Books by and about American Indians: 2008

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison publishes CCBC Choices each year. It includes statistical data about numbers of books written by authors of color.

The information I share below is from "Thoughts on Publishing in 2008" by Kathleen T. Horning, Merri V. Lindgren, Tessa Michaelson, and Megan Schliesman. It was originally published in CCBC Choices 2009. I encourage you to become a Friend of the CCBC, which includes a copy of Choices.

In 2008, CCBC received 40 books that featured American Indian themes, topics, or characters. Of those 40, nine were created by American Indian authors and/or illustrators.


Here's two paragraphs from the essay, in the section titled "Multicultural Writing (and Illustrating, Too!)":

Louise Erdrich continued her chronicle of nineteenth-century American Indian experience in The Porcupine Year, which picks up the story of the Ojibwe girl Omakayas, last seen in The Game of Silence (HarperCollins, 2005). Now forced to leave their home, Omakayas’s family is on the move in a story based in part on Erdrich’s own family history. Joseph Bruchac, the most prolific Native author for children and teens, was inspired by family history to research and write what became March Toward the Thunder, about an Abenaki boy serving in the Union army during the Civil War. Update on Sep 30 2023: I (Debbie Reese) no longer recommend Bruchac's work. For details see Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki? Nicola Campbell’s picture book Shin-chi’s Canoe looks at Native boarding schools through the a story of a boy enduring his first year away from home.

Horning, Lindgren, Michaelson and Schliesman note that few new picture books that show contemporary children of color were published. They write:

In fact, the only 2008 picture book featuring a contemporary American Indian child that we documented here at the CCBC was Niwechihaw=I Help, a bilingual (Cree/English) book published by Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press. The Littlest Sled Dog (Orca) features a dog rather than a child or children but does offer a glimpse of a contemporary Inuit village. And The Drum Calls Softly (Red Deer Press) is a bilingual (Cree/English) picture book in the voice of a child who might be contemporary or from the past, although the stunning illustrations by Native artist Jim Poitras (Cree, Salteaux, and Métis) have a historical sensibility.

On October 24, 2008, I posted a table of data from CCBC specific to books by and about American Indians. It covered 2002 through 2007. I'm reposting that table here, adding 2008 statistics to the table.

Year---Number of bks---About Amer Ind---By Native writer
2002--------3,150--------------------64-----------------------6---------------
2003--------3,200--------------------95----------------------11--------------
2004--------2,800--------------------33-----------------------7--------------
2005--------2,800--------------------34-----------------------4--------------
2006--------3,000--------------------41----------------------14-------------
2007--------3,000--------------------44-----------------------6--------------
2008--------3,000---------------------40----------------------9--------------

Boston Tea Party and 2009 Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party. There is one that happened yesterday, April 15, 2009, and there is one that happened way back when... When colonists threw tea into Boston Harbor in 1773...

That event in 1773 is widely depicted with colonists dressed as Indians who are shown wearing feathers, fringe and face paint. Here's the most famous image, an 1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier.

And here's one from a children's picture book, The Boston Tea Party, published in 2001, written by Pamela Duncan Edwards, illustrations by Henry Cole:

In fact, the colonists did not wear feathers. 

They colored their faces with ash and charcoal 

and draped blankets on their shoulders.* 

Given the multiple misrepresentations of that moment, I wondered if it would be echoed in yesterday's "tea party" events. Watching Jon Stewart's coverage of it, I had my answer (see lower right image):

------------------------------------------

UPDATE, 6:45 PM, April 16, 2009
Jeremy Cote, Phoenix, AZ, posted (to Flickr) "On warpath against more taxes!" In it are two women and two children, wearing tan-colored shirts, feathers in their hair. The children have signs taped to their shirts that say:

"Paleface taxes no good."
"Let little brave keep wampum."

UPDATE, 6:56 PM, April 19, 2009
A few minutes ago, a reader submitted a comment, pointing to a photograph in the NY Times. It accompanies a story titled "Tax Day is Met with Tea Parties." There is no reference in the article to the photograph, which shows a boy in a headdress.


