Louise Erdrich's CHICKADEE wins the 2013 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction!

Congratulations to Louise Erdrich!  Chickadee was selected as the recipient of the 2013 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. From the Horn Book website:

The 2013 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction goes to Louise Erdrich for Chickadee, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The annual award, created by Scott O’Dell and Zena Sutherland in 1982 and now administered by Elizabeth Hall, carries with it a prize of $5000, and goes to the author of a distinguished work of historical fiction for young people published by a U. S. publisher and set in the Americas. This is the second O’Dell Award for Louise Erdrich; she won it in 2006 for The Game of Silence, also published by Harper. (The honors don’t stop there; Erdrich also just won the 2012 National Book Award for her adult novel The Round House.)

Here's more from their remarks about the book:

The book has humor and suspense (and disarmingly simple pencil illustrations by the author), providing a picture of 1860s Anishinabe life that is never didactic or exotic and is briskly detailed with the kind of information young readers enjoy: who knew, for example, that an oxcart train would be so loud, or that mosquitoes could be so terrifying? Anishanabe beliefs about the spiritual connections between humans and the natural world are conveyed matter-of-factly as Chickadee gets help and encouragement from his namesake bird; the Christian faith of the “Black Robes” is also given nuance and respect. Chickadee’s first taste of a peppermint stick in the burgeoning city of St. Paul is just one sign of the increasingly multicultural nature of his family’s world, a world that we hope this author continues to chronicle.

Do you have a copy of it yet? Order one today from Birchbark Books.

In September, 2012, Martha V. Parravano of Horn Book interviewed Erdrich. Check it out, too! In the interview, she says that her next book will be titled Makoons. In it she says that she will be "writing from the living memory" of her relatives. Her writing is exquisite. It'll be hard to wait, but also something to look forward to!
Five questions for Louise Erdrich

Notes on O'Dell's THUNDER ROLLING IN THE MOUNTAINS

Over the last few years I've had several questions from parents and teachers about Scott O'Dell's Thunder Rolling in the Mountains. Today (June 20th, 2023) I am going to start reading it and making notes as I do. 

Update on Thursday June 29th at 8:30 AM: I've now read up to chapter ten and strongly recommend it not be used in classrooms. I think the curriculum companies that include it should revisit their decision to include it. It does not educate students. 

I think it originally came out from Houghton Mifflin in 1992. O'Dell is listed as the first author. The second author is Elizabeth Hall. He died in 1989. He was married to Hall. The "Foreword" is by Hall. She writes that

A few years earlier we had followed the trail taken in 1877 by Chief Joseph and his valiant band [...]. From that trip, from the recollections of Nez Perce and U.S. Army personnel, from the writings of historians, and from Scott's instructions and musings about the story, I have completed the manuscript as Scott had asked me to do. Most of the characters are based on actual Nez Perce, and most of their words and deeds are drawn from recollections of survivors."

She writes that these sources are essential to the book:

• Two eyewitness accounts compiled by Lucullus V. McWhorter: Yellow Wolf: His Own Story (the recollections of Chief Joseph's nephew) and Hear Me, My Chiefs! (based on eyewitness accounts of both sides)
• Chief Joseph's Own Story told on his trip to Washington DC in 1897

She writes that these books were helpful:

• Merrill Beal's "I Will Fight No More Forever": Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War
• Helen Addison Howard's Saga of Chief Joseph
• Arthur Josephy Jr.'s The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest

I'm glad that she includes her sources. But, questions I pose as I read that info:

• Who is Lucullus V. McWhorter? It sounds like he spoke with a Nez Perce person. When did that happen? Did the Nez Perce person speak English? Did McWhorter speak Nimipuutimt (the language the Nez Perce people speak). If the answer to those questions is no, there was likely a translator. 
• Hall says they used Chief Joseph's Own Story as a key source. The subtitle for that source is "Told by him on his trip to Washington, D.C., in 1897*". The footnote for the asterisk says "Chief Joseph's story is presented here not as a matter of historic record or as evidence in the controversy over the facts in connection with the treaty of 1855, but to give an impression of the man." Who wrote that footnote? When I look for information about that account and footnote, what will I find? (Also noting here that the second paragraph of his account says his name is "In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Thunder-traveling-over-the-mountains)." Very close to the O'dell/Hall book title, isn't it? 

The copyright page in the book has this summary:

In the late nineteenth century, a young Nez Perce girl relates how her people were driven off their land by the U.S. Army and forced to retreat north until their eventual surrender.

Questions I pose as I read the summary:

• How does O'Dell (a white man born in 1898) know what a Nez Perce girl of a different gender, era (1800s), and language thinks, feels, and says? 

