Showing posts sorted by date for query If I Ever Get Out of Here. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query If I Ever Get Out of Here. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, May 12, 2023

NOT RECOMMENDED: Lois Duncan's STRANGER WITH MY FACE

I begin with a sample of the book covers for Duncan's Stranger With My Face, overlaid with the red X that I use to signal that a book is not recommended. There are several different covers, which means the book sold well enough to get reissued with a new cover.




In her article for the May/June 2023 issue of Horn Book Magazine, Angeline Boulley talks about Lois Duncan's Stranger With My Face. She wrote:
The first time I read a story that featured a Native American protagonist, I was a high school senior. It was a significant experience for me. As an Ojibwe teen, I hadn't realized my absence in books until that moment. In Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan, teen Laurie learns she was adopted as a baby and that she is Native American. I was excited and intrigued to dive into the mystery-thriller in which Laurie's twin sister, Lia, reconnects with her via astral projection. 

My excitement quickly subsided, to be replaced by something unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I didn't have the words at the time to convey exactly why I felt so disappointed and, even, embarrassed. Now--as an adult with a twenty-year career striving to improve public education for and about Native Americans--I understand that the story lacked authentic representation and perpetuated stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. 
Boulley's article pushed me to take a look at Stranger with My Face. Previously, I've read Season of the Two Heart (published in 1964). Both are deeply problematic. As an adult, Angeline Boulley is able to describe an emotion she had experienced as a Native teen. That emotion? Embarrassment. What do non-Native teens feel today, when they read the book? What do non-Native readers feel? What do non-Native readers take away from the book?

Today, I listened to a podcast about the book (recorded 4 years ago) by two adults who discuss books they read as teens. They are clearly enthralled by the book and have no idea the Native content is problematic. 

Here's the book description:
Laurie Stratton finally has everything a sixteen-year-old could ever want. But just as her perfect summer comes to a close, things start to unravel when her boyfriend insists he saw her out with another guy-when Laurie was really home sick! More mysterious sightings convince Laurie someone very real is out there, watching her. . . .

The truth reveals a long-lost sister who has spent the years growing bitter and dangerous. She has learned how to haunt Laurie, but the visits soon become perilous. She wants something from Laurie-her life!
Stranger with My Face was first published by Little Brown in 1981. It was named an ALA Best Books for Young Adults and as the covers above show, it did very well. It was republished in 2011, with some edits to the content and an interview with Duncan, done by young adult author Jenny Han. 

Han asks Duncan about the Native content (p. 291):
Jenny: The glimpse into Navajo culture is fascinating, and in the end, it's what saves Laurie. Do you have any ties to Navajo or Native American culture?

Lois: I spent most of my adult life in New Mexico, surrounded by Navajo culture. 
That's it: Lois lived in New Mexico, "surrounded" by Navajo culture. In several places, I read that she lived in Albuquerque starting in the early 1960s. The Navajo Nation is not in Albuquerque. There were, and are, Navajo people in Albuquerque, but Duncan said "Navajo culture." As I sit here, my thoughts on "Navajo culture" are of Navajo art forms like sandpaintings and woven rugs. What does she mean? 

Let's take a look at the Navajo content in her book. I lay it out by page number with content or description of content on that page, followed by my comments in italics. The story is set on the east coast, mostly on an island. The protagonist is a seventeen-year-old teen named Laurie. Her boyfriend is Gordon. 

p. 23

I didn't have the sort of looks you found just everywhere. Gordon kidded sometimes that I could be part Indian with my dark coloring, high cheekbones and almond eyes. "Bedroom eyes," he called them, meaning they were sexy. My father referred to them as "alien" because they were the same shape as the eyes he gave to the maidens from other worlds in his novels. When I looked at my parents--both of them so fair--and at Neal and Meg with their light blue eyes and freckled noses, I wondered sometimes how I had managed to be born into such a family.

Deb's Comments
Dark coloring and high cheekbones? Those are stereotypical markers. And, those "bedroom eyes" bother me. The phrase sexualizes a teen girl. The book was first written in 1981 and revised in 2011. I suppose some women would be ok with that term in 1981 but in 2011? Surely not! When the 2011 edition was done, that passage could have been edited out, but apparently neither Duncan or her editor thought it was a problem. It is, however, a significant problem. Native women experience violence from non-Native men at alarming rates. 

Laurie's dad calls her eyes "alien." He's a sci-fi writer and uses that word to describe "maidens from other worlds." He means other planets, but reading those words hits me in a different way. As we come to find out, Laurie's birth mother was Navajo. The adoption part of the story took place in Gallup, New Mexico--which borders the Navajo Nation's reservation. Laurie is definitely not from "another world" but the white family that adopted her? We could say they are from another world. But really, her dad's use of the word is awkward and ought to be have taken out of the revised edition.

p. 52

Before we get to page 52, Laurie's friends, Laurie's family, and Laurie start to sense and see someone/something that looks like Laurie. 

Meanwhile, a new family has moved to the island. It includes a girl named Helen. They've moved from Tuba City, Arizona, where Helen's parents taught at an Indian boarding school. Laurie starts to become friends with Helen. Here's their conversation on page 52:
Helen told me about a boy named Luis Nez.
That was the name he used at school," she said. "I wasn't allowed to know his Indian name. The Navajos are a private people. Luis was my boyfriend, but there was so much that he couldn't share with me." She paused, and then raised her hand to touch the tiny turquoise carving at her throat. "When I left, he gave me this." 
"What is it?" I asked, hoisting myself up on one elbow so as to see better.
"A fetish," Helen said. "It's an eagle, predator of the air. When Luis learned we were coming east by plane, he carved it for me. Turquoise is the Navajo good-luck stone. A turquoise eagle protects the wearer against evil spirits from the skies."
Deb's Comments 

Duncan tells us that Helen's family has moved from Tuba City, Arizona which is within the borders of the Navajo Nation. It is likely that the boarding school her parents taught at is Tuba City Boarding School. That's fine, but what about the passage about his Indian name? All we really get from that is that Navajos are kind of mysterious. 

Remember that Duncan told Han that she was surrounded by Navajo culture? Duncan was a white woman (she died in 2016). When Duncan died, people offered tributes to her body of writing, especially for the crime, gothic, supernatural, and horror stories she wrote for teen readers. She told Jenny Han in the interview that she experienced astral projection herself (more on that later) several years after the book came out when her daughter was murdered.  

Duncan didn't have to depict Laurie as being Native. Laurie could have been white. Why did Duncan depict her as Navajo (actually, Laurie's birth mother was Navajo and her birth father was white)? To some readers it might seem cool, or as Han said "fascinating" but if the reader is Native or Navajo in particular, it is not cool. 

When Laurie first saw Lia (her twin), Lia is a scary, ghost-like image. On page 65, Laurie learns that she was adopted. Laurie's parents had gone to New Mexico to adopt a baby. They saw twin babies. Her mother held and liked Laurie, but not Lia. When she held Lia, she felt that the baby was strange and that she would not be able to love her so they did not adopt Lia. Her placements in foster homes never worked out. Much later in the story we learn that Lia has malevolent motives, driven by jealousy and she uses astral projection to harm others. 

The passage on page 52 has things in it that Duncan depicts as cultural: a name and how it is/is not used, and a stone and its significance within a culture. Living in Albuquerque, Duncan would probably know about stores where Native art is sold. Carved stone figures (fetishes) were, and are, quite popular items. She may have asked a shop keeper about the significance of turquoise (the stone) and eagles (the fetish Helen has been given). In this book, that fetish is a key plot device. Duncan needed an item that would fit with the astral projection plot. In the interview with Han, Duncan likens the fetish to rosary beads or bread and wine in Communion. 

I wish that Duncan had depicted Laurie and Lia as white characters and used rosary beads instead of making them Navajo. In choosing to use Navajo culture, she casts Navajo people as mysterious and, well, evil. Angeline Boulley felt embarrassed and I bet Navajo readers feel that, too. 

p. 53

When Laurie tells Helen that people see her in places she wasn't actually at, Helen asks her if she was using astral projection:
"Using what?" I said in bewilderment.
"You know--sending your mind out from your body? Luis's father used to be able to do it." She paused. "If you had, you'd have known it. It's something you have to work at."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. What did Luis's father do?"
"I'm not sure exactly," Helen said. "Luis didn't talk much about it. He seemed to take it for granted. The medicine men could do it whenever they wanted, I think, and some of the others too. The way Luis described it, the person has to will himself out of his body. It takes tremendous concentration."
Debbie's Comments:

Above (through Helen), Duncan is introducing readers to astral projection as something that a Navajo medicine man does. Laurie's bewilderment and responses further Duncan's depiction of Navajo's as mysterious. 