UPDATE, 8:10 AM, December 16, 2014
For writing about how the colonists were dressed, see:

• A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-party: With a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes published in 1834 by S.S. Bliss.
• The Historic Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773: its men and objects, by Caleb Arnold Wall, published in 1896 by Press of F.S. Blanchard & Co. (see accounts by various participants: Slater, p. 24; Hewes, p. 42; Wyeth, p. 47) 

UPDATE, 9:20 AM, December 16, 2014

Here's the cover of The Boston Tea Party, December 1773, "text" by Josephine Pollard, "drawn" by H. W. McVickar (used quotations marks around text/drawn because those are the words on the title page). Published in 1882 by Dodd, Mead & Company, it has been digitized. Don't buy it from Amazon. You can read the entire book, free, online.  

Here's a page from inside:

The text on the left page is: "Like sons of the forest, a poor imitation." The phrase "son of the forest" stood out to me because it is the title William Apes's book, published in 1829. 

And here's McVickar's drawing of "a Chinaman":

Some of McVickar's cartoons appeared in Harpers Magazine. Josephine Pollard wrote many books for children. 

An (Incomplete) List of Illustrators that Got it Wrong with Feathers and Colored Face Paint:

1882: H. W. McVickar got it wrong in The Boston Tea Party, December 1773 (by Josephine Pollard)

2001: Henry Cole got it wrong in Boston Tea Party (by Pamela Duncan Edwards)

2013: Lauren Mortimer got it wrong in What Was the Boston Tea Party? (by Kathleen Krull)

2013: Peter Malone got it wrong in The Boston Tea Party (by Russell Freedman)

Reflections, Observations: "After the Mayflower" - WE SHALL REMAIN

I watched "After the Mayflower" on Monday night. It was the national broadcast of the first film in the We Shall Remain series on PBS. My thoughts here are not about the film. They're about the context of my viewing.

Without a doubt, it is informative in ways that most people have not seen before. It provides a lot of thought provoking material. It isn't blood thirsty savage Indians, nor is it tragic and noble warriors. There's an honesty to it, of emotion and fact.

When it was over, I stayed in my chair, TV still on the PBS channel. I was going to turn off the set when I heard the lead-in to the next program... "A story of savagery and survival... Handed down through seven generations..." And, "the Lively Family Massacre."

I glanced up at the screen. I was shocked and stunned with what I saw. Clips of what was to be shown in the next hour or so.... A white family, their cabin behind them, tending to their yard... Indian men in the trees watching, then, attacking, killing.

For the next half hour, viewers in central Illinois who watch WILL-TV (housed at the University of Illinois), were given a savage-bloodthirsty-Indians-story that We Shall Remain is challenging with its Native voice and viewpoint. The Lively Family Massacre is a documentary of a woman in Illinois seeking her family roots. A documentary of genealogy research that goes back to the 1800s when the Lively family set up a homestead. A professor is interviewed. He says that we don't know why the Kickapoos attacked that family. Maybe they were retaliating for something that was done to them, the professor said, "we don't know." The woman said the Lively family was scalped and one of them was beheaded.

Then there's an article about a high school teacher in Illinois who is working on a book about Geronimo. He's also involved in the episode of We Shall Remain that will focus on Geronimo. The opening sentence includes this:

"...passionately teaches his students about the 19th century Apache Indian who slaughtered countless Americans in order to ensure the survival of his tribe."

That is not a quote from the teacher. It's the reporter's words.

I'm pointing to the local PBS scheduling decision, and the reporter's words because they offer a glimpse into un-critical, maybe biased, maybe racist thinking in Illinois. It is weighing on me because of damage done last week to the public art exhibit we're sponsoring on the UIUC campus.

Intended or not, efforts to educate the public about past and present day American Indians takes place in contexts that are so negative. I'm hoping the local PBS station would have a 'doh!' response if this juxtaposition was pointed out to them. And I think that reporter would say "oh" if someone engaged him a conversation about biased writing, but I don't know what the individual(s) who damaged the public art would say. "I was just messing around, I didn't mean it?" or, "I'm sorry."

Grumpy today, thinking about context.

Bruchac reading from SKELETON MAN

Update on Sep 30 2023: I (Debbie Reese) no longer recommend Bruchac's work. For details see Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki?

One of my favorite books by Joseph Bruchac is Skeleton Man. Click here to hear him read from the book.