Now, my notes on chapter one (summary in plain font; my thoughts in italics):

• O'Dell/Hall use "we" and "I" for their characters. We are meant to read the book as if the characters the authors create are Native and giving us an insider point of view.   
• O'Dell/Hall use "for many moons" and "three suns" and "six snows ago." I see those references to the passing of time in books written by writers that are not Native. It may sound Native, but is it? 
• The primary character in this chapter is 14-year-old "Sound of Running Feet." She's in the lead of a group of seven that are on an outing to dig roots. She has a rifle that belonged to her grandfather "Old Joseph." As he lay dying, he gifted it to her, to become hers when she became a woman at the age of 14. That happened three months prior to the outing. They see a cabin with smoke rising from the chimney. When another character asks Sound of Running Feet what it is, he says "White people. [...] Indians do not build cabins." Would a Nez Perce person of that time period use the word "Indians"? They might say that Native peoples don't build cabins because they are not aware of those that do build permanent structures. 
• Sound of Running Feet learned (quickly) how to use the rifle. Her father doesn't like it but she thinks it would "be bad to speak against the gift now that Old Joseph was dead. He could come back and make trouble." With that, O'Dell/Hall are telling us something about how Nez Perce people feel about death and gifts. What is their source for that? 
• At the cabin they see a man and woman in the stream. She has a copper pan that the man fills with dirt brought to him by a "boy of our people." They are panning for gold. 
• The man speaks to them. The Nez Perce boy translates, telling them that the man wants to know how they are. Sound of Running Feet does not answer that question. Instead she asks why the white man has built a cabin on land that doesn't belong to him. At first glance it seems cool to ask the question about the land. This is definitely a character who is familiar with fights for land. 
• Sound of Running Feet knows that the boy had gone to a mission school at Lapwai, that his name is Storm Cloud, and that he was mixed up in a murder. He tells the white man what Sound of Running Feet asked about the land. and he replies that the Nez Perce own too much land, that they can't use it all, and that they're greedy. He says his name is Jason Upright and that they better not send Nez Perce warriors to talk to him. The group leaves without replying but at a distance, Sound of Running Feet shoots at and blows a hole in the pan the man and woman are using. They went on home. I'm intrigued. Does the boy's past at the mission school mean he's working for the white man as punishment? What was the murder? Obviously the bit about Nez Perce being greedy is ridiculous. 

[Pausing to hit 'publish' on my notes thus far. These are rough notes. There's likely typos and lack of clarity. I'll be back to add more notes later, when I read chapter 2. I invite your thoughts to what I'm sharing.]

-----

Back on Sunday, June 25th to add notes. I did a quick re-read of chapter one and am noting a paragraph in there that I did not note above. It occurs just after the group sees the cabin and the white people there. Sound of Running Feet remembers hearing "our chieftains" talking about white people. They (the white people) had only set foot on land that belonged to people in the tribe who "called themselves Christians, those who had sold their land to the Big Father..." I don't recall "Big Father" in other works. Generally, writers use "Great Father" to refer to the president of the U.S.  "Great Father" is seen in books like Peter Pan. Sometime I want to trace down the first use of that phrase. That these Nez Perce individuals who became Christians were able to sell their land tells us that the Nez Perce had gone through allotment. Allotment of their land began in 1889. 

More on "Great Father." Immediately following the dedication in a book called The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians" written by Francis Paul Prucha, there's a set of quotes that have that term. The oldest one is "When your Great Father and his chiefs see those things, they will know that you have opened your ears to your Great Father's voice, and have come to hear his good Councils. It is attributed to Lewis and Clark, in presenting American flags and medals to Oto chiefs in 1804. 

My notes and comments (in italics) on chapter two:

• In the opening paragraphs, Sound of Running Feet tells her father about the white people they saw at the cabin. He tells her more are on the way. In her narrative, she tells us that he talks to her because he has no sons and that unlike other girls in the village. In Island of the Blue Dolphins, O'Dell created a female character that is "unlike" others. He's doing it here, too, as if he's championing feminism. But does that work? It does for white culture but does it for Native cultures? 
• She replies, angrily, and uses "Here we stand." and that they will "stand and fight." Both of those are similar to remarks widely attributed to Chief Joseph, delivered by him on Oct 5, 1877: "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Why is O'Dell using them here, as dialog for Sound of Running Feet? 
• The text says that her father, Joseph, is son of Old Joseph, who was an "honored Chieftain of the Ne-mee-poo. He was their chieftain because he could see far away into the land of the suns and moons that had not yet risen." She thinks he was a kind and gentle man who was "too kind" with the whites and "was not a warrior." O'Dell seems to be asking the reader to think of her as tough, tougher than her grandfather. Why didn't she refer to him as her grandfather? 
• "The sun was dying." That sentence is used to indicate sundown. Did the Nez Perce think the sun was dying? Did O'Dell use that directly from a source or is it his construction?
• There are several real people in this chapter. One is U.S. General Howard; the others are Nez Perce men. O'Dell has them all speaking to each other. Is there evidence that they said those words? Here's what O'Dell has Two Moons saying to his son, Swan Necklace: "Listen, idler of all the hills and valleys and meadows in this realm of the living," he said, "Listen to me." "Death stalks the Land of the Wandering Waters." When I do a search on that last sentence, the only return is to O'Dell's book. 

