Showing posts sorted by relevance for query touching spirit bear. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query touching spirit bear. Sort by date Show all posts

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Not Recommended: THE LEGEND OF SKYCO: SPIRIT QUEST by Jennifer Frick-Ruppert

A reader asked me about The Legend of Skyco: Spirit Quest by Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, due out on April 4 of 2017 from Amber Jack Publishing. I was able to get an ARC. Here's the synopsis:
Skyco, an Algonquin boy, is heir to the great chief Menatonon, but he has much to learn before he can take his place within the tribe. He studies with the shaman Roncommock, who teaches him how to enter the spirit world and communicate with spirits and other animals, while he also learns practical skills of hunting, fishing, and starting a fire from other men in his village. But learning to throw a spear with an atlatl and shoot arrows with a bow are just precursors to the ultimate test, the husquenaugh, when he is challenged to use his hard-earned skills to survive the harrowing life-or-death ritual.
I am sharing detailed summary/comments for chapters 1-3, followed by general comments.

Chapter One: The Raid

The main character is Skyco. He's part of a war raid and has just missed being shot by an arrow. He's pulled to the ground. At first he thinks it is the enemy, but it turns out to be Roncommock, the shaman who is accompanying him. Skyco and Roncommock are Algonquin and speak Algonquian. The enemy tribe speaks a different language. It sounds like snakes hissing, so, the Algonquins call them the rattlesnake people, the Mangoaks.

As Skyco and Roncommock run to safety, hiding behind trees, Skyco sees a snake and, frightened, leaps up high. Soon, Roncommock tells Skyco they're safe. He's shot the warrior who had been shooting at them. He teases Skyco about how high he jumped when he saw that snake, and that maybe Skyco can turn that jump into a (p. 4):
"...good move for our next dance. Do you think you could teach the others? The snake jump?"
No longer worried about the enemy, the two head on back to their village, Chowanook. Skyco hears a noise. It is a bear. It knocks Roncommock down, mauling his shoulder and thigh. Skyco has no weapon to use, so decides to roar at the bear. That roar stops the bear from attacking Roncommock.

Skyco roars again and the bear goes away. Roncommock is bleeding heavily. Skyco takes off his loincloth and wraps it around Roncommock's thigh. He keeps an eye out for moss he can use to help with the bleeding. He also finds a brown puffball, which has dust that Skyco sprinkles on the wound. As they make their way, Roncommock leans heavily on Skyco.

Fearful of being in the woods alone at night when predators might smell the bloody wound, Skyco tells Roncommock he'll run ahead to the village telling Roncommock (p. 12):
"That bear was powerful and we need the medicine man's magic to help restore your spirit while it fights that of the bear."
Skyco realizes he is naked without his loincloth, but that it will be faster to travel naked. When he gets to the village, he goes right to Chief Menatonon and tells him what happened. The Chief assigns two "braves" (p. 13) to go with Skyco. They bring Roncommock back for the medicine man, Eracano, to work on, but he's lost a lot of blood. Eracano does all he can, but (p. 18):
"it is up to Roncommock to return to us from the world of the spirits." 
The next day, Roncommock is better and tells Skyco what he learned while he was in the spirit world, fighting the bear's spirit.

He tells Skyco that the bear is the strongest of animals, but wise, too. He knows when to fight, and when not to fight. This bear is Skyco's "guardian spirit" (p. 22). The bear has been looking out for Skyco all along. Its spirit knew that someone was trying to hurt Skyco. When it saw Roncommock, it thought Roncommock was the person trying to hurt Skyco, so the spirit of the bear told the bear to attack Roncommock. Roncommock explains why the bear made that mistake. Because they were on a war raid, he hadn't been wearing his shaman clock and medicine pouch. Instead, he was wearing a bow and arrow and was wearing a warrior's loincloth.

When Skyco roared at the bear, it got the spirit bear's attention. It realized that it had told the bear to attack the wrong person. So, the bear itself went away but its spirit continued to fight with Roncommock's spirit, in the spirit world. That fight continued until (p. 22):
"the bear stripped me of my physical being and searched my spirit in the spirit world"
 and realized that Roncommock was the Skyco's protector.