Cassie Edwards Plagiarized THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAIN

Some of you may recall that Cassie Edwards, author of romance novels (including the "SAVAGE" Indian series) was caught plagiarizing last year. The site "Smart Bitches" catalogued a lot of the plagiarized passages.

I didn't follow all of it carefully last year, and missed this:

Edwards plagiarized from N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain. The novel is read in a lot of high school English/Lit courses, which makes me think that teachers who teach it might want to add a segment on plagiarism to their unit.

Cassie Edwards, Savage Whispers is a passage-by-passage comparison of Edwards' novel and Momaday's writings. It is astounding. It's on a LiveJournal that belongs to "wombat" dated Feb. 29, 2008. (Note: I've got an LJ, too, under my name, Debbie Reese. When you click on the hyperlink, you might get an "Are you 14?" page. If that happens answer the question and you'll then go to the correct page. At that point, I'm not sure how the page will look on your screen. My computer defaults to my LJ, and it plops wombat's analysis on my page. Maybe if you do not have an LJ, you'll go right to wombat's LJ.)

Here's wombat's opening paragraph, followed by the paragraph where she says what was plagiarized, followed by one example. Do go to wombat's page and read the entire thing. Wombat writes:

This is one of Edwards' older books, and it shows: presumably she wasn't yet able to coast on her reputation (and was twenty years younger), so the prose actually has some description and flow, and the plot is noticeably more complex-- compared to her recent routine, it's almost mindbogglingly frenetic.

...

Edwards makes extensive use of Momaday's book (abbreviated below as WRM), as well as his article/essay "A First American Views His Land", first published with various photos as pp 13-19 National Geographic, Vol. 150 No.1, July 1976, and later reprinted (text-only) in his anthology The Man Made of Words, McMillan 1998 (abbreviated below as FAVL; page #s are via antho MMW or magazine NG).

----

SW p 2 (author's note):

After a bloody fight at Palo Duro Canyon, the Kiowa came in, a few at a time, to surrender at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Their horses and weapons were confiscated and they were imprisoned. In a field just west of the post, the Indian ponies were destroyed. Nearly eight hundred horses were killed outright. Two thousand more were sold, stolen, and given away.

Momaday, WRM p. 67:

After the fight at Palo Duro Canyon, the Kiowas came in, a few at a time, to surrender at Fort Sill. Their horses and weapons were confiscated, and they were imprisoned. In a field just west of the post, the Indian ponies were destroyed. Nearly 800 horses were killed outright; two thousand more were sold, stolen, given away.

I'm grateful to wombat for doing this analysis and letting me know about it. Momaday and the UNM Press have been informed. If there's any news on action, I'll let you know.

We the People 2009

Last night I learned that Louise Erdrich's Birchbark House was on the 2009 "We the People" bookshelf. I mentioned that books on that shelf in previous years had been disappointing. This morning, JPM submitted an excellent comment to that post, so I'm reposting it here:

This is an interesting "first" from a group that so far seems to have focused its selections on perpetuating the dominant narrative of "American history". I'm curious about some of their other choices this year. Am not familiar with Kathleen Krull's book on Cesar Chavez (illustrated by award-winner Yuyi Morales), but I see that she also wrote something titled Pocahontas: Princess of the New World (illustrated by David Diaz, whose cover "princess" has a romanticized look) which according to the author's Web site is "fascinating birth-to-death account of this true American princess."

A Chavez book that would have been VERY interesting to see on the list is Rudolfo Anaya's Elegy on the Death of Cesar Chavez. Though "too old" for the age group NEH has chosen for the Krull bio, Elegy is a straight-from-the-heart look at what Cesar Chavez meant to many, many Mexican-Americans and countless others who observed, took part in, and/or benefited from his tireless activism. AND the dust jacket is this amazing time-line poster, perfect for teachers. Illustrator Gaspar Enriquez did some remarkable work. So I am curious about the decision-making process for that "Picturing America" option.

Two other WTP selections raise questions for me regarding representations of indigenous people in this year's "Bookshelf". For example, what does The Captain's Dog have to say about the Lewis and Clark project, especially about the Native people encountered encountered by the expedition? And Freedman's Life and Death of Crazy Horse I read years ago - but what might have been the reason to choose it over a biography by someone of indigenous background? Insider perspectives continue to be a problematic absence for the WTP bookshelves; let's hope that the inclusion of Birchbark House signals the beginning of a trend.

