Friday, April 23, 2021

Guest Review: An-Lon Chen's review of WHO WAS SACAGAWEA? by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin

Note from Debbie: In February of 2021, I received an email from a parent who had questions about a scene in Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin’s biography of Sacagawea. That parent is An-Lon Chen. We began an email conversation. What she wrote struck me as the sort of activity that I want readers of AICL to see. First is the questioning, and then, the research, and all though that research process, collisions with the historical record, the master narrative, and what children learn. An-Lon's essay demonstrates the work some parents do when they read a children’s book to their child. I wish more parents would write about the work they do, and share that work. Publishers do pay attention to critical examinations of the books they publish. Writers do, too (for examples, see Revised and Withdrawn).

Note on April 27, 2021: You can follow An-Lon Chen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anlonchen

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An-Lon Chen's Review of Who Was Sacagawea?


I didn’t set out to write a book review when I contacted Dr. Reese about a scene in chapter 4 where Sacagawea learns that her brother, Cameahwait, is going to break a promise he had made to Meriwether Lewis. I was looking for help in finding the source material for that scene in Who Was Sacagawea? by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin. The book was published in 2002, but is still in print today from Penguin Random House. My family loves the Who Was? biography series and this was the first time I felt the need to do any fact-checking.



An old college friend eventually helped me locate the source material in Lewis and Clark’s expedition journals. Later in this review, I will post it side-by-side with its retelling in the children’s book. It’s an eye-opening look at how much any given author’s interpretation of Sacagawea’s inner thoughts and feelings is a reflection of that author’s own beliefs and their own racial stereotypes, however well-intentioned. (Readers with time constraints can jump directly to the scene in question the Fiction? Or Deceptions? section of this review, though I feel that its full significance is best appreciated in context.)


In this review, I will shine a light on that scene, a racist illustration, and a dishonest and evasive portrayal of United States government actions in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition. However, the problem with Sacagawea is much bigger than one particular book. Who Was Sacagawea? is, in all likelihood, one of the better Sacagawea books out there. The authors clearly cared about their subject matter and succeeded in telling a highly engaging story about a courageous heroine. Unfortunately, the story itself has deeper problems than they seem to have realized.


I was, to be honest, caught by surprise. I am not Native American and don’t have any particular insight into, or knowledge about, Sacagawea’s story. I am, however, a Chinese-American mother of a biracial child, and I am painfully aware of how deeply racist first impressions can linger. I was disturbed enough after reading Who Was Sacagawea? aloud to my five-year old daughter that I felt morally obligated to research and write this review.

Introduction

My daughter first learned about Sacagawea from a board book that was gifted to us called A is for Awesome by Eva Chen. That board book is not the subject of this review, but I include the illustration because it visually demonstrates two important aspects of how Sacagawea's story is told.



First and foremost, all we know about Sacagawea is what white men have written about her, in the third person. We have no record of her own internal thoughts and feelings. In A is for Awesome, Sacagawea is one of the few women in the book whose page doesn’t include an upbeat, inspirational speech balloon with a quote from her (like the one shown for Ginsburg). From a few scraps in Lewis and Clark’s voluminous journals, Sacagawea’s life has been constructed, re-constructed, appropriated, and re-appropriated by white suffragists, historians, schoolteachers, writers, and politicians. We, the non-Native American audience, remain fascinated by Sacagawea because her trek across the western United States with a baby on her back makes for such a good story.


The second aspect of her life story that A is for Awesome shows us is Sacagawea’s happy smile. A smile seems like an inconsequential thing to point out, especially in light of the more obvious question - where’s her baby? But the smile is important because Sacagawea has been used by two centuries’ worth of white authors to justify white expansionism. If Sacagawea can smile about the Lewis and Clark expedition and its aftermath, then we, too, are given permission to smile.


In an email I received from Dr. Reese, she says that she doesn’t know of a decolonized children’s biography of Sacagawea. In her own words from that email:


I'd promote that (non-existent) book so much because teachers all across the country could use it to teach kids how to analyze false narratives. People who don't want the narrative disrupted won't like it, but those who do... like me, well, we'd love it.


I’m going to pause here for a confession. Much as I want this non-existent biography to exist, I too have a strong emotional response to the story as we know it. In reading through the original Lewis and Clark journals, I too am drawn by Sacagawea’s bravery and resourcefulness and resilience. I too hear the siren song that inspired her countless white biographers, who wanted to bring her back to life and give her a voice. For these reasons, I do empathize with them. Her story is not a blank slate: from the journals, we glimpse just enough of her life to desperately want to know the rest. Without any existing window into her thoughts and feelings, we invent our own motivations for her actions. We don’t necessarily set out to write a revisionist history, but we do so simply because what we wrongly perceive as a blank slate is so frustrating and so tempting.


An honest biography would refrain from reconstructing what know from the journal fragments. It would also reframe the larger story in the context of Sacagawea’s own people rather than that of the white expedition. Finally, it would tell the story of her appropriation, which is fascinating and sad in its own right.


The white suffragists who rediscovered Sacagawea had a narrative of their own to disrupt: that history is made exclusively by men. Unfortunately, these women introduced their own explicitly colonialist message. Eva Emery Dye, the novelist who popularized Sacagawea to a white audience ninety years after her death, patriotically credited Sacagawea with “unlocking the gates of the mountains, and giving up the key to her country... giving over its trade and resources to the whites, opening the way to a higher civilization.” [1] [2]


This talk of giving the country over to the whites resonates with a sizable percentage of Americans today. That is the result of misrepresentations of her life story and this country's story. I think it is important that we all take a harder look at Sacagawea’s portrayal in children’s books, and recognize that schoolchildren are receiving that same misrepresentation to this very day. I don’t believe it’s possible to address any of the errors, omissions, and fabrications in Who Was Sacagawea? without seeing how neatly they fit together in support of the colonialist, expansionist narrative first put forth by turn-of-the-century white suffragists. Again, I don’t believe the children’s book authors explicitly intended to push this particular agenda. For too many of us, it is hard to see the bias in the materials we inherit.

Revisionist History

Framing the Story

Who Was Sacagawea? opens with these words (p. 2):


In the year 2000, the United States issued a new dollar coin. Its “heads” side shows an American-Indian woman. She is carrying her baby.


Who is this young woman? Her name was Sacagawea (Sa KA ga WE a). Two hundred years ago, she went with the Lewis and Clark expedition. The explorers traveled across the American Northwest. When the explorers were hungry, she found food. When they met Indians along the way, she acted as a translator. Thanks to Sacagawea’s help, the expedition was a success.


The Lewis and Clark expedition changed American history. It helped the United States settle a huge region. This area included what became the states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.


This is the standard framing for Sacagawea’s adventures. Schoolchildren learn at an early age that the Lewis and Clark expedition enabled white settlement in the Northwest United States, and that the expedition would have failed at multiple junctures if not for Sacagawea. This framing sets her up as the person who scored the game-winning touchdown for the other team.


