American Indians in California - Resources

Update from Debbie on May 6, 2021: Dr. Miranda's site is no longer accessible. You can find an article by her about the missions, at the Zinn Education Project: Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians. 

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On When Turtles Fly, Deborah Miranda is compiling resources for teachers to use in lesson plans about California. She began this project a few weeks ago, with her post titled 4th Grade California Mission Projects.

When we think of California today, we do not, for the most part, teach about American Indians who were there prior to it becoming "California." When we teach about the Gold Rush, we do it in a celebratory or adventurous fashion, and we fail to teach students that those miners (amongst others) committed horrific crimes against Native people. When we teach about the Missions, we gloss over the treatment of Native people at those missions, and we ignore the legacy the Missions had on the lives of Native people. Some Native people embraced Christianity; some imported elements of Christianity to their existing systems of worship; others rejected it.

Here's Deborah's bio, from her page:

I am a member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay area in California. Currently I am an Associate Professor in the English Department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. I teach Composition, Native American Literatures, American Ethnic Literatures, Women's Literatures, Creative Writing (Poetry and Memoir), among other courses. My first book of poetry, Indian Cartography, was published by Greenfield Review Press in 1999 and won the First Book Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. The Zen of La Llorona, my second collection, was published by Salt Press in 2004.

We can do better, if we are open to revisiting what we were taught. Bookmark her site!

• If you're a teacher, use it to develop your lesson plans. 
• If you're a writer, use it to do research.
• If you're an editor or reviewer, use it to fact check manuscripts and books.

Stories, essays, speeches, poems, and music banned in Tucson

[Note: A chronological list of links to AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies Department at Tucson Unified School District is here. Information about the national Mexican American Studies Teach-in is here. The best source for daily updates out of Tucson is blogger David Abie Morales at Three Sonorans.]

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When the Mexican American Studies Department in Tucson Unified School District was shut down, books on the Cambium audit and referenced in the finding of the administrative law judge could no longer be taught. The volume of materials is far more than those books or the seven books that the district boxed up. For example, the following short stories, essays, speeches, poems and music are no longer being taught. They were used by Curtis Acosta in his social justice course, housed within the Mexican American Studies Department.

Non-Fiction - Personal Reflections

• My Dungeon Shook by James Baldwin
• La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness by Gloria Anzaldua
  

Short Stories

• Selections from Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
• Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
• Vatolandia by Ana Castillo
• Love in L.A. by Dagoberto Gilb
• Lindo y Querido by Manuel Munoz
• Brisa by Dagoberto Gilb
• Aurora by Juno Diaz
• Lost Girls by Jane Yolen
• Selection from Tuff by Paul Beatty

Counter Story Telling and Cultura Through Teatro 

• And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? by Silviana Wood 
• Culture Clash in America and Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy by Culture Clash

Shakespeare, Colonization, and Critical Race Theory

• The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Immigration - La Lucha Sigue

• The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Resistance Through Rhetoric

• The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son by Martin Espada
• Jesse Jackson's speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention
• Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
• Speech at the Afro-Asian Conference by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
• "Women, Power, and Revolution" by Kathleen Cleaver
• "Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation" by Angela Davis
• Message to Aztlan by Corky Gonzales
• Message to the Grass Roots by Malcom X
• "Beyond Vietnam" and Where We Go From Here by Martin Luther King Jr.
• "Does 'Anti-War' Have to be 'Anti-Racist', too? by Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez

Resistance/Revolution in Spoken Word, Slam Poetry, and Hip Hop
Poetry

• Selections from William Carlos Williams, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Ana Castillo, Tracy Morris, Paul Beatty

Hip Hop

Selections from Olmeca, Sihuatl-De, Dead Prez, Common, Kanye West, KRS-1, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Rage Against the Machine, etc.

John Smelcer's Identity

Since posting this in 2008, I've written additional items about Smelcer. See them here: AICL's posts about John Smelcer. 

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In the update to my post on Sunday about John Smelcer, I said that readers had written to me, saying that Smelcer is not Native. I checked into it and found some deeply troubling articles published in 1994 the Anchorage Daily News.

The upshot? He is not Native.

This situation makes me uncomfortable for many reasons. I dislike exploring the background of an author. It feels icky. But a greater concern is the integrity of the work of Native peoples.