Now that Roncommock knows the bear is Skyco's guardian spirit, he tells Skyco that he must begin his training in the spirit world (p. 22):
It is very unusual that the bear recognized you so early, even before your spirit quest. The spirits are ready for you now and we will oblige them by beginning with learning the way of the spirits before you learn the ways of the warrior or the hunter. You must enter upon the sacred quest as soon as the spirits decree it, even before you enter the husquenaugh. Your training will differ from that of the other boys who will undergo the next husquenaugh as you pass from childhood to adult. You have more to learn." 
Skyco returns to his mother's wigwam. His mother's brother, Chief Menatonon is there, waiting for him. He was sitting on a mat and asks Skyco to sit, too (p. 24):
As I sat down, I carefully folded my legs so that each foot was underneath a thigh and rested my hands atop my knees, palms down, adopting the position I was taught.
Menatonon tells Skyco he is proud of what he's done, and that he is proud to call him his heir. Menatonon gives Skyco a new loincloth and tells him that he knows Skyco will succeed in the husquenaugh. Skyco admires the quality of the loincloth and then realizes that Menatonon said husquenaugh. Two of Menatonon's most trusted men enter the wigwam and the four go outside, where most of the village members are gathered. Menatonon raises his hands and says (p. 25):
"You see before you my kin and recognized heir. I submit Skyco for the next husquenaugh. If he succeeds and becomes a man, he will be your next chief."  
Everyone inclines their heads in agreement. That night, Skyco thinks about the "grueling ritual" (p. 26) that will test his body and mind to see if he is strong and worthy enough to become an adult. If he fails, he cannot become an adult. "To fail is to die" (p. 26).

My comments:

(1) In her author's note, the author says that Skyco was a real person, kidnapped as a child, by Sir Ralph Lane, who led an expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585-1586.  I found references to "Skiko" in several sources. This verifies that the author based this story on the life of a real person. 

Right away, I am concerned. The author, a non-Native woman writing in the 2010s, is imagining what a Native boy of the 1580s (and his family and members of his tribal community) would do, say, and think. As far as I know, we do not have records of these Native peoples' speech or thinking. The author has nothing to go on.  There are some resources (like Lawson, who she cites in the back matter), but they're written by people who were not of that tribe. They were Europeans. They brought their non-Native lens to what they were writing. What we have, in essence, is a Native people of the 1500s, whose ways of that time were recorded by Europeans, and now, a non-Native writer of the 2010s, imagining their lives. In short, we have an outsider perspective on top of hundreds of years of time. 

(2) Several words in chapter one signal outsider voice and, by extension, a lack of understanding of words and what they convey.  

First is the use of "braves" for men. I noted it once but it occurs more than once. Dictionaries often define brave (as a noun) that is dated, and, is "an American Indian warrior." Synonyms are warrior, soldier, or fighter. My goal, in the writing I do about words used to describe Native people, is to push writers to stop using "brave" or "squaw" ("squaw" is not used in this book) because in addition to being dated, those two words (there are others, too) invoke an Indian man or woman--but with qualities that mark them as very distinct from a English man or woman, or a French man or woman. Amongst those qualities are ones that frame Native peoples as not-quite-human. More... primitive. More... barbaric. They, in short, otherize Native peoples, making them exotic and markedly different from non-Native men and women. 

I also highlighted shaman. That, too, is used by writers as if all Native peoples, everywhere, use that word. We don't. 

(3) In that passage where Roncommock tells Skyco that he can make a new dance step out of that frightened leap when he saw a snake is troubling, too. It demonstrates a lack of understanding of the significance of Native dance. Many of our dances are prayerful in nature, or, done in preparation for a gathering or event. It may be helpful for you to think of prayerful activities or moments within your own religious practice. Would something like leaping into the air be easily turned into part of what you do, in this religious activity? 

(4) When I read that detailed passage about how Skyco sat on the mat, I did it, just to see what that might look like. Sure enough, it is sitting "Indian style" without saying that. I'm glad Frick-Ruppert didn't say "Indian style" but why go into that detail? Why can't Skyco just sit down?! 

(5) Most of chapter one is about that bear, the spirit of that bear, how they determine that the bear is Skyco's "guardian spirit," and then Skyco's anxiety over the husquenaugh. I find all of that especially troubling, for the same reason I noted in (1), above. Frick-Ruppert's story is about real people and their ways of being. As I noted above, what are the sources anyone can use, to accurately depict the ways of this particular nation? In that back matter, Frick-Ruppert references "the Chowanoke Indian Nation" (p. 292) that is trying to get federal recognition. What, I wonder, would they think of what she's written?

