Questions about Messner and Rex's THE NEXT PRESIDENT: THE UNEXPECTED BEGINNINGS AND UNWRITTEN FUTURE OF AMERICA'S PRESIDENTS

On March 24, 2020, Chronicle Books published a new social studies-themed picture book for ages 8-12. Titled The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents, it is written by Kate Messner and illustrated by Adam Rex. As readers of AICL know, we approach our reviews with a Native reader in mind. How will a Native child feel about the contents of this book? How will that child’s parents feel about its contents? We are precisely those parents. 

Our post about The Next President differs from our typical posts in which we recommend, or do not recommend, a book based on its handling of Native content. The Next President is, in many ways, unlike most other books, particularly books about the presidency for young people. We found that we engaged differently with it. So this post is as much about that engagement as it is about the words and illustrations -- what we noticed, what we questioned, and where we went with our questions. We hope readers of the blog will find this approach useful. Part of our engagement involved a series of online, COVID-safe conversations, so we have inserted our names as appropriate, to show who said what.

Debbie: The Next President got some starred reviews. It uses an interesting concept. Rather than repeat what other books about presidents do--which is to talk about their presidency--it is an opportunity for children to see some aspect of each president’s life before they became president. The structure of that information is intriguing, too. Rather than a strict chronological presentation, it is framed by periods/years. Within that structure, Messner and Rex give us information about individuals who were born during that time and/or something they did. It is difficult to describe in words, so we’ll show you a page, here (this image is from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast's blog post about the book):

Jean: This is the first informational two-page spread in the book. It is focused on 1789, the year George Washington became president of the United States. As with most of the pages in the book, there’s a lot going on. On the left, Washington gestures from inside a portrait someone is painting. On the right, four of the men who would later become president are deep in serious conversation. The text above them provides pre-presidency facts about each of them in order: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. The text in the box for President 2 says: 

John Adams was Washington’s vice president. Adams was known for having a short temper and getting into arguments. He was the only one of the first five presidents who didn’t enslave people.

Now, look closely at what Adam Rex has created behind them. Several Black people are shown carrying a building. We thought at first it must be the White House, but it is actually what was called Federal Hall in New York, which no longer exists. In 1789, Federal Hall was a significant government building -- New York was the capital of the US then. Washington was inaugurated there, and Congress passed the Bill of Rights and established the federal judiciary in that building. A lot of the infrastructure of that time was built with enslaved labor (and slavery existed in New York at the time). So I think this illustration of the Black workers holding up Federal Hall might suggest a couple of things. One, it says that the labor of enslaved people was essential to the growth of the United States even in those early days of the country. And it may also say that when the seat of government picked up and moved (from New York to Philadelphia to Washington DC), much of that work was done by people who were enslaved, and whose human rights were denied by that government. It seems to me that illustrations like this one -- a depiction of people holding up an entire building --  invite readers to look further for meaning. 

Debbie: We like that the author/illustrator team tells readers about slavery, right away. We’re told that Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Washington enslaved people. We wish that information extended to other presidents beyond these four. The website, “Slavery in the President’s Neighborhood” says 12 presidents enslaved Africans. In Messner and Rex’s book, the other eight pretty much get a pass. 

Another page we like a lot is the opening double page spread, where we see a range of people and families touring a gallery where they learn about each of the presidents. We especially like that this is a very diverse set of individuals and families (this image is from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast's blog post about the book):

Jean, as we looked at the book, what stood out for you? 

Jean: Ah … Aside from the nearly complete lack of reference to Native people …  I was struck by the range of pre-presidency experiences Messner and Rex depict. We see Andrew Jackson scowling at a bird, along with text about his temper. (Later there’s a page about a duel in which he killed a man.) And on the facing page are pictures of 10-year-old Martin Van Buren, 16-year-old William Henry Harrison, and then 4-year-old Zachary Taylor playing in water with a stick. Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor later were known as “Indian fighters”, which boosted their political careers, and Van Buren eventually oversaw Indian Removal to Oklahoma. None were making war in the year 1789, but their interactions with Native people would prove significant, so I think it would have been good to have some mention of that in the book.

What’s something that stood out for you, Deb?

Debbie: When I first opened the book and saw the end paper art, I was really annoyed. You know how books have a nameplate in a book where its owner can write their name? This one says “This Country Belongs to” and has a line for a child to write their name. It reminded me of the uncritical singing of “This land is your land, this land is my land…” Both obscure the history of this continent, who those lands belong to, and the wars that Native people fought to keep their families safe on their homelands. Part of me wants to enjoy little Zachary playing with that stick but all I can think of is “whose land is that, Zachary, and how did your parents get it?!” That emotion carried, for me, as I went from one page to another in the book. 