Back on June 26: 

My notes and comments (in italics) on chapter three:

• When General Howard went to Chief Joseph to tell him to leave Wallowa, Chief Joseph tells him that when he was "ten snows" he climbed a mountain, made a bed on a stone, and had no water or food. He "put a pebble in my nose and a pebble in each ear to keep me awake." After "five suns" his "guardian spirit" appeared and gave him his name, "Thunder Rolling in the Mountains." That name, he says, binds him forever to the land. O'Dell is describing what he wants us to read as a Nez Perce ritual. What is his source for it? 
• Howard doesn't care about how Chief Joseph feels about the land. They have to leave "before thirty suns come and go." Another Nez Perce man (Too-hul-hul-sote) tells Howard that "the Spirit Chief" made everything and asks who is "this man" who tells them they have to leave.  Chief Joseph asks for more time because the Snake River is flooding and they would die crossing it. Howard says he will send soldiers with guns to drive them out, and Chief Joseph says they will go. Sound of Running Feet knows some of the Nez Perce men will not go and thinks she agrees with them. 

My Notes and comments (in italics) on chapter four:

• Chief Joseph speaks to his people, telling them they must leave. In part, he says "Some among us, the young warriors, will say to you, 'Do not leave. Do not flee like old women. Fight. We shall live here in peace.'" That line -- 'do not flee like old women' -- bothers me. O'Dell wants us to think old women are cowards. What is his source for that characterization? 
• Chief Joseph tells them they are outgunned and outnumbered and have to leave in "ten suns." He tells them to make bundles of things they value. Sound of Running Feet looks at Springtime (her mother), who is pregnant. 
• Sound of Running Feet goes to Swan Necklace (the two are supposed to get married; the passage includes details on who gave what to whom). "You have heard Chief Joseph speak. Where do you stand?" He is a painter. His father, Two Moons, does not think that is a worthwhile occupation. He belittles him. During the visit from Howard, Two Moons made Swan Necklace hold the horses of two of the younger warriors (Red Moccasin Tops and Wah-lit-its). His father thinks it there is a war to be fought and it is not good for them to be married until after the war. Sound of Running Feet gives Swan Necklace her rifle and bullets. A lot of historical fiction has scenes where a marriage is planned. One family has to give the other items like horses and blankets. What is the source for that? 

Back on Wednesday, June 28, to add more notes:

My Notes and comments (in italics) on chapter five: 

• In the second paragraph, Sound of Running Feet gives a physical description of Ollokot: "He was very tall and had his hair cut in a roach that stuck up and made him look like a giant." Earlier in the book she talks about her father's braids. Physical descriptions like these are awkward. Or perhaps what I mean is that outsiders (like Scott O'Dell) who are writing as if they are insiders focus on things that they think matter. But, do they matter to the insiders? And are they accurate? The mostly-available photographs of these two men show them in a certain way but did they look that way all the time? It strikes me as a rather exotifying and reductionist move from O'Dell.  
• In this chapter, Too-hul-hul-sote is angry about being made to leave their land. He shouts "Our Great Spirit Chief made the world," he said. "He put me here on this piece of earth. This earth is my mother. You tell me to live like the white man and plow the land. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? You tell me to cut the grass and make hay. But dare I cut off my mother's hair?" There's a couple more sentences after that. As I started reading that passage, I thought that it sounds a bit (or a lot) like an as-told-to construction or interpretation of something a Native person said that a white person embellished. I did a quick search and was quite surprised to find "Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom" as something said by someone else entirely. I see it attributed to Wovoka (who was Paiute) and to Smohalla (who was Wanapum). I kept looking and found the following two quotes in Josephy's book, The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. Josephy is one of O'Dell and Hall's sources (as noted above)! These two quotes open Joseph's book:

"The earth is part of my body . . . I belong to the land out of which I came. The Earth is my mother." --TOOHOOLHOOLZOTE, THE NEZ PERCE 

"You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men! But how dare I cut off my mother's hair?" --SMOHALLA, NORTHWEST INDIAN RELIGIOUS TEACHER

 There's a lot to dig into but at this moment I think a teacher would be doing a tremendous disservice as an educator, if she uses Thunder Rolling in the Mountains! To me, it looks like O'Dell and/or Hall erred completely in taking that "Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom" and attributing it to Too-hul-hul-sote. 

Back on Thursday, June 29th (at 8:30 AM) with more notes:

I read chapter six but am not noting any passages in it. Here, then, is chapter seven:

• Chief Joseph and his group are leaving their homeland but are also having fights with soldiers. They're leaving White Bird Canyon and thirty-four white soldiers, dead. Sound of Running Feet makes "a doll for my baby sister with a piece of a soldier's shirt." and "My small cousin had a pair of soldier's heavy boots and asked me to cut off their tops and make a purse out of them." That sounds to me like trophy-taking associated with soldiers--not children.
• As they ride, White Feather, a girl one year older than Sound of Running Feet asks her if she is pleased. "The warriors have won and your father has lost." Sound of Running Feet replies that she is pleased and that if the soldiers follow, "we will beat them again." When Swan Necklace tells her about soldiers dropping their guns and running for their lives, she claps her hands with joy. This defiance and joy are rubbing me the wrong way.   

In chapter nine, Sound of Running Feet thinks that if the war is over, she'll be able to marry Swan Necklace. As they ride she takes care of the children in the group, and tells them stories about Coyote, "the trickster with magic powers." Her story is about how Coyote created the tribes. Hmmm... a creation story. Will I find that in a source? 

