Native Trailblazers, or In Search of “500 Brave Native Americans”

Grandson Will, age 8, sings along to Pete Seeger at the top of his lungs:

“’Tis advertised in Boston, New York, and Buffalo.

500 brave Native Americans

A whalin’ for to go –”

He’s got the lyrics wrong; it’s "500 brave Americans," and I smile because he’s adorable. But then I think, "Wait, though! 500. Brave. Native Americans!"  

In US history classes, kids like Will hear about the bravery of non-Native "explorers"/"discoverers"/Pilgrims/settlers/revolutionaries/pioneers/frontiersmen/the US cavalry.

Sure, they may hear Indigenous men referred to as “braves.” But will they learn about 500 specific, courageous Native people? Or 100? Or even … five?

You know whose names they’ll hear, of course – Pocahontas. Squanto. Sacagawea. Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo. In other words, they’ll learn about some Native people who are viewed as helpful to the colonizers, and some of the ones who fought colonization of their homelands. Will (who's now 12) tells me that he and his classmates definitely don’t hear about contemporary Native people whose courage and commitment make a difference NOW in their communities and in the wider world. 

But we know that all kids benefit from the affirmation that Native people ARE STILL HERE and are deeply INVOLVED in the heavy lifting to make the world a better place. It would be Something if, by the time they graduated high school, every student in the US could name a couple dozen Indigenous people who've made a positive difference.  

Native kids, of course, may have first-hand knowledge of family members who are writers, artists, activists, scientists, and so on. But it's challenging to find reliable information for young people about noteworthy contemporary Native people. Biographies tend to be problematic. Most are not the work of Native writers. Though supposedly factual, they often contain the same biased language and distorted window on Native lives often seen in fiction. And they're usually about figures in the distant past. 

An important exception is the Native Trailblazers Series for teen readers. It’s put out by 7^th Generation Press. Each book features 10 or so profiles of significant people or groups, most of them still living. 

The text is straightforward and engaging, and includes lots of direct quotes, so readers see what people say about their own lives and work. The series includes the following four books by journalist Vincent Schilling (St. Regis Mohawk):

• Native Athletes in Action: Revised Edition (2016) (Review of 2012 edition)
• Native Men of Courage: Revised Edition (2016)
• Native Defenders of the Environment (2011) (Published before Standing Rock, it profiles some folks who later became NoDAPL water protectors in 2016-2017.)
• Native Musicians in the Groove (2009)

That’s 40+ brave, committed, smart, and talented Native Americans right there. There are several other books in the series, written by Schilling and by other Indigenous authors. (Schilling also hosts the Native Trailblazers radio program.) 

I haven’t read them all yet – but I feel confident in saying that the Native Trailblazers series is worth a look. 

-- Jean Mendoza

Highly Recommended: WHEN WE PLAY OUR DRUMS, THEY SING by Richard Van Camp + LUCY & LOLA by Monique Gray Smith

When We Play Our Drums, They Sing by Richard Van Camp and Lucy & Lola by Monique Gray Smith are two outstanding books... in one. Here's the covers:

If you get one, you will have the other. They are bound together in a single volume. When you flip the book over to see the back cover, what you see instead is the cover of the other book. And when you get to the end of each story you'll find these resources:

• Language Guide
• Reader's Guide
• Author's Note

Van Camp's author's note tells us that his mother went to Residential school. He tells us that he recently worked up the courage to talk with his mother about her experiences. In her note, Monique Gray Smith writes that her family members were also in the schools. Both stories provide "insider perspectives" or to use the hashtag used today in literature circles to describe books like this, #OwnVoices.

In the United States, the schools are called boarding schools. These "exceptional nations" -- the US and Canada -- tried to stop Native people from being Native people. But those "exceptional nations"  failed.

Van Camp and Smith and their many books demonstrate the resilience of the people in their families--and the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Both stories are about modern-day kids, their families, and their communities. In them, you'll find pain, but you'll also find beauty in the characters and the writing, too. I highly recommend When We Play Our Drums, They Sing and Lucy & Lola. 

Note! Published in 2018 by McKeller and Martin, you can get them directly from them. Hit the link for instructions.

Apple, Echo, and the Importance of “More Than One Book"

Two Native high school girls, two unique stories about not fitting in, and about trying to make sense of Indigenous heritage/ancestry when something has disrupted their place in a Native community....