Chapter Two: The Black Drink

Skyco and his friend, Ascopo, are talking about the husquenaugh. Ascopo's mother submitted his name, too. The two boys will go through it, together. While they're out, Roncommock approaches them and says that the bear guardian is particularly interested in Skyco, and that he is to move into Roncommock's wigwam and begin his learnings (p. 28):
The spirits have decreed that you undergo the black drink ritual as a preparation for the spirit quest.
Roncommock tells Ascopo to go, right away, to Memeo, who will do his training. Roncommock tells Skyco to take off his new loincloth because the black drink they take will get soiled during the ritual. Both drink it and almost immediately the contents of Skyco's stomach and bowels are purged. They do this a second time and then go to the river to clean up. When they get to Roncommock's wigwam, he shaves Skyco's head on one side and trims the length of it on the other side.  Then they slather bear grease, tinted red, and then rest.

Roncommock wakes Skyco. It is time to start. He is to inhale tobacco smoke that Roncommock sprinkles on a fire. If his mind is relaxed and open, the spirits will come. The spirits are powerful. They could strike a man dead, or ignore him completely. Skyco is a bit anxious but remembers the relaxation techniques his mother taught him. Soon, he feels as peaceful as a baby, and sees his mother. She touches him and points toward something out of view.

That startles him. He wakes, and Roncommock tells him that his spirit is strong, that he hasn't been taught how to call the spirits, and yet, they came to him anyway. Skyco tells Roncommock he only felt his mother, touching him as if he was a baby in her arms, and that she had pointed. This, Roncommock says, means that the spirits have recognized him. They didn't reveal his quest, yet, but his mother, pointing, means they are ready to receive and teach him.

They leave the wigwam to have the evening meal with the people of the village. Skyco notices things he didn't notice, before. Walking by his mother's wigwam he sees the paintbrush by their door. It is her spirit guide. Men have animal spirit guides, but sometimes, women receive a plant guide from the spirit world. She is the only woman in the village with a spirit guide. She can tell that he has been accepted by the spirits and brings him water with sassafras leaves. He takes some into his mouth to clean his mouth and the words he is going to say, spits it out and thanks his mother and family for all they've given him. He bows low before her, and then takes another sip of the water, spits it out, and turns to Roncommock and says he wishes to join his household.

My comments:

As with chapter one, there is a lot in chapter two that feels to me that it is created by the author. Creating the religious ceremonies of others makes me uneasy for so many reasons. It feels sacrilegious and presumptuous. This is the sort of content that New Age practitioners will use as authentic ways to get in contact with a spirit world. 

An aspect that bothers me is the gaze on the loincloth, on peoples faces, and their bodies. In chapter two, Skyco removes his loincloth so he doesn't soil it when the contents of his stomach and bowels are purged. 

Chapter Three: The Day I Became An Ant

Roncommock takes Skyco for his first lesson. They go to a field where Roncommock slowly eased himself to the ground (p. 42):
... crossed his legs, folded his feet under his thighs, and placed his hands on his knees in the appropriate position of respect.
He tells Skyco to sit, too, but yells when Skyco nearly steps on an anthill. Skyco sits. He's given some herb water to cleanse his mouth and must wipe some over his eyes, nose, and ears so they, too are purified. Then he drinks some sacred water that will help him contact the spirits. Roncommock sprinkles some powdered uppowoc over the ant mound. The ants run about, picking it up. Roncommock tells Skyco to focus on them, and to try to reach one with his mind. He does, twice, and finds himself drawn to one, which is Roncommock. He scolds Skyco for thinking of the ants as male. All the ants are female. Skyco shifts his pronouns and thinks "she" rather than "he" as they move about. An enemy ant arrives and a battle between the two ant tribes ensues.

In the clean up of the battle, Skyco learns many lessons about how the ant colony is similar to his own village structure. One of the cleaner ants approaches him and tries to identify him, based on his scent. Since he's new to the ant hill, he doesn't have a strong scent. He's afraid the cleaner ant is about to call others to come and drive him out, but realizes he can lift his abdomen and squeeze, emitting a stinky odor. The cleaner ant backs away. Eventually, Skyco and Roncommock return to their own bodies and then to the village.

My comments: 

Here we have another instance in which someone's manner of sitting is carefully described. And again, this manner of sitting conveys respect. I would love to see a source for this! 

I understand the concept of training, of learning by watching others--be they insects or animals--but going into the ants, being an ant... that reminds me more of the Animorphs series than anything else. Perhaps the stinky odor is meant to bring a bit of humor to this story but given that Frick-Ruppert is asking us to think of this as part of a spiritual quest, I find it offensive. Please note that my offense is not that someone farts. I love Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi and have gifted it to children. My offense is that the author--in this imagined sacred space of a Native people--injects this particular kind of humor. 

_________

I finished reading the book and have many passages in chapters marked. I am commenting on the more significant ones, here.