On to chapter ten:

• Chief Joseph and his group have had several fights with soldiers. Many of the soldiers have been killed. Swan Necklace and Sound of Running Feet are talking about the battles. Then, we read this:

"Children made ugly masks of the dead soldiers with eyes hanging down on their cheeks and pieces of ear cut off. They dug holes and buried the masks deep and laughed and hummed secret songs that they made up." Pretty grotesque, isn't it? Did that happen?! How the heck does a teacher work with that passage?! How does it impact Native kids? How does it impact non-Native kids? 

----------

Thursday, June 29, 4:12 PM -- my final set of notes:

I'm not making detailed notes by chapter at this point. I'm tired of the recurring not-Native phrases and oddities like the constance references to Canada as "the Old Lady's country." I did a quick search on that and all hits go to O'Dell and teaching materials about the book. Another redundant phrase is "fight no more" or a variant of it. O'Dell made a real person -- Chief Joseph's daughter -- into the main character in his book. She looks down on her father throughout the book. Did she, in fact, feel that way about her father? From what I've found so far, there's no support for creating her with that disposition. 

In chapter 19 is the "Hear me, my chiefs" speech that is widely attributed to Chief Joseph. Just before it appears, O'Dell writes that Chief Joseph walks to his pony and gets his rifle. General Howard reaches for it, but Chief Joseph pulled it back and said he was not surrendering to Howard. Instead, he was surrendering to Colonel Miles because "This is the man that ran me down." The last sentences of the speech are:

"Hear me, my chiefs," he called. "I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

Then, O'Dell writes, warriors stepped forward and laid their rifles on the ground in front of the generals, and women and children came forward and stood with the men. Sound of Running Feet, however, "could not join them." A small group slipped away for "the Old Lady's country" and she's decided to go with them. Swan Necklace is among them. Most of the remaining chapters are about battles and deaths and trying to get away from soldiers to what they think is safety in Sitting Bull's camp. In the final chapters, Sound of Running feet is married off to an Assiniboine man but runs away. She imagines killing him with her rifle but doesn't. In an afterword, O'Dell and Hall say that she made her way to Sitting Bull's camp and stayed there for a year before returning to Lapwai where she took the name Sarah and married George Moses, a Nimipu man (Nimipu is the name the Nez Perce use for themselves). She never saw her father again. He and the group that was with him were taken to Oklahoma and later returned to Lapwai if they agreed to become Christians. Chief Joseph refused and was taken to eastern Washington, to the Colville Reservation where he died in 1904.

----

Those are my notes. I'll study them and in some instances, do some research to verify what O'Dell and Hall wrote in their book. Then, I'll do a more formal review. I think it may take the form of an open letter to educators, including the individuals at Great Minds Ed, who produce the Wit and Wisdom curriculum. Thunder Rolling in the Mountains is part of their curriculum. 

Peter D. Sieruta

On March 25, 2011 on his "Collecting Children's Books" blog, Peter D. Sieruta wrote about Laura Adams Armer's Waterless Mountain, a story about a Navajo boy. He shared his thoughts about the book (it won the Newbery Medal in 1932) and then said:

I'd be curious to know what Dr. Debbie Reese, who writes the American Indians in Children's Literature blog thinks of the book.

I submitted a comment to Peter (you can see it and our conversation below), and we began talking on our blogs, on Facebook, and most recently, by email. We never met in person, but the few exchanges we had meant a lot to me. On Facebook, we went beyond the professional and scholarly conversations about books.

I felt bad when I read his Facebook post on May 21 (a Monday). He fell down the stairs on the 18th and broke his ankle. I posted on his wall about some research I've done on Scott O'Dell, hoping it might distract him from the dismal recovery he was having. In the weeks prior to that, Peter sent me a few articles about O'Dell. I was looking forward to conversations with him.

But on Saturday morning (May 26th) when I opened Facebook, I read that Peter had died.

I was stunned, and my thoughts have turned to him a lot since then. I've read several tributes to him and his work and I visit his Facebook page, where his brother is sharing memories of Peter. My tribute is this post, wherein I've gathered the exchanges I had with Peter. They are arranged chronologically.



March 25, 2011: Sunday Brunch with Fire and Water

Here's screenshots of our comments to each other (sorry they don't align properly):

April 1, 2012: Facebook
I loaded a photo of my husband's freshly-baked bread onto Facebook:

May 8th, 2012: Facebook
I couldn't access an article about Scott O'Dell and posted a 'help' to child_lit. A few minutes later, I was on Facebook and saw Peter's post to my wall:

 






May 13th, 2011: Sunday Brunch for Mothers and Maurice
 
In his last blog post on May 13th, Peter pointed his readers to my site, saying:

Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature is an important blog that "provides critical perspectives and analysis of indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society." Do I always agree with Debbie? No, but I definitely respect her thought-provoking opinions. I've learned a lot from her blog and am pleased we are friends on Facebook. (And if anyone reading this wants to keep in touch with me on Facebook, feel free to "friend" me.)

This week Debbie posted the following paper doll figures on Facebook, with the message: "These two paper dolls are excellent! Please SHARE with students in Education or Library School."

I love them too and want to share them here:

These are the paper dolls he posted:

In his post, he quoted Steven Paul Judd, the Native artist who made the paper dolls. From there, he went on to talk about paper dolls based on characters in children's literature.