The standard framing also sets up a false timeline and false sense of historical scale. Readers are given the impression that civilization began in Idaho, Washington and Oregon only after they were organized into the states we know today. In reality, tribes on the Columbia River Plateau had been trading with tribes on the Pacific coast by canoe for thousands of years, and trading with tribes across the Rocky Mountains by horseback for hundreds of years. Although the thirty-three members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first white people to make face-to-face contact with these inland tribes, many of them already possessed white trade goods and knowledge of white people obtained through their intertribal trade network [3]. From their perspective at the time, the Lewis and Clark expedition was no different from any of the French, British, and Spanish expeditions that had come and gone before [4].


Below, I’m going to quote every passage in Who Was Sacagawea? that addresses the white settlement of Native lands. This is a comprehensive recitation, down to the last sentence fragment. This is the revisionist American history lesson I delivered to my daughter when I read the book aloud to her. Unteaching it is easier said than done. She trusts the written word.

Resettlement to Reservations

The only information about Indigenous peoples’ forced resettlement to reservations is ignominiously buried in a two-page encyclopedic-like sidebar about buffalo, which I will reproduce here in its entirety (pp. 20-11):


Buffalo Hunting


The American bison is also called the American buffalo. A large male bison is about the size of a small minivan. At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, more than 50,000,000 bison roamed the Great Plains. The Shoshone and the other Plains Indians depended on them for food, warm clothing, and shelter. Their tipis were made from buffalo hides.


Whites begin to settle on the Great Plains shortly after the expedition. The United States government tried to force the Indian tribes to live on the reservations - smaller pieces of land.


In the late 1800s, white buffalo hunters killed all but 550 American bison. Having lost their food and shelter, the Indians moved to the reservations.


During the mid-1900s, some bison were returned to the prairies. Today, 150,000 bison live on ranches and in national parks in the United States and Canada.


The passage creates the false impression that the “Indians” (it’s unclear which) voluntarily moved to the reservations. It gives no sense of the geographical size and scope of the lost homelands in comparison with the ever-shrinking, often fatally distant reservations. And it also creates a more subtle and insidious false sense of scale by enumerating the buffalo’s huge population numbers in detail while lumping together all the “Indians” into one indistinct mass. Because the terms “Indians” and “Plains Indians” are used so generically, it’s impossible to figure out which nations and tribes either term refers to. 


Sacagawea’s Lemhi Shoshone, who lived in the Rocky Mountains on the other side of the Continental Divide and only hunted buffalo seasonally, are lumped in with the Plains Indians. I honestly can’t tell whether the “Indians'' who “moved to the reservations” when there were only 550 bison left, are just the Plains Indians (of which only the Mandan and the Hidatsa are even mentioned in the book), or all the Indian nations and tribes on the entire continent who were forcibly removed to reservations in the name of white settlement.


Though the Lemhi Shoshone and Nez Perce Indians of the Pacific Northwest are lauded in the book for having helped the Lewis and Clark expedition, this confusing sidebar about buffalo and Plains Indians is the closest the book comes to mentioning the wars, broken treaties, depletion of natural resources, incursion of white settlers, and political pressures that forced them onto reservations within less than a century. Let me say that again: that is the only place in the book where readers get even a hint of honest information about what Americans and the US government did to Indian people.

Exploration and Discovery

In Who Was Sacajawea? there are too many references to themes of exploration and discovery to list them all. This is the only one that acknowledges that the land originally belonged to the Indians (p. 21):


The voyagers would do more than visit the territory of the Louisiana Purchase. They would also explore what is now Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Great Britain also had its eye on this territory. Jefferson wanted American explorers to get there first. That would strengthen U.S. claims to the region. Nobody stopped to think that the land already belonged to the Indians.


Ultimately, the exploration and discovery narrative becomes the driving force. We see the virgin landscape unfold through explorer's eyes, from the expedition’s early days in St. Louis to the beached whale at the Pacific ocean.


The discovery narrative is so powerful and compelling, it inevitably overpowers the fact presented on page 21 that the Indians were there first. Devoid of context, it is like a carcinogen warning on the side of a package. The reader sees it and forgets about it. Without having been introduced to the diverse and distinct Indigenous peoples of the “unexplored” Columbia River plateau, and without having learned anything about their relationship with the land or the miles and the millennia that it spans, it’s easy for the reader to promptly dismiss the fact that the land already belonged to the Indians.

Commemoration

At the very end of the journey, we learn (p. 95):


The Lewis and Clark expedition reached St. Louis in late September. Cheering crowds greeted the men. They were heroes. They had explored vast and distant lands. Lewis and Clark had paved the way for America's settlement of the west.


The expedition is credited with enabling the invasion and occupation of Native homelands, and the book celebrates along with the cheering crowds. In the final chapter, “Honoring Sacagawea,” we learn less about the modern-day fate of her people than we did earlier when we read that today, there are over 150,000 buffalo on ranches and in national parks (p. 102):


During the 1800s, Indians and whites fought many wars. White people did not want to honor any Native Americans. By 1900, the fighting had ended. The country was getting ready to celebrate the expedition’s 100th anniversary. That was when Americans ‘discovered’ Bird Woman. Suddenly, she became very well-known. Sacagawea has had more landmarks named for her and memorials built in her honor than any other American woman. 


Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming have mountains named for Sacagawea. Washington and North Dakota have lakes named for her.


So how did the fighting end? Who won the wars? Do Indians still exist today? We never find out, as the book immediately segues into a recitation of Sacagawea’s many landmarks and memorials. 


In reality, the fighting ended only about thirty years before the unveiling of Sacagawea’s first major statue at the 1905 Portland World’s Fair. White veterans of the last Northwest Indian wars against the Modoc, Nez Perce, Bannock, and Paiute tribes were present among the crowds [5]. White female suffragists unveiled Sacagawea’s statue, draped it in an American flag, and gave speeches lauding her selfless, patriotic, and vital role in America’s westward expansion [6]. Make no mistake: Sacagawea’s statue was a propaganda piece and a victory celebration.


The irony is evident in the Sacagawea dollar coin released in 2000. Whose “liberty” is the United States government celebrating, and in whose God do we trust? Certainly not Sacagawea’s, or that of her Lemhi Shoshone tribe, or that of any other contemporaneous American Indian nation.



Erasure


At the 1905 Portland World’s Fair, National Woman Suffrage Association President Anna Shaw hailed Sacagawea as a memory of a conveniently vanishing race [7]:

“Your tribe is fast disappearing from the land of your fathers. May we, the daughters of an alien race who slew your people and usurped your country, learn the lessons of calm endurance, of patient persistence and unfaltering courage exemplified in your life…”  

Who Was Sacagawea? propagates the same nostalgic myth of the vanishing Indian by concluding with a recitation of Sacagawea’s many monuments and memorials while failing to mention that all the Indigenous tribes encountered by the reader in the book still exist today. For this review, I did a lot of research and learned a lot.


Sacagawea’s Lemhi Shoshone lived in their relatively isolated homeland valley for two more years after the 1905 Portland World’s Fair. Though they had remained mostly neutral during the Nez Perce, Bannock, and Sheepeater Wars, they were ultimately driven by political and economic pressures to relocate to the Fort Hall Reservation, 200 miles away. Tribal members refer to this exile from their homeland as their own “Trail of Tears” [8]. Though the small number of Lemhi Shoshone who remained in or returned to their homeland have not succeeded at obtaining federal recognition, they remain a distinct society today [9]. The Lemhi Shoshone who relocated to the Fort Hall Reservation are now part of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, a federally recognized sovereign nation with over 5,900 members. 


