Thinking Critically About Writing Assignments We Ask Children to Do [and a recommendation for TEACHING CRITICALLY ABOUT LEWIS AND CLARK by Schmitke, Sabzalian, and Edmundson]

When we ask children to think (and write) like someone of a different time period, a different culture, a different geographical location, and a different language, what are we giving them in order to do that? Do we have content that can help them do that with the educational integrity that is necessary? In the case of Sacagawea, we have nothing to go on. She left nothing written. All we have is a lot of imaginings of what she thought, and what she said. 

In January of 2019, a photo of a "Lewis and Clark Expedition Diary Entry" assignment went viral. Written by a fifth grader, it was circulating again recently. Several people sent it to me, asking what I thought of it. In the assignment, students are asked to imagine being someone on the expedition. In this case, the fifth grade child imagined herself as Sacagawea. Here's what she wrote on her worksheet:

Dear Diary,

I am so mad! I took 3 annoying men who were very stinky to find the best rout to the Pacific Ocean, found horses, food, and peace so tribes wouldn't attack us! I did that whole journey, but the thing is I did most of the work, not Lewis, or Clark, or my husband! It should have been called the Sacagawea expedition!! I DID THIS ALL WITH A BABY ON MY BACK YET THE MEN DID MORE COMPLAINING!! And I got zero $! Like come on! I'm never doing that again.

My guess is that all of you reading #31DaysIBPOC are aware that men are paid more than women, and that women get little credit for their accomplishments. You've probably taught your students about gender inequities. Clearly, the fifth grader who composed the "Dear Diary" entry had learned about the difference in how men and women are treated. With that in mind, the 5th grader's answer sounds great. That's why it went viral. People think it is clever.

But if we pause to think critically, do you think Sacagawea would have written something like that? Before, during, and after her lifetime, people of Native Nations were and are fighting to protect our homes, gardens, families, and homelands from outsiders who wanted/want Native lands and resources. 

Representations--or, rather, misrepresentations--of Sacagawea are on my mind of late because An-Lon Chen (a parent) wrote to me about Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin's biography of her: Who Was Sacagawea. Chen had been reading it to her child and found herself wondering about its accuracy. We had an email conversation that evolved into a review essay that AICL published on April 23. I'm linking to it here and I want teachers to click through and read her review, especially the section she titled "Erasure." There, she writes about the 1905 Portland World's Fair, and how the National Woman Suffrage Association unveiled the first statue of Sacagawea. [Update on Sunday, May 16, 2021: Chen emailed me this week to say that the 1905 statue was the first major one of Sacagawea. She's found an earlier one, from 1904, done by sculptor Bruno Zimm.]

My point in bringing up Chen's essay? Because I'm thrilled by her critical stance! I want more parents to ask questions. I want educators to welcome their questions, and when necessary, I want us to change what we're doing in the classrooms or spaces where we teach. 

I know--thinking critically is in the news a lot as some parent and teachers object to anti-racist instruction. Changing what we do is hard and sometimes scary, but it is important. We, at American Indians in Children's Literature, are providing book reviews that we hope are helpful to you as you revisit the books you have or teach in your classrooms. We also created Tips for Teachers: Developing Instructional Materials about American Indians. We're here to help and the #31DaysIBPOC series (this is its third year) can help, too. 

On my side table is a copy of Alison Schmitke, Leilani Sabzalian, and Jeff Edmundson's book, Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark: Challenging Dominant Narratives in K-12 Curriculum. Published this year by Teachers College Press, I highly recommend it! It will help teachers revise what they've been doing when they teach about Lewis and Clark. 

As I bring this post to a close, a warm ku'daa (thank you, in Tewa) to Tricia Ebarvia and Kim Parker for launching #31DaysIBPOC in 2019 and inviting me to participate.  

 

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This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. 

Please click here to read the previous blog post by Katie Huang (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog series). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, we welcome your comments.

__________

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

National Geographic's Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture, Not Recommended, Part 2

Encyclopedia of American Indian History & Culture: Stories, Time Lines, Maps, and More
Written by Cynthia O'Brien
Published in 2019
Publisher: National Geographic
Reviewed by Jean Mendoza
Status: Not Recommended

 Debbie's review (1/4/2020) of Encyclopedia of American Indian History & Culture: Stories, Time Lines, Maps, and More focused mainly on visual images used in the book. There are enough problems with a number of the photographs and other images used to warrant not recommending the book. I reached a similar conclusion after looking at selections of the Encyclopedia's written content, and here I'll talk about that process.