Spirits


The overarching aspect of this book is spirits, the spirit world, communicating with the spirit world, spirit quests, and having a spirit animal or a spirit guide. Indeed, we see that in the subtitle "Spirit Quest."

Throughout the book, Skyco interacts with the spirit world. For each of the interactions, he will end up with an item to wear that will remind him that these creatures are his spirit guides. In chapter two, he was with ants. He can't really have something about ants on his body, so, he'll carry a bit of the sand from an ant pile in his medicine bag. Skyco is bit by a shark. He learns that a shark is one of his guides, so he wears a necklace of shark teeth to remind him of that.

There's a part where Skyco and three other boys in training kills a deer. They eat its organs, thereby "taking on the power of the buck" (p. 215). You've seen that sort of idea, too, right? Indians eat this or that animal, gaining that animal's special qualities.

All this sure as heck dovetails with people think they know about Indians, and it dovetails with tons of stories about Indians and what Indians do, but is it accurate?! And if it is, should it be written about in a book for children--a book written by an outsider to whatever nation the book is about? (My answer: NO.)


The Legend


In one of the chapters, Skyco tells Roncommock about visions he's had. Roncommock can't interpret any of this for him until after Skyco completes the husquenaugh, but as Skyco is telling him about what he saw, Roncommock gets up, walks around, and says to himself "could he be the one?" (p. 200).

We aren't told what "the one" means, but, it sounds like the author is developing this story in a way that Skyco is going to be--as the title suggests--a legend. What Skyco saw in that part of the story is white people who will be coming to their lands. They won't understand boundaries, Roncommock tells Skyco. But, Skyco's training is important. He has spirit guides from the earth (the ant), the water (fish/shark) the sky (falcon) and land (bear).

Towards the end of the story in the husquenaugh, we learn that Skyco will be a shaman and a chief. The others exclaim over that power and standing. The book ends with Skyco emerging from the husquenaugh. There, is, however, a second book in the works.

Closing Remarks: Not recommended!


As I noted in my comments to chapter one, I am concerned with the ways that Frick-Ruppert imagines the Native people in this story. She's relying on very old sources, written by Europeans, whose interpretations of what they saw then, in the 1500s, are--in fact--white Europeans who felt superior to the Indigenous peoples of what came to be known as the United States. There were differences, yes, but notions of superiority are highly subjective. Romanticizing anyone is no good, for anyone, least of all children.

Most Native peoples do not write accounts that delve deeply into our respective spiritual or religious ceremonies. We guard all of that from people who want to appropriate it, or use it in ways that are harmful to us. Did Frick-Ruppert know that? Did her editor know?

Bottom line: I do not recommend Jennifer Frick-Ruppert's The Legend of Skyco: Spirit Quest. 






Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Reaction to Slapin’s review of Touching Spirit Bear

Beverly Slapin’s review of Touching Spirit Bear (posted here on September 20th) has generated discussion on a listserv sponsored by the American Library Association and other places as well.

I share some of the discussion and my responses here. I paraphrase a response and use italics to differentiate it from my response.

-------------------------

It is well written and a great story. Teen boys who are bullies need books like this to learn about the consequences of their behavior and that there are other ways of behaving. Errors regarding Tlingit culture are excusable because the book has so much value for bullies.

Debbie: Is it ok to use and misrepresent one culture (in this case Tlingit) because someone else (bullies who are presumably not Tlingit) stand to gain?

-------------------------

I will continue recommending the book because it was favorably reviewed and is on so many award lists.

Debbie: How knowledgeable are the people who wrote the reviews? When Ann Rinaldi’s My Heart is on the Ground came out, it was favorably reviewed and it was likely headed for Recommended Books lists. But our critique headed that off, because, I think, people knew that the information in the critique was (and is) irrefutable, and that it was irresponsible to laud the book.

-------------------------

IT IS FICTION! JUST A STORY! It doesn’t matter if it is accurate or not.

Debbie: If a work of fiction said that 2+2=7, everybody would know it was a mistake. But we, as a society, know so little about American Indians that we don’t know when American Indian cultures are being misrepresented, stereotyped, or otherwise inappropriately used.

American society is so enamored with a narrow, romantic view of who we (remember, I am Nambé Pueblo Indian) are that it is not open to criticism that gets in the way of wholeheartedly endorsing or recommending a book. People who love the book and don’t like Slapin’s review may feel the criticism is an attack on them, on their personal values. Critiques like Slapin’s are not personal attacks, but they can feel that way when the book under critique is well loved.