There is a long history by which Native peoples and our cultures are deemed irrelevant, rendered invisible, tokenized, and appropriated. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, one of our leading scholars in Native studies, writes about this in her books and articles. She says that the thrust of Native studies is to form an educational strategy for the defense of our tribal nations, and the defense of our land and treaty rights. Another scholar, David Wilkins, asks us to consider how our work affects the continued existence of our nations.

My own area of research and writing is centered on children's books. Part of this work means, for me, consideration of the creation of these books. It means doing what I can to guide readers to work with integrity, that is respectful of Native peoples, our histories, our futures.

I will repeat here what I said yesterday. I do not draw hard and fast lines, saying that only Native people can write stories about Native people. Some wonderful books about American Indians have been written by people who are not themselves Native.

This post is going to get over-long and complicated, so I'll return for now to Smelcer.

Here is what I learned from the Anchorage Daily News article called "UAA Finds Professor Isn't Native. University Reviewing Records." It was in the Metro Section of the Final Edition on May 3, 1994, on page 1.

• He was hired the previous year by the University of Alaska Anchorage in their effort to increase the ethnic diversity among its faculty. Administrators at the university were under the impression he was Native.
  
• In a letter sent to UAA prior to his hire, he said he was "affiliated with Ahtna" and referred to his "Native American Indian heritage."
• The head of Ahtna, a man named Roy Ewan, wrote a letter of recommendation for Smelcer, that said "Ahtna recognizes John Smelcer's tribal membership."
  

It isn't clear to me yet how or why his identity was challenged. Information about that identity was brought to the attention of the university. Some of that is:

• He was adopted by a Native man named Charlie Smelcer, who said "He's a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian just like anyone else is."
• Ewan said his letter was a mistake. He said "When they told me this guy was Charlie Smelcer's son, I just assumed it was his blood son," Ewan said.

The article said that Smelcer did not believe he had misrepresented himself. This is an excerpt from that portion of the article:

"I was very careful with the dictionary, finding that word 'affiliated,'" he said, "After all, I was an English major."

Smelcer also said he knew his letter would leave the impression that he was an Alaska Native by birth. He said he considered himself a Native even though his parents were not. "My entire life has been surrounded by my Alaska Native family," he said.

But in a telephone interview from Juneau, Charlie Smelcer flatly denied that description. The senior Smelcer, a retired Army officer, said that, "in no way, shape or form" was John Smelcer raised in a Native environment.

"He was a middle-class kid who grew up around a military environment, with cars and television and everything else like that," Smelcer said. "If he's used my Native heritage for his personal or professional gain, then that's wrong."

Smelcer said that nobody at UAA ever asked him "point blank" if he was "a blood Indian." The article concludes with this:

But Smelcer said he did not know whether he would be able to pursue his academic career now. The recent interest in his birth and background had left him feeling confused, he said. "Suddenly, I don't know who I am anymore."

Additional articles in the Anchorage Daily News indicate that he resigned his position in the middle of the university's investigation--not about his identity--but on "whether he told the truth about having poetry accepted for publication in the New Yorker magazine and other journals," (see "UAA Professor Quits among Credentials Probe," August 3rd). The paper says there was a forged letter in his files from an editor at the New Yorker. Smelcer says he didn't put it there. Other presses Smelcer was going to have poems published in denied that they were going to publish his poems.

So... That is what I've learned so far.

The politics of identity within Native circles can be vicious and ugly. There's a lot at stake. Writers of Native stories know that the book buying public will be more inclined to buy a book written by a Native author. Claims are made, but not checked. This happens all across the country, in many, many places. Some claims are flat-out fraudulent. Some are misguided. Others are very thin. And some, like Smelcer's, are both tragic and outrageous.

Publishers or reviewers could ask, point blank, "are you...." of authors who claim Native heritage or identity. But they don't ask that of other writers, so, is it appropriate to do so here? These are very complex matters, but they are important, and they require a lot of reading and thinking to understand these complexities.

One good text to read to begin exploring the identity question is Eva Garroutte's Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.

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Update: Sunday, Feb 3. All the information in the Anchorage Daily News has been confirmed as accurate. My inquiries to the Ahtna tribal office were directed to John Smelcer's father, who told me that his comments in the Anchorage paper are accurate.
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Navajo Nation's First Poet Laureate: Luci Tapahonso

Does your library have Luci Tapahonso's Blue Horses Rush In on your YA or adult fiction or poetry shelves?

Is her Songs of Shiprock Fair on your picture book shelves?