As we paged through the book, we spent a lot of time on some of the things we noticed. Like that statue of George Washington. That is… interesting, isn’t it? Here's a screen capture of it, taken with my phone: 

Jean: Oh, gosh, yes. Adam Rex places a huge statue of Washington in the middle of the gallery on that first full 2-page spread. Is it a factual depiction or is it something imagined that Rex wants readers to think about, like the enslaved men holding up the building in the illustration we mentioned? We ended up down a research rabbit hole, wondering if that’s a real statue. It turns out it’s a real monument -- Washington in white marble, seated on a throne and half naked, holding a sword. Right behind him, Rex shows a strange, smaller figure which, it turns out, is literally the only representation of Native people in the entire book.

Deb, do you want to say more about what we found out about the statue and that figure? 

Debbie: The sculptor’s name is Horatio Greenough. As we dug in that rabbit hole we learned that the statue has two small figures behind the seated Washington. From a Smithsonian page about the statue, we learned that those two figures are an American Indian and Christopher Columbus, and that they represent the Old and New World (see the side-by-side comparison of the Greenough's "Indian" with Rex’s representation of it, below). I was already annoyed with the endpaper, and so, realizing that the only Native image in the book was presented in that particular context added to my disappointment.  

Jean: That statue has a strange history. When the work was unveiled in 1840, public opinion was strongly against it. People hated that it showed Washington partly clothed, and made him seem king-like. I have a negative reaction, too, for a different reason: unlike every other statue I’ve seen of a Native person created by a white person, this figure conveys purposeless, indecision, and maybe even laziness. The subject kind of leans forward and stares into the middle distance, and looks to be scratching his ear. Definitely not the heroic noble savage trope there, but definitely not any better. Think of how much time and effort went into creating a lackadaisical, confused Native man in white marble. I’d love to know the sculptor’s decision-making process. (Source for image of Rex's illustration is Debbie's camera; source for the photo on the right is George Washington Unclothed.)

Debbie: And I want to know why Rex included it! I hope teachers would want to dig in like we did but am not sure they’ll be able to do that, given the incredible demands on their time overall. A teacher could do a lot of fascinating research with students--just on that statue especially now, during a period when people are asking important questions about statues across the US and around the world. Who commissioned them, when, and why? As I did research on Greenough’s statue, I read Monument Wars: Washington D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape by Kirk Savage. He said that initially, Greenough meant to include a small statue of “a negro” (Savage used quotation marks around the word) to represent plantation slavery as the engine of U.S. expansion across the continent. But, someone argued that it would connect Washington to slavery and the role of slavery in national expansion. No monument had done that before. So he decided to use Columbus instead.

In Greenough’s statue, there was a desire to hide some truths about Washington. I wonder if Adam Rex found that out, too? I’ve been having so much trouble trying to figure out why he put this statue in the book, at all. Then I saw on Twitter that Rex said “[W]e get all these ancient Greek-looking Presidents because we like to imagine our country is the Platonic ideal of democracy.” Is the statue--and that Indian--there to invite kids to think about the failings of our democracy and how statues contribute to those failings? 

I wish there was a page of “why we did this” information in the back of the book. It would have been so useful! You and I come into this book with a lot of knowledge about imperialism and how that plays out in children’s books with the endless mythologizing of American exceptionalism. I took a look online to see if anyone noted anything remotely like that in their review of the book, and nobody has. Perhaps that points to the need for a “why we did this” page. 

As our deep-dive into the statue shows, we tend to ask a lot of questions and we wish we didn’t have to do that! I think picture book teams have a terrific model for what-to-do with respect to providing readers with information. That model is Kevin Maillard and Juanita Martinez Neal’s Fry Bread. It has eight pages of notes! I think that’s the first time I’ve seen that, and it would help tremendously with books like The Next President. As we read the book we saw many places where we thought more information would have helped us understand what Messner and Rex were doing. Like with the page on President Buchanan. Can you tell our readers what we wrestled with there, Jean? 

Jean: The text about James Buchanan states that he was the only president who never married. The illustration shows him walking in close, if not intimate, conversation with another man. There’s a long history of speculation about whether Buchanan was gay. When we looked for photos of the man who was his partner, it was clear to us that Rex had drawn a likeness of William Rufus King. We think it would be especially helpful for LGBTQ+ readers to be aware that there’s some convincing scholarship that says Buchanan was gay, and that King, who served as a US Senator, was his long-time partner. We imagine a teacher thinking that a child can go find the information on their own, but that suggestion is fraught with peril. Some contemporary sources, and others from Buchanan’s time, contain expressions of homophobia that could be harmful. 

Debbie: Yes! The goal should be affirmation, right on the page! I think of the article, “The All Heterosexual World of Children’s Nonfiction: A Critical Content Analysis of LGBTQ Identities in Orbis Pictus Award Books, 1990-2017 by Thomas Crisp, Roberta Price Gardner, and Matheus Almeida. They have a section in their article called “Give Us Names: Looking for Queerness in LGBTQ-Identified Focal Subjects” where they write that heterosexual identities are promoted explicitly, while “a code of silence and invisibility often surrounds any inclusion of queer-identified people.” In their study of all those Orbis Pictus Award books, they also write (p. 260):

While it is not impossible for readers to recognize the codes embedded in these depictions, the authors of these children's books squarely place the burden on their readers, and ultimately reinscribe queer invisibility for those who are not able to decipher the textual clues, would rather not acknowledge, or who are unaware there is a need to acknowledge queer existences.