Also noted: this year's shelf has a repeat -- a version of the Paul Revere "midnight ride" story was also part of the 2005-06 Bookshelf on "Freedom". Wonder if the committee/s had any conversation about choosing David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride instead (for older readers) which unlike the Longfellow poem, focuses on historical accuracy.

And if you want to read past posts on this discussion, here they are:

June 7, 2007: "We" the People?

April 4, 2009: BIRCHBARK HOUSE is on "We the People" Bookshelf, 2009

BIRCHBARK HOUSE is on "We the People" Bookshelf, 2009

Through January 30, 2009, librarians were invited to submit a proposal to win a set of books on the 2009 "We the People" bookshelf. Schools winning a set are being announced this month.

The big news, for me and readers of American Indians in Children's Literature is that Louise Erdrich's book, Birchbark House, is among the books this year. The theme is "Picturing America."

I've been disappointed (furious, actually) with some of the selections in years past. I'm delighted, though, that over 4000 schools in the country will be receiving a copy of Birchbark House book from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Congratulations to Erdrich, and to all students who will have this book in their library.

Interview

While I was at Westfield, MA earlier this year, I was interviewed by Evan Dobelle, President of Westfield State College for One on One with Evan Dobelle. It was the longest interview I've given (30 minutes), and it was tough. The interview is online if you want to see it. Dobelle's questions were far-ranging, some of them in areas of study that are not my focus, hence its tough nature. I don't think I made huge gaffes, but, when I've got more time, I'll study the interview. I've gone one-on-one with university presidents and chancellors before (here at UIUC), but being taped is a different experience.

WE SHALL REMAIN

Writers, reviewers, editors, teachers... anyone whose work in some way touches American Indian cultures/histories... Please watch the upcoming PBS series WE SHALL REMAIN. It starts on Monday night. Native scholars and leaders were deeply involved in the series. At the website there are guides for teachers to use with students and an abundance of additional materials.

A colleague has a clip from the episode that covers boarding schools. The clip is on Facebook. Cut and paste this link in your browser to view it.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=656887999169

It starts with children singing "Ten Little Indians." The visuals start with animated ledger art of a school bus, with Native children boarding that bus. The animated ledger-art is interspersed with black and white photos, and interviews with Native people who were in the schools. The clip is from one of the episodes that will air later.

It is a powerful clip. In spite of the boarding schools, we are still here, and as is made clear by the series itself and the interviews and activities of Native people today, it is clear why the series is called "We Shall Remain." I don't mean that to sound melodramatic. I do mean to say that Native people are pushing back in greater numbers and in greater ways to the ways that we our cultures and histories are taught and presented in the media, in school, in books, etc.

Here's a preview:



In that preview you see tanks. That's from the Wounded Knee episode (#5 scheduled for May 11th). Previously on this site I've written about the takeover of Alcatraz Island and the activism of Native people during the 60s and 70s. Wounded Knee is part of that. The Wounded Knee episode of WE SHALL REMAIN was an Official Selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. One of the advisors for that segment is Robert Warrior, Osage, currently working here at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as Director of our American Indian Studies. If you wish to read (in advance) of that episode, get a copy of a book he wrote along with Paul Chaat Smith, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. Oyate also has some excellent books filled with photographs of the takeover.


Debbie

"But that's what they thought back then"

When reading popular and award winning books historical fiction for children (such as Little House on the Prairie or Matchlock Gun), people defend those books by saying "but that's the way they thought back then."

It's a typical defense of said books and their ilk, but I want to push us all to think carefully about that statement. There's a range of possibilities. Here's three:

Some people said that Indians were savages, blood-thirsty murderers, etc, but did they believe it?

Some people believe it.

Some people did not believe it.

Let's fast forward to today and think about the war in Iraq. Certain segments of the media, and certain political leaders give us overly broad statements about Iraqi's. They collapse a lot of people into a single frame. Or they use fear in an attempt to convince us of the need for a certain action. They repeat these things again and again, enough so that polls tell us that, for example, most Americans believe things about the Iraq war that are not true.

Now let's skip ahead 50 years. What will 'historical fiction' of the present time look like in 50 years? How are writers going to tell children about the war with Iraq? Are they going to create American characters who say that all Iraqi's were brutal killers?