If they're not, order them next time you're buying books. By coincidence or design, the rich covers of Blue Horses Rush In and Songs of Shiprock Fair convey the depth and brilliance of Tapahonso's writing. She writes from experience. Tapahonso is Dine (Navajo). She grew up in Shiprock, New Mexico. You can bet that the poems you read in Songs of Shiprock Fair are rooted in her actually being there--not once, or twice, but many times. She went to school at the University of New Mexico. One of my favorite stories in Blue Horses Rush In is about being a student at UNM. I went to UNM, too. I completely 'get' that story.

Tapahonso's writing has received many awards, but recognition from ones immediate community is, perhaps, the most meaningful. Tapahonso has been named as the Navajo Nation's first Poet Laureate. With affirmation from her tribal nation, you know your purchase of her books is a good choice.

What did Curtis Acosta teach in his Mexican American Literature course?

[Note: A chronological list of links to AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies Department at Tucson Unified School District is here. Information about the National Mexican American Studies Teach-in is here. The best source for daily updates out of Tucson is blogger David Abie Morales at Three Sonorans.]

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Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 DNC Convention is among the readings Curtis Acosta taught in his Social Justice, Resistance, and Literature course. 

Ever since January 15th when I read Who's afraid of "The Tempest" in Salon, I've been wondering what the teachers in the Mexican American Studies courses were teaching that led people to write laws to penalize school districts that offered courses that sought to "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government" or "promote resentment towards a race or class of people" or were "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group" or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

Since then, I've learned a lot about the Mexican American Studies (MAS) Department and resistance to it.  There's a lot more to know. I continue to study the historical context that the program and resistance to it are nested within.

It seems the primary targets of the law were ideas taught in MAS history and social justice classes. I say that based on Governing Board President Stegeman's 2011 proposal to make those courses electives rather than allow them to count as fulfilling core course graduation requirements. Students and community that support the MAS program successfully stopped that proposal from being voted on by occupying the board's meeting room. Students chained themselves to board members chairs. Depending on who you ask, it was a violent and threatening event, or, it was a peaceful demonstration.

TUSD's response was to start having heavy police presence at their meetings. This included the use of helicopters, cordoning off streets, and admitting people to meetings only after they were wanded by security. Most of us know about the police brutality at Occupy Wall Street events, but I don't think the police brutality in Tucson is getting that attention. If you've seen it in the national press, please send me links. Here's a video of that brutality (the video is from a story about police brutality at the Three Sonorans page at Tucson Citizen):

What was being taught that moved people to write the law in the first place? What was being taught that motivated supporters of the program to fight so hard to keep the program intact?

Below is Curtis Acosta's syllabus. I didn't get it from him or the MAS program. I found it on the website for Tucsonans United for Sound Districts (TU4SD). Their January 2012 newsletter, written by co-founder Loretta Hunnicutt, takes credit for the shut down of a program that allowed "political predators" in the classroom to be funded by taxpayer dollars. They've got links to the syllabus for eight different courses, but they've reproduced his on their site. Obviously, they view it as evidence of the work of a "political predator."

At present, they are working on new legislation modeled on the Ethnic Studies law that would say "A teacher who uses partisan books and/or partisan materials or teaches any partisan doctrine or conducts any partisan exercises in school is guilty of unprofessional conduct and his certificate shall be revoked."

This new proposal is meant to control what is taught in any classroom by any teacher, but their work to rid TUSD of the MAS program and their use of Acosta's syllabus as an example of inappropriate course content is very telling.

Jane Yolen, author of Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast, has wondered why her book is on the list of books that may no longer be taught by teachers who once taught in the MAS program. When I found Acosta's syllabus, I wrote to Jane to let her know it was her "Lost Girls" story that was being taught. That story is Yolen's take on Peter Pan. In Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings, Susan Redington Bobby writes that it "subverts a story meant to reinforce traditional gender roles and uses it to reinforce values of feminism" (p. 58).

Race. And feminism, too. What stands out to you? I don't like sounding like a fear mongerer, but I definitely thing we have a lot to be fearful of in the politics of the present time, and I hope you are, too. Could a law like the one in Arizona be passed in your state? Given the money driving politics in the United States right now, I think that the right question is not "could a law" but "When will a law like the one in Arizona be passed in your state?"


