	The last of the Mohicans	1961	Scribner	0553213296 (Bantam : pbk. : 1981) ; 0808519735 (Econoclad) ; 9780808519737	While guiding a small party of English settlers to the protection of a fort during the French and Indian War, Hawkeye, a frontier scout, and his two Indian friends, the remaining braves of the Mohican tribe, struggle against the evils of Uncas who desires a white maiden for his wife.;
Cooper, James Fenimore	The Pathfinder	1964	Airmont Publishing Co., Inc.
Nelson, May.	The Redbirds are flying	1963	Criterion Bks.
Steele, William O.	The Year of the Bloody Sevens	1963	Harcourt
Steele, William Owen.	The year of the Bloody Sevens	1963	Harcourt
Capron, Louis.	The red war pole	1963	Bobbs
Tavo, Gus.	The buffalo are running	1960	Knopf
Lauritzen, Jonreed.	The legend of Billy Bluesage	1961	Little, Brown
Sandoz, Mari.	The Story Catcher	1963	Westminster Press
Oberreich, Robert.	The blood red belt	1961	Doubleday
Jones, Weyman.	The talking leaf	1965	Dial Press
Clark, Margaret Goff.	The mystery of the buried Indian mask	1962	Watts, F.
Surany, Anico.	The golden frong	1963	Putnam
Lobdell, Helen.	The fort in the forest	1963	Houghton
Lobdell, Helen.	The fort in the forest	1963	Houghton
Haig-Brown, Roderick Langmere Haig	The whale people	1963	Morrow
Haig-Brown, Roderick Langmere Haig	The whale people	1963	Morrow
Hollmann, Clide.	The eagle feather	1963	Hastings House
Hollmann, Clide.	The eagle feather	1963	Hstings House
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Sandoz, Mari	The horsecatcher.	1957	Westminster Press		Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.;
Schultz, James Willard	With the Indians in the Rockies.	1960	Houghton Mifflin		The adventures of Thomas Fox and Pitamakan, a Blackfoot Indian boy.;
Scott, Paul	Eliza and the Indian war pony,	1961	Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
Scull, Florence D.	Bear teeth for courage	1964	Van Nostrand
Scull, Florence D.	Bear teeth for courage.	1964	Van Nostrand
Shannon, Terry.	Tyee's totem pole	1955	Whitman
Shannon, Terry.	Wakapoo and the flying arrows.	1963	A. Whitman
Shannon, Terry.	Wakapoo and the flying arrows	1963	Whitman		Wakapoo, a Chumash Indian boy, finds the secret of courage when his peace loving people are attacked on their island home off the coast of Southern California.;
Sharp, Edith Lambert.	Nkwala.	1958	Little, Brown
Sharp, Edith Lambert.	Nkwala.	1958	Little, Brown
Sharp, Edith Lambert.	Nkwala.	1958	Little, Brown
Sharp, Edith Lambert.	Nkwala	1958	McClelland and Stewart	0771081243 : ; 9780771081248
Simmons, Dawn Langley.	Peter Jumping Horse	1961	Holt
Snedden, Genevra Sisson	Docas, Indian of Santa Clara.	1958	Heath		Bibliography: p. 187-189.; Through the eyes of Docas and his playmates one sees the coming of the white man to California and the establishment of one of its famous chain of missions.;
Sorensen, Edna Jennings.	Felipe's long journey : a story of the Andes ; pictures by Ezra Jack Keats.	1961	Watts F.
Sorensen, Edna Jennings.	Felipe's long journey : a story of the Andes ; pictures by Ezra Jack Keats.	1961	Watts F.
Speare, Elizabeth George.	Calico Captive	1957	Houghton Mifflin		During the French and Indian War, young Miriam is captured by Indians and taken to Montreal;
Steele, William O.	Flaming arrows	1957	Harcourt, Brace		An Indian attack on a fort in the Tennessee wilderness makes young Chad Rabun realize that it is wrong to condemn one person for the misdeed of another. ;
Steele, William O.	Wayah of the Real People	1964	Colonial Williamsburg : distributed by Holt
Steele, William O.	Wayah of the Real People	1964	Colonial Williamsburg: distributed by Holt
Steffan, Jack.	Mountain of fire : a novel.	1959	Day
Stevenson, Augusta.	George Custer, boy of action.	1963	Bobbs-Merrill		The boyhood of the great Indian fighter who died in the controversial Battle of Little Big Horn.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Israel Putnam, fearless boy.	1959	Bobbs-Merrill		A biography of an American patriot who fought in both the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars, describing his boyhood and youth on the Massachusetts frontier.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Israel Putnam, fearless boy.	1959	Bobbs-Merrill		A biography of an American patriot who fought in both the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars, describing his boyhood and youth on the Massachusetts frontier.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Kit Carson, boy trapper.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		The boyhood of the frontier trapper, hunter, Indian fighter, scout, and soldier.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Kit Carson, boy trapper.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		The boyhood of the frontier trapper, hunter, Indian fighter, scout, and soldier.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Sam Houston, boy chieftain.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		A biography of the man who helped make Texas a part of the United States, emphasizing his boyhood in Virginia and his friendship with the Cherokee Indians.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Sam Houston, boy chieftain.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		A biography of the man who helped make Texas a part of the United States, emphasizing his boyhood in Virginia and his friendship with the Cherokee Indians.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Squanto, young Indian hunter.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		The boyhood of the Wampanoag Indian who lived for a time in England and then returned to New England where he helped the Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth.;
Stevenson, Augusta.	Squanto, young Indian hunter.	1962	Bobbs-Merrill		The boyhood of the Wampanoag Indian who lived for a time in England and then returned to New England where he helped the Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth.;
Strachan, Margaret Pitcairn.	Cabins with window boxes	1964	I. Washburn
Steele, William O.	The year of the bloody sevens.	1963	Harcourt, Brace & World
Cooper, James Fenimore	The last of the Mohicans : a narrative of 1757	1957	World
Haig-Brown, Roderick Langmere	The whale people.	1963	Morrow
Barbary, James.	The fort in the wilderness; an adventure in history.	1965	Norton		First published in England under title: The fort in the forest.; An English officer, in command of a fort on the Canadian frontier during Pontiac's uprising, is captured by the Indians, returned to the English as a hostage, but comes back later to convince Pontiac of French betrayal.;
Barbary, James.	The fort in the wilderness; an adventure in history.	1965	Norton		First published in England under title: The fort in the forest.; An English officer, in command of a fort on the Canadian frontier during Pontiac's uprising, is captured by the Indians, returned to the English as a hostage, but comes back later to convince Pontiac of French betrayal.;
Surany, Anico.	The golden frog : illus. by Leonard Everett Fisher.	1963	Putnam
Tilghman, Zoe Agnes Stratton	Maiom, the Cheyenne girl;	1956	Harlow Pub. Corp.