Most regular readers of this blog won’t need to be convinced that it takes more than one story about a group of people to adequately portray that group’s experience. Still, we know that in classrooms and in library collections across North America, the pickings are usually slim when it comes to books by and about Native people. So “the danger of a single story” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns about is very real.

Right now I’m revisiting that point -- yet again -- via two recently published books with contemporary Native teen girl protagonists. Dawn Quigley’s (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) debut novel Apple in the Middle (2018) is set in Minnesota and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. The protagonist, Apple, meets her Native family members for the first time, the summer after her sophomore year in high school.

Katherena Vermette’s A Girl Called Echo: Pemmican Wars (2017) is a graphic novel. Echo, the main character, is 13 years old. She is Metis, as is Vermette. The story is set in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Apple’s mother, who was Turtle Mountain Chippewa, died after giving birth to her. Apple grew up with her dad and stepmother (both white), in their upper middle class suburban world, where she feels like she never quite fits. She carries a sense of guilt for her mother’s death. She’s a bit prickly, and more than a bit socially awkward. Since an incident of open racism during grade school, she has tried to look as white as possible. Her father’s reluctance to tell her about her Native family hasn’t helped. As a narrator, Apple has a lot to say. She can be rude, impulsive, and loud, with a biting sense of humor, but she begins to dial it all down somewhat as she gets to know her Turtle Mountain relatives.

Of her sense of not fitting in, Apple says, “I call it the Ping-Pong effect because you’re the ball, and nobody ever wants you in their space. Have you ever felt like that? Never really belonging anywhere, but trying your darndest to run between two lives only to find you’re always stuck in the middle.”

Apple may feel that she's constantly running, but Echo’s days in Pemmican Wars seem to involve just putting one foot in front of the other, with tremendous effort.

Unlike Apple, Echo is nearly silent. She’s emotionally isolated at school and in her foster placement, and moves as if something is draining all her energy. She spends most of her time with her earbuds in: Guns n Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers. The only time we see anything like a smile on her face is when she finds some graphic novels about Metis history on a library shelf. She’s in a new school and knows nobody, though her history teacher seems to “see” her. When she falls asleep, she dreams herself into events from First Nations history, and it’s in those dreams that she seems to feel most alive -- and where she has a friend.

Her mother stays in some kind of institution – rehab or mental health facility, maybe – which hints at why Echo is in foster care. Echo opens up slightly when she visits her mom. She speaks, asks questions about their family's Metis background, tells her mom what she is learning. The history class, the dreaming, and her relationship with her mom may be what eventually help her find her place. (That's "eventually" because Echo doesn’t find resolution in Pemmican Wars. Vermette’s second Echo book is due out in December, and we can hope that things will be looking up for her protagonist.)

The changes Apple and Echo go through in their respective stories are very different from each other, though both characters move toward a stronger sense of who they are, and what being Indigenous means (or can mean) to them, as they deal with racism, school, family issues, and so on. Young people deserve to get to know both of them.  Their stories belong on the same shelves (and in the same gift bag!) with Cynthia Leitich Smith’s 2018 release, Hearts Unbroken, whose protagonist Louise faces the effects of personal-level and community-wide racism while navigating peer relationships and romance during senior year. 

Three brand-new, strong Indigenous female teen main characters -- now there's a gift for your students, your teen patrons, your children, and your grandchildren!

(Recognition is due Katherena Vermette’s collaborators on Echo – illustrator Scott B. Henderson and color artist Donovan Yaciuk. Because Echo speaks so seldom, it’s on the illustrations to convey key details about her life. And they do so with subtlety and grace! For example, the letters WPG on the front of a bus Echo rides signal that she's in Winnipeg. Or so I'm told.)

--Jean Mendoza

UPDATE 10/29/19: Last week, @debraj1121 commented on Twitter that although she liked Apple in the Middle, she was concerned about negative mentions of "voodoo." One of Apple's distorted ideas about Native people is that they practice what she thinks of as voodoo, which evidently both intrigues and frightens her. Apple's grandmother pushes back on that mistake, calling voodoo "nonsense" and enlightening Apple about their family's actual beliefs.

Reading the Twitter conversation that followed, I realized 1) how much I need to learn, and 2) it's important to make a statement here about how voodoo appears in Apple in the Middle.