Social Justice, Resistance, and Latino Literature

First Quarter - Contemporary Fiction

Non-Fiction - Personal Reflections

• My Dungeon Shook by James Baldwin
• La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness by Gloria Anzaldua
  

Short Stories

• Selections from Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
• Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
• Vatolandia by Ana Castillo
• Love in L.A. by Dagoberto Gilb
• Lindo y Querido by Manuel Munoz
• Brisa by Dagoberto Gilb
• Aurora by Juno Diaz
• Lost Girls by Jane Yolen
• Selection from Tuff by Paul Beatty

Second Quarter - Critical Race Theatre

Counter Story Telling and Cultura Through Teatro 

• And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? by Silviana Wood 
• Culture Clash in America and Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy by Culture Clash

Shakespeare, Colonization, and Critical Race Theory

• The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Third Quarter

Immigration - La Lucha Sigue

• The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Resistance Through Rhetoric

Nonfiction

• The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son by Martin Espada
• Jesse Jackson's speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention
• Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
• Speech at the Afro-Asian Conference by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
• "Women, Power, and Revolution" by Kathleen Cleaver
• "Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation" by Angela Davis
• Message to Aztlan by Corky Gonzales
• Message to the Grass Roots by Malcom X
• "Beyond Vietnam" and Where We Go From Here by Martin Luther King Jr.
• "Does 'Anti-War' Have to be 'Anti-Racist', too? by Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez

Fourth Quarter

Resistance/Revolution in Spoken Word, Slam Poetry, and Hip Hop
Poetry

• Selections from William Carlos Williams, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Ana Castillo, Tracy Morris, Paul Beatty

Hip Hop

Selections from Olmeca, Sihuatl-De, Dead Prez, Common, Kanye West, KRS-1, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Rage Against the Machine, etc.

Another award for Alexie's YA Novel

Editors Note on Feb 25, 2018: Please see my apology about promoting Alexie's work. --Debbie

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Roger Sutton, editor at Horn Book, just posted to the child_lit listserv, that Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian has won the 2008 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry. Roger's post says:

"Novelist Sherman Alexie is new to young adult literature but not to acclaim. A 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award recipient for his first collection of short stories for adults, he is also a poet, a film director, and a standup comic. Last fall, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature."

The award will be presented October 3rd in Boston. Acceptance speeches are printed in the The Horn Book Magazine.

Congratulations, again, to Sherman! I look forward to his work in progress, which is another YA novel: Radioactive Love.

Consider handing Alexie's DIARY to students that are enthralled with Meyer's TWILIGHT saga. His realistic depictions of Native youth in Washington are way better than hers.

New book: SIMON J. ORTIZ: A POETIC LEGACY OF INDIGENOUS CONTINUANCE

Today's post is about a new book, Simon J. Ortiz: A Poetic Legacy of Indigenous Continuance. I bought a copy last week...

Daughter Liz and I spent most of the last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) annual meeting. Next year's meeting will be in Tucson, Arizona. Anyone that has anything to do with the creation, publication, or distribution of literature by/about American Indians should consider attending this meeting. The insights gained in a few short days will go a long way towards improving the quality of literature for children.

When I'm at Native meetings and conferences, I'm somewhat embarrassed at most of the children's books by/about American Indians that are published. In child lit land, people embrace bogus stuff that would never fly in a college Native lit course. In child lit land, crap (yes, I'm irate today) like Touching Spirit Bear flies off the shelves. Amongst those who study Native literature, it's equivalent for adult readers is the target of much laughter and derision. It is not taken seriously as "Native" literature and it isn't taught as Native literature.

But over in child lit land, there is a clamor for the sequel to Touching Spirit Bear. Like I said, it is embarrassing. And indefensible, too.

It has got to get better.

It can get better if people in child lit land take some time to read Native scholarship, and attend Native conferences and meetings.