Those are powerful passages, and if Messner and Rex read this post, I hope they address the way they may be contributing to the invisibility that Crisp, Gardner, and Almeida note! I am guessing that Messner and Rex felt that Buchanan’s identity as a gay man is not universally seen, at present, as a fact and that may be why they did not include it explicitly in the text, but that decision is contradicted by the illustration of that very man, William Rufus King.

Jean: We also wonder what scholars, or parents, or children who are Asian American or Latinx wish had been included in the book, or whether lives of Black people could have been depicted outside of enslavement and work. But we’ll return now to our original goal of analyzing the absence of Native content in The Next President. As parents, aunties, and grandmothers of Native kids, we want books like this one to show Native people as more than just part of a statue onto which a white sculptor projected his dream of a White republic. We know teachers are going to be using this book to support social studies curricula. We also suspect that publishers will want more books like this one, on different topics. So we are at work on two resources that we think would be useful in providing historical facts while acknowledging the influence of Native people on US history. 

One is a series of land acknowledgements -- one for each president’s birthplace. We’re finding this one to be challenging for a variety of reasons. But we think it can support any curriculum about US presidents. The second resource is a kind of rejoinder to The Next President -- we’ll have brief facts about each president’s dealings with Native people (pre-Presidency, if possible, in keeping with Messner’s approach). We plan to have those available as soon as we can.

A brief note: we are aware that many people feel that Messner and Rex left out President 45, but he's shown on page 33 as a teenager.

As always, we welcome your comments.

__________

Note: "The All-Heterosexual World of Children's Nonfiction: A Critical Content Analysis of LGBTQ Identities in Orbis Pictus Award Books, 1990-2017" by Thomas Crisp, Robert Price Gardner, and Matheus Almeida came out in Children's Literature in Education (2018), 49, pages 246-263.

"Redscales" (a stand-in for R*edskins) in DINO-THANKSGIVING

Update from Debbie on Tuesday, October 18, 2022: Today I received an email from the editorial folks at Lerner. The page in Dino-Thanksgiving that shows the "Redscales" has been changed. In the second edition, the dino brothers hope the "Rippers" win. The team colors are changed from maroon and gold to red and light blue (or maybe that is gray). Similar changes have been made throughout the earlier book (Dino-Football). Changes were made to all ebook formats, too. I'm grateful to everyone at Lerner who participated in the conversation and subsequent changes and feel confident they will carry this moment forward in their future work.  

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Last week I went to a local library to gather Thanksgiving books to see what I might see (patterns, etc). The library uses a turkey sticker on the spine. Rather than look up books, I scanned the top shelves in about half of the children's E section of the library, and on the "new books" shelf--pulling any book with a turkey sticker on it--until my arms were full. That was 19 books.

I got home and started reading, sorting, making notes, etc. This post is about one page in one of the books. The books have an array of problems but this one stands out because it came out this year (2020). The book is Dino-Thanksgiving written by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Barry Gott. In it, dinosaurs are gathering for a Thanksgiving feast. They do the sorts of things people do on Thanksgiving Day--like watching a football game:

That's a photo of the page. Those red arrows are by me, drawing attention to "Redscales" and the Pteros shown in a maroon and gold helmet and maroon and gold jerseys. There's no mistaking the parallel. The "Redscales" are a stand-in for the Washington DC professional football team. 

I assume the author and illustrator and art director and all the people in-house at Lerner Books thought it was cool or clever, but it isn't. I did a post about it on Facebook and tagged Lerner. The next morning, they replied, saying:

We appreciate those who have pointed out this insensitivity. We are changing the team name in reprints, and we’re discussing changes to the art as well. And we’re doubling down on our commitment to watch for things like this during our production process, and do better in the future.

I'm glad to know they're going to change it--but the question I and others have is--how did that happen in the first place? Resistance to mascots is national news! How did so many people involved with this book miss that problem? 

I'm sharing this with readers of AICL to encourage you to use social media when you see problems like this. Tag publishers when you speak up. Tag me if the content is specific to Native people, and I'll amplify what you say. 

Anti-Indigenous Content in S. E. Hinton's THE OUTSIDERS

On October 13, 2020, S. E. Hinton replied to a tweet asking her to consider writing a graphic novel version of The Outsiders (first published in 1967). In her reply she said no, and that: 

"The Outsiders is the first book many people read in their life & it shows them they CAN read a book. Not that they can turn the pages of a graphic novel." 

If you're on twitter, you saw (or can go see) responses to her reply. A day later, she sent out another tweet saying she is reconsidering her earlier remark and apologized to fans of graphic novels. Watching it unfold, I remembered that The Outsiders is one of the classics that has anti-Indigenous content. 