The Nez Perce tribe that aided the expedition after they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains is a federally recognized tribal nation with over 3,500 citizens. Though the Nez Perce Reservation is located on part of their homeland in north-central Idaho, the Nez Perce who aligned with Chief Joseph during the Nez Perce War of 1877 spent eight long and deadly years in exile on reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma before finally being allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest in 1885. 


The Mandan Indians in North Dakota who helped feed the expedition during the winter of 1804-1805 were ravaged by multiple smallpox epidemics and allied with the Hidatsa and the Arikara in order to survive. Today, they are the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, with 16,770 enrolled members. In 1949, the federal government displaced over 80% of their population in order to build the Garrison Dam. The loss of the river-valley homeland that had been their agricultural livelihood left The Three Tribes devastated economically, socially, and spiritually [10]. In 1985, Congress awarded them $149.5 million in just compensation for the lands underneath the lake created by the dam. This lake is called Lake Sakakawea, so named by the US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam [11].


There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes and 1.9 million tribally enrolled members in the United States today. This tally doesn’t include the Chinook and Clatsop tribes of the Lower Columbia River that are featured in the book for having traded with the expedition at the very end of their journey. The Chinook Nation, which includes both these tribes, is still fighting for federal recognition. Their struggle is not the focus of this piece, but it’s well worth visiting their own website to learn more. Ironically, because they never signed a ratified treaty or officially ceded homelands, they are now denied COVID relief and other forms of federal aid [12].


All these nations and tribes survived the white occupation of their ancestral homelands. So why were they written out of Who Was Sacagawea? Why do we get a modern-day update on the buffalo and the dollar coin and the namesake lake in North Dakota, but no update on the people themselves? Because in order to justify the discovery and settlement narrative, we need to pretend that the people we displaced no longer exist.


I’m going to shift gears at this point, from the larger historical canvas to the scene in the book that took me down the path that led to this review.

Fiction? Or Deceptions?

We know just enough from Lewis and Clark’s journals to be deeply drawn to Sacagawea as a human being, and we become emotionally invested in giving her a happy ending. I think many children’s biographers paint a false portrait of Sacagawea not for ideological reasons, but because letting her share in the happy ending of the white expedition is the only way to give her a happy ending at all. Rather than using Sacagawea’s story to reflect on hard truths about white settlement of Indigenous homelands, we now use it to assuage our collective guilt.


Most narratives downplay how little agency Sacagawea had in her own life. Sacagawea's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, was a predatory man who “married" at least five Native American girls, the last when he was 80 and she was 14 years old [13]. According to the Lewis and Clark journals, Sacagawea herself was captured in a raid at age 10 or 11 by the rival Hidatsa tribe (referred to in the book as the Minnetaree) and either sold, traded, or gambled away to Charbonneau when she was 13.


The authors of Who Was Sacagawea? go to great lengths to try and make Sacagawea’s backstory palatable to younger readers. In the first few pages, they insert an awkward paragraph explaining that like all Shoshone girls, she would have been married at age 13 or 14 to an older man within her own Shoshone tribe. My impression is that this is intended to soften the blow of her ensuing capture and forced marriage to Charbonneau.


In Chapter 4, Sacagawea emotionally reunites with her Lemhi Shoshone tribe in present-day Idaho after five years and 600 miles of separation. She learns that her brother Cameahwait is the new chief. He becomes part of the translation chain that allows the Lewis and Clark expedition to trade for horses and guides from the Shoshone in order to cross the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains.


Here, the book’s authors launch into speculation as to why Sacagawea stayed with the white expedition instead of staying with her people, conveniently avoiding the possibility that she may not have had a choice. But even that editorialization isn't enough, because the book also introduces a new, illustrated plot point (pp. 60-61):


Bird Woman must have been tempted to stay with her people. However, she chose to move on with the Corps of Discovery. We can only guess why. Perhaps she felt loyal to the explorers. They had treated her and Pomp kindly. She may never have felt so important before. The chance to visit other Indian tribes and see the ocean must also have been exciting to a young girl.


The explorers were still among the Shoshone when Bird Woman overheard something shocking. Her brother had changed his mind. He was going to break his promise. He was going to keep the horses and take his hungry people to hunt buffalo. Sacagawea told Charbonneau what she had learned. She asked him to tell Captain Lewis. Lewis confronted Cameahwait. The chief was ashamed. He would keep his word after all, he said. Once again, Sacagawea had helped save the expedition.


This is the point where I went on a protracted hunt for the original source material. The passage above felt a little too convenient. Here is a photo of that page:



This scene establishes Sacagawea’s brother as a deceitful, unreliable Indian, plants Sacagawea firmly on her husband's side, and firmly aligns her with the white expedition. The reader can relax and enjoy the rest of the book, believing that Sacagawea chose of her own free will to stay with the good guys.


Is it any wonder that some Native Americans think of Sacagawea as a traitor? Look at the illustration in the book above: Sacagawea is eavesdropping from behind a tree, and she’s about to snitch on her Shoshone brother to her white husband. As I am about to demonstrate, this scene is entirely fictitious. No part of it ever happened. But it appears in this biography. We’re conditioned to believe the words in print without question.


Here is the actual source material, with the only mention of Sacagawea underlined in blue. I will guide you through it, shortly. [14]




“Whilst at dinner we learnt by means of Sacajawea” (page 110) is the only mention of Sacagawea in this entire passage. All we learn from it is that she conveyed some information. There is no indication about how or why she chose to share that information, or that it was secret in any way, or that she had overheard it from behind a tree. All those details provided on page 60 and 61 of Who Was Sacagawea?, in other words, were invented wholesale.


The actual information being conveyed is more difficult to decipher without some context. I will summarize and give the needed background.


At the time of the journal passage, the expedition and Cameahwait’s party are camped some distance away from the Shoshone village in the Bitterroot Mountains. At this point, Lewis and Clark have traded for some horses from Cameahwait, and Cameahwait has indicated willingness to trade more. Lewis and Clark want the entire combined party to travel to the Shoshone village in order to continue bargaining for their needed horses. Cameahwait, however, has just instructed a runner (as conveyed by Sacagawea) to have his people leave the village and meet Lewis and Clark’s party at their current encampment instead. 


From there, they will make their seasonal journey down to the buffalo-hunting grounds on the Great Plains of present-day Montana. All of Lewis’s subsequent pontification refers to the horses he thinks he’s entitled to once they reach the Shoshone village in the mountains, not to any horses that have actually been promised. At the end of page 111 in the journals, Cameahwait agrees to change his plans. In subsequent journal entries, everyone arrives at the village and Lewis bargains for his horses.


Nowhere is there any indication that Cameahwait attempted to steal back horses that he had already traded away, or that Sacagawea saved the expedition by overhearing secret plans and ratting on her brother to her husband. The passage in Who Was Sacagawea? is entirely fictitious.