At last year's NAISA meeting in Athens, Georgia, my dear friend Evelina Zuni Lucero (Isleta/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo) introduced me to Simon Ortiz. Through our conversation, I volunteered to write a chapter for a book Evelina was co-editing. That book is Simon J. Ortiz: A Poetic Legacy of Indigenous Continuance. Most of the contributors to the volume were at NAISA, giving papers. The contributors (tribal affiliations are in parens) are:

Elizabeth Ammons
Elizabeth Archuleta (Yaqui)
Esther Belin (Dine)
Jeff Berglund
Kimberly Blaeser (Chippewa)
Gregory Cajete (Tewa)
Sophia Cantave
David Dunaway
Roger Dunsmore
Lawrence Evers
Gwen Westerman Griffin (Sisston Wahpeton Dakota Oyate)
Joy Harjo (Mvskoke)
Geary Hobson (Cherokee, Arkansas Quapaw)
David L. Moore
Debbie Reese (Nambe Pueblo)
Kimberly Roppolo (Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek)
Ralph Salisbury (Cherokee)
Kathryn W. Shanley (Assiniboine)
Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo)
Sean Kicummah Teuton (Cherokee)
Laura Tohe (Dine)
Robert Warrior (Osage)

Hopefully, you have Joy Harjo's The Good Luck Cat on your shelves, along with Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller or Ceremony. Do you have a copy of Like a Hurricane: The American Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, co-written by Robert Warrior? Remember the poem about basal readers that I posted here some time back? That was Laura Tohe's poem. These four people are among the most read and most influential Native writers, and they are in the volume because Ortiz's work meant something to their own growth.

In his 1981 essay in MELUS, Ortiz says that we (Native people) creatively used foreign (European) ritual, ideas, material, and language (English) on our own terms. In Reinventing the Enemy's Language, Joy Harjo writes:

When our lands were colonized the language of the colonizer was forced on us. It was when we began to create with this new language that we named it ours, made it usefully tough and beautiful (p. 23-24).

That is what Simon J. Ortiz: A Poetic Legacy of Indigenous Continuance is about. Using language for continuance. Get a copy, read it, think, read it again, and think about what you write (if you're a writer), what you publish (if you're a publisher), what you review (if you're a reviewer), and what you buy for your children, your library, your school.

Read Simon Ortiz's essays, stories, poetry, and children's books. Spend some time immersed in this reality, not the fantasy where Indians are romantic or tragic figures of the past. Do this, and books for children will get better.

[Update, 9:49 AM, May 27] : Next year's meeting of NAISA will be in Tucson, AZ, not Tempe. Thanks to commenter, Matthew, for catching the error. I also linked to the association's webpage.]

Beverly Slapin reviews SMUGGLING CHEROKEE by Kim Shuck

Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin's review of Smuggling Cherokee may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 2015. Slapin is currently the publisher/editor of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children.

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Shuck, Kim (Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox, Polish), Smuggling Cherokee. Greenfield Review Press, 2005; grades 7-up

Smuggling Cherokee is full of powerful insight: part autobiography, part musing, part outrageous wit, and part punch-in-the-gut startling. Kim Shuck is a visionary: she knows who she is, what she comes from, and what she’s been given to do. Her poems are honest and passionate, and, without polemic, will shatter just about every stereotype about Indians that anyone has ever espoused: 

The man asks me, 
“Do you speak Cherokee?”
But it’s all I ever speak
The end goal of several generations of a
smuggling project.
We’ve slipped the barriers,
Evaded border guards.
I smile,
“Always.”

Some of Kim’s poems are tenderly, achingly beautiful: 

The water I used to drink spent time
Inside a pitched basket
It adopted the internal shape
Took on the taste of pine
And changed me forever. 


And for those who didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, the many faces of depredation:

I call the slave master

Who lost track of my ancestor

A blanket for you

In gratitude.

I call the soldier

With a tired arm

Who didn’t cut deeply enough

Into my great-great grandfather’s chest to kill clean.

I return your axehead

Oiled and sharpened

Wield it against others with equal skill.

Will the boarding school officer come up?

The one who didn’t take my Gram

Because of her crippled leg.

No use as a servant – such a shame with that face…

Finally the shopkeeper’s wife

Who traded spoiled cans of fruit

For baskets that took a year each to make.

Thank you, Faith, for not poisoning

Quite all

Of my

Family.

Blankets for each of you,

And let no one say

That I am not

Grateful for your care.

Smuggling Cherokee, as with all of Kim Shuck’s poems, will resonate with Indian middle and high school readers. Students who are not Indian may not “get” some of them the first time around, but they will, eventually, if given the space to sit with them.

Kim Shuck—a poet, teacher, fine artist and parent of at least three—teaches college courses in Native Short Literature, creates phenomenal beadwork and basketry, curates museum collections, teaches origami to young children as an introduction to geometry, grows vegetables, converses with trees, takes long walks, and meditates while doing piles of laundry. She won the Native Writers of the Americas First Book Award for Smuggling Cherokee, as well as the Diane Decorah Award for Poetry, she has a fierce and gentle heart, and I’m honored to call her “friend.”