Do you remember these passages, in Hinton's The Outsiders? 

On page 106-107, Two-Bit says: 

"I thought all the wild Indians in Oklahoma had been tamed. What little squaw's got that tuff-looking mop of yours, Ponyboy?" 

Early in the book, Hinton describes Two-Bit as the oldest member of their gang and "the wisecracker of the bunch" (page 9). People think his remarks are funny. He reminds Ponyboy of Will Rogers (I wonder if Hinton knew that Rogers was Cherokee?). 

The state currently known as Oklahoma is where you'll find thirty-nine sovereign tribal nations. Hinton grew up in Tulsa. I don't know what the population of Native people was in the 1960s in Tulsa or Oklahoma, but my guess is that Hinton may have had classmates that were Native. As a kid (she wrote the book while she was a teenager), did she carry stereotypical ideas of what Native people would look like? 

We certainly see stereotypical ideas in Two-Bits words. First is "Wild Indians." Two-Bit also uses what growing numbers of people recognize as a slur: "squaw." And what does he imagine that a "squaw" does? Scalp others. Some would argue that Two-Bits identity as a joker makes a difference in how readers are meant to interpret that passage. You've heard all the "it's a joke!" disclaimers for insensitive jokes, right? Humor like that does not humor me. Jokes like that are made at someone's expense. Defense of them are also made at that someone's expense. 

This passage is on page 135-136 (point of view in the book is Ponyboy):

Screeching like an Indian, Steve went running across the lawn in flying leaps, stopped suddenly, and flipped backward. 

And,

With a happy whoop I did a no-hands cartwheel off the porch steps, hit the ground, and rolled to my feet.

See the stereotyping there? Indians "screech." And Ponyboy "whoops" -- presumably, like an Indian would.... and you know that means the woo-woo sort of thing you see in movies and television shows. 

I looked around a bit to see if I could find any lesson plans where teachers are teaching kids about the stereotypical content of The Outsiders. I found some worksheets here and there but they're all about class differences. Do you know of any worksheets that address the anti-Indigenous passages? 

On Twitter I see objections from many people. I'm noting the problematic Native content. Some are noting that Gone With the Wind is referenced several times. The book's content was bad when it came out in 1967. Most people did not notice it then, and some do not notice it now. Some think it does not matter. I disagree. It matters. Though I didn't create this post with the intent of reviewing the book, I think I'll just say that whether it is characterized as anti-Indigenous or anti-Black or outdated--it need not be taught today. There are better options. 

In short, I do not recommend The Outsiders. If the book is put forth as a graphic novel, I wonder if Hinton would do that edition and if she'd leave out the references to Gone With the Wind and the stereotypical Native passages?  

_________

For your reference, a screen cap of Hinton's tweets:

  

Highly Recommended: The Cabin, by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson

The Cabin

Written by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson

Published in Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions about Small Town America

Edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter; Publisher: Candlewick Press, 2020

Review Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewer: Debbie Reese

I grew up at Nambé Pueblo. Back in the 60s, our home was one of the handful that was along the washboarded dirt road that ended at our waterfalls. During those years the US government constructed a black top road so construction workers could build a dam to control the river that fed the valley. Many days I'd go to the river with my grandma to bring buckets of water to the house.  I spent many days and nights with my grandma. Her house and the one my parents built for their growing family were connected at one end (forming an L shape). Our front doors were not that far apart but I was a scaredy cat! After spending a day with Gram, I'd just sleep with her rather than dash across the yard from her door to ours. Too dark outside! Who knows what might get me?! Staying the night with her meant I'd stay in bed until she got the wood stove going. From under the quilts I could watch her adjust the damper till she had the fire just where she wanted it. Then, she'd call to me and I'd sit by the warm stove as she made some oatmeal and toast for me. 

All of that is in my mind this morning because last night, I read Hopson's "The Cabin." From the first word to the last ones, I was right there--in that cabin, with her teenaged protagonist. Of her story, Hopson writes:

My short story ‘The cabin’ is about a young Inupiaq teenager who encounters something strange while trapping.

As that teen wonders what she's hearing outside the cabin, she thinks it might be a bear. She's got a rifle. I'm reminded of the time when a bear was around the pueblo, getting into corn. Some of us kids were afraid to be outside, playing! Our parents were worried, too. Some got their rifles out, just in case they needed them. 

Life on a reservation, in a remote area, was wonderful. I have nothing to complain about. What I have is terrific memories, brought forth by reading My Cabin. It resonates with me on many levels. There's elders in it--like my Gram--so that's one key piece of it but there's so much more! 

You should definitely order a copy of Rural Voices! Hopson's story is excellent, and I look forward to reading the others in the book. I highly recommend My Cabin. And I wonder what else she's working on? If you're interested in knowing more about her, head over to her website. On her "about" page, you'll read that she's a tribally enrolled Inupiaq. 

