Today (October 18, 2012) at her popular Children's Book-A-Day Almanac, Anita Silvey is featuring Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur. She writes that "This book works brilliantly as a way to chase the blues away for all children."
Maybe not for all children, Anita! For readers who are aware of stereotyping of American Indians and Alaska Natives, this page might actually bring on the blues!
Silvey writes that Danny and the Dinosaur "has been enticing children ages two through eight into reading for more than forty years." Given its publication history, I think she's probably right about it enticing readers, but it is also introducing or affirming stereotypes.
Silvey is a powerful figure in children's literature. If she would say something critical about a book like Danny and the Dinosaur, how might her critique impact books being written today?
If she was more critical, I think a book like Bailey at the Museum would be different than it is (currently working on a post about Bailey and will link to it here as soon as it is ready).
IndieCade, or, the International Festival of Independent Games was held last week, October 4-7, 2012.
Ben Esposito's "Kachina" (which I gather is still in development) was designated as a 2012 Official Selection. Here's a screenshot from the website:
Here's what the description says. See, in particular, the text I put in bold:
Kachina is a physics-based toy that evokes Katamari Damacy's sense of order & scale mixed with Windowill's childlike wonder. Drawing as readily from Hopi folklore as it does Bruce Springsteen, Kachina invites you to play with the creatures and artifacts of North American mythology.
And, here's a video from IndieCade, showing the game being played:
I taught elementary school for several years and know the value of games that help children understand physics, but...
Esposito and the IndieCade people who selected it as an Official Selection must not know that teepees and totem poles have nothing to do with the Hopi people. They obviously have no idea what kachinas mean to the Hopi people, and they also likely have no idea that calling the religious traditions of an Indigenous people "folklore" is derogatory.
It may not matter to Esposito, but I think teachers who want games like this for their students and who have knowledge of American Indians would reject it. I'm going to tweet this post to Esposito. Maybe he can change it before it is finished.
On Sunday, October 7, 2012, the Eat Sleep Read group on Facebook posted this image:
Isn't the image cool? I like it a lot and am sharing it here, along with a book recommendation...
I recommend you give, and read, Joe Bruchac's Skeleton Man. It is one of my favorites. I still remember reading it aloud with my daughter. We were so engrossed in it that we were startled when my husband came home from work that day!
And all those stories with Indian ghosts? Avoid them, too! I see those ghosts in a lot of stories, and it irks me (sometimes, 'irks' is an understatement).
People sure seem to like Indian ghosts that haunt places! I know, for example, that a lot of people liked Gensler's The Revenant but I didn't. Her ghosts put me off. So did the ghosts in the melon patch in Peck's Season of Gifts.
Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson's edited volume, Rethinking Columbus, was being used in the Tucson Unified School District a year ago, but was subsequently removed from the classrooms when the district shut down its Mexican American Studies classes.
Rethinking Columbus is an outstanding book, offering readers the opportunity to develop and apply critical thinking skills to events--like Columbus Day--that carry bias in favor of one viewpoint, at the expense of the viewpoint and perspective of others.
When Rethinking Columbus was removed from the classrooms in Tucson, essays and poems by Native writers were also removed. Their essays and poems are in Rethinking Columbus. Among them are:
Suzan Shown Harjo, who wrote "We Have No Reason to Celebrate"
Buffy Sainte-Marie, who wrote "My Country, 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying"
Joseph Bruchac, who wrote "A Friend of the Indians"
Cornel Pewewardy, who wrote "A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas"
N. Scott Momaday, who wrote "The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee"
Michael Dorris, who wrote "Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving"
Leslie Marmon, who wrote "Ceremony"
Wendy Rose, who wrote "Three Thousand Dollar Death Song"
Winona LaDuke, who wrote "To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility"
In addition to Rethinking Columbus and the Alexie and Zepeda books, over 50 other books were removed.
As TUSD administrators moved forward in shutting down the Mexican American Studies courses, they prevented students from reading Sherman Alexie's Ten Little Indians and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Ofelia Zepeda's Ocean Power.
The teachers who taught in the program were reassigned and no longer called Mexican American Studies teachers. As they created new syllabi, they were also told they could not teach from a Mexican American Studies perspective.
But, I wonder... Are teachers who were not previously teaching in the Mexican American Studies classes teaching Rethinking Columbus this year? Or Alexie? Or Zepeda?
The title for today's blog post comes from this math worksheet:
The photo was taken by the mother of a Native student in a school in Wisconsin. Indian Country Today has the full story, and I urge you to read it, talk with fellow teachers in your school, and evaluate teaching materials in your school, library, or home, with an eye towards identifying similarly offensive materials as this math worksheet.
Natives names carry significance---just like the naming of any people, anywhere---and this worksheet trivializes Native people by mocking Native names. It happens a lot. And "squaw" though widely recognized as derogatory, appears in a lot of children books.
Curious about the origin of the question/answer math worksheet, I found the "joke" in these places:
Acted out by, presumably, a camp (or scouting or hobbyist group) where playing Indian (in stereotypical ways) is central to their identity (in this case, the "Ohana Tribe")
I also figured out that the book the math worksheet is published in is Masterminds Multiplication & Division: Reproducible Skill Builders & Higher Order Thinking Activities Based on NCTM Standards, published 1995 by Incentive Publications. Masterminds Multiplication & Division is apparently used in a lot of schools. Is it in yours?
Did you see the video that started circulating yesterday? The one that shows Scott Brown's staff making war whoops and doing the tomahawk chop at an Elizabeth Warren event? The media is portraying it as a mockery of Warren's Native heritage.
"Outrageous!" the pundits exclaim.
On one hand, I'm glad they're seeing it as outrageous. On the other hand, I'm going to pull on Floyd Red Crow Westerman's song, "Where Were You When":
Did you listen to it?
I wonder where Warren and all the pundits have been all this time? All these years when Native people have been fighting mascots.
At the University of Illinois, countless people came forward to say they were part Native, and that they like these mascots because they honor American Indians. With their "part Native" proclamation, they felt quite emboldened to attack Native people whose identity is part of our daily lives. By that, I mean Native people who are tribally enrolled or tribally connected to a Native Nation. In his excellent report on Brown and Warren in Indian Country Today, Mark Trahant includes a video clip in which Cherokee Nation Chief Baker said that he wishes "every Congressman and Senator in the U.S. had a... felt a kinship to the Cherokee Nation." Presumably, Baker thinks they would be allies of Native Nations and our needs. My experience at Illinois tells me that kinship of that kind works against us more than it does in support of us.
Warren is saying that if her staff had done what Scott Brown's staff did, there would be "serious consequences." She's telling him to DO something.
I'm asking HER to do something. This is a chance for her to regain support from people who have lost faith in her due to the way she is handling the identity issue.
Ms. Warren: Mascots and stereotyping have serious consequences for Native children and their nations. You're seeking a senate seat in a city that has a stereotypical mascot. Issue a statement condemning it.
Here's another suggestion: To help us displace the stereotypes planted in the minds of children, take a minute each day to highlight a book by a Native author who tell stories of our lives as-we-are, rather than the classics that stereotype us. I can help you select books to highlight.