If there was only one book like Touching Spirit Bear out there, then maybe it wouldn’t matter. But there are more flawed stories about American Indians than there are good ones. All those flawed ones contribute to the misperceptions American have about American Indians.

-------------------------

I’m out of time and will have to stop here. Your comments in the "Comments" option are welcome.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Search terms

Nothing substantive today, just offering you a glimpse of search terms by which people found the blog as of 11:30 today. The software that generates the list doesn't use upper case letters.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Tlingit Elder's Comments on Ben Mikaelsen's TOUCHING SPIRIT BEAR: "I can just picture Tlingit kids being very, very embarrassed."

Eds. note: These comments about Mikaelson's Touching Spirit Bear were submitted to American Indians in Children's Literature by Tlingit elder, Eileen Baustian. 



To me, the first thing that comes to mind is embarrassment. When the banishing incident happened in 1993, two teenage Tlingit boys were taken to Klawock, Alaska, by Rudy James, who claimed to be a tribal judge. The whole tribe felt embarrassed by his misrepresentation of our tribal customs. And then to have this book, which was obviously based on this incident, just felt insulting. I just know that Mikaelsen flat-out copied this event for his book. I felt that it was totally bizarre that Mikaelsen would use this incident, even though he denies it.

I really have a hard time, I don’t know how to express what we feel about words, about using words like “at.oow,” which is special regalia. It’s not just a blanket, it’s spirit. It’s the clan’s property. It would never, ever have happened that this kid would be given at.oow. This Tlingit probation officer could not have handed over at.oow. Mikaelsen’s use of that word it implies an understanding and yet the context is inappropriate; it just couldn’t have happened that way. I don’t feel Mikaelsen had the right to use the word without understanding how at.oow is used.

The animal dances, the ancestor rock, the anger rock, the anger stick, I don’t even have any words for this. I kept thinking, where did he come up with this? I can’t even imagine any of these rituals happening today. And the animal-impersonation dances: I thought I’d die. Even if these things all existed, this is a white boy from Minnesota. How would he know how Tlingits move when we dance?

It’s interesting that Mikaelsen says that the Tlingit culture was peripheral to the story, so he didn’t feel he needed to delve into cultural aspects in great depth. But he did go into cultural aspects in great depth; he just made them up. He says that his book was shared with a “First Nation [sic] spiritual leader,” but who is this unnamed spiritual person? Is she/he Tlingit? Does she/he have permission to advise non-Indians about Tlingit culture and ritual?

I can just picture non-Native kids reading this book and thinking they understand Tlingit culture. I can just picture teachers using the “Tlingit culture” in this book as a springboard for cross-cultural exercises. And I can just picture Tlingit kids being very, very embarrassed. 

Eileen Baustian
Elder
Eagle/Shark Clan, Tlingit

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

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


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

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

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

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

It has got to get better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, January 03, 2010

We saw AVATAR...

We saw Avatar a few days before Christmas. Using my cell phone, I thought I'd take a few notes as I watched the film, sending the notes as brief text messages to my email account. There was so much wrong that I quit after a few minutes. My txts are in bold. In parenthesis are my off-the-cuff response.

arrows in tires
(Modern day covered wagons!!)


sig weaver (anthro) wears bead necklace.
(She's the Indian lover. I guess Cameron never read Deloria or listened to Westerman's "Here Come the Anthros")


indigenous school provided by humans
(Hearing that part made me think that Cameron HAS read some history and DOES know a little... )

na'vi are called savages
(no surprise)

their homeland most hostile environment known to man.
(the wild west)


braids and tail. 
(Drawing from lots of "other" there, collapsing them all into na'vi... )

flute and drum music
(Of course!)

they're (na'vi)  watching us
(Just like the Indians in Little House on the Prairie!!!)

riders on horses
(Plains Indians!!)

the riders whoop 
(Classic Western)


A lot of people say that the special effects make the movie enjoyable. A lot of people wave away problems with the story because of the special effects. Those defenses are given again and again in response to critiques of children's books. A lot---a WHOLE LOT---of people defend Brother Eagle Sister Sky because taking care of the environment is more important than Indian stereotypes. Same thing with Touching Spirit Bear. The "good" it does for students who are bullies is more important than its misrepresentations of American Indians.

Support of books like Brother Eagle, Sister Sky and Touching Spirit Bear plays a role in the embrace of films like Avatar.  In my view, we're all kidding ourselves. None of it is worth defending.