Not only is it fictitious, it is actively harmful. Why was that passage so believable that two decades’ worth of editors, reviewers, librarians, parents and schoolchildren never (to my knowledge) questioned it? Because it plays into our negative stereotypes of Native Americans. Because the shifty, capricious Indian chief fits neatly into our worldview and our preconceptions.


As for Sacagawea’s motivations in leaving behind her Shoshone people and staying with her husband, I found no information in the Lewis and Clark journals other than the following passage about the Shoshone man she had been betrothed to. As it turns out, he was still alive but didn’t want her back (p. 118).


When we brought her back, her betrothed was still living. Although he was double the age of Sacajawea, and had two other wives, he claimed her, but on finding that she had a child by her new husband, Chaboneau, he relinquished his pretensions and said he did not want her.


I assume that the authors of Who Was Sacagawea? read the same passages I read. Why was the passage above not offered as a possible reason Sacagawea stayed with the white expedition? Why was the passage about Cameahwait re-imagined into a traitorous plot point?


Because we want that happy ending so badly. Portraying Sacagawea as winning with the good guys is much easier than addressing what happened to those other guys. Sacagawea gets the happy ending we want her to have, but it is at the cost of being airlifted to the other team.

Sacagawea’s Son

I have one last critique of Who Was Sacagawea? in particular, and the Sacagawea story in general. Both have to do with Sacagawea’s baby.


The illustrator of Who Was Sacagawea?, like the authors, clearly cares about his characters and has clearly done research in bringing them to life. That said, I can’t get over this picture of Sacagawea’s one-year old son:




The hunched back, the weak chin, and the enormous feet look like they were inspired by popular imagery of Neanderthals. The Lewis and Clark expedition was 200 years ago, not 40,000 years ago. I’m sure the illustrator meant well. But it’s easy for subconscious bias like this to creep into illustrations, and go uncaught by an editorial and publishing team. As with the fictitious plot point about the traitorous Indian chief, this baby is believable only because of our own latent stereotypes and preconceptions.


The final story element that appears in every account of Sacagawea’s life is William Clark’s fondness for both her and her child. After repeated offers, Clark adopted the boy when he was about six years old. Sacagawea died shortly after giving birth to his sister two years later. Clark adopted the baby girl as well. She doesn’t appear in his records at all after her initial adoption, and may not have survived past childhood.


It’s easy for contemporary readers to see Clark’s adoption of Sacagawea’s son as being sweet and heartwarming, without recognizing the underlying worldview and preconceptions of the era: kind white adoptive parents will civilize the savage child and give that child a better life. I have yet to see any account of Sacagawea’s life that addresses the adoption of her children in the context of the United States government’s soon-to-be-realized practices of forced assimilation, now commonly referred to as cultural genocide.


The broader topic of assimilation is far too complex for a review like this to address. I’ll instead follow Dr. Reese’s advice and point readers to the recent film Dawnland, which tells the heartbreaking story of how Indigenous children were removed from their homes in order to “save them from being Indian.” The investigation shown in Dawnland was conducted through Maine’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first of its kind in the United States. Last year, then-Congresswoman Deb Haaland (now Secretary of the Interior), a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, introduced a similar bill at the federal level. The main section of this bill is well worth reading.

Decolonizing Sacagawea

Above, I wrote briefly that an honest biography of Sacagawea, with the tragic parts told, would look very different from the biographies that schoolchildren read today. When we zoom in, the exploration and discovery story is endlessly appealing. But when we zoom out, we can better see the false framing, the false timeline, the invasion and occupation story, the assimilation story, the appropriation, the wishful thinking, the latent stereotypes, and the ongoing harm.


I honestly don’t believe that any of this can be fixed for the target audience of the Who Was? series. A newly rewritten Who Was Sacagawea? with corrections made to all its falsehoods and errors would still be a dramatization beyond what we can reasonably know about Sacagawea’s own internal motivations, and it would still feature the same exploration, discovery, and settlement narrative. Tamper too much with any of these elements, and the story loses its appeal. Despite everyone’s best intentions, it would slowly get zoomed back in and edited back down to its previous form, perhaps with a few awkward and unconvincing disclaimers.


Older students could perhaps benefit from an entirely different treatment of Sacagawea’s story, one that bypasses the false dramatization and instead presents all the primary source journal fragments in their original form, along with the tools and context necessary to understand why and how they got assembled together to fit the familiar, colonialist narrative. Even then, there are many chasms where such a book and its readers could easily get trapped. This would prevent them from reassembling the puzzle pieces into a more honest form. I don’t pretend to be able to navigate past these chasms, but I will point them out because I’ve encountered each of them multiple times over the course of researching this piece.


First and foremost, there’s the strong desire to save both Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark expedition from being cast as the bad guys. This is understandable, given that the explorers weren’t the ones who authorized the invasion, occupation, and cultural genocide that followed the expedition. It can be difficult to grasp that even though the Lewis and Clark expedition didn’t directly do the harm, it was and is an extremely effective vehicle for justifying the harm done to Native peoples. This justification happens in other places and times, too, as shown by the engineered lake over Mandan Indian homelands--a lake that was named for her, and the statues of her, everywhere. Her name is used to serve the same purpose: justifying colonialism.


A decolonized biography of Sacagawea would need to focus on dismantling the propaganda rather than arguing about everyone’s good intentions. Straw man arguments against Sacagawea being a traitor tend to fall into this trap. No, she herself wasn’t a traitor in the Benedict Arnold sense. She didn’t name the lake. But her story routinely gets told to children in a way that betrays her people: revisionist history followed by erasure and hollow commemoration. We lose sight of the betrayal when we take swings at the straw man.


Another potential chasm is the fact that Sacagawea and her descendants proudly figure in multiple tribes’ oral histories, at odds with the scanty written record that says she died at age 25. It’s tricky to avoid passing judgment on the veracity of competing claims, and it’s even trickier to avoid taking tribal members’ pride in their kinship with Sacagawea as license to continue telling our own harmful version of the story. My hope is that we can respect the Lemhi Shoshone, Shoshone-Bannock, Wind River Shoshone, Hidatsa, and Comanche histories while recognizing that popularizing one or more of them would have little effect on the revisionist history currently being taught to children. Even though we could, in theory, give Sacagawea a happier personal ending by adopting a version of the story where she leaves her white husband and reunites with her own (Shoshone or Hidatsa or Comanche) people, the happier personal ending doesn’t change the broader political and historical canvas. 


Perhaps the most significant chasm is the whiteness of the source material itself. The Lewis and Clark expedition diarists, despite their best efforts, were not reliable ethnographers. Their journals contain numerous misrepresentations of Indian traditions and customs. An honest biography would need to address and compensate for those misrepresentations, which is much easier said than done. Sacagawea spent most of the journey alone among white people. She’s an easy heroine to offer up to white kids precisely because of her isolation. They get a semblance of diversity without ever needing to experience an Indigenous society or lifeway or worldview.