May 16th, 2012: Facebook

I posted a link to a Prezi I did about Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins. Peter viewed the Prezi and asked me a question:

Two days later, Peter fell. As many others have written, his death is a tragic loss to children's literature. Though we never met in person, I feel that I've lost a friend with whom I would have had lots of interesting conversations with about books like Island of the Blue Dolphins. 

I'm glad to have known Peter and like Elizabeth Bird so many others, I will miss him.

Scott O'Dell and Changes to California's Department of Education "Recommended Literature List"

"No results found." it said. Surely, I thought, that can't be right! 

Let me explain. In 2021 and early in 2022 I was doing some work with teachers in California. A key emphasis in my work involves a critical look at award-winning, classic, and popular children's and young adult books like Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins. Most have stereotypical writing and illustrations that mis-educate readers. 

When I do these professional development sessions, I often look at a state's department of education website to see if there are recommendations for children's books, and had looked at California's Department of Education site. It has a database of recommended books. I was not surprised to find Island of the Blue Dolphins in the database. Here's a screen capture of it:

The annotation in the database says there are scientific inaccuracies. I'd love to know what "scientific inaccuracies" refers to! I've analyzed the book. There are many problems with it. For details see A Critical Look at O'Dell's ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS. (Note: Author Kate DeCamillo was persuaded not to write uncritically about the book after she read my post and Professor Eve Tuck's tweets that are part of my post.) 

In October of 2022 I was doing some work with another California school system. I went back to the California Recommended Literature List to get a fresh screen capture of the entry for Island of the Blue Dolphins. I entered the title in the search bar, but instead of the annotated entry, I got "No results found." I took a screen cap and shared it on social media, sure that I was doing something wrong in my search of the database. I asked others to search for it and they had the same experience. The book was no longer in the database!

I started looking around the Department of Education website and found this paragraph:

Traditionally, the Recommended Literature List was updated periodically, with new titles being added to the previous lists. This resulted in a Recommended Literature List with over 8000 titles. As of 2022, the CDE is pleased to take the Recommended Literature List in a new direction, with an annual updated and refreshed list of the latest and best in children’s and young adult literature.

An updated and refreshed list of the latest and best? That was exciting! Of course, I did a few searches of names of Native writers and was thrilled to see their books in there!

In February (of 2022) I had also looked up Leo Politi's deeply flawed Song of the Swallows. Published in 1949, it won the Caldecott Medal. It, too, had been in the database and it, too, is not there anymore!

The next paragraph on the site tells us that the previously curated lists are available to download. So I downloaded the "Recommended Literature List through 2020" as an XLSX document and started looking through it. 

I am delighted with what I learned! These books that AICL does not recommend are also not in the database anymore: 

• Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn
• Gardiner, John Reynolds. Stone Fox
• Joossie, Barbara M. Mama Do You Love Me?
• Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie

Because my initial look into the database was for Island of the Blue Dolphins I wondered if the database had other books by Scott O'Dell. The answer is that it did. Below, I am listing the ones that focus on, or include, Native content. I know teachers use many of them but I hope they will revisit their use. I've read several of his books but have not written about them. If I had reviewed them for AICL, they'd carry a Not Recommended label. 

NOT RECOMMENDED: 

• The Serpent Never Sleeps: A Novel of Jamestown and Pocahontas 
• Sing Down the Moon
• Thunder Rolling In the Mountains
• Zia
• Black Star, Bright Dawn
• The King's Fifth

In the last few years, there have been significant changes in many spaces! From monuments that are taken down or renamed, to names of children's book awards that are changed... These changes are unsettling to some people but for so many others, these are profound moments of justice. I look forward to more of this. I try to keep up with changes. If you see one that I missed, do let us know!

Open Letter: "Trail of Lightning is an Appropriation of Diné Cultural Beliefs." Does the Letter from the Diné Writer's Collective Mark a Turning Point?

On November 5, 2018, Indian Country Today published Trail of Lightning is an appropriation of Diné cultural beliefs. It is from the Diné Writer's Collective and is signed by Esther Belin, Sherwin Bitsui, Chee Brossy, Dr. Jennifer Denetdale, Tina Deschenie, Jacqueline Keeper, Dr. Lloyd Lee, Manny Loley, Jaclyn Roessel, Roanna Shebala, Jake Skeets, Dr. Laura Tohe, Luci Tapahonso, and Orlando White.

All the people that signed the letter are Diné (Navajo). They write poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Some are professors or teach writing. As far as I know, this letter is the first of its kind. These writers are telling everyone not to appropriate Diné culture and beliefs.

Although their letter is specifically about Rebecca Roanhorse and her book, Trail of Lightning, they name others, as well:

There are other examples of literary appropriation of our culture by non-Navajos. Notably Tony Hillerman and his "mystery" books that appropriated and continue to profit off Navajo culture and stories without shame — all while portraying us inaccurately. Once again, there was no Diné "board" or "intellectual property committee" that denounced Hillerman’s use of our property (in the 1970s-90s when he published the bulk of his books) for his gain and it has gone largely unchecked. We think of other non-Navajo writers such as Oliver LaFarge, Scott O’Dell, the infamous Nasdijj aka Timothy Barrus, who constructed Navajo people and our stories from an outsider’s perspective. 