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UPDATE. Monday, January 4, 2010

This post has generated a lot of email to me, mostly from people who share my view of the film. In some, people are surprised that this sort of thing is still happening. I think some of those individuals are not close readers of film or children's and young adult literature. AVATAR is only one film of the last two months that has given viewers Indian stereotypes. Here's others:

BLIND SIDE---I did not see the film. I saw the trailer, though, and in it, Sandra Bullock and her husband (that's a guess) and her little boy are in their car. The child is in the backseat, wearing a headdress. I can only imagine why. If anyone has seen it, let me know!

THE PROMISE---Betty White's character is out in the woods "dancing" and chanting. This movie mostly takes place in Alaska.

INGLORIOUS BASTARDS---Lots of references to "Indian" methods of killing. And of course, scalping was a big piece of the story.


Thursday, July 23, 2015

Set two: Links to Oyate's BOOKS TO AVOID pages

A few years ago, Oyate removed its Books to Avoid page. A great many people miss that page and write to me asking if I saved those reviews. I didn't--but they aren't gone forever! They're available on the Wayback Machine.

In order to fit within the 200 character limit on "Labels" (the labels are on the right and serve as an index of what is in the post itself), I am creating several pages of the links, arranging them alphabetically. This post includes M through T.

I'm also going to save a pdf of each one, just in case the Wayback Machine goes down.

Marrin, Albert, Sitting Bull and His World and additional comments
Martin, Bill and John Archambault, Knots on a Counting Rope 
Mikaelsen, Ben. Touching Spirit Bear
Rylant, Cynthia. Long Night Moon 
Speare, Elizabeth George. Sign of the Beaver
Taylor, C.J., Peace Walker: The Legend of Hiawatha and Tekanawita
Turner, Ann. The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl

See also:
Set 1
Set 3

Monday, March 06, 2023

Debbie--have you seen SWIFT ARROW by Josephine Cunnington Edwards?

Some time back, a reader wrote to ask if I had read Swift Arrow by Josephine Cunnington Edwards. It was published in 1997 by a publisher I was unfamiliar with: "TEACH Services." On their website is a page about their history. A paragraph from there:
On January 1, 1984, a small home in Harrisville, New Hampshire, became the maiden office of TEACH Services, Inc. The mission of the newly formed publishing company was to encourage and strengthen individuals around the world through the distribution of books that point readers to Christ. 
I see, there, that the author was a missionary to Africa. And here's a description of the book: 
Colored leaves, red, yellow, and brown, fluttered past George as he rode behind Woonsak in the long string of Indians and ponies. They were riding north and moving quickly. So many Indians moved along the path that George, who rode near the front of the line, could not see the end when he turned around to look. The farther they went, the more unhappy George became. For with every step, Neko (his faithful pony) took him farther and farther from his home and from Ma and Pa. Even the fluttering leaves seemed like little hands waving good-bye all the day long. So begins chapter seven of this beloved classic by Josephine Cunnington Edwards. George, a young pioneer boy is captured by Indians and raised as the son of a mighty chief. He spends his time learning the ways of these native Americans, and yearning for the day that he might find a way to return to his loving family.

The TEACH website offers a preview of the book. That same preview is available in Google Books. Historical fiction often has biased and anti-Indigenous words, so I sometimes do a search (that's an option in Google Books) on a particular word to see how it is used in the book. In Swift Arrow, I found:

"squaw" -- 20 times
"squaws" -- 18 times
"paleface" -- 13 times
"brave" (as word for male) -- 12 times
"papoose" -- 11 times
"redskins" -- 4 times
"firewater" -- 3 times
"savages" -- 2 times 

I also looked for the word "dance" to see how it is used. Classic and award-winning books often include deeply offensive depictions of what they call Indian dance/dancing. In Swift Arrow, George watches "several warriors" jump into the middle of a circle and begin "a strange dance" where they leap into the air, and howl. Then, "several more braves" jumped into the circle. As George goes to sleep, he listens to the "howling" and thinks about this "savage life." You see that sort of description in Little House on the Prairie, and Sign of the Beaver, and Touching Spirit Bear. 

As the description above notes, George gets captured by Indians. When he arrives at the village, a few "squaws" pointed at him and "a few reached up dirty hands to touch his light face and run their fingers through his curly hair." There's a lot to say about that particular scene but I draw your attention to the word "dirty." It is also commonly used in historical fiction, as if being dirty is a way of life for Native people. It wasn't. 

As I look at reviews, etc., I see that their chief, "Big Wolf" plans to make George--who is now called Swift Arrow--his son and future chief of the tribe. That sort of thing is seen in many works of historical fiction. An authority figure (in this case "Big Wolf") is choosing a white captive for a significant role in the tribe. Those storylines are examples of white supremacy. Knowing that the author was a missionary, it does not surprise me that she created that particular plot. 