Highly Recommended: APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE) by Eric Gansworth

Monday, October 12 is Indigenous Peoples' Day. There will be many virtual events taking place. Top of my list is the one from Arizona State University. Eric Gansworth will open their day of events. When you click on through to register for his lecture (at noon, Central Time) you will see that Gansworth was selected to deliver the 2020 lecture in the prestigious Simon Ortiz Red Ink Indigenous Speaker Series. People in Native studies or who study the writing and scholarship of Native people will recognize names of people who have given that lecture. In the field, being selected to give that lecture has tremendous significance. Videos for most of the talks are available at the site. If you are new to your work in learning about Native writing, make time to watch and study all of them! 

Gansworth will be talking about his new book, Apple (Skin to the Core). Across the hundreds of  Native Nations, our life experiences differ. Census information has shown that about half of us grow up in suburban or urban areas. I'm glad to see books set in those spaces. 

Some of us grew up on our homelands or on reservations. Native-authored books for children and young adults that reflect a reservation sense-of-place with the integrity that Gansworth brings to his writing, are rare. On Indigenous Peoples Day, I'll be giving a talk, too. My audience will be Pueblo peoples. I expect a large segment of the audience to be people who are living on their Pueblo homelands. And so, I'm emphasizing books like Apple (Skin to the Core) that will speak directly to a reservation-based experience. Of course, everyone should read it and Gansworth's other two books, If I Ever Get Out of Here and Give Me Some Truth. 

As I read through his memoir, I linger over some of what I read... I want to tell you about this poem, or what I see on that page, but that's not the thrust of this post. A review is forthcoming. Today, I celebrate the gifts that Eric Gansworth gives to us, in every word he writes, in each poem, story, and book. 

Bio from Gansworth's website:

Eric Gansworth (Sˑha-weñ na-saeˀ), a writer and visual artist, is an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation.  He was raised at the Tuscarora Nation, near Niagara Falls, New York.  Currently, he is a Professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.

And a video about the book and the word "apple":

Tips for Teachers: Developing Instructional Materials about American Indians

 Editors Note: This post was created as a one-page document that would fit into a single page. It is also available as a pdf. If you have trouble opening or downloading the pdf, write to us directly (see the "Contact" tab for Debbie's email address). A one-pager was hard to do! We wanted to add resources for each of the ten points. Instead, we'll be adding resources in the comments section. We encourage you to share the link to this post and the pdf with others but do not insert Tips for Teachers in something you are selling! We created this as a free resource. If you see someone selling it, please let us know. 

Tips for Teachers: Developing Instructional Materials about American Indians

Prepared by Debbie Reese (Nambé Owingeh) and Jean Mendoza (White) 

American Indians in Children’s Literature 

As educators develop or adapt lesson plans to teach about Native peoples, we recommend attention to the following:

(1) “American Indian” and “Native American” are broad terms that describe the Native Nations of peoples who have lived on North America for thousands of years. Recently, “Indigenous” has come into use, too (note: always use a capital letter for Indigenous). Many people use the three terms interchangeably but educationally, best practice is to teach about and use the name of a specific Native Nation.

(2) There are over 500 sovereign Native Nations that have treaty or legal agreements with the United States. Like any sovereign nation in the world, they have systems of government with unique ways of selecting leaders, determining who their citizens are (also called tribal members), and exercising jurisdiction over their lands. That political status distinguishes Native peoples from other minority or underrepresented groups in the United States. Native peoples have cultures (this includes unique languages, stories, religions, etc.) specific to who they are, but their most important attribute is sovereignty. Best practice—educationally—is to begin with the sovereignty of Native Nations and then delve into unique cultural attributes (languages, religions, etc.)

(3) There is a tendency to talk, speak, and write about Native peoples in the past tense, as if they no longer exist. You can help change that misconception by using present tense verbs in your lesson plans, and in your verbal instruction when you are teaching about Native peoples. 

(4) Another tendency is to treat Native creation and traditional stories like folklore or as writing prompts, or to use elements within them as the basis for art activities. Those stories are of religious significance to Native peoples and should be respected in the same ways that people respect Bible stories. 

(5) In many school districts, instruction and stories about Native peoples are limited to Columbus Day or November (Native American month) or Thanksgiving. Native peoples are Native all year long and information about them should be included year-round. 

(6) Native peoples of the 500+ sovereign nations have unique languages. A common mistake is to think that “papoose” is the Native word for baby and that “squaw” is the word for woman. In fact, each nation has its own word for baby and woman, and some words—like squaw—are considered derogatory. We also have unique clothing. Some use feathered headdresses; some do not.  

(7) To interrupt common misconceptions, develop instructional materials that focus on a specific nation—ideally—one in the area of the school where you teach. Look for that nation’s website and share it with your students. Teach them to view these websites as primary sources. Instead of starting instruction in the past, start with the present day concerns of that nation.

(8) To gain an understanding of issues that are of importance to Native peoples, read Native news media like Indian Country Today, Indianz, and listen to radio programs like “Native America Calling.”