Hillerman, LaFarge, O'Dell, and Barrus aren't Native. Though Hillerman and LaFarge did not write specifically for children or teens, O'Dell did. His Sing Down the Moon came out in 1970. Published by Houghton Mifflin, it won a Newbery Honor Medal in 1971. I have not read Sing Down the Moon but can see that O'Dell brought what he thinks of as Diné spiritual beliefs into his novel (p. 44):

"Jesus Cristo," Rosita said, "is like all our gods if you put them together. He is Falling Water and Spider Woman. But he is not cunning like Falling Water, nor is he vengeful like Spider Woman."

The Diné writers go on to say (I've highlighted a few words):

In doing so [constructing Navajo people our stories from an outsider's perspective], a disservice was done to the Navajos, as it also reinforced old and new stereotypes. Furthermore, Roanhorse’s appropriation, especially as an in-law who married into and lived on the Navajo Nation homeland and as an Indigenous relative, is a betrayal of trust and kinship. We do not want to let such breaches of faith and cultural contract slide any longer. So we write this letter objecting to the book.

Are the writers going to speak up about other books and writers in the future? It sure sounds like it to me, and while it makes me nervous for writers, I also welcome the letter because I think it can have a positive impact on writing.

During Twitter conversations, someone asked if other Native writers have been challenged for writing stories of a Native people that is not their own. Two people came to mind: Joseph Bruchac, and Tim Tingle. Bruchac's Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two came out in 2004 from Dial Books. There are passages of ceremony in that book. More recently, Tingle wrote a series about the Long Walk. Published by 7th Generation, it featured a teenager named Danny Blackgoat. In the third book, there is a chapter called Grandfather's Healing during which Danny recites a prayer.

Did Bruchac or Tingle do what Roanhorse did? The fact is, I don't know. I am of Nambé Pueblo. I don't know what is appropriate regarding the use of Navajo spiritual or cultural ways. When Trail of Lightning came out, I promoted it on social media because I believed Roanhorse had the guidance necessary to share what was ok to share. But then I started to hear from Navajo readers who had concerns over its content. After much thought, I withdrew my recommendation of Trail of Lightning, and as best as I've been able to do, I've inserted a note to that effect on social media in spaces where I had recommended it. That may strike some as an extreme act on my part. Why did I do that? Because Native spiritual ways are so horribly misunderstood and misrepresented in books and films. Instead of the respect that ought to be accorded to our belief systems, they often get characterized as folk or fairy tales rather than sacred stories that guide our lives. The Nov 2018 Scholastic book club flyer is a recent example (red x and words to the left of the image are mine): 

I've shared the Diné letter in several places because I think what they said is important. Some have responded to the letter (not necessarily to me, specifically) by asking questions like 'who gave the Diné writers authority to write this letter?' As the writers indicated, the Diné Nation does not have a committee that has oversight over this but they are--as citizens of a sovereign nation--defending that sovereignty and acting to safeguard their spiritual beliefs. We could turn that particular question onto a writer and that writer's cultural advisors: who gave them authority to write/endorse the book's contents?! Indeed, who gave me (Debbie Reese) authority to review books, at all? Clearly, some of these conversations go nowhere but other ones can help us with our work.

What does the letter mean, for AICL, and for me as a critic and scholar of representations of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books?

For now, it means that I will be even more careful in what I do in my review and analysis of children's books. This is where I am, today:

• when I use the #OwnVoices tag, I will only use it for a book by a Native writer who is writing of their own nation. And I will take care to identify the nation of the writer who is writing outside their own nation. Joseph Bruchac's newest book, Two Roads, is about a Creek boy. We have not yet reviewed it on AICL but when we do, we'll note that Bruchac is Abenaki. Earlier this week, I saw an announcement that, in 2019, Tim Tingle will have a Choctaw detective book out for middle graders.  He's Choctaw; the character is Choctaw, so that would be an #OwnVoices book.

• when I see any references to the spiritual or religious ways of Indigenous people in a not-own-voices book I am reviewing, I will include a note that I cannot speak with authority about that particular content. If there is a note in the book about a sensitivity reader, I will note that information, but also note that there is a continuum of what people think regarding what can and cannot be shared. Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning is a good example of that. She's not Diné, but Diné readers disagree in their determinations of what can and cannot be shared. 

At this moment, I am most concerned when the content is about religion or spiritual practice. I don't think that other subject matter (like events of the Long Walk) is as problematic but for sure, I'll be paying closer attention than ever before.

One thought is this: how to enforce any of this? Well, the fact is--nobody can enforce anything. This is not a question of a body or bodies of people forcing something to be undone. This is a question of ethics and decision making.

I think that scholars of Indigenous literature will be citing the Diné letter in the future. I don't know what that will look like. Will they embrace it? Or will they reject it, in parts or in its entirety? What do you think about it? If you work as an editor in a major publishing house, has anyone brought this letter to an editorial meeting? Will you take it to the next one you attend? Have you seen the contents of the letter being discussed as a conference yet? Has it been discussed in your social media networks? If you have any thoughts to share, or, if you have seen things said that you'd like to bring to this post, please submit them in a comment.