If I decide to order the book I'll be back with a more in-depth review but right now, I am confident in saying that I would not recommend it. I wish this book was an outlier but I think the questions I've received about it point to it being used more and more within politically conservative spaces. 
 

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Jeff Berglund's response to "Desecrations and Desires: White Male Fantasy in Will Hobbs' BEARSTONE


Jeff Berglund, a friend and colleague at Northern Arizona University, wrote this essay in response to Jane Haladay’s essay, “Desecrations and Desires: White Male Fantasy in Will Hobbs’ Bearstone.” Jeff is an Associate Professor in the Department of English.

_________________________

Jeff Berglund's Response to Jane Haladay’s essay, “Desecrations and Desires: White Male Fantasy in Will Hobbs’ Bearstone"

I bring in young adult novels in all of my Native literature courses, particularly because many of my students are English Education majors, but also because it recalls for students so many of the previous renderings of Native peoples and cultures in books they read in junior high and high school, books like Bearstone, Touching Spirit Bear, Sign of the Beaver, Sing Down the Moon, and so forth.

Thanks, Jane, for doing (and recording) the real-world sort of work many of us are called to in our local communities. What I like about Jane's work is that it provides a model to all of us of how we might engage in these debates *and* set the terms of our participation.

So many teachers have basic questions and limited time and resources for doing ground-up investigations on their own. I ask my college students to consider donating copies of Birchbark House and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian so I can donate, on their behalf, reading sets (5-7 books) to schools. In paperback, these books are between $7-10 and give back barely $1-2 in sellback at the bookstore, so many students are willing to donate these.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of guest-lecturing in Jennifer Denetdale's graduate course at Dine College for Dine' educators. In the group of 15 students, all of whom are practicing teachers, not one, as a child, had read a book about the Navajo Long Walk. Two had seen the recent books by Dine' writers, but all were eager to find more. That's not surprising. What is surprising is that everyone had lots of basic questions: how do we figure out what books are the best quality? How can we trust authors to tell us the truth? Of course, Jennifer and I referred them to Debbie's blog, to Oyate, and we then proceeded to look at a number of books with evaluative criteria, such as those listed below in order to remind everyone that we all have to engage in the evaluative/comparative process of critical reading:

Questions to Consider When Purchasing New Books:
  1. Does the author have a connection to Native peoples, communities, or is the author a member of a tribal culture? What stake does the writer have in the lives of indigenous children?
  2. When was this book written? Does the author reflect his or her own time period and contemporary thinking about cultural and ethnic diversity?
  3. Whose story is being told? Do the centering principles of the story reflect the diversity and complexity of this culture and honor this culture’s principles as a means of understanding history or traditions?
  4. Are Native people represented as fully human—full of joy, wonder, wisdom, beauty, sorrow, pain, pleasure? Or, are they rendered as anthropological subjects, distanced from the contemporary world or assumed to be separate from all implied readers?
  5. If different viewpoints could be represented, do the authors or illustrators make efforts to include these different ideas?
  6. If stories are retellings of traditional narratives, is there information about how the author has come to the source information or come into a position to represent such information?
These are starting points that lead to pretty involved discussions.

[Note from Debbie: See my review of Jennifer Denetdale's nonfiction book on the Long Walk.]

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Second Post: The POC Challenge

Near the end of my post About the POC Challenge, I wondered if people participating in the POC Challenge are reading critics of color. I posed the question because my research on children's books about American Indians shows that most reviewers do not have the expertise necessary to recognize flaws in the way that authors and illustrators portray American Indians.

This lack of knowledge means that some deeply flawed books get starred reviews, nominated for (and win) awards, and end up on "Best Books" lists. All of this praise means the book is purchased by more people, and the flaws are passed on to more and more readers. Hence, misconceptions and erroneous information flows into the child or young adult who reads the book, and they go on to select and read books whose images of Indians feels familiar to them.  It's a cyclical and burgeoning problem for all of us.

A handful of new and old books that have been discussed here on American Indians in Children's Literature demonstrate the depth and breadth of the problem. I note them below, but start looking around on this blog and you'll find many others.

Arrow to the Sun, by Gerald McDermott, won the Caldecott in 1978.

Bearstone, by Will Hobbs, a popular writer with many books about American Indians.  

Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech, won the Newbery in 1995.

Take a look at the lists of books discussed on this site (lists are by title and by label). There, you'll find Touching Spirit Bear, Sign of the Beaver, Twilight, Little House on the Prairie...