My focus was on terminology and concepts relevant to Indigenous/US political history. I wanted to know what the book had to say about the Doctrine of Discovery, settler-colonialism, Manifest Destiny, Native sovereignty, the taking of Indigenous homelands, and Indigenous resistance. What words writers choose, and what they leave unsaid, reveals much about their understanding of a topic and about what they want readers to understand.

Let's start with sovereignty. The term is in the glossary, but the definition says nothing about its connection to Indigenous reality. It's not in the index, but as Debbie mentioned, the publisher's note

on p. 8 devotes about 300 words to tribal sovereignty (see image below), including a bit about the concept of "domestic dependent nations" and allusion to particular legal rights of Native nations. But readers must wade through frustrating mischaracterization of Indigenous history. "As Europeans took over more territory" leaves out the fact that the US, from the moment it was established by former Europeans, also "took over" Indigenous homelands. More about that later. And in paragraph 2, the phrase "lost their sovereignty" makes it sound like the Nations, oops, dropped it somewhere, when in fact the colonizing US government refused or failed to consistently recognize or honor Indigenous sovereignty.

The Encyclopedia misses other key opportunities to deepen readers' understanding of Indigenous history. It has no glossary/index entries for "Doctrine of Discovery" or "Manifest Destiny."  Here I'll talk about those and some related terms that should be dealt with more effectively in the book. (Debbie and I learned some things about the challenges and benefits of glossaries and indexes when we adapted An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, and we have an appreciation for how they can promote or hinder readers' understanding of a book's content.)

First, the Doctrine of Discovery. This product of collaboration between European rulers and the Roman Catholic Church laid the groundwork for European invasion and colonization of Indigenous homelands in what are currently called the Americas. The Doctrine of Discovery has ongoing influence on policies and attitudes here. (For example, in Brazil, the current elected leader denies Indigenous peoples' right to exist on their homelands, and the current resident of the White House greatly admires Andrew Jackson, proponent of "Indian Removal.") Knowing about the Doctrine of Discovery is essential to understanding the history and present circumstances of every Indigenous nation. But it's not in the glossary or index, and if it's mentioned in the text, I didn't find it.

BTW, the Encyclopedia's glossary definition of Catholicism leaves out that Church's key role in the Doctrine of Discovery. Also, "the mission years" highlighted in the book's California section means the years of Catholic missions, but that's not made clear. The textbox titled Mission Indians (see below) explicitly mentions Spanish brutality toward the Indigenous people, then says that the Spanish "also baptized as many as possible into the Catholic Church." Readers deserve to be shown more clearly how Spanish soldiers and priests together actively sought to destroy multiple Nations in what is currently called California, and how baptism was part of that. And again, here's the notion that Indigenous traditional ways were "lost." Not so. Colonizers intentionally destroyed them.

Manifest Destiny. Awareness of Manifest Destiny is basic to understanding the impact of "Western expansion" on Indigenous nations. But there's no glossary definition for it, nothing in the index, and it isn't mentioned in the definition of Western expansion, below.

Notice how the glossary definition above uses passive voice ("the name given to")?  That glosses over the fact that colonizers have named it that -- not the Indigenous people on whom Western expansion was inflicted. Also, "acquired" doesn't begin to describe the bloodshed and treachery that enabled the US government to take Indigenous lands. "Settled" conjures up images of individuals and families quietly and legally building little homes and communities for themselves (Little House Anywhere Charles Ingalls Wants to Build One) -- and leaves out the central, often coordinated, roles of governments, land speculators, militias/military, missionaries, business owners, and squatters in the takeover. "Violently and intentionally took and colonized Indigenous homelands" would be more accurate.

Some terms the Encyclopedia does include are handled in ways that leave much to be desired. The glossary definition of colonization ("settling and taking control of a place and its indigenous people") is far too mild. And colonization period -- defined here as "the time between 1607 and 1783, during which the Europeans settled in what is now the United States" has two problems. First, the US itself continued to colonize the continent, taking Indigenous homelands, long after its independence from Britain. (That's what "Western expansion" was.) Second, the US is a colonizing nation in present time (e.g., Puerto Rico, Guam). A third problem is that there's no index entry for either of those glossary terms, so you can't easily look up what else the book says about them, if anything.