I haven’t commented on the authenticity of any of the cultural details in Who Was Sacagawea? because I am not Native American myself, but even I cringed every time the book made blithe generalizations about “Indian” customs without specifying which tribe they belonged to. Is it common for all Indians to have many different names during childhood (p. 6)? Do all Indians refer to late October as “Moon of the Falling Leaves” (p. 23)? Do all Indians refer to the middle of winter as “Frost in the Tipi” (p. 31)? No, of course not. These cultural details, even if they’re authentic, are unique to specific tribes. But mixing and matching those details is apparently good enough for white authors writing for white children. Sacagawea’s story unfortunately lends itself to this surface-level treatment because the reader meets a lot of tribes without lingering long enough to differentiate between them.


Getting past these chasms goes well beyond my own knowledge or ability. I will, however, offer one screening question for any future biography of Sacagawea that purports to be decolonized: is the reader upset by the end of the story? Has the reader acquired enough cultural and historical context from outside the expedition itself to mourn the government betrayals and the lost homelands? If the reader is not actively mourning, then perhaps the book in their hands is still the same old story that continues to deny the truths of what happened.


If this sounds depressing, there are other ways to offer hope. There are other Indigenous heroes and heroines to celebrate, especially for the younger audience of the Who Was? series. There are contemporary heroes and heroines who would help kids realize that Native Americans still exist today. Endlessly rehashing the Sacagawea story seems to make white people feel better, but it’s ultimately an avoidance mechanism. It’s an easy way to get a Native American heroine onto a bookshelf without challenging white mindsets and white worldviews. It pushes better books off the shelf and prevents better books from being written.


There are better books already out there. My daughter and I are slowly making our way through some of the selections on Dr. Reese’s website. We both loved Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story by S. D. Nelson (Abrams, 2013). That’s a start. I too have a lot to learn.


References


[1] Blee, Lisa (2005). Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 106(2), 245. Retrieved from https://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/Blee-Completing-Lewis-and-Clark.pdf


[2] Oregonian, July 7, 1905. Retrieved from https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83025138/1905-07-07/ed-1/seq-11/


[3] Conner, Roberta (2006). Our People Have Always Been Here. In Josephy, Alvin Jr. (ed.), Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes: Nine Indian Writers on the Legacy of the Expedition (p. 90). Vintage.


[4] Ibid, p. 100.


[5] Blee, Lisa (2005). Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 106(2), 239. Retrieved from https://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/Blee-Completing-Lewis-and-Clark.pdf


[6] Ibid, pp. 239-245.


[7] Brooks, Joanna (2004). Sacajawea, Meet Cogewea. In Fresonke, Kris, and Mark Spence (eds.), Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives (p. 184). Berkeley:  University of California Press. Retrieved from http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4q2nc6k3/


[8] Campbell, G. (2001). The Lemhi Shoshoni: Ethnogenesis, Sociological Transformations, and the Construction of a Tribal Nation. American Indian Quarterly, 25(4), 556-567. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1186016


[9] Ibid, p. 567.


[10] “MHA Nation History.” Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, MHA Nation. Retrieved April 6, 2021 from www.mhanation.com/history


[11] Cross, Raymond (2004). “Twice-born” From the Waters. In Fresonke, Kris, and Mark Spence (eds.), Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives (p. 117). Berkeley:  University of California Press. Retrieved from http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4q2nc6k3/


[12] Fernando, Christine (2021, February 27). “Pandemic leaves Chinook Nation in Washington, other tribes not federally recognized, at higher risk.” The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/covid-19-pandemic-leaves-chinook-nation-other-tribes-without-us-recognition-at-higher-risk/ 


[13] TW - sexual violence. “Toussaint Charbonneau.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, April 10, 2015. https://www.nps.gov/jeff/learn/historyculture/toussaint-charbonneau.htm


[14]  Lewis, Meriwether & Clark, William (1814). “History of the expedition in command of Captains Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri : across the Rocky Mountains down the Columbia River to the Pacific in 1804-6 : a reprint of the edition of 1814 to which all the members of the expedition contributed” (pp. 110-111). Toronto: Morang.

Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/historyofexpedi02lewi/page/110/mode/2up


Not Recommended: Paco Le Reveur by Alex Cousseau and Olivier Latyk

Recently I have been talking (online) with people from places outside of North America. I was familiar with stereotypical images (in art and illustration) with Karl May's books, and those by Herge, some of the Babar books, and others. I asked folks to send me things they come across. 

Today, I'm sharing an interior page from Paco le Reveur by Alex Cousseau and Olivier Latyk. It was published by Belin Education in Paris in 2017. Here's the cover:


And here's the interior page:



AICL's readers will see the problems right away. The authors do not specify a tribal nation for the main character. This means the information is a mish-mash of anything those who created the words and illustrations associate with "Indian." In this case we see renderings of tipis and totem poles in a place that suggests Monument Valley. I can't read French, so don't know what any of the words mean. 

Cousseau has won awards for his work (not this one, as far as I can tell). I might make time to look, later. For sure, I would not recommend his book. If you happen to have books in French in your library and this is amongst them, I recommend replacing it with ones that don't misinform readers about Native peoples. 




Friday, April 16, 2021

A Housekeeping Note

Good morning!

This post is specifically for the people who subscribe to American Indians in Children's Literature. You receive an email when a new post goes live. In July, the service that provided the option to subscribe by email will no longer be available. 

Other than email, you can keep up with AICL using Twitter. We usually post links there. Find us at:

@debreese
@JeanMendoza2016

We will look into other email subscription options. If you know of one, let us know! 

Thanks!
Debbie


Wednesday, April 07, 2021

Highly Recommended: WHEN THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD WAS SUBDUED, OUR SONGS CAME THROUGH: A NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF NATIVE NATIONS POETRY, edited by Joy Harjo




When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through:
A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry
Edited by Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), with LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), 
Jennifer Elise Forester (Mvskoke), and Contributing Editors
Cover art by Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo)
Published in 2020
Publisher: W.W. Norton and Company
Review Status: Highly Recommended
Reviewer: Debbie Reese

****

I watched the livestream when this Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through was launched on August 21 at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe. I love the title, and I love seeing "Native Nations" in the subtitle! 

Luci Tapahonso (Diné) was there, with Joy. Thinking about it this morning makes me smile as I recall the warmth between these two Native women. And I recall Harjo's reading of "Rabbit Is Up To Tricks." It was weeks before the presidential election. When you read or listen to it, you will likely feel the same chill I felt. That poem was first published in Harjo's 2015 book, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. 

Last year when the anthology was published, I wrote about Marcie Rendon's poem, "What's an Indian Woman to Do?" Since then, I page through my copy of the book and see names of people I know and think that I've got to do a blog post about their poems, especially for teachers who are using their books. Here at American Indians in Children's Literature and elsewhere, I've written about poems and stories and books by Kimberly M. Blaser, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Heid E. Erdrich, Louise Erdrich, Eric Gansworth, Joy Harjo, Layli Long Soldier, Deborah A. Miranda, Simon Ortiz, Marcie Rendon, Kim Shuck, Leslie Marmon Silko, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Mark Turcotte, James Welch, Gwen Westerman, Tanaya Winder, and Ofelia Zepeda. Teachers who assign their works can add their poems to the author studies they do of these wonderful Native writers. For each writer in the book, you'll find their tribal nation listed by their name. 