Indigenous #KidLitWomen

My contribution to the month-long #KidLitWomen campaign is to lift Indigenous women who have written books for children and teens.

If we were sitting in a classroom or a lecture hall, I'd ask you to name a picture book about a Native woman or girl. Chances are most of you would name a book by Paul Goble or Scott O'Dell. I drew a line through their names to tell you... NO! Not books by those guys! Inside, I'd be cringing to hear you give me those answers. And I'd explain that books by those men have many many many many (how many times shall I write that word?!) problems.

My solution-oriented challenge for you, for the #KidLitWomen campaign is this: Next time you're at the bookstore, reach for books written by Indigenous women. And ask for them at the library! And if your children bring that Goble or that O'Dell book home, arrange a meeting with the teacher to talk about books by Indigenous Women.

Here's my list. Take it with you to the book store, to the library... to your next book club meeting!

Board Books

• Wild Berries by Julie Flett (Cree-Métis), Simply Read Books, 2013.
• Boozhoo: Come Play With Us by Deanna Himango (Ojibwe), Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior, Chippewa, 2002.
• My Heart Fills With Happiness by Monique Gray Smith (Cree, Lakota and Scottish), Orca, 2016.

Picture Books

• Shi-shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell (Nle7kepmx, Nsilx and Métis), Groundwood Books, 2005.
• The Good Luck Cat by Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), Harcourt Brace, 2000.
• Sweetest Kulu by Celina Kalluk (Inuit), Inhabit Media, Incorporated, 2014.
• Powwow Summer: A Family Celebrates the Circle of Life by Marcie Rendon (White Earth Anishinaabe), Minnesota Historical Society, 2013.
• Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle by Carole Lindstrom (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians), Pemmican, 2013.
• Hungry Johnny by Cheryl Minnema (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe), Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2014.
• The Water Walker by Joanne Robertson (Ojibwe), Orca, 2017.
• Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), Morrow, 2000.

Middle Grades

• I Am Not A Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis (Nipissing), Second Story, 2016.
• The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Hyperion, 1999.
• Indian Shoes by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee (Creek), HarperCollins, 2002.
• Super Indian, Vol. One and Vol. Two, by Arigon Starr (Kickapoo), Wacky Productions, 2012.

High School

• #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited By Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale, Annick Press, 2017.
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (Georgian Bay Métis), Dancing Cat, 2017.
• Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon, (White Earth Anishinaabe), Cinco Puntos, 2017.
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich, (Turtle Mountain Chippewa). Harper, 2012.

Coming in 2018 and 2019…

• The Summer of Split Feather Fever by Christine Day (Upper Skagit), HarperCollins.
• Apple In the Middle by Dawn Quigley (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), North Dakota State University Press.
• We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci L. Sorell (Cherokee), Charlesbridge.
• Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), Candlewick.

Beverly Slapin's review essay of Helen Frost's SALT

Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin submitted this review essay of Helen Frost's SALT, comparing it to Bruchac's ARROW OVER THE DOOR. It may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013. Slapin is currently the publisher/editor of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children.

____________________________________________________________

A few years ago, a colleague and I facilitated a workshop in Albuquerque. The workshop dealt with evaluating children’s books about Indian peoples. It was a small group, about 20 or so participants, mostly teachers and librarians in the area. Of these, some were Diné (Navajo) and some were white. At one point, we brought out one of the worst historical fiction books in our collection, Scott O’Dell’s SING DOWN THE MOON.[1] We asked the participants to read sections of this book and, based on a series of evaluative questions, to review it. They did, and almost all of them agreed that this was not a book they’d use in their classrooms or libraries.

Except for one, a Diné elder, who worked specifically with Diné young people—“reluctant readers” at risk for dropping out of school. This elder said that each year, she purchases a new class set of SING DOWN THE MOON because it’s the first book her students actually get excited about. My colleague and I were astonished. We just looked at each other. We weren’t about to confront an elder, especially a Diné elder, especially about a book purporting to be about Navajo people. So we waited.

What seemed like an eternity was actually just a couple of minutes. This elder told us that she brings SING DOWN THE MOON into the classroom each year, opens it up and starts reading it aloud. The reaction, she said, is immediate. “They just can’t stop laughing,” she said, in disbelief that a book about their Diné people could be this bad. We’d never leave our sheep in a storm. This isn’t how our ceremonies go. We don’t talk like this. They reach for the books. They read the story, again and again. They laugh about it. They talk about it. They critique it. They write about it. The books get marked up, some pages get folded over and others get torn out. It doesn’t matter, the elder said, because her students have gotten excited about a book. Then, she said, she introduces them to BLACK MOUNTAIN BOY: A STORY OF THE BOYHOOD OF JOHN HONIE[2] and other books published by Rough Rock Press and the Navajo Curriculum Center, traditional stories they recognize and new stories they appreciate.

SING DOWN THE MOON received the Newbery Honor Award. It received rave reviews from all of the “mainstream” reviewers, including The New York Times. Not one of the reviewers saw any of what made the Diné students fall out of their chairs.