As the story continues, Helen and Laurie talk about astral projection, and Laurie tries to find out more information about her twin. Helen and Laurie grow closer, as friends. But then something happens to Helen. She falls, hits her head, and ends up in the hospital. It becomes clear that Lia is responsible for Helen's fall. That makes Helen the most recent person who Lia hurt out of jealousy. The turquoise eagle necklace plays a prominent role towards the end of the story. Megan (Laurie's little sister) throws it at Lia who has occupied Laurie's body. On contact, Lia is driven from Laurie's body and Laurie retakes control of her body. 

p. 97

Lia lived with their mother for a short time before she died. Laurie remembers asking Lia (who was visiting Laurie via astral projection) to tell her about their mother. Lia tells her that their mother never smiled because the world had been cruel to her. In her telling, Laurie says Lia creates "some sort of fairy tale from another place and time." Laurie can't recall Lia's precise words but remembers it this way:
There was once a young Navajo girl, Lia said, so lovely that all the men in her village wanted to wed her, and she was married at the age of thirteen to the son of the Chief. So, without having known girlhood, she settled down to being a wife. Then one day when she was seventeen, the same age we are now, a trader came through the village in a pickup truck buying turquoise and silver jewelry. He was handsome and fair-complexioned with hair the color of sunshine, and the girl took one look at him and fell violently in love. He asked her to come away with him. She told him that was impossible. But suddenly, when she realized that he was really leaving, she climbed into the cab beside him and rode away with him, leaving everything she owned behind in her husband's hogan. 
"I belong to you now," she told the trader. "I will love you and stay beside you until the day I die."
But the trader was a casual man who was used to willing girls and good times, and after several months with his Indian maiden he grew tired of her. 
"Go back to your people," he said. "That's where you belong."
"I can't," the girl told him. "My husband would never take me back. Besides, I am going to bear your child."
"That's your problem, not mine," said the trader.
She thought he was joking. But that night he did not come home to her. She sat for three days in their apartment, waiting, until finally she had to realize that he had left her. In the top drawer of his bureau she found an envelope with money in it and a note that told her to put the baby up for adoption. Enclosed was the address of the Hastings Agency.
The "baby" turned out to be twin girls with the trader's fine feathers. They had lighter skin than their mother's, but had inherited her hair and eyes. Obeying the instructions in the note, the young mother took them to the agency, but because they were of mixed blood they were classified as "hard to place." 
"Won't your family help you raise them?" the director, Mrs. Hastings, asked. "The Navajo people always take care of their own."
The girl explained that she could not return to the reservation with half-breed children.
"The people would drive me out," she said. "I am married to the son of the Chief."
Laurie's telling of the conversation with Lia continues, with Lia describing their mother's attempts to raise her alone. They lived in one low-cost apartment after another, and that their mother supported them by cleaning houses. Sometimes she'd take Lia to them. They were beautiful. At the end of the day, Lia and their mother would go back to their apartment, eat, and go to bed. She was miserable. She'd imagine the ocean, that their mother had seen when she went searching for the trader. Laurie asks when she had time to do that, and Lia told her that their mother would just lie still on the bed and "go." Laurie realizes that their mother also had the power to do astral projection. One place she looked for the trader was in California because Indian jewelry was in demand there. 

Debbie's Comments

In Lia's story to Laurie, we see outsider writing. Duncan has a Navajo character--Lia--speaking about their origin but she sounds like a white girl telling a European fairy tale. "There was once" as the opener kicks it off. It continues with notions of beauty making a Navajo person much-desired by others. And what the heck... Lia uses "Indian maiden"? That grates! And, being married at thirteen? Jean Craighead George did that, too, in Julie of the Wolves. 

White traders did go through Native communities, buying items they would later sell and it is reasonable to think that Lia and Laurie's mother fell in love with one but I don't know about her calling her own children "half breed" and I don't know if "the people" would reject her. Calling them "the people" also grates. She's talking about her own community. Again--this is supposed to be a Native voice, but it sure doesn't sound like one to me. I also wonder about "the Chief." The Diné (Navajo) people use "chairman" to refer to their leader. The word "chief" was used to refer to Manuelito but that was in the 1800s. Duncan's "chief" sounds more like the romanticized kind of thing that outsiders come up with. 

****

Summing up: I read the whole book more than once to do this write up and analysis of significant passages in the Stranger With My Face. I think I've done all I need to. I wish Duncan had not depicted Laurie and Lia as Navajo. It wasn't necessary for a horror story about twins and astral projection. In fact, when a film version of it was made in 2009, Laurie and her sister are not Navajo. Have you seen the film? Was there a necklace in it that saves Laurie in the end? Objects do have significance, within any peoples' spirituality or its religious ways of being, but in this book, something that *might* be significant to Navajo people sounds more like holy water to me. In so many ways, this book fails. It is fiction, and people will defend it being on shelves because of that. I hope my "not recommended" label encourages some librarians to reconsider it. 






Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Highly Recommended: HEART BERRY BLING by Jenny Kay Dupuis; illustrated by Eva Campbell

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Heart Berry Bling
Written by Jenny Kay Dupuis (Member of Nipissing First Nation)
Illustrated by Eva Campbell (Not Native)
Published in 2023
Publisher: Highwater Press
Reviewer: Debbie Reese
Review Status: Highly Recommended

****

A few weeks ago, I saw a photo of a person at a conference posing with a copy of Jenny Kay Dupuis's new picture book, Heart Berry Bling. Today, I read an advance sample copy and am here to give it a Highly Recommended rating! 

Here's the description from the publisher's website:

On a visit to her granny, Maggie is excited to begin her first-ever beading project: a pair of strawberry earrings. However, beading is much harder than she expected! As they work side by side, Granny shares how beading helped her persevere and stay connected to her Anishinaabe culture when she lost her Indian status, forcing her out of her home community—all because she married someone without status, something the men of her community could do freely. 

As she learns about patience and perseverance from her granny’s teachings, Maggie discovers that beading is a journey, and like every journey, it’s easier with a loved one at her side.

In this beautifully illustrated book, children learn about the tradition of Anishinaabe beadwork, strawberry teachings, and gender discrimination in the Indian Act.

I'll start by saying that I love stories where a kid is with a grandparent because like many children, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. When the book is about a Native family, however, the content of the story adds to my emotional response to what I see on the pages. 

The story opens with Maggie and her dad in the car. When they park, they walk a while to get to her granny's house. As they walk Maggie hears the sounds of a city. That's important! There is a tendency to think that Native people lived long ago (we're still here!) and that they all lived on reserves/reservations or in rural places. Some did and do, but not everyone does. Showing us granny, in the city, is great!

When Maggie and her dad arrive at her grandmother's house, Maggie can smell the fry bread her grandmother made. On the kitchen table are granny's beads. Granny is on the phone, speaking Anishinaabemowin with her sister. All of these are markers--in print and illustration--of a Native home.

As the two sit on the couch to look at photos that have inspired granny's beading designs, Maggie asks her about a person shown in an old photo. Granny tells her:
"That's me. Back when I lived on the reserve."
She goes on to say that she married a man who wasn't First Nations, and under the laws that existed then, 
"I was stripped of my Indian status and had to leave the community."
Right there is when I paused in my reading, thinking about Native people like Maggie's grandmother, whose identity is taken from them. 

There are many ways in which this happens. There's a long history of social workers deeming Native parents "unfit" to care for their children. Their infants and children end up in foster care and white adoptive homes. There's also a long history of non-Native people thinking they had an ancestor who was Native, so they decide to claim that identity as if it is one within their lived experience. Some trot out a story of tragic separation but that story undermines the realities of the lived experiences of people like Maggie's grandmother. 

On the next page, Maggie's grandmother tells us more about the Indian Act. Maggie asks for more information. It is an outstanding page that I hope readers will sit with. 

As the story moves back to beading, I hear -- in Granny's words -- how beading helped her heal some of the pain she experienced due to the Indian Act. On the book cover we see Maggie looking into a mirror. She's wearing the earrings she made with her grandmother. 

So many teachings are embodied in those earrings! So many memories are sewn into them! From the shiny beads to the tears Maggie shed when she accidentally poked her finger with the beading needle, to Granny's life story... this is quite a magnificent story from Jenny Kay Dupuis! 

As I've noted before, we're seeing more extensive author notes than was the case in the past. In Heart Berry Bling we have a two-page note that tells us Granny's story is the story of the author's own grandmother. There's more details on what was lost when her status was taken from her. We also learn about First Nations women who fought that Act and were eventually able to get some changes to it in 1985, but it wasn't until 2011 that changes were made that made it possible for Jenny Kay Dupuis to have her First Nations status. More changes took place in 2017 and 2019. 

We need books from writers like Jenny Kay Dupuis--people whose families hold these brutal realities in their memory as something they lived through--and people across North America have so much learning to do about Native life and history, and about authenticity of storyteller and storytelling. 

Thank you, Jenny, for sharing this story with us. It is a story with difficult parts, but also the joy in this Native child and her Native grandma, being together!  

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Use/Misuse of the Word "Treaty" or "treaty" in Children's Books

Last week, I had a conversation with an educator who told me about conversations they'd had with teachers about Sign of the Beaver. Here on AICL we've had several posts about the book. I can't recall why I decided to take a look at it again, but I did. 

In particular, I noticed the way that the author used the word "treaty":

On page nine, we see:
Since the last treaty with the tribes, there had not been an attack reported anywhere in this part of Maine. Still, one could not entirely forget all those horrid tales.

The book is set in the 1768; I will try to figure out what treaty the author is having the white character refer to. Obviously the second sentence about "horrid" tales is meant to tell us that white people were being viciously attacked by Native people. There's bias in that passage but use of "treaty" is ok. 

The next use is not. 

On page 30, Matt (the white protagonist) is grateful to Saknis (a Native man) who helped Matt recover from bee stings and a fall. He gives Saknis a book (his copy of Robinson Crusoe). Matt realizes Saknis can't read. Saknis asks Matt if he can read. When Matt says yes, Saknis says:
"Good," he grunted. "Saknis make treaty." 
"A treaty?" Matt was even more puzzled.
"Nkweniss hunt. Bring white boy bird and rabbit. White boy teach Attean white man's signs.
"You mean--I should teach him to read?"
"Good. White boy teach Attean what book say." 
There, the use of treaty is wrong. Treaties are the outcome of negotiations between heads of state. They are not something that a person and another person do. Using the word in that way, Elizabeth George Speare misrepresents their significance of the word. Why did she do that?

Her book won a Newbery Honor in 1984. Did anyone on the Newbery Committee that year notice the word being misused? Did Speare's editor notice? I have not seen any articles that address that point. I do see lesson plans that note the passage, but not in the way I am noting it. The reason Saknis wants Matt to learn to read is so that Native people won't be tricked by words in treaties. I find that a bit ironic because I think readers of Sign of the Beaver are being subtly led to a misunderstanding of the word. That may be due to a lack of understanding (in the author, editor, reviewers, etc) that Native peoples are citizens of nations. Somehow, they seem to be framing a treaty as a cultural artifact specific to Native peoples rather than a political one specific to diplomatic negotiations between heads of state. 

It reminded me of the way that Stephanie Meyer used it in her Twilight series. She has a treaty between vampires and a pack of wolves. She misused it, too. 

With that in mind, I posed a question: how are writers using the word in their books for children/young adults? I asked it, on Twitter, and will use this post to keep track of replies. At some point I hope to write a blog post about what I find. 