(9) The National Congress of American Indians has free resources online that can help you become more knowledgeable. An especially helpful one is Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction, available here: http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes.

(10) Share what you learn with your fellow teachers! 

__________________________________________________________

Prepared on October 1, 2020. May be shared with others.
© American Indians in Children's Literature. 

Highly Recommended: "What's an Indian Woman to Do?" in WHEN THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD WAS SUBDUED, OUR SONGS CAME THROUGH

What's an Indian Woman to Do?

Written by Marcie Rendon

Published in

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through

Edited by Joy Harjo; Published in 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company

Review Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewer: Debbie Reese

****

 
The first three lines in Rendon's poem, "What's an Indian Woman to Do?" are these:

what's an indian woman to do

when the white girls act more indian

than the indian women do?

From there we read about the Indian woman's ex-husband and what he expected her to do. The poem doesn't tell us this explicitly, but to me, that expectation is based on stereotypes he had acquired. We read about the Indian woman's mother and her work and how their life meant they didn't have time to make the sorts of things that white girls make and sell at powwows--and how they use what they think is a Native-sounding name and start using a reservation accent... And that bit about them correcting the Indian woman's use of Native language... What they are doing is claiming a Native identity.  

In the introduction to When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, Joy Harjo writes (p. 15): 

"Poems like Marcie Rendon's playful "What's an Indian Woman to Do?" both worry the edges of mixed identity and strongly claim Indigenous belonging."

Rendon's poem is about white women claiming to be Native, how they treat Native women, how they are embraced by others, and what that all feels like to a Native woman. If you follow Native people on social media, you likely know that we talk about sketchy claims to Native identity. From time to time, the national news will cover someone that has made a false claim to an identity. Most recently there were many articles about Jessica Krug a white woman who claimed to be Black. 

A few weeks before that, there were articles about "Sciencing_Bi"--a Native person created by a white woman named Beth Ann McLaughlin. That case was unusual. More often, we see a white person claiming to be Native in the ways that Jessica Krug was doing with her claim to being Black.

In Native communities, the word "pretendian" circulates as a term to describe someone who is making a fraudulent claim to being Native. Harjo addresses this issue in the Introduction to When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (page 3):

Because we respect indigenous nations' right to determine who is a tribal member, we have included only indigenous-nations voices that are enrolled tribal members or are known and work directly within their respective communities. We understand that this decision may not be a popular one. We editors do not want to arbitrate identity, though in such a project we are confronted with the task. We felt we should leave this question to indigenous communities. 

When I launched American Indians in Children's Literature in 2006, I had already been studying children's literature about Native peoples for over a decade. In that capacity I, too, was confronted with the task of determining whether someone was Native or not. Generally, I take writers at their word when they claim to be Native. If an individual says they're enrolled or a citizen of a specific nation, I relax. I assume they are telling the truth. If they're not enrolled or a citizen, I take a closer look at their claim. Are they, as Harjo said, known in or working with their community? As you might know, all of this can get messy real quick! 

When someone's claim to an identity is questioned, some people (usually the person and their friends) quickly move to charge the questioner as "identity police." That label shifts the focus from the person making the claim to the person who is asking the question. The latter is criticized. In some cases, that has been me--Debbie, a Native woman. What, then, am I to do? To borrow Rendon's words, What's an Indian Woman to do?

Marcie Rendon's poem is about being a Native woman and seeing people who are not Native be embraced by society as if they are, in fact, Native. Can you see why Marcie Rendon's poem, What's an Indian Woman to Do?" might resonate with me? People trust what I write here on AICL and in my book chapters and articles. When a new book comes out and the author asserts a Native identity on the book jacket and in promotional materials, it is clear that their editor and publisher believe their claim. Have they vetted that claim? The care I take in studying and recommending (or not recommending) a book is important to a lot of people. I do the best I can do, given what I know about pretendianism, and the complexities of Native identity. Harjo continues:

And yet, indigenous communities are human communities, and ethics of identity are often compromised by civic and blood politics. The question "Who is Native?" has become more and more complex as culture lines and bloodlines have thinned and mixed in recent years. We also have had to contend with an onslaught of what we call "Pretendians," that is, nonindigenous people assuming a Native identity. When individuals assert themselves as Native when they are not culturally indigenous, and if they do not understand their tribal nation's history or participate in their tribal nation's society, who benefits? Not the people or communities of the identity being claimed.

One of the strengths of Harjo's work on this anthology is that teachers and librarians can learn from the many things she says in the introduction but there are other things to learn. Learn the names of the poets she's included. Learn the names of their tribal nations. For each poet she includes, Harjo provides information you need. Here's the entry for Rendon:

MARCIE RENDON (1952–), Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, is a poet, playwright, and community activist. Rendon’s work includes two novels, most recently Girl Gone Missing (2019), as well as four children’s nonfiction books. She received the Loft Literary Center’s 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship. She is a producer and creative director at the Raving Native Theater in Minnesota.