I thought, at first, that the books eligible for the Challenge were books written by people of color, but I see now that any book with a character of color is eligible, and, based on the book list being generated, the "color" is not limited to the four groups in the United States commonly labeled as "underrepresented" (American Indian, African American, Asian American, Latino/a American). To gain insight to those four populations and books about them, read Teaching Multicultural Literature in Grades K-8 and Using Multiethnic Literature in the K-8 Classroom. Both are edited by Violet J. Harris.

To focus specifically on American Indians, participants can read my site, but they can also read A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin.

In comments to my first post about the POC Challenge, Thomas Crisp referenced the GLBT challenge. He referenced the work of David Levithan's work on this body of literature, but look for articles by Crisp, too. I like a word Cynthia Leitich Smith used in her comment: Commitment.  I hope the bloggers participating in the challenge become committed to reading criticism, and applying that criticism to their reviews.

 

Monday, June 07, 2010

Syd Hoff's DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR



I imagine that most of you recognize the illustration above. It appears in Danny and the Dinosaur, an I Can Read book published in 1958:




Do you remember the illustration at top? Like many of you, I read Danny and the Dinosaur as a child. I don't recall if I paused at that illustration. Likely, I passed it over then, but as a person who studies images of Indians in children's literature, I notice it now and view it critically.

Watch the video embedded below. At the 3:35 mark, Frank Ettawageshik of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, talks about the placement of American Indians in museums, and what those placements teach children.



The University of Michigan took a lot of heat for their decision to remove the dioramas from their museum. How many of those people, I wonder, remember Danny's visit to the museum? How many of them got their introduction to Indians in museums from the much-loved Danny and the Dinosaur? Is Danny and the Dinosaur in your collection?

I invite you to consider removing it. Removing it?! Is that censorship? It might be, but, what if the book contains something that is inaccurate?

Look at the illustration. The words say "He saw Indians." But he didn't! He saw a shirtless man with a big nose wearing a headdress. What tribe might that man belong to? We don't know, and, the naked torso/feathered headdress/hooked nose constitute a stereotype.

Course, this IS an easy-reader, so we might think that for Syd Hoff to be tribally specific (name the tribe), it would overwhelm the child. Let's say Hoff said it was a Plains Indian. They wear headdresses like that, but what about the bare torso and the hooked nose? What if Hoff put accurate clothing on the man and did not draw the nose that way? His Indian would still be in a natural history museum, which makes it problematic in a different way...

The book's publication date is 1958. As such, it predates the development of what we now call multicultural literature. Would the book be published today? (Note on July 18, 20140, the answer is yes. Based on what I'm seeing in 2014, it would!) It is, of course, reprinted again and again. You can get it in hardcover, paperback, or in audiobook format.

Hoff sent his manuscript for his first children's book to Ursula Nordstrom. In Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (edited by Leonard Marcus), you can read her letter to Hoff (see page 103). Dated December 4, 1957, she asked him to revise it for the I Can Read series. Studying her letter, I gather that the text for the page above originally read that Danny wanted to "see how the world looked a long, long time ago." She deemed that line "unchildlike" and said that a child would probably want to see specific things. About that page (page 8 of his manuscript), Nordstrom wrote:
You could just say "He saw Indians. He saw bears. He saw..."
That suggestion is followed by this:
On Page 9: "He saw horses and wagons. He saw mummies. He saw cavemen. And he saw...(OK? Roman chariot and Egyptian mummies look too hard for a child who has just learned to read and is excited about reading.)
I find it fascinating to think about what Hoff may have written, and it would be terrific to see his original manuscript! Nordstrom didn't think "Roman" or "Egyptian" were ok. Indians, however, are ok. They wouldn't be "too hard for a child who has just learned to read and is excited about reading."

I hear something much like Nordstrom's words a lot when a favorite book is challenged. Again and again, people say "it gets unmotivated kids to read!" about books like Touching Spirit Bear. Or, they say that I am making a mountain out of a molehill and there are other, more important things, to worry about. I'm glad to point people to new research on the effects of stereotyping. And as before, I'm happy to send you Stephanie Fryberg's article "Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots." (Or, you can download a pdf here.)  With the word 'mascots' in the title, you may think the article is irrelevant, but Fryberg is studying the effects of images that include Indian images used in mascots, but also in film and books. The 'Indian princess' in the title is Disney's Pocahontas.

Watch the video above, read Fryberg's article, and then, consider whether or not you'll leave Danny and the Dinosaur on your shelf.


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