If you see the word in a book for children/young adults, let me know and I'll add it below. I am not limiting my question to anything other than books for children and young adults. Fiction, nonfiction, by Native writers, not by Native writers, set in the past or not.... I want it all. An analysis of its use will be interesting! I anticipate lot of misuse but hopefully, some good uses, too! Metaphorically would be fine -- if done carefully. We'll see what turns up, and thank you for suggestions! 

Children's and Young Adult Books that use the word "treaty"

Note: Initial list created on Jan 28, 2023; books added after that date will be noted with "[added on...]"). This is not a list of recommended books; it is a list of books that have the word treaty in them.
  • Belin, Esther, Jeff Berglund, and Connie A. Jacobs. The Dine Reader. Published in 2021 by the Arizona Board of Regents.
  • Boulley, Angeline. Firekeeper's Daughter. Published in 2021 by Henry Holt.
  • Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Published in 2008 by Scholastic Press.
  • Craft, Aimée. Treaty Words: For As Long As the Rivers Flow. Published in 2021 by Annick Press.
  • Crawford, Kelly. Dakota Talks About Treaties. Published in 2017 by Union of Ontario Indians.
  • Cutright, Patricia J. Native Women Changing Their World. Published in 2021 by 7th Generation.
  • Davids, Sharice. Sharice's Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman. Published in 2021 by HarperCollins.
  • Davis, L. M. Interlopers: A Shifters Novel. Published in 2010 by Lynberry Press. 
  • Day, Christine. I Can Make This Promise. Published in 2019 by HarperCollins.
  • Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Published in 2017 by Dancing Cat Books.
  • Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Published in the US in 1952 by Doubleday.
  • Gansworth, Eric. If I Ever Get Out of Here. Published in 2013 by Scholastic.
  • Gansworth, Eric. Give Me Some Truth. Published in 2018 by Scholastic. 
  • Gansworth, Eric. Apple Skin to the Core. Published in 2020 by Levine Querido
  • Gansworth, Eric. My Good Man. Published in 2022 by Levine Querido.
  • General, Sara and Alyssa General. Treaty Baby. Published in 2016 by Spirit and Intent.
  • George, Jean Craighead. The Buffalo Are Back. Published in 2010 by Dutton.
  • Keith, Harold. Rifles for Watie. Published in 1957 by Harper.
  • Marshall, Joseph III. In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse. Published in 2015 by Amulet.
  • McManis, Charlene Willing. Indian No More. Published in 2019 by Lee & Low Books.
  • Merrill, Jean. The Pushcart War.
  • Pierce, Tamora. Alanna, the First Adventure; Wild Magic, First Test, Trickster's Choice. 
  • Prendergast, Gabrielle. Cold Falling White.
  • Prendergast, Gabrielle. The Crosswood. 
  • Sorrell, Traci. We Are Still Here. Published in 2022 by Charlesbridge.
  • Speare, Elizabeth George. The Sign of the Beaver. Published in 1983 by Houghton Mifflin.
  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. Published in 1883 by Cassell and Company.
  • Tingle, Tim. How I Became A Ghost. Published in 2013 by Roadrunner Press.
  • Treuer, Anton. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition. Published in 2021 by Levine Querido.
  • Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Published in 1876 by American Publishing Co.
  • Verne, Jules. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Originally published as a serial in 1870 in France.
  • Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. Published in 1935 by Harper (Harper Collins).

Sunday, November 06, 2022

"Never fear," said Gramps. "My great, great grandmother was one quarter Native Bear and I am ready to share."

This morning on Twitter, I saw a tweet that included a photo of a page from a Berenstain Bears book. The person who shared it characterized it as 'yikes' and most of the people who commented about it agreed. Because a lot of what we see online is satire or parody, I wondered if someone was playing around with the Berenstain Bears books. 

Some of the books have stereotypical content and are cringeworthy. In Berenstain Bears Go to Camp (published in 1982 by Random House) shows Grizzly Bob in a feathered headdress and fringed buckskin. In Berenstain Bears Give Thanks (published in 2009 by Zonderkids, a Christian publishing house) the bear family has a turkey named Squanto. This is supposed to be their dinner on Thanksgiving Day but Sister Bear objects and they decide to keep Squanto as a pet. 

I looked for the book where Gramps says his great, great grandmother was "one quarter Native Bear" and found it right away. It is in The Berenstain Bears Thanksgiving Blessings. Like Berenstain Bears Give Thanks, it is from Zonderkids, the Christian publishing house. It came out in 2013.

Thanksgiving Blessings is one of the too-many books that puts forth the feel-good Thanksgiving story (in this one, the "Native Bears" gave the "Pilgrim Bears" food and they all shared in a great feast), but it is also one of those that goes a step further by having a character claim to be Native. That character talks about what they will "share" with others. Some readers will see "share" and think it is a good moral lesson, but some of us read that and see it as an attempt to depict harmony that looks away from the facts of history.

Here, it is Gramps saying that his great, great Grandmother was "one quarter Native Bear." Here's a screencap of the page (I put the red arrow there to draw your attention to Gramps and this bogus claim):



And here's the text on that page:
The whole family helped set the table. It was, indeed, a magnificent Thanksgiving feast. 
"It's a shame there aren't any Native Bears here to share it with us," said Brother. 
"Never fear," said Gramps, seating himself at the head of the table. "My great, great grandmother was one quarter Native Bear an I am ready to share. Let's eat!"
If you follow Native people on social media, you know that there are many conversations about people who claim they are Native. Social media makes it possible for this topic to be more visible than ever before. 

I ran into these claims a lot in the 1990s when I was a student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). It had a stereotypical mascot they called "Chief Illiniwek." Before I arrived there, Native students, staff and faculty had been asking the university to get rid of it. 

Without fail, we encountered fans who claimed that they are part Native and--with that claim to Native identity--said that the mascot was a good thing. Some of them may have had an ancestor, but some of them were simply recounting family lore, and were using that family lore to dismiss Native people who resist being stereotyped and misrepresented via mascots, children's books, television shows, and movies. 

That dismissal is precisely what I see in Thanksgiving Blessings. Obviously, Mike Berenstain (his parents launched the Berenstain Bears books in the 1960s), uses Gramps and his "one quarter Native Bear" as an attempt to validate the bogus Thanksgiving story. 




If you have a family story that tells us an ancestor was Native and you have no idea what that ancestor's nation was, and you speak from that space of not-knowing, I urge you to stop doing that, especially if you're doing it to counter Native people who speak up about stereotypes, and/or biased and inaccurate information. You are harming the very people you claim to be. You are undermining us. Please stop! 

To learn more about fabricated or unsupported claims to Native identity, you can read through resources I've compiled: Native or Not? And if you see that sort of thing in a children's book, please let me know!



Saturday, June 04, 2022

Centering and Featuring Native Languages

In 2007 I saw a graphic that--at the time--I felt was terrific. I shared it everywhere. Created by the Tulsa City-County Library, it had the word 'read' in the center. Around it was the word 'read' in several different Native languages. 

Then last week, I watched a video of Dawn Quigley and Joaquin Munoz, speaking at the Indigenous Teacher Education Program at the University of Arizona, College of Education. Most of you know Dawn as a Native author, but she's also a professor. Click through and listen to the entire lecture. Professors Quigley and Munoz have terrific information to share! In his remarks, Munoz talks a bit about Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves. He's co-author on an excellent article you can download about her book: Ni keehtwawmi mooshahkinitounawn: Lifting Up Representations of Indigenous Education and Futures in The Marrow Thieves

In one portion of her remarks, Dawn talked about having a critical lens. That is what AICL is about: bringing a critical lens to the ways that Native peoples, cultures, languages, stories and songs are represented. 

Dawn closed her presentation by sharing the 'read' graphic and saying that "the English word 'read' should not be in the middle." Just before that, she said it is an amazing graphic. It is! I love seeing Native languages. I am guessing that she--like me and so many others--think Native languages should be more visible. And, she's right to say that the English word should not be in the middle! If we want to center our languages, we have to bring that critical lens to the 'read' graphic. 

So--here's my decentering of that graphic. I put the Tewa word for 'read' in the center (Tewa is the language we speak at Nambé). [Update on June 17th: Sue Anderson from the Tulsa City-County Library wrote to say "We are happy to give permission for others to use this image, provided they credit the Tulsa City-County Library and leave our tagline on the graphic."]


Earlier this year when signing bookplates for An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, for Young People I wrote our word and my Tewa name on the top half of the bookplate, and on the bottom half, I wrote 'read' and signed 'Debbie Reese.' (If you happen to have one of those, could you please take a photo of it and send it to me? I didn't take a photo of the bookplates before sending them on to Minnesota for their Indian Education conference.)

Adding on June 6th, a photo of the bookplate! 
Kú'daa, Odia Wood-Krueger, for the photo!




Related to how Native languages are treated in books, we wrote about that in An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, for Young People. In our "A Note To Readers," we said:
For a long time, textbooks and other print media have put non-English words in italics. Setting words apart in that way signals that English is the normal way to speak and write and other languages are “different.” But many people now see this use of italics as a way of “othering” languages and the people who speak them. We are strong advocates for the shift away from italics. You will not see Native words in italics in this book.
When you read Dawn's books, you'll see that she does not italicize Ojibwe words her characters use, except when she's explaining a word to the reader. Look at this passage on page 3 of Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend when Jo Jo is on her way to school:
Mama usually walks with me, but today my kokum was going to. Kokum is another way to say "grandma" in the Michif language. She moved in with us after my moushoom died last year. 
A page earlier, we learned from Jo Jo that moushoom is their word for grandpa. When you read Eric Gansworth's books, you'll see that he used italics--for German words--in If I Ever Get Out of Here. Here's a passage from page 13 where his main character, Lewis, is visiting George, a white boy that Lewis is becoming friends with. Lewis loves music and is looking at albums on the shelves at George's house (p. 14):
"You like the Beatles?" I said. "We had pretty much all of their albums, but when my brother moved out, he took most of the later ones with him."