Voodoo is widely misunderstood in mainstream Western culture, and is portrayed in horror films and the like, as a kind of magic that can be used to hurt someone or cause chaos. It's often racialized (practitioners shown as African, Afro-Caribbean, or African-American, and scary). Popular (mis) representations reveal little if anything about the actual cosmology, a complex belief system with origins in Africa. It probably had a powerful role in sustaining many people who were enslaved and brought to the continents currently called the Americas. It has many believers in Haiti and elsewhere, and is more correctly called Vodou or Voudon.

I was dismayed to realize that, focused as I was on Apple's ignorance about Native people, I had scarcely noticed the mention of voodoo in the book.  @debraj1121's tweet got me started looking into what "voodoo" really is. Beyond the very general statements above,  I can't be a reliable source of information; still building a sense of what's trustworthy. One scholarly exploration that I'm finding helpful is "Haitian Vodou and Voodoo: Imagined Religion and Popular Culture" by Adam M. McGee, which focuses not on the actual religion but on how it has been sensationalized in the mainly-White popular imagination.

Anyway, part of Apple's growth as a character involves putting aside misunderstandings about Native people. Authors often do that by having events or other characters interfere with the character's ignorance or mistaken ideas. Apple's grandmother's contradiction (voodoo is "nonsense") falls short.
Author Dawn Quigley has said on Twitter that she honors and values @debraj1121's insights,  and has contacted the publisher of Apple in the Middle about the problem. 

If you've read or shared Apple in the Middle, recognize that voodoo is a real religion and that in the Western imagination it has been heavily colonized by powerful and persistent misrepresentations in films, stories, etc. 

Also on 10/29/19 -- A large and growing number of previously-White-identified people in eastern Canada have begun coopting First Nations identity by being spuriously designated "Eastern Metis." (For more information, see Darryl Leroux's book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity,  and his Web site Raceshifting.) We want to note that A Girl Called Echo author Katherena Vermette and her character Echo are of the Metis nation in Manitoba, not the pretender group. 

Debbie--have you seen SQUIRM by Carl Hiaasen?

A reader of AICL wrote to ask if I've seen Squirm by Carl Hiassen. Published in 2018 by Knopf (Penguin Random House) here's the description:

Some facts about Billy Dickens:
  *  He once saw a biker swerve across the road in order to run over a snake.
  *  Later, that motorcycle somehow ended up at the bottom of a canal.
  *  Billy isn't the type to let things go.

Some facts about Billy's family:
  *  They've lived in six different Florida towns because Billy's mom insists on getting a house near a bald eagle nest.
  *  Billy's dad left when he was four and is a total mystery.
  *  Billy has just found his dad's address--in Montana.

This summer, Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, save a neighbor's cat, save an endangered panther, and then try to save his own father.

The review at Kirkus tells me that, in Montana, Billy learns that his dad--Dennis Dickens--has a new wife and that Billy now has a stepsister named Summer. They're members of the Crow Nation.

From what I can see in the Google Books preview, once Billy gets to Montana and to his dad's house, he meets Summer. Her last name is Chasing-Hawks. A few months after Summer's mom and Billy's dad started dating, Summer and her mom moved in with Billy's dad. Billy asks "Was it hard to leave the reservation?" Summer replies "Life on the rez can be...challenging?"

I'll see if I can get a copy, and if I do, I'll be back with a review.

Not recommended: Scott Kelley's I AM BIRCH

A colleague wrote to ask me about Scott Kelley's I Am Birch. Published in 2018 by Islandport Press, it is getting a 'not recommended' from me.

In the back of I Am Birch is an "About the Book" page that tells readers that:

The legends of Gluskap were part of artist Scott Kelley's childhood. One in particular, "How Rabbit Got Long Ears," was a favorite. In it, Rabbit tells the other animals that the sun is not going to rise again, and Gluskap must set the record straight.

Kelley had been working on a series of paintings of Wabanaki tribal elders, and another series of animals from the Maine woods. The story of Rabbit had been playing in his head for months, until he remembered a little drawing of a birch tree he had made, and at last, I Am Birch came to life: chaos and fear as seen by a birch stump, who, against all expectations, manages to put those fears to rest.

I am a former schoolteacher. Some people think books are just meant to entertain--but they definitely educate, too. What do students learn by reading I Am Birch?