—Beverly Slapin

(Note: Smuggling Cherokee can be ordered from kshuck@tsoft.net. Discount for class sets, free shipping.)

Eds. note: Kim Shuck wrote to say that she is an enrolled with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. 

Beverly Slapin reviews Joseph Bruchac's KILLER OF ENEMIES

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

Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children, submitted this review essay of Joseph Bruchac's Killer of Enemies. It may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved.

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Bruchac, Joseph, Killer of Enemies. Tu Books/ Lee & Low, 2013; grades 5-up

  

First, a pre-review story….

Years ago, Joe Bruchac was giving an evening reading at a local East Bay indie bookstore. Readers of his short stories and poetry, young and not so young, filled the room. For lack of available seats, a few friends and I stood in the back. Joe, holding his hand drum and one of his books, walked to the podium, looked around, and, as was his wont, greeted the audience in Abenaki. I waved to him from the back, and he acknowledged me this way:

“And kwai-kwai to my friend, Beverly Slapin, who actually likes…(two-second pause here)…some of my books.” Remember that, Joe?

Now, the review….

I just love Joe’s latest young adult thriller, Killer of Enemies!

If there’s one thing known for sure, it’s that Lozen, the famed and much-honored Chiricahua woman warrior, was no wimp. She rode in battle with Geronimo and with her brother Victorio, and their enemies—Mexican and American—knew and feared her. It’s been said that, from time to time, the spirits visited Lozen, that she could find water in the desert, and that she could locate enemies and read their thoughts. It’s been said that she led a large group of fearful women and babies, riding their panicky horses, across the surging Rio Grande—and then returned to battle the American forces.

Like her namesake, 17-year-old Lozen is a warrior and a hero. In this post-apocalyptic thriller, a mysterious force named Cloud, arrived from beyond Jupiter, has destroyed much of humanity and rendered useless all advanced technology. Lozen’s family, with many others, is held under marshal law in a walled fortress called Haven, ruled by four deranged and despotic semi-human overlords (the “Ones”) with bio-enhancements that no longer work. Holding her family hostage—and on the whims of any of them—they send her out to battle genetically modified monsters (“gemods”), such as giant birds of prey, a beyond huge anaconda, and many more. Drawing strength from her wits, her prayers, her supernatural powers inherited from her namesake, her family’s and tribe’s histories, her tracking and fighting skills, and the allies she encounters—natural and supernatural—Lozen is determined and unafraid. 

Since this is not the first apocalypse her family’s survived, Lozen has inherited, as she would say, mucho generational experience:

It was lucky for me in particular that my youthful skills included such…anachronistically useless pursuits as hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, tracking, and wilderness survival at a time when the wilderness itself was barely surviving. Those esoteric and…outdated interests can be blamed on or credited to my family, especially my uncle and my dad—stubborn descendants of a nation that had been targeted for destruction in more than one century yet still survived.

Aside: Whenever I receive one of Joe’s young adult novels, I open to a random page to see how he’s chosen to grab video-game-obsessed pre-teens. Here’s a sample:

One nice thing from being entombed when you are not yet a corpse is that it gives you plenty of time for thinking. That is also one of the worst things about being in a situation like this. It seems as if no matter what you think about, it all comes down to: Crap, I’m trapped.

Joe embeds Lozen’s story in a cultural framework that makes sense to his readers, Native and non-Native alike. Picking up an eagle feather was and is a big deal, for instance, and Lozen does not feel the need to step out of the narrative to give the reader an ethnographic exposition. When she has time, she says a complete prayer; when she’s on the run, she simply says, “thank you.”

Unlike many young adult novels about Indian people—and in particular, Tanya Landman’s sloppily researched and abysmally written Apache Girl Warrior—the Lozen in Killer of Enemies is a confident, pragmatic, fearless young woman who understands the power of dreams—and who knows who she is, what she comes from, and what she has been given to do.