"We have them all," George said. "My dad's a huge Beatles fan. When we lived in Germany, he took me down to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, because that's where they got their start. My Mutti about busted a blood vessel." 

"'Mutti'?"

"Sorry, German, it's like 'mom.'"

And when you read Brian Young's Healer of the Water Monster, you'll see he uses Navajo words for numerals in the chapter titles: 


These are definitely signifiers of change in children's book publishing! In my lectures and workshops, I encourage teachers to modify texts they use with students in their classrooms. I encourage them to give students reasons for the modifications and I also recommend they make modifications in front of students so that students can learn that books are not sacred. Words in them can be crossed out, and new ones inserted or added somehow to visually signify a shift. With my modification of the 'read' graphic, I'm decentering English. Said another way, I'm centering or featuring Tewa. 

I'm going to write to the staff at Tulsa City-County Library to let them know of my modification and ask if they might let us all use their original graphic, overlaying 'read' with a Native language -- either our own or one spoken by the people a library's homelands are located on. You can also make your own large poster and ask Native people in your service area how they say 'read' in their language. 

Friday, April 22, 2022

Thoughts on David A. Robertson's THE GREAT BEAR being removed from libraries

Note from Debbie on April 27: The Durham District School Board in Ontario released a statement today that said they did an accelerated review and returned Robertson's book to library shelves. Unfortunately, they did not elaborate on why it was removed in the first place. 

Thoughts on David A. Robertson's THE GREAT being removed from libraries

Friday, April 22--On April 15, I began to see posts on social media about David A. Robertson's The Great Bear being removed from libraries. Published by Puffin (Penguin Random House Canada) in Sept 2021, it was on my to-be-read list.

Because of the growing conversations about it, I made time to read it this week. I saw the things I look for when I evaluate a book. The author is Native (Cree) and is writing about their own nation (Robertson's characters are Cree). There is Native (Cree) language in the book. Another item I look for is setting. I prefer books set in the present day because they provide educators with many opportunities for helping children know that we (Native peoples) did not disappear. I'll say more about the book in a review later. Based on my read of it, The Great Bear will carry a Highly Recommended tag. 



In my studies and analyses of children's and young adult books, I characterize books like The Great Bear as mirrors for Native kids (mirrors is one part of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's metaphor; I encourage you to read her article). Books described as mirrors are ones where the characters and their experiences are ones that reflect the reader. Historically, Native children have had very few mirrors. The vast majority of children's books in the past have been written by white writers. In recent years we have seen more Native books by Native writers get published but the numbers are still very low. You can see that by looking at this infographic. At the time the infographic was created in 2018, only 23 of the 3,134 books represented had enough content to be categorized as American Indian/First Nations: 


The data makes it clear: we desperately need books by Native writers! If you want to dive into data over a broad range of years, go to the Books by and/or about Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (All Years) pages at the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Some brief notes about the book: the main characters in The Great Bear are Morgan, a thirteen-year-old Cree girl who has been in the foster care system since she was two, and Eli, a twelve-year-old Cree boy who recently entered the foster care system. Eli knows his language and culture. He teaches Morgan words and shares stories with her. She feels protective towards him. Their foster parents are not Native but they also aren't foster parents who abuse the children they take into their homes. Books with characters like Morgan and Eli are rare, but there are many Native children in foster care. In short, The Great Bear functions as a good mirror for children like Morgan and Eli, and for children who are Cree, and for children who are Native. 

The social media posts I saw were about the book being removed from libraries in the Durham District Schools in Ontario, Canada. The first article I read was in The Toronto Star on April 14. Major points follow: 
  • The Durham School Board had removed several books that have "content that could be harmful to Indigenous students and families." 
  • Robertson was stunned and confused to learn that the board had removed his book because its contents could be harmful to Indigenous students. 
  • An email to principals in the district instructed schools to remove the books, pending a review.
  • The email said that schools regularly review collections that are "no longer current, or which may contain content that perpetuates harmful narratives, racial slurs and discriminatory biases, assumptions, and stereotypes." Specific information about the contents deemed "harmful" were not provided.
  • Robertson's publisher had attempted to reach the district by emails sent on April 1 and April 6.
Since then I've read several additional articles from news media and I watched the school board meeting that took place on April 19th. 

My analysis of children's books is centered on the child/teen reader. I've been critical of Native writers, before. If a book by a Native writer has problems, I note and share those problems. I went into my reading of The Great Bear with the information from the Toronto Star uppermost in my mind. What out-of-date content would I find? What harmful narrative? Racial slur? Discriminatory bias? Assumptions? Stereotypes? 

When I finished reading it, the only question I had was the use of "Happy Hunting Ground." It is one of those phrases that gets used a lot to refer to a good place after death. It is one of those phrases that I have wanted to research to figure out its origin. Is "Happy Hunting Ground" an English translation for a concept articulated by people who speak Cree? I don't know. When I see a white writer use it, I note it as a problem. But I hesitate to do so in this case. 

Other than that, I think The Great Bear has a lot to offer to Native and non-Native readers!  

And so, I echo Robertson's confusion. I've read several of his books. Though the stories vary, I've not found anything in any of them that caused me to think they would harm a Native child. His books are popular. With them being pulled from libraries in Durham (Canada), what are teachers there and elsewhere thinking? Should they use the books? If they do, are they at risk of hurting Native children? In the U.S. librarians and teachers are choosing to avoid books that feature marginalized characters. This is being referred to as "soft censorship." (See Kelly Jensen's article about it at Book Riot: Soft and Quiet: Self-Censorship in an Era of Book Challenges.) Soft censorship is terrible. It deprives us of so many books by people from communities that have been marginalized. 

On social media, I've seen two comments about The Great Bear that stand out. On April 20, 2022, Nancy Rowe asked why it is so hard to believe that Indigenous students, staff, and families do not 
"enjoy reading about colonialism, residential school, culture, etc. They live it n don't need to be forced to listen, read n experience colonial-violence." 
I don't think anybody enjoys that kind of reading. Her remarks suggest that children were forced to listen to or read The Great Bear. Is that what happened in the Durham schools? Were children forced to listen to it, or forced to read it? What was in the book that hurt them? Did they and/or a parent ask a teacher to stop, and did that teacher dismiss their concerns? 

And, what is being asked for with regard to the contents of a story? In a way it sounds like someone wants books with happy Native content. 

So--let's look at a couple of things that might have been the issue.  

First, Eli wears a braid. He is being bullied about it by kids at school. He cuts it off. Louis, the main character in Eric Gansworth's If I Ever Get Out of Here asks one of his friends to cut his braid for similar reasons. I bring up his book because that is not an uncommon experience for Native boys who wear their hair long or in a braid. They get harassed and decide to cut their hair. In the last few years there have been reports of cases where a Native child's hair is cut without their consent. It is traumatizing, especially with the larger historical context in which the hair of Native children was cut at residential and boarding schools. Children who experienced their own hair being cut without consent, or know that a parent or grandparent went through that experience, might become uncomfortable with a classroom discussion of that part of The Great Bear. If that is the case, then I think the district needs to say so, immediately, so that teachers in other classrooms take care with their discussions of Native hair being cut. Second, Eli says that if he could stop being brown, he'd do that, too. Children with skin like Eli's go through that all the time. It, too, is a common and painful experience. So--these two points (the braid and skin color) are heavy. They may be too heavy for some readers, and there are likely other readers who feel that weight but who also feel seen--who feel a validation of something they went through. 

Elsewhere I saw someone say that The Great Bear and the other books had too much culture. Too much culture?! It strikes me as a throwback to "kill the Indian" policies in residential and boarding schools. Saying a book by a Native writer has "too much culture" is telling that writer they're too Indian. 

The Great Bear is not the only one that has been pulled from shelves in Durham. As far as I can see, titles of other books are not being made public. I imagine that Native writers in the US and Canada are wondering if their book was pulled. I imagine teachers and librarians and scholars who read, shared, and recommended The Great Bear are now second guessing their evaluation. 

Where I end up after several days of reading and thinking is nowhere. The questions I had a week ago are the same ones I have today. What, in the book, caused harm to Native readers? In order to address those concerns, we need to know a page number. We need a passage. We need an explanation for why that passage is a concern. With that information, writers can make edits. Without that information, there is absolutely nothing they can do. 



Friday, April 15, 2022

Debbie Reese responds to Kent Nerburn

Dear Kent Nerburn, 

On April 13th, the MinnPost ran an interview that Jim Walsh did with me. In it, Walsh asked me what I find most bothersome about the idea of white writers writing Native stories. You submitted a comment in response to what I said and it seems you were hoping I'd see your comment. I tried to reply but had trouble registering for an account. Rather than fuss with the website, I decided to respond here.

Here's your comment to the interview:

As a non-Native author who writes about experience with Native reality and has done it in a unique way that has gained both respect and traction in Native America, I wonder what Debbie Reese thinks of my work and approach in Neither Wolf nor Dog, The Wolf at Twilight, and The Girl who Sang to the Buffalo? I think I’m an outlier who has found a way to write across cultures, and many Native readers and organizations agree. But I always want to hear other opinions. The books are well-known and used in many curricula, so I’m guessing she knows of them. This forum is an odd way to reach out, but it seems like an opportune way to do so. My apologies if this seems like a self-serving comment; it is not intended to be so. It is a way to expand the dialogue that needs to take place so that people’s voices are heard undistorted, but, at the same time, to explore ways that we can keep from balkanizing ourselves so totally that it becomes illegitimate to reach and speak across cultures.


You don't remember that you and I exchanged a few comments in June of 2021 on your Facebook page (here's a link to that page, for those of you who have FB accounts). 