As Debbie noted in her review, National Geographic has said it wants to stop its long-time racist misrepresentations of Indigenous people. Debbie mentions that several Native scholars are credited as consultants on the Encyclopedia. That's a wise move on National Geographic's part, though we know there's no guarantee that Native people's contributions were actually used. Some content and wording depart from what's typical in colonizer-centered informational/reference books about Indigenous history, which suggests some use of Indigenous input. For example, the introduction, by former US Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne), uses the term "European invaders". (But if "invaders" appears elsewhere in the book, I didn't find it.)  The Encyclopedia does refer frequently to Native nationhood, Native rights, acts and campaigns of resistance, and present-day existence. It defines words like encroachment, tribal status, federal recognition, and reparation, which Native consultants would likely push to have included.  Unfortunately, that's not enough, because those positives share space with problematic text like this photo caption:

It's better to refrain from commenting if one isn't sure why a Native person dresses
a certain way. Also, "more attractive" than what, and to whom, and why? 
Treating such cultural information as some kind of mystery is a form of Othering.

and this "In the Know" box:

The circled statement places traditional Salish beliefs in the past, when there 
may well be contemporary Salish people who share them. The wording
 also makes Salish beliefs sound "different", though in fact, a number of 
contemporary religions believe in guidance by spiritual guardians. For 
example, some Christians profess belief in guardian angels.

It would be wonderful to have a visually appealing reference book that provides young people with a cohesive, well-grounded, well-sourced, thoroughly Indigenous perspective on Indigenous nations and cultures, and their history with what is currently called the United States. National Geographic's Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture is not that book.

Edited on 1/12/2020: It's important to also mention that, although the Encyclopedia refers to Catholicism in the glossary and briefly in some of the text, it makes another glaring omission: there is no glossary entry or indexing for Protestantism and/or Calvinism, both of which played a considerable role in Indigenous-white relations outside of what is currently known as California. The first European colonizers in places like Plymouth and Jamestown were Protestant, as were many of those who came after. They tended to have little regard for Indigenous people's religions, and often considered them to be consorts of the devil. Much more could be said of that, and more should have been said in the NatGeo Encyclopedia.

Not Recommended: National Geographic's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE: STORIES, TIME LINES, MAPS, AND MORE

Encyclopedia of American Indian History & Culture: Stories, Time Lines, Maps, and More
Written by Cynthia O'Brien
Published in 2019
Publisher: National Geographic
Reviewed by Debbie Reese
Status: Not Recommended

In late December, I did a series of tweets as I read through National Geographic's Encyclopedia of American Indian History & Culture: Stories, Time Lines, Maps, and More. Those tweets (with minor edits for clarity) are pasted below. I can't use italics on Twitter, so, I use upper case letters for book titles. Generally speaking, caps are used to denote shouting. I've passed the book on to Jean Mendoza. She'll be doing a follow up post. When it is ready I'll come back here and add a link to it. Here's her review: National Geographic's Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture, Not Recommended, Part 2

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Questions about National Geographic's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE: STORIES, TIME LINES, MAPS, AND MORE are picking up. This is a thread for notes as I look through it.

A couple of days ago, friend and colleague @readitrealgood tweeted about the use of "history of settlement" in the publisher's note. She thinks--and I agree--that "history of colonization" would be more accurate and honest:

Alia Jones@readitrealgood

 · Dec 17, 2019

Alia Jones@readitrealgood

From the publisher’s note: “We also hope it (the encyclopedia) helps readers to realize the impact that the history of settlement still has on Native peoples today.” I think “history of colonization” is more accurate & honest

44

5:00 PM - Dec 17, 2019

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She noted a problem in captions that do not name the Indigenous person in the photograph:

Alia Jones@readitrealgood

Oh NO!

My initial impression is that things feel surface level. For example some of the photos credit people & others don’t. Like this photo shows the most famous traditional lacrosse stick maker Alfred Jacques but it just says “Onondaga tribal member” in the caption

20

7:14 PM - Dec 17, 2019

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When I got the review copy some weeks ago, I noted a deeply problematic glossary definition of boarding school as "a private school where students live." That isn't an inaccurate definition but it completely inappropriate to have it in a book about Native peoples!