The anthology has 161 poets! I recognize some names but not all of them. As we move what I hope is the end of the weight of the pandemic, I hope to read them all. I'm grateful to Harjo and the editors for the care that went into this anthology. I recommend you study her introduction to it, too. Among the passages that stand out for me is this one (page 3): 
Many who open the doors of this text arrive here with only stereotypes of indigenous peoples that keep indigenous peoples bound to a story in which none of us ever made it out alive. In that story we cannot be erudite poets, scholars, and innovative creative artists. It is the intent of the editors to challenge this: for you to open the door to each poem and hear a unique human voice speaking to you beyond, within, and alongside time. This collection represents the many voices of our peoples, voices that range through time, across many lands and waters.
One of the voices I found inside is Chief Seattle. Many people feel they know him and his writing, due to the ways a speech he gave in 1854 have been mis-used by non-Native writers. Some of you may recall the criticism I've written of Susan Jeffers's book that uses that speech. In the anthology you'll find a different excerpt. 

Over time, I'll write about poems in the book. For now, I want to draw your attention to the art on the cover. Yesterday as I gazed out the window, in the early dawn and in the late afternoon, I was thinking about the quality of the light. Beside me on the table was When the Light of the World Was Subdued. I wonder if my unconscious mind was at work, forming links from the light to the book cover. Here's the cover again, in a larger size than I used above:



This morning as I thought about the book I wanted to know more about Emmi Whitehorse. At Chiaroscuro, she wrote this about her work:
My paintings tell the story of knowing land over time - of being completely, micro-cosmically within a place. I am defining a particular space, describing a particular place. They are purposefully meditative and meant to be seen slowly. The intricate language of symbols refer to specific plants, people and experiences."
The art on the cover is titled Kin Nah Zin #223. Whitehorse created it in 1983. For me, it has depth that reflects the fact that we, Native peoples of the continent currently known as North America, have been here, always. And the qualities of the light--its very presence as rendered by Whitehorse--shine light on what was, and what will be, too. If I was a poet I might have the words needed to say what I feel as I look at that cover and think about the anthology and about Harjo, too, and the light she brings forth.

Yesterday (April 6, 2021) I watched a zoom event that featured Harjo. Like the poems she writes and the music she creates, the words she spoke yesterday are ones that I will return to. You can watch it, too, on YouTube. As noted above, I highly recommend When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. Get a copy for yourself and ask your library to get a copy for their collections. 

And... a couple of ideas that take you from an admirer to an activist! If your institution is among those that are doing land acknowledgments, look for a poet of the people that your acknowledgment names. Use the anthology to find one, and read that poem at your gathering or meeting or conference. Go to your bookstore and library, and put in requests for other writings by the poets in your area. 


Friday, March 26, 2021

Why did Dav Pilkey and Scholastic decide they will no longer publish THE ADVENTURES OF OOK AND GLUK, KUNG FU CAVEMEN FROM THE FUTURE?

Note: These updates are based on information I received after I wrote the blog post. They are in reverse chronological order (newest one appears first):

Update from Debbie on Sunday, March 28 at 12:50 PM: I talked with Mr. Kim. In my conversation with him, it is clear to me that his conversations with Mr. Pilkey have been positive. I'm glad to know that is the case. Mr. Kim has inserted two edits to the third paragraph of the petition. They are in bold, italicized font and read as follows:

(Edit: 3.28.21 1:10pm EST - At the time I drafted this petition, I had emailed Scholastic with my requests and interpreted their delay in responding as a refusal to acknowledge same. I now believe this is inaccurate and misleading, as Mr. Pilkey made clear to me later on that he and Scholastics were in discussions behind-the-scenes to address these issues that I was not privy to).

(Edit: 3.28.21 1:10pm EST - Per my conversations with Dav Pilkey, he and his family made donations to an AAPI-affiliated organization prior to his public apology, and there was no refusal on Mr. Pilkey's end to donate). 

Here is a screen capture of that paragraph. It is an important update to the petition:


 Update from Debbie on Sunday, March 28 at 9:45 AM: I received an email from Mr. Kim and I hope he edits the petition. As Sayuri Pilkey said, it does not accurately reflect Mr. Pilkey's response. But I am not casting aspersions on Mr. Kim, either. Parents speaking up for our children and our peoples often do so from emotional and painful spaces. 


Update from Debbie on Sunday, March 28 2021 at 5:01 AM: I've reached out to Mr. Kim but he has not yet replied. I was able to see his posts to Facebook about these events. In reading them, I believe Sayuri Pilkey is correct: Dav Pilkey did not refuse to make a public statement. The refusals were coming from Scholastic and I believe Scholastic's wishes that this all happen quietly are why Mr. Kim posted his petition at the Change site. The writing in the petition still says "Scholastic and Mr. Pilkey" and I hope that Mr. Kim edits that as soon as possible. His "Update" does not constitute an edit to the original petition. 

Update from Debbie on Saturday, March 27 2021 at 11:00 AM: There is conflicting information regarding the sequence of events, and Dav Pilkey's response to Mr. Kim. Sayuri Pilkey submitted three comments on March 27 at 12:59 AM, 1:34 AM, and 2:49 AM. Comments to AICL are moderated (due to spam). Just now (11:00 AM), I opened the submitted comments page on my site and saw Sayuri Pilkey's comments. As soon as I can, I'll place the comments within the body of the post (lot of people don't read comments). 

Update from Debbie on Saturday, March 27, 2021 at 4:55 AM: I changed the original title of this post into a question ("Why did...") because the original title was misleading. While it is important that Pilkey and Scholastic made the decision to stop publishing the Ook and Gluk book, people are praising them in ways that I don't think are merited. A Korean American parent brought the stereotyping in the book to their attention. They agreed it was a problem but refused to say anything publicly. The public statements from Pilkey and Scholastic came about after the parent posted a petition at the Change site. I believe the parent was correct in asking for public statements and donations from sales of the book. The public is best-served by open discussions of problems in books like Ook and Gluk.  







On March 25, 2021 Dav Pilkey, best selling author and illustrator of children's books, issued this apology on his YouTube page:
Hi everyone, I’m Dav Pilkey. About ten years ago I created a book about a group of friends who save the world using Kung Fu and the principles found in Chinese philosophy. The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future was intended to showcase diversity, equality, and non-violent conflict resolution. But this week it was brought to my attention that this book also contains harmful racial stereotypes and passively racist imagery. I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for this. It was and is wrong and harmful to my Asian readers, friends, and family, and to all Asian people. My publisher, Scholastic, Inc., has stepped forward to share my responsibility, and together we are ceasing all further publication of The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future, and are actively working to remove existing copies from retail and library shelves. I hope that you, my readers, will forgive me, and learn from my mistake that even unintentional and passive stereotypes and racism are harmful to everyone. I apologize, and I pledge to do better. Sincerely, Dav Pilkey PS. My wife and I pledge to donate all of my advance and royalties from the sale of The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future to charities that provide free books, art supplies, and theater for children in underserved communities; organizations that promote diversity in children’s books and publishing; and organizations designed to stop hatred and violence against Asian. These non-profit charities include: We Need Diverse Books, The AAPI, and TheaterWorks USA, among others.