At the time, you were looking for someone who could get your book about boarding school into Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland's hands. You wrote that you think "America, for the moment, seems to be willing to hear that story." You went on to say:
Native America wants the story of the boarding schools known; Deb Haaland wants the story known; I want the story known. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written the book. We need to seize the moment.
Your request generated a lot of comments from people who like the book. They agreed with you, that Haaland should read your book. I replied to your request for an intermediary with this:
A strong NO to getting his book into anybody's hands. People can learn about boarding schools from Native people. It is long past time that white folks -- however well-intentioned -- stopped speaking for/about us.
You replied to me, saying:
And well it should be. And I agree that Native people should tell their own stories. But I suspect that you have not read my books or delved into who I am, what my background is, what I do, and why I do it. With a more open mind and heart you might well see that there are some ways to be an ally that do not represent either cultural appropriation or cultural exploitation. I can only control my intentions; I cannot control the response of people to my work. I respect your concern, but I think perhaps you are seeing through a generic lens, which is exactly what non-Native people have done to Native peoples over the years. Do not make the same mistakes from the other side that have been made from the Euro-American side. We need to be larger than that.
Prior to that day in June, I had already been reading your work. I knew who you were. I had begun reading your books and had been taking notes on things that stood out to me. I'm going to share those notes at the bottom of this post.

For now, I want to address a couple of things you said to me. 

In June of 2021 on Facebook, you started out by saying that you agree: Native people should be telling our own stories. But most of your comment is not about that. Instead, you said I need to have a more open mind and heart. You say you don't think you are appropriating or exploiting Native culture. You say you respect my concern, but then you equate me--a Native woman advocating for Native writers--with the actions of white people. You say "we need to be larger than that" but what you mean is that I need to be "larger than that." In other words, you don't want me to criticize you and other white writers who create stories about Native people. 

In the April 13 MinnPost comment, you suggest that efforts to prioritize Native writing is a step towards "balkanizing" who gets published. You think a prioritization of Native voices will make it  "illegitimate" to reach and speak across cultures. 

To me that sounds like conversations I've had with many white people who don't like what we say when we speak up about what you are doing. Whether it is a mascot or a book or story, white folks just want us to go away and be quiet so you can go on doing what you're doing. Some do what you did: accuse us of balkanization. 

You respond as if we are oppressing you. You sound like you think white writers are being oppressed. Are you? Consider the facts. How many books by Native people get turned into movies, compared to books by white writers that get turned into movies? In recent years, your book was made into a movie. The one about the Osages and the FBI also got made into a movie. 

Returning to books: I study the data of what gets published. Maybe you don't know about that data. Here's an infographic of books in 2018. Clearly, white writers get far more books published than we do:


If the 25th anniversary edition of your book had been sent to the Cooperative Children's Book Center in 2018 (your anniversary edition came out in 2019), the staff at CCBC would have put it on the list of books by or about American Indians/First Nations. The infographic shows that 23 of the 3,134 books reflected in the data at that moment in 2018 were categorized as being by or about American Indians/First Nations. 

Now, look closely at the feet of the children on the left side of the graphic. See the shards of glass there? That represents books with problematic content. It is a visual signal that we must consider more than just how many books are published. When I reviewed the 23 books, about half of them were by white writers. In their books, I found stereotyping and romanticization and similar sorts of problems. 

In the end, about 12 books by Native writers were published. I won't say that books by Native writers are free of problems but in my thirty years of studying children's books, I can say that their books are far better than those by white writers.

I've read Neither Wolf Nor Dog and I find problems in it. I know--you have said many times that there are Native people who like your books. I believe you. I'm not one of them. In the MinnPost comment, you also said that you want to know what I think of your books. Below is a sample from my notes. At some point, I will write up my analysis of Neither Wolf Nor Dog. For now, I share these notes to demonstrate why I find your book problematic. 

The dedication

The dedication for Neither Wolf Nor Dog is: "For the silent ones." 
My comments: I assume "the silent ones" in your mind are Native peoples. That dedication was one of many things I noted as I read. I think the dedication echoes a stereotypical way of thinking about Native peoples (as silent, without voice), and that it simultaneously signals to readers that you are a good person doing all you can to help us silent ones. Some find it valorous and see you as a good ally to Native people. As a person who studies representations of Native peoples, I see you as another in a long line of white people who are intent on saving us by speaking for us, by telling our stories for us...  I know--there are Native people who do think of you as an ally. I don't.  

Chapter 1: An Old Man's Request

When the chapter opens, we read that you got a phone call from a Native woman whose grandfather wants to talk to you because he saw the Red Road books that you did. You tell us that you had worked with students on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation, collecting memories of their parents and grandparents. Those oral histories became the two Red Road books. You tell us you had a tightness in your chest, hearing the woman's words, because the books had "gained some notoriety."  Some Native people did not like what they read in the books because some of it opened "old wounds" or rekindled "family feuds." Most Native people, you assure us, liked the Red Road books--but those ones who did not--they call you to challenge you.  
My thoughts: Showing us that vulnerability invites readers to share that tightness along with you. The way you characterize Native concerns seems to belittle them, and ultimately, feels dismissive. The way you wrote those opening paragraphs works to get readers to ally with you but I want to know more about that project and what the books had in them. Did you let parents and grandparents see what was going to be in the book, before publication? Seems that if you had done that, you wouldn't have gotten blow back. You aren't listed as the author of those two books but you lift them up in these opening passages. It seems you're exploiting that project. It sets this whole phone call in motion. It is the set up for how this book came into being.

The woman who called did not give you her name. You told her you'd talk to her grandfather and you thought she'd put him on the phone but, it turns out, he doesn't like to talk on the phone. You tell us you know that some "very traditional elders" don't like to use the telephone, or, "have their picture taken." 
My thoughts: Your remarks about traditional elders tell readers that you have knowledge about very traditional elders that others may not. You offer that as a reason why the woman's grandfather won't talk on the phone. Something about this feels off to me but I don't have words for it yet.

You tell readers that you are getting more nervous because the man won't talk on the phone. The woman gives you "the name of a reservation." It is a long way from your home. 
My thoughts: Earlier, I noted that you tell us the woman wouldn't give you her name, and now, we are not given the name of the reservation. Because I've read the book, I know that this lack of names matters to the success of your book. 
 
We aren't ever going to know the man's name, because he specifically asks you not to share his information. He just wants YOU to tell his stories because he likes what you did with the Red Road books. 

That secrecy might feel respectful to readers but to me, it feels very exploitative of your readers. You've written the foreword and intro in a way to disarm criticisms of what you're doing in this book. The "old man" of the chapter title has a request and you're going to honor that request. He trusts you, and we're supposed to trust you, too. But, I don't! All of it feels too tidy. 

The upshot of this secrecy is that your name is the only one we know. You are the one who speaks. You are the one who profits from book and movie ticket sales. Maybe you give some of the profits to a Native organization. If you do, that is likely seen as you being a good guy to Native people. Saviorism. 

I've got more notes about your book, but I'll pause there to talk about your book being used in schools.

In your comment to the MinnPost you said that your books are "used in many curricula." I am not surprised, but I am disappointed. What is lost when people use your book instead of ones by Native writers? The opportunity to make Native people and their work visible. Here's what I mean. Let's imagine a classroom.

Teacher to class of juniors and seniors in high school: "Today we're going to start reading Louise Erdrich's The Round House. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the owner of Birchbark Books, a bookstore in Minneapolis. Let's take a look at the website for her tribal nation." 

Using words like the ones I suggested above means that a teacher would be centering Native voices by using Erdrich's book. By taking students to the tribal website, two things would happen. First, the students would find even more tribal voices. And that simple act of visiting a tribal nation's website tells students that Native people use technology. Some of you will think "of course they do" but the fact is there's a lot of people in the US who don't know we exist, today, and some think that "authentic" Indian people live in the woods in (of course) tipis or wigwams. 

The teacher would use present-tense verbs as they talked about Erdrich, her bookstore, and the tribal website. The opportunities for visibility are many! But--the students don't have that opportunity because they're reading your book instead. That bothers me. I imagine you'll say it isn't your fault that they choose you over a Native writer. You're right. It isn't your fault, but I wonder if you've done anything anywhere to help them find Native writers? 

I see that Carter Meland has a comment to you at MinnPost (dated April 14, 2022) and that you replied to him.  You refer to the "own voices" movement as a necessary corrective but immediately follow up with a "But" that argues for your own space. I wish you would spend more of your words lifting Native writers than arguing for your own voice. 

Debbie

Friday, April 23, 2021

Guest Review: An-Lon Chen's review of WHO WAS SACAGAWEA? by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin

Note from Debbie: In February of 2021, I received an email from a parent who had questions about a scene in Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin’s biography of Sacagawea. That parent is An-Lon Chen. We began an email conversation. What she wrote struck me as the sort of activity that I want readers of AICL to see. First is the questioning, and then, the research, and all though that research process, collisions with the historical record, the master narrative, and what children learn. An-Lon's essay demonstrates the work some parents do when they read a children’s book to their child. I wish more parents would write about the work they do, and share that work. Publishers do pay attention to critical examinations of the books they publish. Writers do, too (for examples, see Revised and Withdrawn).

Note on April 27, 2021: You can follow An-Lon Chen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anlonchen

**** 

An-Lon Chen's Review of Who Was Sacagawea?


I didn’t set out to write a book review when I contacted Dr. Reese about a scene in chapter 4 where Sacagawea learns that her brother, Cameahwait, is going to break a promise he had made to Meriwether Lewis. I was looking for help in finding the source material for that scene in Who Was Sacagawea? by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin. The book was published in 2002, but is still in print today from Penguin Random House. My family loves the Who Was? biography series and this was the first time I felt the need to do any fact-checking.



An old college friend eventually helped me locate the source material in Lewis and Clark’s expedition journals. Later in this review, I will post it side-by-side with its retelling in the children’s book. It’s an eye-opening look at how much any given author’s interpretation of Sacagawea’s inner thoughts and feelings is a reflection of that author’s own beliefs and their own racial stereotypes, however well-intentioned. (Readers with time constraints can jump directly to the scene in question the Fiction? Or Deceptions? section of this review, though I feel that its full significance is best appreciated in context.)


In this review, I will shine a light on that scene, a racist illustration, and a dishonest and evasive portrayal of United States government actions in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition. However, the problem with Sacagawea is much bigger than one particular book. Who Was Sacagawea? is, in all likelihood, one of the better Sacagawea books out there. The authors clearly cared about their subject matter and succeeded in telling a highly engaging story about a courageous heroine. Unfortunately, the story itself has deeper problems than they seem to have realized.