Maybe the placement of these two moments side-by-side doesn't work. I invite your comments.

Rethinking Schools article on AMERICAN GIRLS

Elizabeth Marshall, a former elementary schoolteacher, has a terrific article on the Rethinking Schools site. Titled "Marketing American Girlhood" she makes excellent points again and again about what this well-marketed series hides or glosses over. Here's a paragraph about Josefina:

Josefina's story takes place on a rancho near Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1824 before the Mexican-American War. The nonfictional "Looking Back: America in 1824" at the end of Meet Josefina dilutes this colonial history by limiting discussion to two sentences about the Mexican-American War and pointing out that when it ended in 1848, America "claimed most of the land that is now the southwestern United States" (Tripp, 1997, p. 83). The author of this history then moves on to describe the benefits of this war. "Although Josefina would never have imagined it when she was 9 years old, she would one day be an American — and the cultures and traditions of the New Mexican settlers and their Pueblo neighbors would become part of America, too" (p. 83). It is important to note that this loss of sovereignty was especially significant for New Mexican women, who had many more rights as Mexicans than they had as Americans — like the right to own their own property. The creators at American Girl favor a whitewashed version of this history, and Josefina's narrative reads as a melting pot story in which difference is assimilated into a larger American girlhood identity. Like Meet Josefina, each of the historical fictions takes place in the past and in this way allows issues such as racism, colonization, and war to be presented as things that America has overcome.

In 2006, one of my students brought Josefina's World, 1824: Growing up on America's Southwest Frontier to class. Marshall quotes from Beverly Slapin's review of Kaya. A couple of years ago, Jean Mendoza and I visited the AG store in Chicago. I wrote about that visit, and Roger Sutton, editor at Horn Book, blogged about the series, too.

During our visit, Jean and I wondered about the stage performance they do there but didn't want to rearrange our visit to see it. There is, however, a review in Theatre Journal [to read the entire review, see Theatre Journal 60.2 (2008): 303-306]. The author of the review is Matt Omasta from Arizona State University. Do click on his name to read about him. He's doing some fascinating work, including a stage adaptation of Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue. Here's some excerpts from his review of the American Girls production. He begins with:

I believe that Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is a cultural pedagogue. As corporations further their reach into today's world, I am interested in interrogating what these companies "teach" young people vis-a-vis their popular performances like The American Girls Revue. Viewing the production confirmed my suspicion that children would be indoctrinated into consumer identities and encouraged to avail themselves of the plethora of American Girl products available in the adjoining shop. More surprising and perhaps more troubling for me was the Revue's implicit yet deeply embedded hegemonic discourse that prescribed social roles based on children's race, class, and gender.

In the Revue, a group of girls show another how to play American Girl. Each one picks her favorite girl and acts out a scene. Omasta described three of them-- Felicity, Josefina, and Addy--and the scenes they act out. Then, he writes:

I see a troubling dichotomy when I consider these stories: affluent white people are encouraged to break free from their hegemonic roles, while impoverished minorities should rely instead on inner peace, since attempts at material social change will prove futile.

Of the males in the production, he writes:

With the exception of one kindly avuncular figure, males appeared only in apathetic or aggressive/hostile roles: a confederate soldier, a cruel animal-abuser, a drum-beating Native American who paid no heed to the troubles of his tribe.

Thank goodness, the shows are shutting down. The economy is probably the reason. Wouldn't it be great if they were going dark due to objections from the public? From teachers?

Omasta concludes his review saying that the Revue is the rule, not the exception, in theater for young audiences. Sounds a lot like children's and young adult literature. While some say American Girl is invested in diversity, we have to pay attention to what that diversity is. If it is just decoration, it's not real. It just lets people feel like they're living a liberal or progressive politic.

In short, in "American Girls" there's a lot to think about.

PUBLIC ART EXHIBIT AT NATIVE AMERICAN HOUSE VANDALIZED AGAIN

Earlier today, just after I hit the upload button on my post about "The Big Indian," a colleague here noticed that the Edgar Heap of Birds signs outside our buildings were damaged. The sign shown here is from the opening of the exhibit. Here's the press release.

URBANA, IL -- April 7, 2009

Three signs that are part of the "Beyond the Chief" exhibit outside Native American House and American Indian Studies buildings were vandalized between Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon.