Events that led Pilkey and Scholastic to cease publication of The Adventures of Ook and Gluk are noted below.

In a petition at Change, a Korean American father wrote that his two children are huge fans of Pilkey's books. They found Ook and Gluk at the library and brought it home. In his petition, he wrote:
Upon close inspection, I realized the book relied upon multiple instances of racist imagery and stereotypical tropes, including a "Kung Fu master" wearing what's purported to be a traditional-style Tang coat, dashes for eyes for the Asian characters, stereotypical Chinese proverbs, and a storyline that has the Kung Fu master rescued by the non-Asian protagonists using their Kung Fu skills (despite the fact that they were taught said skills from the supposed master). 
The father reached out to Scholastic and they had several conversations. Scholastic agreed to pull the book from retailers, but, Scholastic and Mr. Pilkey refused to publicly acknowledge and apologize for the book, and declined to donate proceeds from the book's run as a bestseller (it was on the NY Times bestseller lists for 33 weeks) to AAPI. 

Those refusals, I gather, are what led the Korean American father to launch a petition on the Change site. I cannot find date/time stamps on the petition at the Change site that would tell me when it was posted. In the update tab dated March 26, the Korean-American father reported that Pilkey had apologized and that Scholastic was going to do so, too.  Here, I am sharing that update in its entirety:

MAR 26, 2021 — 

UPDATE: My head is spinning. Thank you so much for sharing and spreading the word. Mr. Pilkey reached out to me via FaceTime to acknowledge that the images in “Ook and Gluk” were racist and offensive, and that it was unintentional and stemmed from his own ignorance. Mr. Pilkey was extremely apologetic and remorseful, felt terrible that he had put something into the world that could have such a negative effect on our children. He personally apologized to my son as well.

Mr. Pilkey also listened patiently while I explained to him why I thought it was so important to publicly acknowledge that these images were harmful, and that a donation should be made to an AAPI org as a form of reparation. He was hesitant about the apology and advised he’d need to discuss it with his family. He did point out that he had already donated to an organization days before.

Within an hour of ending our 40 minute conversation, Mr. Pilkey emailed to let me know he would be issuing a formal and public apology.

I can’t believe how quickly this happened and believe it speaks to the sincerity of the author and his willingness do the right thing. This is not about canceling people. It was a teachable moment and I’m grateful Mr. Pilkey listened.


Another update, also dated March 26, includes the screen capture of the apology on Pilkey's YouTube page (shared at the top of this post).

Earlier today (March 26), Scholastic issued a press release telling us they made their decision on Monday, March 22nd.  Here's the statement:

FROM SCHOLASTIC REGARDING THE ADVENTURES OF OOK AND GLUK

On Monday, March 22, 2021, with the full support of Dav Pilkey, Scholastic halted distribution of the 2011 book The Adventures of Ook and Gluk. Together, we recognize that this book perpetuates passive racism. We are deeply sorry for this serious mistake. Scholastic has removed the book from our websites, stopped fulfillment of any orders (domestically or abroad), contacted our retail partners to explain why this book is no longer available, and sought a return of all inventory. We will take steps to inform schools and libraries who may still have this title in circulation of our decision to withdraw it from publication.  

Throughout our 100 year history, we have learned that trust must be won every day by total vigilance. It is our duty and privilege to publish books with powerful and positive representations of our diverse society, and we will continue to strengthen our review processes as we seek to support all young readers.

We can all be glad and encouraged by Pilkey and Scholastic's decision. It is important to know, however, that Scholastic continues to publish many books with stereotypical and racist images. 

Five years ago, they withdrew A Birthday Cake for George Washington because of its smiling slaves content. If they had issued a directive, then, that every book they publish would be examined, Pilkey's book would have been pulled, but it wasn't. It was out there for another five years, shaping the way readers see Asian Americans, Asians, and specifically, Chinese people. That fact alone casts Scholastic's "total vigilance" into question. They made their decision on Monday, March 22nd, which is five days ago. Are they now reexamining all their books? I doubt it. 

__________
I keep a log of changes to books, and books that are withdrawn. It includes links to information. 

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Highly Recommended! PEGGY FLANAGAN: OGIMAA KWE, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

On March 24th, Jean posted her review of Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector. It is one of three terrific books published by the Minnesota Humanities Center. Read her review! Today, I'm sharing my thoughts on another book in that series. 

Highly Recommended!

Peggy Flanagan: Ogimaa Kwe, Lieutenant Governor
Written by Jessica Engelking
Illustrations by Tashia Hart
Published by Minnesota Humanities Center
Reviewed by Debbie Reese
Review Status: Highly Recommended

****


A few months ago, when I saw the cover of this book on social media, I was psyched! Well, let me say that again: 

I was psyched!!!! 

Across Native networks, we've been deeply supportive of Native people who run for state and national offices--especially Native women. I had come to know about Flanagan from friends and colleagues in Minnesota, and I was thrilled when, in 2018, she was elected as the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota. 

That's Native context. 

Now, consider another context: biographies in children's literature. For a chapter in a book due out this year, Representations and Possibilities: Reading and Teaching with Diverse Nonfiction Children's Books edited by Thomas Crisp, Suzanne M. Knezek, and Roberta Price Gardner, Betsy McEntarffer and I did research on children's biographies of Native people. As you might guess, we found very few on women, very few by Native writers, and very few about Native people who were born after 1900. 

And now, consider state history standards. In their study of the standards, Dr. Sarah Shear and her colleagues found that eighty-seven of the state history standards to not mention Native history after 1900. 

Regular readers of AICL know that we write a lot about the need for books by Native writers that are set in the present day. They can function as a mirror for Native kids where they see a reflection of who they are, and a window for non-Native kids that can tell them that Native people are citizens or members of hundreds of distinct Native Nations and that we are here--in the present day. The state history standards are telling, aren't they? Kids are not taught that we are still here. Books like this biography of Flanagan fill a huge gap in what is available, but it ought to be inserted in those state standards documents, too!

If Betsy and I were writing that chapter on non-fiction today, we'd be including Engleking and Hart's biography of Peggy Flanagan. We might start with a close look at the cover. That, of course, is Peggy Flanagan, but study the illustration. 



On her blouse is a strawberry. Wild strawberries are a traditional Ojibwe food. Behind Flanagan are three flags. Not two, but three. One is the US flag, another is the Minnesota flag, and the third? Well--that's the White Earth Nation's flag:


Most readers may not notice the strawberry or the flag, but Ojibwe families will, for sure! Hart's illustrations and Engleking's words are mirrors of their identity. 

The subtitle for the book includes "Ogimaa Kwe." Those are Ojibwe words. Throughout the book, readers will find additional Ojibwe words--which adds another layer of the books mirror-like qualities for Ojibwe children. 