I was, to be honest, caught by surprise. I am not Native American and don’t have any particular insight into, or knowledge about, Sacagawea’s story. I am, however, a Chinese-American mother of a biracial child, and I am painfully aware of how deeply racist first impressions can linger. I was disturbed enough after reading Who Was Sacagawea? aloud to my five-year old daughter that I felt morally obligated to research and write this review.

Introduction

My daughter first learned about Sacagawea from a board book that was gifted to us called A is for Awesome by Eva Chen. That board book is not the subject of this review, but I include the illustration because it visually demonstrates two important aspects of how Sacagawea's story is told.



First and foremost, all we know about Sacagawea is what white men have written about her, in the third person. We have no record of her own internal thoughts and feelings. In A is for Awesome, Sacagawea is one of the few women in the book whose page doesn’t include an upbeat, inspirational speech balloon with a quote from her (like the one shown for Ginsburg). From a few scraps in Lewis and Clark’s voluminous journals, Sacagawea’s life has been constructed, re-constructed, appropriated, and re-appropriated by white suffragists, historians, schoolteachers, writers, and politicians. We, the non-Native American audience, remain fascinated by Sacagawea because her trek across the western United States with a baby on her back makes for such a good story.


The second aspect of her life story that A is for Awesome shows us is Sacagawea’s happy smile. A smile seems like an inconsequential thing to point out, especially in light of the more obvious question - where’s her baby? But the smile is important because Sacagawea has been used by two centuries’ worth of white authors to justify white expansionism. If Sacagawea can smile about the Lewis and Clark expedition and its aftermath, then we, too, are given permission to smile.


In an email I received from Dr. Reese, she says that she doesn’t know of a decolonized children’s biography of Sacagawea. In her own words from that email:


I'd promote that (non-existent) book so much because teachers all across the country could use it to teach kids how to analyze false narratives. People who don't want the narrative disrupted won't like it, but those who do... like me, well, we'd love it.


I’m going to pause here for a confession. Much as I want this non-existent biography to exist, I too have a strong emotional response to the story as we know it. In reading through the original Lewis and Clark journals, I too am drawn by Sacagawea’s bravery and resourcefulness and resilience. I too hear the siren song that inspired her countless white biographers, who wanted to bring her back to life and give her a voice. For these reasons, I do empathize with them. Her story is not a blank slate: from the journals, we glimpse just enough of her life to desperately want to know the rest. Without any existing window into her thoughts and feelings, we invent our own motivations for her actions. We don’t necessarily set out to write a revisionist history, but we do so simply because what we wrongly perceive as a blank slate is so frustrating and so tempting.


An honest biography would refrain from reconstructing what know from the journal fragments. It would also reframe the larger story in the context of Sacagawea’s own people rather than that of the white expedition. Finally, it would tell the story of her appropriation, which is fascinating and sad in its own right.


The white suffragists who rediscovered Sacagawea had a narrative of their own to disrupt: that history is made exclusively by men. Unfortunately, these women introduced their own explicitly colonialist message. Eva Emery Dye, the novelist who popularized Sacagawea to a white audience ninety years after her death, patriotically credited Sacagawea with “unlocking the gates of the mountains, and giving up the key to her country... giving over its trade and resources to the whites, opening the way to a higher civilization.” [1] [2]


This talk of giving the country over to the whites resonates with a sizable percentage of Americans today. That is the result of misrepresentations of her life story and this country's story. I think it is important that we all take a harder look at Sacagawea’s portrayal in children’s books, and recognize that schoolchildren are receiving that same misrepresentation to this very day. I don’t believe it’s possible to address any of the errors, omissions, and fabrications in Who Was Sacagawea? without seeing how neatly they fit together in support of the colonialist, expansionist narrative first put forth by turn-of-the-century white suffragists. Again, I don’t believe the children’s book authors explicitly intended to push this particular agenda. For too many of us, it is hard to see the bias in the materials we inherit.

Revisionist History

Framing the Story

Who Was Sacagawea? opens with these words (p. 2):


In the year 2000, the United States issued a new dollar coin. Its “heads” side shows an American-Indian woman. She is carrying her baby.


Who is this young woman? Her name was Sacagawea (Sa KA ga WE a). Two hundred years ago, she went with the Lewis and Clark expedition. The explorers traveled across the American Northwest. When the explorers were hungry, she found food. When they met Indians along the way, she acted as a translator. Thanks to Sacagawea’s help, the expedition was a success.


The Lewis and Clark expedition changed American history. It helped the United States settle a huge region. This area included what became the states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.


This is the standard framing for Sacagawea’s adventures. Schoolchildren learn at an early age that the Lewis and Clark expedition enabled white settlement in the Northwest United States, and that the expedition would have failed at multiple junctures if not for Sacagawea. This framing sets her up as the person who scored the game-winning touchdown for the other team.


The standard framing also sets up a false timeline and false sense of historical scale. Readers are given the impression that civilization began in Idaho, Washington and Oregon only after they were organized into the states we know today. In reality, tribes on the Columbia River Plateau had been trading with tribes on the Pacific coast by canoe for thousands of years, and trading with tribes across the Rocky Mountains by horseback for hundreds of years. Although the thirty-three members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first white people to make face-to-face contact with these inland tribes, many of them already possessed white trade goods and knowledge of white people obtained through their intertribal trade network [3]. From their perspective at the time, the Lewis and Clark expedition was no different from any of the French, British, and Spanish expeditions that had come and gone before [4].


Below, I’m going to quote every passage in Who Was Sacagawea? that addresses the white settlement of Native lands. This is a comprehensive recitation, down to the last sentence fragment. This is the revisionist American history lesson I delivered to my daughter when I read the book aloud to her. Unteaching it is easier said than done. She trusts the written word.

Resettlement to Reservations

The only information about Indigenous peoples’ forced resettlement to reservations is ignominiously buried in a two-page encyclopedic-like sidebar about buffalo, which I will reproduce here in its entirety (pp. 20-11):


Buffalo Hunting


The American bison is also called the American buffalo. A large male bison is about the size of a small minivan. At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, more than 50,000,000 bison roamed the Great Plains. The Shoshone and the other Plains Indians depended on them for food, warm clothing, and shelter. Their tipis were made from buffalo hides.


Whites begin to settle on the Great Plains shortly after the expedition. The United States government tried to force the Indian tribes to live on the reservations - smaller pieces of land.


In the late 1800s, white buffalo hunters killed all but 550 American bison. Having lost their food and shelter, the Indians moved to the reservations.


During the mid-1900s, some bison were returned to the prairies. Today, 150,000 bison live on ranches and in national parks in the United States and Canada.


The passage creates the false impression that the “Indians” (it’s unclear which) voluntarily moved to the reservations. It gives no sense of the geographical size and scope of the lost homelands in comparison with the ever-shrinking, often fatally distant reservations. And it also creates a more subtle and insidious false sense of scale by enumerating the buffalo’s huge population numbers in detail while lumping together all the “Indians” into one indistinct mass. Because the terms “Indians” and “Plains Indians” are used so generically, it’s impossible to figure out which nations and tribes either term refers to. 


Sacagawea’s Lemhi Shoshone, who lived in the Rocky Mountains on the other side of the Continental Divide and only hunted buffalo seasonally, are lumped in with the Plains Indians. I honestly can’t tell whether the “Indians'' who “moved to the reservations” when there were only 550 bison left, are just the Plains Indians (of which only the Mandan and the Hidatsa are even mentioned in the book), or all the Indian nations and tribes on the entire continent who were forcibly removed to reservations in the name of white settlement.


Though the Lemhi Shoshone and Nez Perce Indians of the Pacific Northwest are lauded in the book for having helped the Lewis and Clark expedition, this confusing sidebar about buffalo and Plains Indians is the closest the book comes to mentioning the wars, broken treaties, depletion of natural resources, incursion of white settlers, and political pressures that forced them onto reservations within less than a century. Let me say that again: that is the only place in the book where readers get even a hint of honest information about what Americans and the US government did to Indian people.

Exploration and Discovery

In Who Was Sacajawea? there are too many references to themes of exploration and discovery to list them all. This is the only one that acknowledges that the land originally belonged to the Indians (p. 21):


The voyagers would do more than visit the territory of the Louisiana Purchase. They would also explore what is now Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Great Britain also had its eye on this territory. Jefferson wanted American explorers to get there first. That would strengthen U.S. claims to the region. Nobody stopped to think that the land already belonged to the Indians.


Ultimately, the exploration and discovery narrative becomes the driving force. We see the virgin landscape unfold through explorer's eyes, from the expedition’s early days in St. Louis to the beached whale at the Pacific ocean.


The discovery narrative is so powerful and compelling, it inevitably overpowers the fact presented on page 21 that the Indians were there first. Devoid of context, it is like a carcinogen warning on the side of a package. The reader sees it and forgets about it. Without having been introduced to the diverse and distinct Indigenous peoples of the “unexplored” Columbia River plateau, and without having learned anything about their relationship with the land or the miles and the millennia that it spans, it’s easy for the reader to promptly dismiss the fact that the land already belonged to the Indians.

Commemoration

At the very end of the journey, we learn (p. 95):


The Lewis and Clark expedition reached St. Louis in late September. Cheering crowds greeted the men. They were heroes. They had explored vast and distant lands. Lewis and Clark had paved the way for America's settlement of the west.


The expedition is credited with enabling the invasion and occupation of Native homelands, and the book celebrates along with the cheering crowds. In the final chapter, “Honoring Sacagawea,” we learn less about the modern-day fate of her people than we did earlier when we read that today, there are over 150,000 buffalo on ranches and in national parks (p. 102):


During the 1800s, Indians and whites fought many wars. White people did not want to honor any Native Americans. By 1900, the fighting had ended. The country was getting ready to celebrate the expedition’s 100th anniversary. That was when Americans ‘discovered’ Bird Woman. Suddenly, she became very well-known. Sacagawea has had more landmarks named for her and memorials built in her honor than any other American woman. 


Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming have mountains named for Sacagawea. Washington and North Dakota have lakes named for her.


So how did the fighting end? Who won the wars? Do Indians still exist today? We never find out, as the book immediately segues into a recitation of Sacagawea’s many landmarks and memorials. 


In reality, the fighting ended only about thirty years before the unveiling of Sacagawea’s first major statue at the 1905 Portland World’s Fair. White veterans of the last Northwest Indian wars against the Modoc, Nez Perce, Bannock, and Paiute tribes were present among the crowds [5]. White female suffragists unveiled Sacagawea’s statue, draped it in an American flag, and gave speeches lauding her selfless, patriotic, and vital role in America’s westward expansion [6]. Make no mistake: Sacagawea’s statue was a propaganda piece and a victory celebration.


The irony is evident in the Sacagawea dollar coin released in 2000. Whose “liberty” is the United States government celebrating, and in whose God do we trust? Certainly not Sacagawea’s, or that of her Lemhi Shoshone tribe, or that of any other contemporaneous American Indian nation.



Erasure


At the 1905 Portland World’s Fair, National Woman Suffrage Association President Anna Shaw hailed Sacagawea as a memory of a conveniently vanishing race [7]:

“Your tribe is fast disappearing from the land of your fathers. May we, the daughters of an alien race who slew your people and usurped your country, learn the lessons of calm endurance, of patient persistence and unfaltering courage exemplified in your life…”  

Who Was Sacagawea? propagates the same nostalgic myth of the vanishing Indian by concluding with a recitation of Sacagawea’s many monuments and memorials while failing to mention that all the Indigenous tribes encountered by the reader in the book still exist today. For this review, I did a lot of research and learned a lot.


Sacagawea’s Lemhi Shoshone lived in their relatively isolated homeland valley for two more years after the 1905 Portland World’s Fair. Though they had remained mostly neutral during the Nez Perce, Bannock, and Sheepeater Wars, they were ultimately driven by political and economic pressures to relocate to the Fort Hall Reservation, 200 miles away. Tribal members refer to this exile from their homeland as their own “Trail of Tears” [8]. Though the small number of Lemhi Shoshone who remained in or returned to their homeland have not succeeded at obtaining federal recognition, they remain a distinct society today [9]. The Lemhi Shoshone who relocated to the Fort Hall Reservation are now part of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, a federally recognized sovereign nation with over 5,900 members. 


The Nez Perce tribe that aided the expedition after they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains is a federally recognized tribal nation with over 3,500 citizens. Though the Nez Perce Reservation is located on part of their homeland in north-central Idaho, the Nez Perce who aligned with Chief Joseph during the Nez Perce War of 1877 spent eight long and deadly years in exile on reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma before finally being allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest in 1885. 


The Mandan Indians in North Dakota who helped feed the expedition during the winter of 1804-1805 were ravaged by multiple smallpox epidemics and allied with the Hidatsa and the Arikara in order to survive. Today, they are the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, with 16,770 enrolled members. In 1949, the federal government displaced over 80% of their population in order to build the Garrison Dam. The loss of the river-valley homeland that had been their agricultural livelihood left The Three Tribes devastated economically, socially, and spiritually [10]. In 1985, Congress awarded them $149.5 million in just compensation for the lands underneath the lake created by the dam. This lake is called Lake Sakakawea, so named by the US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam [11].


There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes and 1.9 million tribally enrolled members in the United States today. This tally doesn’t include the Chinook and Clatsop tribes of the Lower Columbia River that are featured in the book for having traded with the expedition at the very end of their journey. The Chinook Nation, which includes both these tribes, is still fighting for federal recognition. Their struggle is not the focus of this piece, but it’s well worth visiting their own website to learn more. Ironically, because they never signed a ratified treaty or officially ceded homelands, they are now denied COVID relief and other forms of federal aid [12].


All these nations and tribes survived the white occupation of their ancestral homelands. So why were they written out of Who Was Sacagawea? Why do we get a modern-day update on the buffalo and the dollar coin and the namesake lake in North Dakota, but no update on the people themselves? Because in order to justify the discovery and settlement narrative, we need to pretend that the people we displaced no longer exist.


I’m going to shift gears at this point, from the larger historical canvas to the scene in the book that took me down the path that led to this review.

Fiction? Or Deceptions?

We know just enough from Lewis and Clark’s journals to be deeply drawn to Sacagawea as a human being, and we become emotionally invested in giving her a happy ending. I think many children’s biographers paint a false portrait of Sacagawea not for ideological reasons, but because letting her share in the happy ending of the white expedition is the only way to give her a happy ending at all. Rather than using Sacagawea’s story to reflect on hard truths about white settlement of Indigenous homelands, we now use it to assuage our collective guilt.


Most narratives downplay how little agency Sacagawea had in her own life. Sacagawea's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, was a predatory man who “married" at least five Native American girls, the last when he was 80 and she was 14 years old [13]. According to the Lewis and Clark journals, Sacagawea herself was captured in a raid at age 10 or 11 by the rival Hidatsa tribe (referred to in the book as the Minnetaree) and either sold, traded, or gambled away to Charbonneau when she was 13.


The authors of Who Was Sacagawea? go to great lengths to try and make Sacagawea’s backstory palatable to younger readers. In the first few pages, they insert an awkward paragraph explaining that like all Shoshone girls, she would have been married at age 13 or 14 to an older man within her own Shoshone tribe. My impression is that this is intended to soften the blow of her ensuing capture and forced marriage to Charbonneau.


In Chapter 4, Sacagawea emotionally reunites with her Lemhi Shoshone tribe in present-day Idaho after five years and 600 miles of separation. She learns that her brother Cameahwait is the new chief. He becomes part of the translation chain that allows the Lewis and Clark expedition to trade for horses and guides from the Shoshone in order to cross the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains.


Here, the book’s authors launch into speculation as to why Sacagawea stayed with the white expedition instead of staying with her people, conveniently avoiding the possibility that she may not have had a choice. But even that editorialization isn't enough, because the book also introduces a new, illustrated plot point (pp. 60-61):


Bird Woman must have been tempted to stay with her people. However, she chose to move on with the Corps of Discovery. We can only guess why. Perhaps she felt loyal to the explorers. They had treated her and Pomp kindly. She may never have felt so important before. The chance to visit other Indian tribes and see the ocean must also have been exciting to a young girl.


The explorers were still among the Shoshone when Bird Woman overheard something shocking. Her brother had changed his mind. He was going to break his promise. He was going to keep the horses and take his hungry people to hunt buffalo. Sacagawea told Charbonneau what she had learned. She asked him to tell Captain Lewis. Lewis confronted Cameahwait. The chief was ashamed. He would keep his word after all, he said. Once again, Sacagawea had helped save the expedition.


This is the point where I went on a protracted hunt for the original source material. The passage above felt a little too convenient. Here is a photo of that page:



This scene establishes Sacagawea’s brother as a deceitful, unreliable Indian, plants Sacagawea firmly on her husband's side, and firmly aligns her with the white expedition. The reader can relax and enjoy the rest of the book, believing that Sacagawea chose of her own free will to stay with the good guys.


Is it any wonder that some Native Americans think of Sacagawea as a traitor? Look at the illustration in the book above: Sacagawea is eavesdropping from behind a tree, and she’s about to snitch on her Shoshone brother to her white husband. As I am about to demonstrate, this scene is entirely fictitious. No part of it ever happened. But it appears in this biography. We’re conditioned to believe the words in print without question.


Here is the actual source material, with the only mention of Sacagawea underlined in blue. I will guide you through it, shortly. [14]




“Whilst at dinner we learnt by means of Sacajawea” (page 110) is the only mention of Sacagawea in this entire passage. All we learn from it is that she conveyed some information. There is no indication about how or why she chose to share that information, or that it was secret in any way, or that she had overheard it from behind a tree. All those details provided on page 60 and 61 of Who Was Sacagawea?, in other words, were invented wholesale.


The actual information being conveyed is more difficult to decipher without some context. I will summarize and give the needed background.


At the time of the journal passage, the expedition and Cameahwait’s party are camped some distance away from the Shoshone village in the Bitterroot Mountains. At this point, Lewis and Clark have traded for some horses from Cameahwait, and Cameahwait has indicated willingness to trade more. Lewis and Clark want the entire combined party to travel to the Shoshone village in order to continue bargaining for their needed horses. Cameahwait, however, has just instructed a runner (as conveyed by Sacagawea) to have his people leave the village and meet Lewis and Clark’s party at their current encampment instead. 


From there, they will make their seasonal journey down to the buffalo-hunting grounds on the Great Plains of present-day Montana. All of Lewis’s subsequent pontification refers to the horses he thinks he’s entitled to once they reach the Shoshone village in the mountains, not to any horses that have actually been promised. At the end of page 111 in the journals, Cameahwait agrees to change his plans. In subsequent journal entries, everyone arrives at the village and Lewis bargains for his horses.


Nowhere is there any indication that Cameahwait attempted to steal back horses that he had already traded away, or that Sacagawea saved the expedition by overhearing secret plans and ratting on her brother to her husband. The passage in Who Was Sacagawea? is entirely fictitious.


Not only is it fictitious, it is actively harmful. Why was that passage so believable that two decades’ worth of editors, reviewers, librarians, parents and schoolchildren never (to my knowledge) questioned it? Because it plays into our negative stereotypes of Native Americans. Because the shifty, capricious Indian chief fits neatly into our worldview and our preconceptions.


As for Sacagawea’s motivations in leaving behind her Shoshone people and staying with her husband, I found no information in the Lewis and Clark journals other than the following passage about the Shoshone man she had been betrothed to. As it turns out, he was still alive but didn’t want her back (p. 118).


When we brought her back, her betrothed was still living. Although he was double the age of Sacajawea, and had two other wives, he claimed her, but on finding that she had a child by her new husband, Chaboneau, he relinquished his pretensions and said he did not want her.


I assume that the authors of Who Was Sacagawea? read the same passages I read. Why was the passage above not offered as a possible reason Sacagawea stayed with the white expedition? Why was the passage about Cameahwait re-imagined into a traitorous plot point?