As I read that entry and think about what it says, I think I know what Marcie Rendon's answer to "What's an Indian Woman to Do?" has been. She counters the claims to Native identity by being an activist, a writer, producer, and creative director whose works and words can help you see who we are--for real. 

Get a copy of When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through and make room in your budget to get books by Native writers in Harjo's book.   

Highly Recommended! THE SEA IN WINTER by Christine Day

Jean and I both read Christine Day's The Sea in Winter and are thrilled by what Day has written! A review is forthcoming, but I wanted to give you all a heads-up. Day's book comes out on January 5, 2021. Pre-order it! And check out her website. She's an enrolled citizen of the Upper Skagit tribe. 

Here's the book description, from Day's website:

It’s been a hard year for Maisie Cannon, ever since she hurt her leg and could not keep up with her ballet training and auditions.

Her blended family is loving and supportive, but Maisie knows that they just can’t understand how hopeless she feels. With everything she’s dealing with, Maisie is not excited for their family midwinter road trip along the coast, near the Makah community where her mother grew up.

But soon, Maisie’s anxieties and dark moods start to hurt as much as the pain in her knee. How can she keep pretending to be strong when on the inside she feels as roiling and cold as the ocean?

I read an advanced reader's copy in August and tweeted my excitement about it. The Sea In Winter is the first book I saw with the Heartdrum logo on the spine. In that tweet, I said:

Honestly, I'm trembling a bit as I hold an ARC of Christine Day's THE SEA IN WINTER in my hands, and gaze at the Heartdrum logo on the spine, created by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson. Congratulations, and thank you, @CynLeitichSmith and all those who brought this imprint into being.

And I shared a close up photo of the logo:  

I passed my copy of the book over to Jean. She's spent a lot of time in that area and will be doing the review essay. Do order a copy, though, right now! 

Not Recommended: Conrad Richter's THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST

The Light in the Forest

Written by Conrad Richter

Published in 1953

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Reviewer: Debbie Reese

Review Status: Not Recommended

****

More than once over the years, someone has written to ask me about Conrad Richter's The Light in the Forest. Given its age (published in 1953), I suspected it would have problematic content and I suppose I didn't have the energy at the moment to do anything with it. Last week, I decided to give it a try. As you see by red X on the three book covers above, my initial suspicions were correct. The Light in the Forest is not recommended. The cover on the right is the spin off version that came out when Disney turned Richter's book into a movie in 1958. A fraud--Iron Eyes Cody--was the "technical advisor" for that film. 

I read the acknowledgements and chapter one of Richter's book and did a series of tweets as I read. I'm copying them here:

In the acknowledgements, Richter says he was struck by stories of white captives who had been returned to their white families, but who wanted to run away to rejoin the Indian home where they'd lived.

As a small boy, Richter wanted to run away to live "among the savages."

The acknowledgement is romantic (and stereotypical) in tone. It says Indians were repelled by American ideals and restrained manner. I don't know what ideals Richter had in mind but "restrained" on the heels of "savages" might be a hint of what is to come as I read the book.

The main character is 15. He's white and has been living with Indians as an adopted son since he was 4. The village has received word that they must give up their white prisoners.

He is shocked that it includes him.

Cuyloga (the Indian man who adopted him) had "said words that took out his white blood and put Indian blood in its place." He was thereafter called True Son.

I'm always curious as to how a writer comes up with a Native name for a character. I looked up Cuyloga...

... and got hits to Sparknotes and Cliffsnotes and gradesaver and enotes and quizlet and coursehero.... all of which tell me the book is used a lot in schools.

I think we're meant to think that "Cuyloga" is a Lenape word. The people in this village would probably speak Lenape. But Cuyloga gave this white child he adopted an English name: "True Son." I wonder if Richter will use "True Son" throughout, or if he'll use a Lenape name?

In the first para of ch 1, we learn that Cuyloga taught True Son to "endure pain." True Son holds a hot stone from the fire "on his flesh to see how long he could stand it." In winter, Cuyloga sat smoking on the bank while True Son sat in the icy river till Cuyloga said ok.

True Son doesn't want to be returned to the whites, so he blackens his face (why?!) and hides in a hollow tree. But, Cuyloga finds him. True Son is "tied up in his father's cabin like some prisoner to be burned at the stake."

Burned at the stake?! Again,

Cuyloga takes True Son to the soldiers nearby. True Son resists, which embarrasses Cuyloga. He leaves and True Son imagines their village and its "warriors and hunters, squaws, and the boys, dogs and girls he had played with."

Squaws?

I've read enough of Richter's THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST to know I will be asking people not to use it. It is old, stereotypical, and there are better choices. If the goal is to study conflicts between Native and White people, Erdrich's BIRCHBARK HOUSE is much better!

Today I'll expand a bit on some of what I noted in those tweets. 