Young readers might recognize the similarities between post-apocalyptic and pre-apocalyptic life, such as the guarded compound of Haven and the 19^th century prisons called reservations and Indian residential schools. They also might recognize the similarities between the deranged post-apocalyptic Ones and contemporary one-percenters, who enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. As well, older readers might recognize some of Lozen’s quips as taken directly from an Alfred Hitchcock thriller containing a nightmarish shower scene, a campy Broadway musical not involving birds, a TV series about a patriarch’s superior knowledge, the title of a Ray Bradbury novel (itself based on a Shakespeare play), a Kevin Costner movie, a snipe at the language-challenged Tonto, a line from a poem by Robert Frost, and many more. There’s also a host of puns and other word plays and a helpful Bigfoot with laugh-out-loud Jewish cultural markers (“So sue me”). All of this is a treasure trove for talented classroom teachers and school librarians.

For those readers who are unduly thrilled by videogame-inspired carnage, there is this from Lozen:

When Child of Water and Killer of Enemies finished destroying nearly all—but not all—of the monsters that threatened human life in that long ago time, they did not feel the thrill of victory. What they felt was sickness. Taking lives is a precarious job, one that can end up polluting your spirit and burning your heart. When you touch the enemy in battle, it unbalances you. The Hero Twins would have died if it had not been for the healing ceremonies that were used to restore their balance, to cool their interior, to soothe their spirits, to clean the dust of death from their vision.

And finally, I thank Joe for incorporating a Muslim love interest for Lozen—Hussein, the gentle gardener and musician, who survives torture by the Ones—and who joins Lozen’s family on the run. Just as Indians in general and Apaches in particular are all-too-often treated as savages in children’s and young adult books, Islamophobia is rampant as well.

Brisk pace and nonstop action—an adrenaline rush with large helpings of gore, drama and hilarious wordplay—move Lozen’s narrative in a page-turner that left me hungering for a sequel that I’m pretty sure is on the horizon. Killer of Enemies is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

Beverly Slapin's review of RABBIT STORIES by Kim Shuck

Shuck, Kim (Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox, Polish), Rabbit Stories. Poetic Matrix Press, 2013, high school-up

Rabbit (the Being) has awesome responsibilities. He weighs and measures leaves so they can exist. He sings to bring the flowers into bloom. He dances to turn the seasons. He cradles subatomic particles and powwow dancers in his sight—whispers, “beautiful, happy”—and they dance, dance, dance, dance. All these things (and more) he has been given to do, else the world—or at least this corner of the cosmos—will get bent. No small feats and no small responsibilities, those. Rabbit is also a mentor (in his magical way) to Rabbit Food, the human girl he’s named for a wild rose, the human girl he brings to maturity as a smart, loving, responsible, talented Indian woman; a quantum physicist who knows who she is and what she comes from. Under Rabbit’s auspices (and, of course, those of her Aunties and Grandmas), Rabbit Food is a “child of multiple cultures, of Tsalagi and Polish and fantasy and sci-fi, she knows that around any corner there may be a paradigm shift… (And) she will be prepared if stuck in an alternate reality.”

The two—(or three if you count the polyvalent reality of Robin and Fox)—trickster-mentor and quantum physicist, naturally acknowledge each other without actually speaking or touching. Since Rabbit Food was a child, it has never occurred to her to mention him to anyone. Rather, she tosses him a cookie now and then, or lets the cilantro stolen from the fridge go unnoticed, or hides a cashew where he will find it, and she “keeps learning the things she needs.” And Rabbit “loves Rabbit Food, loves her…with the completeness that only someone thoroughly self-absorbed can achieve, and only then for small moments.” 

The stories—of Rabbit Food’s lifetime as girl, young woman, new mother and mature artist, and, of course, ever the student of trickster-cum-life coach Rabbit—weave up, down, around and through. They’re brilliantly crafted and lovingly told, semi-autobiographical stories that take place in parallel worlds full of spirit and magic and wonder and grace; intertwined like the tight stitches of a Tsalagi double-woven basket.

Indian students will appreciate these stories for their many cultural and historical references, their nuances and word plays, their multiple layers of dream and memory, and their fast-paced, wise cracking humor—everything that makes Rabbit Stories Indian. They will also probably appreciate that the author did not, as non-Native authors often do with “Indian” material, turn the stories into mind-numbing ethnographic expositions. Students who are from outside the community may not “get” everything, but will appreciate the stories as well. I encourage teachers to allow these appealing stories to resonate with their students and not to ruin the experience by attempting to analyze or interpret them.

Rabbit Stories, as is Kim’s first book of poetry, Smuggling Cherokee, is amazing; and Kim—an accomplished artist and master storyteller, poet, and educator—is an international treasure. Not one eagle feather dropped here, no pickup dance necessary.

—Beverly Slapin