I have concerns about the photos and art used throughout. Here's some artwork that appears on the timeline about the southwest. See the boxes with specific years? None of them tell us what that art is supposed to represent: 

I'm still mulling over what sort of analysis I will do on this book.

What do we expect from an encyclopedia? Some of us know that National Geographic has a problematic history of misrepresentations, biased information, exotic treatments of people... They knew they had problems, and asked a historian to do an analysis of their covers. (nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/…)

The book I'm discussing in this thread is an encyclopedia. It 304 pages long. It is meant for kids between 8-12 years old, or 2nd-7th grade. That's a huge span in reading ability. I'm critical of rigid adherence to who can read what, when, etc. but this bk is a bit of a stretch. 

One thing I've talk abt w/ colleagues in publishing/review circles is the use of sepia-toned photos, esp. those by Edward S. Curtis. 

I am pretty sure you've seen his work. It gets used, uncritically, a lot. Ppl assume photos from that period are authentic, but, they aren't. 

Here's an excerpt from a good article about Curtis's body of work: (artsy.net/article/artsy-…)

The Publisher's Note for this encyclopedia takes abt 1/3rd of this page:

As I share photos I take as I look through the bk, I'm sure you'll notice things I did not see. I welcome replies or retweets with comments. Here's a closer look at the Publisher's Note. I put a pencil there for scale so you can see the print size on that page.

That note [bottom of first column] says that "The following terms and notes help provide critical context for readers of this encyclopedia." One of those notes [third column] is about Curtis photos. In essence it is a caution abt the controversial nature of his work.

But, the caution itself is useless because as you page through the book, which of the photos are by Curtis? We have NO WAY TO KNOW. Captions don't tell us. See? This photo is on page 20 on the Ahtna page:

A teacher or librarian wanting to know if it is a controversial photo would look it up in the Photo Credit pages, but... no mention of the photographer there, either. Look in the ARCTIC section to find info on page 20.

Earlier I asked ppl to share their observations of photos I'm pasting in this thread. Here's one from @desmondcwong, about the Publisher's Note on the Métis:

Desmond@desmondcwong

The description of the Métis as people with both Indigenous and European ancestry instead of a distinct sovereign Nation and polity is already inaccurate and harmful. https://twitter.com/debreese/status/1208041890857308160 …

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Circling back to the "Two Ahtna girls" photo, I found it online, here:

In the original photo, you can see the name "Miles Brothers" on the lower left but that info was cropped out of the photo in the encyclopedia. (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Two-…)

Do readers assume that all the photos in this book are by Curtis? They aren't, as my search for "Two Ahtna girls" shows. I know that Curtis is not the only photographer who staged photos. Did Miles Brothers do that, too? That last is a question for myself, really, for further research on my own.

The larger point is about how an encyclopedia presents information about photographs, and who took them. Ok... shall I page through and see if I can find a Curtis photo? (Nods to self.)

Finally found a Curtis photo, on page 125. Caption says "Lone Wolf, also known as Guipago, was chief of the Kiowa tribe in the 1860s and 1870s. He led the tribe's warriors in raids against other tribes. He is pictured seated with his wife, Etla."

Here's info about it being a Curtis photo from the Getty file: but the Library of Congress doesn't name the photographer: (I'll keep looking...) (gettyimages.com/detail/news-ph…) (loc.gov/item/201789671…)

In the meantime, I'm paging on thru the book. I've found several black and white or sepia-toned portraits or photos and looked them up. So far, none of them are by Curtis. 

Ok, here's a photo on page 187. The caption (as is the case throughout the book) does not tell us who the photographer is. I found the photo at the Library of Congress. There, it says Curtis is the photographer. (loc.gov/item/97505232/)

To remind you why I'm doing this close look at the photos in this National Geographic encyclopedia: it has a note up front that is a caution about Curtis photos. But none of the photos throughout the 300+ pages are captioned with photographers names. 

As we look at that "Cayuse woman" photo, did Curtis do something to romanticize the woman and her baby? We don't know--and that's a problem for an encyclopedia -- especially one that tells readers to be careful of photos! 

So far in this thread I've focused on photographs because this encyclopedia is full of images. Some are paintings, some are photographs of artifacts, and some are black/white or sepia, or full color photos of Native ppl. 