Given the illustrations (I've included several, below) and the information in the "About the Book" page, I Am Birch looks like it is a Native story. So, I would try to figure out a few things.

First: Is the author Native? 

The answer? No. Kelley isn't Native. Course, that doesn't mean he can't tell create words or illustrations that look like they're meant to be be Native, but when someone chooses to create content that they're putting forth as Native, they must do a lot of research, first.

So, that's the second question. Does the author provide us with information about his research? Or, his resources? One of the touchstone articles about sources for  is Betsy Hearne's Cite the Source.

The answer? No. Nothing of that sort is listed in the book. I have no doubt that Scott Kelley meant well. But the images of Indigenous people that most Americans carry around are deeply flawed. Knowing they're flawed is the first step. Becoming aware of the big and small ways they're flawed starts by doing research--not of standard sources--but of books written by the people they are writing about. Because Kelley's book is about the Wabanaki peoples, he could start by reading nonfiction by Lisa Brooks. She is Abenaki. Zooming out a bit, he could also read a book by an Indigenous scholar like Daniel Heath Justice. His Why Indigenous Literatures Matter is new and an outstanding resource about our literatures.

Third: does the author give us anything at all to work with, in order for us to do a critical analysis of the content of their book?

In the back of I Am Birch, there is an "About the Book" page. It has some words to guide our analysis, but it is pretty thin. First is "Gluskap." Someone, we're told on that page, who can "set the record straight." Ok--Gluskap is someone with power or influence.

In that second paragraph of the "About" page, we see "Wabanaki tribal elders." I think we're to assume that the Gluskap of Kelley's childhood is associated with the Wabanaki -- but "Wabanaki" refers to several different tribal nations. Today, in Maine, there are four sovereign tribal nations:

• Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians, 
• Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, 
• Passamaquoddy Tribe, and the 
• Penobscot Nation. 

All four have websites that include links to pages about their histories, cultures, and their respective languages. As far as I've been able to see, none of them call their language Wabanaki and none of them refer to their tribal members as Wabanaki. And, these are distinct nations.

In short, the "About" page gave bits of information that I used, below, when I started looking at the content of the book.

Fourth: Does the author have a website that can help understand what they're doing with their book?

Kelley does, in fact, have a website and there are several news articles about his book.

In the "About" page, I read that Kelley was working on a series of paintings of Wabanaki tribal elders, I thought he meant that elders were sitting for portraits, but that's not the case. Turns out, Kelley is using old photographs to do his series.

You can see his method in a video, Scott Kelley Studio Timelapse, where he's shown doing an eagle (the eagle in the video is not in his book). Figure 1 (below) is a screen cap from the video. In the center is his canvas. On the left are what he's calling "Wabanaki elders." On the right are photographs of eagles.

Figure 1

If we zoom in, we can see that the hat he has put on that eagle is in the photo on the bottom left:

Figure 2

Those photographs Kelley used are what helped me learn that he's not correct in saying "Wabanaki elders." At least one of the people in the photographs he used to create the illustrations in I Am Birch are not Wabanaki. In Figure 3 (below) I put a screen cap of his bear next to a screen cap of the Native man he used for the headdress he put on his bear.

Figure 3

The photograph on the right is in the Massachusetts Historical Society's archive. It is titled "An Ojibwe man in DC." 

Next, look at the photos below (Figure 4) of a Penobscot man and two different Penobscot women. The man is wearing a large collar draped around his shoulders. In the center photograph, a woman is wearing it. In The Handicrafts of the Modern Indians of Maine," (published in 1932), Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (she isn't Native) wrote that women "have no right to wear it [that collar]." Is she right? I don't know, but one thing is known: in some of these old photographs, the photographers would ask people to put on items of clothing that didn't belong to them to make the photograph seem more authentic. The first two photographs were taken by A. F. Orr. I don't know if he was among the photographers who asked people to wear this or that, even if it wasn't theirs. Is Kelley aware that he should be careful in using these old photographs?

I haven't found who took the third photograph, of Molly Molasses.

Figure 4

As I compare what I see on his website with what he put into his book, I see that Kelley combined aspects of those photographs to create his Badger. In his Badger (Figure 5), you see the collar, and the cap shown on Molly Molasses. The photo of Molasses doesn't show much detail on the cap, but online you can find detailed photographs of the caps. They were often made of red trading cloth. In his book, Kelley refers to his Badger as a female. If Eckstrom is correct about who can and cannot wear the collar, then it is incorrect for Kelley to put it on Badger. 