Richter's idea that Native people teach their kids how to "endure pain" is something I see a lot. I've not traced that down to see where it came from and I'm not doing it now. Certainly, Native and non-Native parents in the past and in the present, teach their kids things they need to know to live. But come on: pulling a stone from a fire and putting it on your flesh... that would cause injury! It doesn't make sense to me. 

That "burned at the stake" bit is also a common occurrence and it, too, makes me wonder where it came from. If you've watched old westerns--or even new things like the television series of Little House on the Prairie--you've seen Indians tying someone at a stake and then lighting a fire to burn them alive. You probably remember that Europeans did that to people they thought were heretics or witches. (There's another popular trope that isn't in Richter's book but that you should be wary of: that a captive would be cooked alive in a pot and then eaten.) From what I can tell there's one incident of a white person being "tied to a stake" and tortured. That's William Crawford and I'll be doing research on that to see what I find. I welcome your research into all this, and if you find things of note, let us know in a comment.

I noted that "True Son" uses the word "squaw." A search of the text indicates it appears 20 times. Reading those passages, it is clear that "True Son" has a derogatory view of women, Native or otherwise. Richter's story depicts them as a beast of labor whose work is beneath that of a man. 

The word "Injun" eleven times, and scalp (or variations of it) appear 43 times. The emails I get from teachers who want to use the book... now, they make me cringe. Obviously the book is a lot like Little House on the Prairie: holding quite a solid space in peoples' reading memory, coupled with the idea that this is a good book. It is not. I do not recommend it. 

Reckoning with A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES

Recently, a reader of AICL wrote to me (Debbie) to say they'd been looking through editions of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses in their library. They had seen my 2017 post about depictions of Native peoples in various editions. 

They sent me photos of the poem, "Travel." Here's the edition illustrated by Tasha Tudor:

In Tudor's edition I circled a line. Here's the full verse:  

Where are forests, hot as fire,

Wide as England, tall as a spire,

Full of apes and cocoa-nuts

And the negro hunters' huts;

 

Here's the edition illustrated by Brian Wildsmith (I think it came out in 1966):

Instead of "and the Negro hunter's huts", the line is "And the brave hunters' huts". When the Wildsmith edition was being done, who made the decision to change that word? 

The "Travel" poem itself is a lot like "Foreign Children." Both poems center whiteness. Those who are not white are depicted in racist and exotic ways. 

Here's "Foreign Children" in the Tudor edition:

As people in the U.S. and elsewhere tend to racism and bias in statues, I wonder what we'll see in books like A Child's Garden of Verses? It gets published over and over with different illustrators. Will that taper off? Will changes to what gets included in it change? Do you work in a library? What versions are on your shelves? What do you see in them when you read them, or when you compare them with other editions? A growing awareness of racism and bias is a plus for everyone. 

 

Some Things We're Learning: More about IPH4YP

Once An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People was out in the world, we heard from reviewers and other readers about topics they would have liked to see covered in the adaptation. Their suggestions included attention to Two Spirit people in Indigenous history, and to relations between Native peoples and Black people in what's currently called North America, from colonization to the present. 

We hope to one day be able to have a second edition of IPH4YP, where we can make those kinds of additions. But it's uncertain whether that will happen. Meanwhile, we're reading and doing research so we can write meaningfully about those subjects.

For about a year, we've maintained a companion website for the book, at  https://iph4yp.blogspot.com/ We hoped people would go there to let us know what else they think should be part of IPH4YP, but the Comments section hasn't had a lot of action. 

We've decided to be more proactive. We're planning a series of posts on IPH4YP, to share what we learn about some of the topics suggested by readers. 

The first very large topic we're looking at is Native-Black relations, starting from questions and thoughts that come up as we do a close reading of Tiya Miles' Ties That Bind: The Story of An Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and in Freedom (Second edition).  If a second edition happens, we will draw on those to create new text. If there's no second edition, the posts can still be resources for educators, parents, and other readers who want to go beyond what's in IPH4YP. These posts will be pretty informal and will include information from our readings on the topics, plus questions we're asking ourselves for further study, and lists of resources people can use to follow up on their own. We'll direct them to some of our favorite research rabbit-holes.  

We invite you to take a look at our first entry in this project, which went up on 8/18/2020. "Slavery and Early Treaties" takes off from Dr. Miles' text, with a look at how some early treaties between the US and Native Nations talked about and positioned Black people. Future posts will look at things we find out about other treaties, British colonizer use of propaganda to influence Indigenous peoples against people of African descent, enslavement of people of African descent by Native people, and the experiences of "Black Indians". 

We hope you'll go there, and read and comment. What you have to say is likely to help us think more clearly about the topics at hand, and how we might eventually incorporate them into a second edition.

By the way, Ties That Bind is giving us lots to think, talk, and write about, and we think many of you might have the same reaction, so do see about getting a copy if you haven't read it. It's not a book for children, but Miles' scholarship, her ways with words, and the importance of the topic make it essential reading.  

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

by Jean Mendoza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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