Kids will hone in on the images on these pages. Those images will carry a lot of weight! This is an encyclopedia. The information provided in captions must be accurate! 

Especially because we all know that most kids who pick it up will already have a lot of biased info about Native peoples, that they were "taught" by someone. 

On page 193 of the encyclopedia is a photo w/caption "Klamath people built round, pole-framed houses in summer, and covered them with mats (pictured). Winter homes were built partly underground." LOC says it is a Curtis photo.

Feedback I've gotten in the thread that I want to add to the thread itself so others can see include:

Randell Baze, a Native librarian (see his Twitter profile @RandellBaze) noted the frequent use of Fancy Dancers on book covers:

Dr. Debbie Reese (tribally enrolled, Nambé Pueblo)

 · Dec 20, 2019

Questions about National Geographic's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE: STORIES, TIME LINES, MAPS, AND MORE are picking up. This is a thread for notes as I look through it.

Randell Baze@RandellBaze

Why is there always a Fancy Dancer on books like these?
We don't all dance powwow.

11

11:03 AM - Dec 20, 2019

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Well, that's about all I want to do right now on old photographs. Maybe I'll take a look at images per page, do some counts and see how that looks. I will say this: the book is heavy. My wrists get tired holding it up.

Elsewhere I noted that the white font on yellow background is a design flaw. It is hard to read and I think it would fail a contrast test. 

In my quick count of images in the first section, Arctic and Subarctic, most of the images are photos of an article of clothing. There's 8 photos of items. Next highest count is 7 of what I called unnamed person. They're things like:

"Alutiq girl" in a traditional headdress
A woman w a handdrum; caption says "An Idle No More protest in Toronto..."
"A Gwich'in man" in a wolf mask at Denver March Powwow.
"Yup'ik elder with her grandchildren..."
"An Inuvialuit girl wears a modern-day parka..."
"An elderly James Bay Cree woman prepares a fire..."

In the back, the book includes a list of 10 consultants. I recognize a couple. They do terrific work. I doubt that they saw the glossary definition for boarding school. And I doubt any of those consultants would have said ok to "Spirit Dolls."

The author [of this encyclopedia] is Cynthia O'Brien. 

When I look up her name in WorldCat, I see she's listed as author on Scholastic's BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, and BEST & BUZZWORTHY 2017, and bks in Crabtree's "Travel with the great explorer's" series. So... no subject experience of her own. 

My guess is that National Geographic wanted to do this book, and so, they hired her to do it.

She isn't Native. Given her lack of subject knowledge, it is no surprise that we get a book that reflects common errors in thought about who we are. Those common errors?

That we are people of the past (so, "history" is in the title).

And, the predominant use of "culture" and "tribe" and little to no use of "nation" or "sovereign nation" to describe us (so, "culture" is in the title). And, that we dance.

The large photo on the cover? A person, dancing.

The double-paged spread for the title page? A person, dancing:

Page 8, with the Publisher's Note? A person, dancing. I shared that page before (to talk about the Curtis photos) but am sharing it again, to look at the "Tribal Sovereignty" information provided.

Sovereignty is at the core of who we are... but that information is sorely lacking in this book. Here, I'm zooming in on the first two columns in that publisher's note:

There's 304 pages in this book. Sovereignty has less than 300 words, and those words are in tiny print in a publisher's note. That's so wrong, @natgeo!

Teachers and librarians who get this book: the emphasis on visual elements of Native existence is a huge problem. 

Who is in charge of the books division at National Geographic? Did they not read the critical analysis of covers of the magazine?! (nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/…) 

National Geographic's encyclopedia doesn't use the word "savage" but many images in the book go that route. Consider these two photos of Manuelito, a leader of the Diné (Navajo) ppl. On the left is the one in the book, on the right is the one used by Diné scholar, Dr. Jennifer Denetdale.

The "information" (quotation marks denote my sarcasm) in the encyclopedia about the Navajo Nation doesn't use the word nation, at all. 

It uses tribe and another phrase that gets used to describe Native peoples: "nomadic." 

In her bk, Denetdale pushes back on use of that word. I've spent most of this day reading and studying this book's text and images. I've seen enough to determine that it will get a Not Recommended label from me.

Children deserve far better than this, National Geographic! If you have already bought a copy, see if the store will give you a refund. This truly is a waste of money.