Figure 5

On another page, Kelley has Deer (Figure 6):

Figure 6

I think Kelley used a photograph of Molly Muise (Figure 7), who was Mi'kmaq, to make Deer's cap.

Figure 7

****

Setting aside Kelley's art to look at the story in I Am Birch, the "About" page says that his story is inspired by "How Rabbit Got Long Ears." So far I have been unable to find any versions of that story. Searches of that story name take me to the "Native Languages" site--but those stories aren't sourced and some go to hokey sites. If you know where I can find it, please let me know.

Kelley's story opens with "Everyone calls me BIRCH, for I am a birch tree, much like any other." Turning the page, however, we read that Birch is not a tree anymore because Beaver came along and turned Birch into a stump. Beaver was mumbling "COLD AND DARKNESS." After a while, Porcupine comes along and tells Birch that COLD AND DARKNESS are coming and that everyone is terrified. Birch asks Porcupine who told him about this COLD AND DARKNESS. Porcupine thinks it was Deer. When Deer comes by, Birch asks her if she was the one who started it, and she says she heard it from Badger. This goes on for several pages, with Kelley using photographs of animals in Kelley's versions of Native articles of clothing. Because Birch is the one who finally figures out there is no COLD AND DARKNESS coming that everyone should be afraid of, I think Birch is meant to be Gluskap. Kelley's Birch sets things right.

****

In I Am Birch, some might find the art and the story compelling, and they might see it as a tribute to Indigenous people. But is it? I don't think so.

Kelley uses what he calls photographs of "Wabanaki elders" to create his characters, but those photographs are from distinct tribal nations--some of which aren't even Wabanaki. To some, his animals are pretty to look at, but this mish-mash treatment of different nations renders his art inaccurate. In creating this art, as he did, Kelley seems unaware of the need to be accurate and to do research to ensure accuracy.

Generally speaking, people don't make up stories like the ones they read in the Bible and put them forth as Bible stories. They understand that is doing that is disrespectful and sacrilegious to Christians who deem those stories sacred. That fundamental respect must be accorded to the stories of Indigenous peoples, too. The Gluskap stories are not folktales. To the people who tell them, they are sacred, creation stories. In creating the story he tells in I Am Birch, I think Kelley is stepping over lines of respect.

In short: I do not recommend Scott Kelley's I Am Birch, published in 2018 by IslandPort Press.

__________
Note: I found the references to Eckstorm's book here:
http://iroquoisbeadwork.blogspot.com/2013/01/wabanaki-beadwork-part-2.html

Classic, Award-Winning, Popular Books with Racist, Biased Depictions of Indigenous People

In my experience, a lot of people don't remember or realize that classic, award-winning, or popular books have Native content in them that is biased, stereotypical, or just flat out incorrect. I and others have written about several of those books. That writing is here on AICL but in research and professional articles and book chapters, too.

This post is a list of links to some of that writing. If you're a teacher or professor interested in using a children's or young adult book to teach critical literacy, these will work well for that sort of analysis.

Arrow to the Sun

Caddie Woodlawn 

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Little House on the Prairie

Sign of the Beaver

Touching Spirit Bear


What we need are books by Native writers! Check out AICL's Best Books lists.

Some thoughts on Native identity, in response to #ElizabethWarren (again)

Eds note: Below is a compilation of a tweet thread I did from Oct 20-21. (If you do tweet threads and want to compile them, try Spooler. That's what I used for this post.)

Thinking, today, about Native identity, and how we speak of it. 

I used to say "tribe" but realized that just "tribe" wasn't sufficient. For those who did not (and do not) know that we are sovereignty nations, "tribe" alone let them place us as a race or a cultural group. 

I can talk all day long about growing up on our reservation, doing the things we do as Native people there, and say things like "moccasins" and most people in the US would nod because it would fit with what they know of us as peoples with distinct cultures. 

But doing that is not enough. So--I use "nation." When I'm giving a lecture, I give an example of what it means to be a sovereign nation. A simple one: we decide how fast you drive on our reservation. If you go too fast and get a ticket, it is paid to our tribal gov offices. 