If there’s a moral to this story, it might be this: Some really terrible books can probably be used in good ways. (But I could not bring myself to purchase a class set of them.)

Here are some questions I’ve used and taught in evaluating historical fiction: Is this book based on true events or are the details rooted in actual history? Is this book based on the lives of real people or could these people really have lived? Does the author have an understanding of and respect for the era and the characters? Are the characters believable and does the author present the characters’ ways of seeing the world respectfully? Does the author explain cultural nuances that may be misunderstood? Are the language and the dialogue believable? And finally, does the book read well?

Which brings me to one of my favorite historical novels for young readers: Joseph Bruchac’s THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR.[3] Bruchac is a gifted writer, and one of the things he does well is breathe life into historical events.

Told in alternating voices of two young men—Stands Straight, an Abenaki, and Samuel Russell, a Quaker—the story is based on an actual incident that took place between the Abenaki and the Quakers during the summer of 1777.

As British troops near Saratoga, the young Quaker wrestles with his pacifism and the taunts of his neighbors, and Stands Straight—whose mother and brothers were killed by the Bostoniak—joins his uncle in a scouting party. Surrounding the meetinghouse, the party of Abenaki encounters a group of Quakers engaged in a “silent meeting.” As Stands Straight and Samuel Russell sign their friendship to each other, they place an arrow—its head broken off—over the door. There will be no war in this place this day.

In an interesting author’s note, Bruchac recounts the research that he and his sister, Marge Bruchac, conducted, notes how several accounts of this historical event differ, and further denotes the changes he made in his telling.

While SING DOWN THE MOON would not measure up to the standards of the questions listed a few paragraphs above, THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR would shine. 

Which brings me to a young adult novel currently being discussed,[4] Helen Frost's SALT: A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP IN A TIME OF WAR [5]. As with THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR, this story is also told in alternating voices of two young men—Anikwa, a Myaamia (Miami) living in Kekionga, and James, son of a trader family, living outside of Fort Wayne, inside the stockade. SALT takes place in 1812. “As the British and American armies prepare to meet at Fort Wayne for a crucial battle…James and Anikwa, like everyone around them, must decide where their deepest loyalties lie. Can their families—and their friendship—survive?”[6]

In reading SALT against ARROW, I don’t see Anikwa and James as believable as Stands Straight and Samuel, and I question some of the introductory description, such as

• “Kekionga is part of the Miami Nation, a Native American community made up of villages along the rivers…”  (In the year in which this story takes place, the Myaamia Nation was the seat of a huge political confederacy of nations. The terms “community” and “villages” diminishes the size and political structure—and, for young readers and their teachers, the importance—of the Myaamia. In an attempt to equalize Anikwa’s people with James’ people—who really were a small trading community—Frost diminishes one and emphasizes the other.)

• “Although there is sometimes distrust and fighting between the two communities, friendships and intermarriage are also common.” This was wartime; there was lots of killing going on. Although it’s possible that friendships between enemy peoples may have occurred, to describe the horrors of war as “sometimes distrust and fighting” minimizes the depredation of Native peoples and the wholesale theft of land. (And notice that, while the word “sometimes” is a descriptor for war, “common” is a descriptor for friendship. Here, in her “story of friendship,” she minimizes the larger and emphasizes the smaller.)

• In places, Anikwa seems to step out of the story to inform readers about how his family lives and how things are done. This is probably for the benefit of young readers and their teachers who may not be familiar with how the Myaamia people lived in 1812, but it disrupts the flow of the narrative.

• And, as Debbie Reese comments, “We don't know enough about that period of history, or about the Miami Nation and its resistance to encroachment, to be able to read the sparse text within a context that this story needs.”[7] Reading the treaty of 1803[8] might help, as well as reading the material on the Myaamia Center website.[9] But are young students and their teachers going to dig as deeply as they need to, to get the real story?

Myaamia children who may read SALT will undoubtedly have the historical and cultural knowledge they’d need to deal with the inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies present in Frost’s book. For children and their teachers who are not Myaamia, not so much. Since historical fiction is often used in classrooms to supplement the teaching of history, accuracy is especially important in these books for young readers. When it comes down to it, it's the responsibility of an author—especially a children's book author—to get the history right.

—Beverly Slapin

---

[1] Scott O’Dell, Sing Down the Moon (Houghton Mifflin, 1970). See a critical review of this title in Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin, eds., A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children (AltaMira, 2005).

[2] Vada Carleson and Gary Witherspoon, Black Mountain Boy: A Story of the Boyhood of John Honie (Rough Rock Press, 1993).

[3] See a review of this title in Seale and Slapin, op. cit.

[4] See Debbie Reese’s discussion and comments in “American Indians in Children’s Literature” (americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com).

[5] Helen Frost, Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

[6] This text is from the publisher’s copy.

[7] Debbie Reese, op. cit., October 13, 2013.

[8] This treaty is between the US and Delawares, Shawanoes, Putawatimies, Miamies, Eel River, Weeas, Kickapoos, Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias nations of Indians. Article 3 can be found on Debbie Reese’s page, op. cit., and the entire treaty (entitled “Treaty with the Delawares, etc., 1803”) can be found at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/del0064.htm.

[9] http://myaamiacenter.org/