Because we want that happy ending so badly. Portraying Sacagawea as winning with the good guys is much easier than addressing what happened to those other guys. Sacagawea gets the happy ending we want her to have, but it is at the cost of being airlifted to the other team.

Sacagawea’s Son

I have one last critique of Who Was Sacagawea? in particular, and the Sacagawea story in general. Both have to do with Sacagawea’s baby.


The illustrator of Who Was Sacagawea?, like the authors, clearly cares about his characters and has clearly done research in bringing them to life. That said, I can’t get over this picture of Sacagawea’s one-year old son:




The hunched back, the weak chin, and the enormous feet look like they were inspired by popular imagery of Neanderthals. The Lewis and Clark expedition was 200 years ago, not 40,000 years ago. I’m sure the illustrator meant well. But it’s easy for subconscious bias like this to creep into illustrations, and go uncaught by an editorial and publishing team. As with the fictitious plot point about the traitorous Indian chief, this baby is believable only because of our own latent stereotypes and preconceptions.


The final story element that appears in every account of Sacagawea’s life is William Clark’s fondness for both her and her child. After repeated offers, Clark adopted the boy when he was about six years old. Sacagawea died shortly after giving birth to his sister two years later. Clark adopted the baby girl as well. She doesn’t appear in his records at all after her initial adoption, and may not have survived past childhood.


It’s easy for contemporary readers to see Clark’s adoption of Sacagawea’s son as being sweet and heartwarming, without recognizing the underlying worldview and preconceptions of the era: kind white adoptive parents will civilize the savage child and give that child a better life. I have yet to see any account of Sacagawea’s life that addresses the adoption of her children in the context of the United States government’s soon-to-be-realized practices of forced assimilation, now commonly referred to as cultural genocide.


The broader topic of assimilation is far too complex for a review like this to address. I’ll instead follow Dr. Reese’s advice and point readers to the recent film Dawnland, which tells the heartbreaking story of how Indigenous children were removed from their homes in order to “save them from being Indian.” The investigation shown in Dawnland was conducted through Maine’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first of its kind in the United States. Last year, then-Congresswoman Deb Haaland (now Secretary of the Interior), a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, introduced a similar bill at the federal level. The main section of this bill is well worth reading.

Decolonizing Sacagawea

Above, I wrote briefly that an honest biography of Sacagawea, with the tragic parts told, would look very different from the biographies that schoolchildren read today. When we zoom in, the exploration and discovery story is endlessly appealing. But when we zoom out, we can better see the false framing, the false timeline, the invasion and occupation story, the assimilation story, the appropriation, the wishful thinking, the latent stereotypes, and the ongoing harm.


I honestly don’t believe that any of this can be fixed for the target audience of the Who Was? series. A newly rewritten Who Was Sacagawea? with corrections made to all its falsehoods and errors would still be a dramatization beyond what we can reasonably know about Sacagawea’s own internal motivations, and it would still feature the same exploration, discovery, and settlement narrative. Tamper too much with any of these elements, and the story loses its appeal. Despite everyone’s best intentions, it would slowly get zoomed back in and edited back down to its previous form, perhaps with a few awkward and unconvincing disclaimers.


Older students could perhaps benefit from an entirely different treatment of Sacagawea’s story, one that bypasses the false dramatization and instead presents all the primary source journal fragments in their original form, along with the tools and context necessary to understand why and how they got assembled together to fit the familiar, colonialist narrative. Even then, there are many chasms where such a book and its readers could easily get trapped. This would prevent them from reassembling the puzzle pieces into a more honest form. I don’t pretend to be able to navigate past these chasms, but I will point them out because I’ve encountered each of them multiple times over the course of researching this piece.


First and foremost, there’s the strong desire to save both Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark expedition from being cast as the bad guys. This is understandable, given that the explorers weren’t the ones who authorized the invasion, occupation, and cultural genocide that followed the expedition. It can be difficult to grasp that even though the Lewis and Clark expedition didn’t directly do the harm, it was and is an extremely effective vehicle for justifying the harm done to Native peoples. This justification happens in other places and times, too, as shown by the engineered lake over Mandan Indian homelands--a lake that was named for her, and the statues of her, everywhere. Her name is used to serve the same purpose: justifying colonialism.


A decolonized biography of Sacagawea would need to focus on dismantling the propaganda rather than arguing about everyone’s good intentions. Straw man arguments against Sacagawea being a traitor tend to fall into this trap. No, she herself wasn’t a traitor in the Benedict Arnold sense. She didn’t name the lake. But her story routinely gets told to children in a way that betrays her people: revisionist history followed by erasure and hollow commemoration. We lose sight of the betrayal when we take swings at the straw man.


Another potential chasm is the fact that Sacagawea and her descendants proudly figure in multiple tribes’ oral histories, at odds with the scanty written record that says she died at age 25. It’s tricky to avoid passing judgment on the veracity of competing claims, and it’s even trickier to avoid taking tribal members’ pride in their kinship with Sacagawea as license to continue telling our own harmful version of the story. My hope is that we can respect the Lemhi Shoshone, Shoshone-Bannock, Wind River Shoshone, Hidatsa, and Comanche histories while recognizing that popularizing one or more of them would have little effect on the revisionist history currently being taught to children. Even though we could, in theory, give Sacagawea a happier personal ending by adopting a version of the story where she leaves her white husband and reunites with her own (Shoshone or Hidatsa or Comanche) people, the happier personal ending doesn’t change the broader political and historical canvas. 


Perhaps the most significant chasm is the whiteness of the source material itself. The Lewis and Clark expedition diarists, despite their best efforts, were not reliable ethnographers. Their journals contain numerous misrepresentations of Indian traditions and customs. An honest biography would need to address and compensate for those misrepresentations, which is much easier said than done. Sacagawea spent most of the journey alone among white people. She’s an easy heroine to offer up to white kids precisely because of her isolation. They get a semblance of diversity without ever needing to experience an Indigenous society or lifeway or worldview.


I haven’t commented on the authenticity of any of the cultural details in Who Was Sacagawea? because I am not Native American myself, but even I cringed every time the book made blithe generalizations about “Indian” customs without specifying which tribe they belonged to. Is it common for all Indians to have many different names during childhood (p. 6)? Do all Indians refer to late October as “Moon of the Falling Leaves” (p. 23)? Do all Indians refer to the middle of winter as “Frost in the Tipi” (p. 31)? No, of course not. These cultural details, even if they’re authentic, are unique to specific tribes. But mixing and matching those details is apparently good enough for white authors writing for white children. Sacagawea’s story unfortunately lends itself to this surface-level treatment because the reader meets a lot of tribes without lingering long enough to differentiate between them.


Getting past these chasms goes well beyond my own knowledge or ability. I will, however, offer one screening question for any future biography of Sacagawea that purports to be decolonized: is the reader upset by the end of the story? Has the reader acquired enough cultural and historical context from outside the expedition itself to mourn the government betrayals and the lost homelands? If the reader is not actively mourning, then perhaps the book in their hands is still the same old story that continues to deny the truths of what happened.


If this sounds depressing, there are other ways to offer hope. There are other Indigenous heroes and heroines to celebrate, especially for the younger audience of the Who Was? series. There are contemporary heroes and heroines who would help kids realize that Native Americans still exist today. Endlessly rehashing the Sacagawea story seems to make white people feel better, but it’s ultimately an avoidance mechanism. It’s an easy way to get a Native American heroine onto a bookshelf without challenging white mindsets and white worldviews. It pushes better books off the shelf and prevents better books from being written.


There are better books already out there. My daughter and I are slowly making our way through some of the selections on Dr. Reese’s website. We both loved Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story by S. D. Nelson (Abrams, 2013). That’s a start. I too have a lot to learn.


References


[1] Blee, Lisa (2005). Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 106(2), 245. Retrieved from https://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/Blee-Completing-Lewis-and-Clark.pdf


[2] Oregonian, July 7, 1905. Retrieved from https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83025138/1905-07-07/ed-1/seq-11/


[3] Conner, Roberta (2006). Our People Have Always Been Here. In Josephy, Alvin Jr. (ed.), Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes: Nine Indian Writers on the Legacy of the Expedition (p. 90). Vintage.


[4] Ibid, p. 100.


[5] Blee, Lisa (2005). Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 106(2), 239. Retrieved from https://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/Blee-Completing-Lewis-and-Clark.pdf


[6] Ibid, pp. 239-245.


[7] Brooks, Joanna (2004). Sacajawea, Meet Cogewea. In Fresonke, Kris, and Mark Spence (eds.), Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives (p. 184). Berkeley:  University of California Press. Retrieved from http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4q2nc6k3/


[8] Campbell, G. (2001). The Lemhi Shoshoni: Ethnogenesis, Sociological Transformations, and the Construction of a Tribal Nation. American Indian Quarterly, 25(4), 556-567. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1186016


[9] Ibid, p. 567.


[10] “MHA Nation History.” Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, MHA Nation. Retrieved April 6, 2021 from www.mhanation.com/history


[11] Cross, Raymond (2004). “Twice-born” From the Waters. In Fresonke, Kris, and Mark Spence (eds.), Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives (p. 117). Berkeley:  University of California Press. Retrieved from http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4q2nc6k3/


[12] Fernando, Christine (2021, February 27). “Pandemic leaves Chinook Nation in Washington, other tribes not federally recognized, at higher risk.” The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/covid-19-pandemic-leaves-chinook-nation-other-tribes-without-us-recognition-at-higher-risk/ 


[13] TW - sexual violence. “Toussaint Charbonneau.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, April 10, 2015. https://www.nps.gov/jeff/learn/historyculture/toussaint-charbonneau.htm


[14]  Lewis, Meriwether & Clark, William (1814). “History of the expedition in command of Captains Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri : across the Rocky Mountains down the Columbia River to the Pacific in 1804-6 : a reprint of the edition of 1814 to which all the members of the expedition contributed” (pp. 110-111). Toronto: Morang.

Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/historyofexpedi02lewi/page/110/mode/2up