The US has many racial groups and many cultural groups but they don't have a land base over which they have jurisdiction such that they can set speed limits. 

If you're following the #ElizabethWarren news, you may have seen the word "citizen" or "citizenship" or "tribal member" or "enrolled." You may have been surprised to hear those words and/or to learn that tribal nations determine who their citizens or tribal members are...

But, that is how it works. Each tribal nation has ways it decides who its members are... and you can look that up if you know the name of the nation you're interested in. 

As I'm laying it out, it might seem pretty simple but... this is all political! Our tribal leaders and councils and the requirements are imperfect because, we're human beings. 

One of my top concerns is fraud. There's so many people that outright lie about a Native identity. It gets them jobs, or cred in some places, that they ought not have. 

Some people get jobs and cred by claiming it, but they're not outright lying. They really believe a family story. When someone asks for specifics, it can get uncomfortable for everyone. 

Someone who can't get enrolled, but who is definitely Native--that's an entirely different story. 

But those folks can generally point to cousins who are enrolled, who are kin. Those folks are usually known in the nations who they name as theirs. People in the nation will speak for them. 

I've been fooled by someone's claim to Native identity--more than once. When you find out that people tried to tell that person to stop identifying that way and they did it anyway... And they still do it... it is hard! 

There's resources out there. Books that can help you learn some of the nuances of all this. Eva Garroutte's REAL INDIANS is one.

Because of Warren, DNA [testing] is the big topic of the moment. It won't help you [get enrolled with a nation]. Read Kim Tallbear's book: NATIVE AMERICAN DNA: TRIBAL BELONGING AND THE FALSE PROMISE OF GENETIC SCIENCE

Speaking of myself, I am tribally enrolled at Nambé Pueblo, a sovereign nation that Spain, Mexico, and then the US regarded as a nation. We were a nation before the United States was a nation. 

Some universities, in an effort to stop fraudulent hirings (and there are MANY) are trying to figure out how to stop that kind of fraud. 

There's so many ways I could go with this thread. Things in my head. Like--years ago, Scott Lyons wrote an article in a newspaper, about tribal nations that were disenrolling Black people. That whole convo is very complicated, but, one

... one thing that Scott said was that tribal nations have to exist as nations, and that if we disenroll Black people, we were engaging in a form of ethnic cleansing. 

Some articles, books, etc. have helped me understand many dimensions of the politics of Native identity. Scott's is one of those. Wish I could find it. He's right. Those disenrollments were wrong. 

Native America Calling has had some very good segments on disenrollment. Here's one: Wednesday, April 6, 2016. Disenrollment. 

Here's another one: Wednesday, May 6, 2015. Tribal Enrollment and Blood Quantum. 

A lot of people think that it is racist to ask a Native person for "proof" of the identity. They're using a racial framework, and if this was a racial issue, it would be racist to ask -- but Native citizenship isn't about race. It is about nationhood. 

It is more like asking someone for proof that they're a US citizen. That's fraught, too, esp right now with this racist administration in DC, but that's [nationhoood] the framework where the question belongs. 

And--friends/colleagues who are Indigenous--if you see a tweet in this thread that needs clarification, please let me know. 

Another Native scholar who helped me clarify how I speak about Indigenous identity is Elizabeth Cook Lynn. I used her work to write a post for my site, titled Are We People of Color? 

I try to listen, weekly, to @mediaINDIGENA's podcast. I learn a lot from the guests there. Go here, and scroll down to episode 119. It was about DNA testing. 

People who follow me know that most of my work is in children's and young adult literature. My blog, American Indians in Children's Literature, has 11 years of posts on it. ELEVEN YEARS. That's a lot of content, available to you, at no charge. 

I said "at no charge" because most of the writing that we do is in journal articles, magazines, books... that cost money to get to. So--as a former schoolteacher, I do what I can to provide resources to people who want/need them. 

Most children's/YA books out there that teachers assign are deeply flawed. Like, ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS. Ugh. Don't assign that, please. Here's my critique of that book.  

Books like that one are huge obstacles to progress in terms of getting Native writers published, and getting their books read or assigned in schools. Seems ppl prefer long-ago-far-away "Indians" over stories that are real! That show our lives as we live them. 

Coming up soon, I'll be on the #NIEABookClub to talk about two excellent books by Native writers. 