The damaged signs include the ones naming Meskwaki, Sac, and Potawatomi. The signs, located on the 1200 block of West Nevada Street on campus, are bent and permanently damaged.

"I find it distressing that this art exhibit which is meant to educate everyone on campus about the indigenous history of Illinois has been repeatedly targeted in this destructive way," said Robert Warrior, director of Native American House and American Indian Studies.

These signs are just the latest to be vandalized. On or about March 15, the sign featuring the Peoria tribe was similarly damaged.

The signs are valued at $10,000 each. To date, no arrests or citations have been issued in connection with the damage.

The signs are part of an exhibit by Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds and was designed to "remind the campus community whose land they occupy," according to the Native American House Web site. The signs represent 12 different indigenous peoples with homelands in Illinois.

"The Big Indian" in La Crosse, Wisconsin

As you may know, I was in La Crosse last week. I did a presentation on American Indians and children's literature in Murphy Library at U Wisconsin La Crosse. It was a terrific gathering and I met a lot of wonderful people.

A reporter from the local paper was there to do an interview. Her article ran on Saturday in the Tribune. It is titled "Activist eyes cultural accuracy in kid's books." Here's the first two paragraphs:

The classic children’s book “Little House on the Prairie” portrays American Indians as primitive and less than human, said an expert in American Indian studies.

Yet the book is set in a time when the U.S. government had about 800 treaties with American Indian tribes, said Debbie Reese, assistant professor of American Indian studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These were men protecting their families, not bloodthirsty Indians,” she said.

Trib readers offered comments to the article. "Sad Sally" said:

I can hardly take it anymore. DON'T WE HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO WORRY ABOUT????? MY GOD, WE ARE AT WAR, OUR ECONOMY IS IN SHAMBLES, OUR PRESIDENT IS OVER SEAS CALLING US ARROGANT, THOUSANDS OF BABIES ARE BEING ABORTED AS WE SPEAK, GAYS CAN MARRY IN IOWA, and we are worried about how Laura Ingalls perceived the Indians? This is downright stupid MY GOD!! 

And "wiseup" said:

Too many times 'activist' means complainer. Native's routinely killed other tribes and forced them off their own lands before the white man came here. Few were taught this tragic history. If you go back far enough, EVERY race has committed genocide, mass murder, etc against their fellow man! No one with a brain sees any side as ALL GOOD or ALL BAD. You can't change what happened in the past! Get over it and look to future!

I doubt that either Sad Sally or wiseup were at the talk I gave. Perhaps "activist" cued them to respond as they did. I do, in fact, consider myself an activist scholar, which is a way of saying that I use the knowledge I gain during my research by sharing it with others, and I encourage them to share it with others, too. I suggest they be active with that knowledge by asking bookstores to order copies of books that do not stereotype American Indians.

Most of the comments to the article are like Sad Sally's remarks. Comments by Jaxx are different:

I am currently reading "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen, which I highly recommend for people. Not only do public schools not teach about the genocide that Native Americans have experienced, but they also make Christopher Columbus into a hero!

Negative comments are the norm, but worth noting because they tell us what think. They tell us what the teachers who attended my talk are up against...

I read those negative comments and think about "The Big Indian" statue in La Crosse at Riverside Park. Formally known as "Hiawatha," the statue is controversial. Minnesota Public Radio did a piece on it in 2000. Called "A Dilemma in La Crosse" it includes voices of those who want to keep it, and voices of those who want it removed. The photograph above is "The Big Indian." It's a tourist draw for the city. The Marriott, for example, lists it under "Recreation Information" on their webpage. They list it as "The Big Indian."

In the article, an art history professor who studies roadside statues says that it should stay in place because statues like it serve as reminders of how far the country has come. She can view it that way, but reading the article, it is clear that the public does not see it as she does. By them, it is revered and they see nothing offensive about it. The art history professor also says that it is an important marker for American history. I think it is evidence of America's arrogance, power, and ignorance. It makes it possible for people to comment, as they did, to the article about my talk.

Who, in fact, was Hiawatha? Is, for example, Hiawatha by Susan Jeffers an accurate portrayal of the person who was Hiawatha? Or are they about Longfellow's fictive Hiawatha?