Tomerlin, John.	Prisoner of the Iroquois.	1965	Dutton
O'Dell, Scott	La isla de los delfines azules	1964	Noguer	8427931085 ; 9788427931084	Medalla Newbery.; Tâitulo original: Island of the Blue Dolphins.; Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Middle Grade; Book Level 5.4; Accelerated Reader Points 6; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 04 05 06 07 08; 054; 006; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 1090; 1090;
O'Dell, Scott	La isla de los delfines azules	1964	Editorial noguer	8427931085 (pbk.) ; 9788427931084	"Tâitulo original: Island of the blue dolphins"--t.p. verso.; Stranded on a beautiful isolated island off the coast of California, a young 19th century Indian girl spends 18 years, not only surviving through her courage and self-reliance, but also finding happiness in her solitary life.; Accelerated Reader; Interest Level Middle Grade; Book Level 5.4; Accelerated Reader Points 6; Accelerated Vocabulary, Literacy Skills; 04 05 06 07 08; 054; 006; Lexile, MetaMetrics, Inc.; Lexile Measure 1090; 1090;
Underhill, Ruth M.	Antelope Singer	1961	Coward-McCann
Baker, Betty.	The shaman's last raid	1963	Harper & Row
Carlson, Natalie Savage.	The Tomahawk family.	1960	Harper		An Indian girl is anxious to do everything her teacher at school tells her, in order to be a good American, but her stubborn brother and her old fashioned grandmother present problems.;
Carlson, Natalie Savage.	The Tomahawk family.	1960	Harper		An Indian girl is anxious to do everything her teacher at school tells her, in order to be a good American, but her stubborn brother and her old fashioned grandmother present problems.;
Van Riper, Guernsey	Jim Thorpe, Indian athlete.	1956	Bobbs-Merrill
Vance, Marguerite.	Esther Wheelwright, Indian captive.	1964	Dutton
Vestal, Stanley	Happy hunting grounds.	1963	Lyons and Carnahan
Waltrip, Lela.	Quiet boy	1961	Longmans
Waltrip, Lela.	Quiet boy	1961	Longmans
Webb, Nancy	Makema of the rain forest,	1964	Prentice-Hall		Bibliographical references included in "Acknowledgments" (p. [3]);
Welch, Ronald C.	Mohawk Valley.	1958	Criterion Books
Welch, Ronald	Mohawk Valley	1958	Criterion Bks.
Welch, Ronald	Mohawk Valley	1958	Oxford University Press	0192710788 : ; 9780192710789
Wheeler, Arville	White Squaw : the true story of Jennie Wiley.	1958	Heath		A fictionalized account of the life of Jennie Sellards Wiley, who spent a year as an Indian captive in Kentucky and eventually escaped and returned to her husband in Virginia.;
Wilcox, Eleanor Reindollar.	Cornhusk doll	1956	Dodd
Wilson, Charles Morrow.	Crown Point : the destiny road	1965	McKay
Wilson, Hazel (Hutchins)	His Indian brother	1955	E. M. Hale		When his father's return from Boston with the family is delayed, young Brad, left to care for their new wilderness home in Maine, must depend on the Indians for survival.;
Wilson, Hazel Hutchins	His Indian brother	1955	Houghton Mifflin		When his father's return from Boston with the family is delayed, young Brad, left to care for their new wilderness home in Maine, must depend on the Indians for survival.;
Wilson, Holly.	Snowbound in Hidden Valley	1957	Messner
Witten, Herbert.	Escape from the Shawnees	1958	Follett		The author: p189.; The great hunter, Gabe Stoner, asked eleven year old Whit Martin to go hunting with him. When he and Gabe ran into a party of Indians, Gabe was wounded and he and Whit were captured by the Indians and taken across the Ohio into Shawnee country. Whit and Gabe escaped from their captors and young Whit managed to survive and to help save the wounded hunter. (Publisher);
Witten, Herbert.	Escape from the Shawnees	1958	Follett
Worcester, Donald Emmet	Lone Hunter and the wild horses	1959	Walck, H.Z.
Worthylake, Mary M.	Children of the seed gatherers.	1964	Melmont Publishers
Leiser, Harry W.	The lost canyon of the Navajos	1960	Criterion Books
Lampman, Evelyn Sibley.	The shy stegosaurus of Indian Springs	1962	Junior Literary guild : Doubleday
Ziner, Feenie.	Dark pilgrim : the story of Squanto.	1965	Chilton Co.