One is @DanielVandever's picture book, FALL IN LINE, HOLDEN, which is about a kid in boarding school, where the goal was to stop Indigenous kids from being Indigenous. So--about identity. And asserting identity. 

The second one is @CynLeitichSmith's HEARTS UNBROKEN, where a teen girl in a suburb is navigating challenges to her identity. There's an important thread in Smith's book--about L. Frank Baum. Native ppl know why that's in there. 

Most non-Native people see "L. Frank Baum" and think 'yay' but they don't know that Baum wanted to exterminate Indigenous people. 

Europeans wanted us out of the way. But our ancestors fought back. That's why we're here, today, saying 'nope' to those who misrepresent us in children's books or in national politics. 

Vine Deloria Jr -- in volume 1 of DOCUMENTS OF INDIAN DIPLOMACY -- wrote something abt treaties that sticks with me. To Indigenous leaders/ppl, they were about relationships. To Europeans/Americans, they were about resources. Interesting, eh? 

Circling back to the Elizabeth Warren situation. So many Indigenous people are getting trolled by people who seem to think that, in speaking up abt what Warren did, we are choosing trump or GOP, as if our existence is one or the other. 

That kind of trolling demonstrates a lack of understanding, or, a lack of care if there is some understanding. That kind of response isn't helpful to anyone. 

The response that is needed, is one that is issued after you've read Native writing(s) about identity--specifically right now--about Warren. To help with that, I'm creating a list: A Curated List of Native Responses to Elizabeth Warren 

When I was at U Illinois, we had a couple of instances of ppl making claims... and so we drafted a statement: Identity and Academic Integrity 

I'll be adding to this thread as I see other items that are of relevance. See Dr. Arica Coleman's article in Time magazine: and get her book, THAT THE BLOOD STAY PURE. (time.com/5430057/elizab…)

See Kim TallBear's threaded response to Zerlina Maxwell's remarks on MSNBC a few days ago:

Kim TallBear@KimTallBear

Flat out wrong. Zerlina Maxwell obviously does not know what she is talking about regarding tribes & DNA testing: "MSNBC Analyst Drops Loaded Comment About Cherokee Nation For Rebuking Elizabeth Warren" https://www.dailywire.com/news/37346/msnbc-analyst-drops-loaded-comment-about-cherokee-james-barrett …

8:23 AM - Oct 21, 2018

MSNBC Analyst Drops Loaded Comment About Cherokee Nation For Rebuking Elizabeth Warren

One MSNBC analyst is particularly upset with Cherokee Nation for its blistering rebuke of Democratic Sen.

dailywire.com

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See Ebony Elizabeth Thomas's thread, with its link to an article by Henry Louis Gates:

Ebony Elizabeth

✔@Ebonyteach

This. (Thread.) https://twitter.com/KimTallBear/status/1054004350954233857 …

Kim TallBear@KimTallBear

Replying to @KimTallBear

White supremacy is the foundation of Indigenous appropriations, but it is not only white people who help uphold that system. non-whites are invested too in settler-colonial appropriation of all things Indigenous. just like other non-black POC are also capable of being anti-black.

8:53 AM - Oct 21, 2018

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As noted in tweets 8, 11, and 12, being a citizen or enrolled in a tribal nation is messy. I'm glad to see threads from friends/colleagues who can add to my/our/your understandings. See Elissa Washuta's thread:

Elissa Washuta

✔@elissawashuta

Being an enrolled citizen in a federally-recognized nation is not the only way to be Native. I do not think DNA is valid in determining Indigeneity, but I'm concerned about the reductive #nativetwitter takes I'm seeing that equate Indigeneity to citizenship.

10:04 AM - Oct 21, 2018

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See Daniel Heath Justice's thread, too:

Daniel Heath Justice@justicedanielh

In the wake of the Elizabeth Warren debacle, let’s not forget another way in which racial logics have displaced kinship in our own politics and relations: the continuing struggle for Freedmen descendants to be recognized as enfranchised citizens and relatives in the Five Tribes.

Daniel Heath Justice@justicedanielh

Replying to @chipotalosa

And for those of us who are scholars, do we ensure Freedmen voices & experiences are visible in our work, & not only as footnote?

1:16 PM - Oct 21, 2018

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And, see Rebecca Nagel's Facebook post about ongoing conversations about Cherokee Freedmen: Here's a screen cap of the first two para's of her post.