The biography starts in 1986 when Flanagan was in first grade in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. It is recess time, and Peggy is outside, playing. But she’s thinking about the lessons they were doing before recess. Her teacher had been talking about Christopher Columbus. Peggy knows her people were here before he was, and she knows the impact of Europeans on Native peoples, so, she’s not looking forward to going back into the classroom where she anticipates they’ll keep talking about him. Hart’s illustration for that page shows three kids at desks, taking notes as a teacher writes on the chalkboard. We can see Peggy’s page. She’s not taking notes. Instead, she’s sketched a sad face. Here's that page:


That, too, is a mirror of Native experiences in school. For far too long, Native children have been in classrooms where a teacher puts that myth forward, uncritically. I'm glad that's in there, and I hope it is the nudge teachers need to stop doing that! 

As we move through the book, we learn that Peggy and her mother needed food stamps. That honesty is important. We also learn that Peggy found teachers who believed in her. When we move to Peggy's college years, we learn that she went to St. Cloud State University in 1998 but transferred a year later, to the University of Minnesota. There, we read about how excited she was to walk into a classroom and see someone who looked like her. That person is Professor Brenda Child. An aside: Dr. Child has written excellent books for adults but she also wrote the children's picture book, Bowwow Powwow, which we at AICL highly recommend. The last chapter is about Flanagan being sworn in as Lt. Governor of Minnesota in 2019, and the back matter includes an Ojibwe timeline and a set of questions for discussion. Those are precisely the kinds of things that make it possible for teachers to more readily use the books in the classroom.

The illustrator, Tashia Hart, is also a writer. I’ve got her Gidjie and the Wolves in my to-be-read pile, and I follow her on social media. She’s working on a romance novel! Anybody who reads romance novels knows that genre is flooded with white women writing dreadful books that are marketed as being about Native people. 

As I sit here, re-reading what I've written about Peggy Flanagan: Ogimaa Kwe, Lieutenant Governor, I think you can tell that the book resonates with me, tremendously. It does that in another way. The book came out in 2020. In the "About the Author" note, I see this:
She currently resides in Minnetonka and is isolating in Elklader, Iowa...
Isolating. It is the first book I read that referred to the pandemic and its impact on all of us. Somehow, Engleking's reference to isolation touches on a tender place. As I write this review, we feel that we see hope at the end of a long year. Part of that light is seeing another Native woman assuming a leadership role. Of course, I'm referring to Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo, who was sworn in as Secretary of the Interior. She has worn traditional Pueblo clothing for many events, including at her swearing in. 


We need a biography of her, and of Sharice Davids, too. She's Ho-Chunk and was elected to Congress to represent Kansas, in 2019. Haaland was also elected that year, to represent New Mexico. 

I best hit the pause button on this post! I highly recommend Engleking and Hart's biography of Flanagan. As I noted up top, Jean reviewed another book in this three-book series, and we've got one more to do! That'll be Kade Ferris's book about Charles Albert Bender! 


Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Recommended: Ella Cara Deloria, Dakota Language Protector

 


Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector
Written by Diane Wilson (Dakota)
Illustrations by Tashia Hart (Red Lake Anishinaabe)
Published by Minnesota Humanities Center in partnership 
with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council
Reviewed by Jean Mendoza
Review Status: Highly Recommended


AICL readers, and especially middle-grade teachers! Don't miss the book launch for a new series that I wish had been available for my kids! 

You can register now to attend the online event Thursday, March 25, 2021, from 6:30 -8:00 PM (Central), to celebrate the publication of three biographies for students in 3rd-5th grade (and beyond). 

They are part of the Minnesota Humanities Center's new Minnesota Native American Lives series (created in partnership with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. The series will feature Ojibwe and Dakota people whose contributions deserve to be better known. Though the subjects of the bios all lived, or live, in what is currently called the state of Minnesota, they are figures whose impact extends well beyond the state borders. Represented so far are MN lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan (Ojibwe), Ojibwe baseball star Charles Albert Bender, and Ella Cara Deloria, a Dakota anthropologist and language preservationist.

Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) and Gwen Nell Westerman (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) are the series editors. Each of the books is written by a tribally-affiliated Native author, and illustrated by Red Lake Anishinaabe artist Tashia Hart. We'll be reviewing each of the books on AICL, starting now with Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector.

Author Diane Wilson (Dakota) follows Ella Deloria from her childhood on the Standing Rock reservation to the creation of a fellowship in her name at Columbia University in 2010, nearly 4 decades after her death in 1971. Wilson emphasizes Deloria's key role in preserving traditional Dakota stories and the Dakota language, and focuses on the life experiences -- including racism and poverty -- that influenced her. 

One fundamental influence was the way Ella's grandparents and parents interpreted the situation that Native people found themselves in during the time Ella was a child. She was born in 1889, when Native peoples were often, essentially, prisoners on their own drastically reduced homelands. They were still targeted for assimilation or outright destruction by the settler-colonizer government that had long sought full control of the resources on the continent. Ella's family saw advantages to being bilingual and bicultural -- knowing both their Dakota traditional ways, and those of the English-speaking Christian settler-colonizer culture. Ella's father was ordained as an Episcopal priest. Her younger brother, Vine, also became a priest (and as Wilson points out, was paid considerably less than his white counterparts). The late Dakota writer and intellectual Vine Deloria Jr. was Ella's nephew. 

Wilson shows how, even in the context of a rather remarkable family, Ella's intelligence, talent, and energy stood out. Ultimately, she used her education to protect her home language and promote greater general understanding of Native peoples and cultures. Along the way, she worked with well-known anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Mead became a friend. Boas was a valued mentor, though if we read between the lines of this biography, it seems that he also may have exploited her abilities and commitment. For some of the time she worked with him, she was so poorly paid that she and her sister had to live in their car. 

I especially enjoy the way Wilson begins each chapter with a quote from Ella Deloria's writing. This is ensures that young readers get to "hear" her voice. 

Teachers are likely to appreciate the "Extend Your Learning" section in the back of this book and the others in the series. The section includes "Ideas for Writing and Discussion," "Ideas for Visual Projects," "Ideas for Further Learning," and a timeline that starts in 900 (Common Era) and ends with Peggy Flanagan's swearing-in as lieutenant governor in 2019. 

As a mother, grandmother, and auntie of Native kids, it's hard for me to put into words how moved I am by the existence of this series. Overall, in terms of which Native people are seen as biography material, it doesn't seem that much has changed since my children were actually children. At the time, it seemed that most biographies of Native people were of military leaders (Sitting Bull, Geronimo), or of Sacagawea, or Pocahontas. My firstborn (now in his late 30s) is named in part for a Mvskoke ancestor (born around 1835) who was, himself, named for the visionary Shawnee leader Tecumseh.  So naturally, when he was young, I was pleased to find a biography of Tecumseh for his reading level. I grabbed it off the shelf to read aloud to him one day when he was ill. At the end, the author lamented the death of Tecumseh and the end of his dream of Native unity. We lamented it, too. But then the writer closed with the words, "... And the Indian way of life was gone forever." 

Grrr!!!

Lessons learned or reinforced: 1) Mom, ALWAYS read a book through before you share it. 2) Fortunately, if you say, "Well, that's messed up and we know better", your children will probably be open to critiquing anti-Native assumptions and historical inaccuracy with you. And critique it we did.

But we shouldn't have had to. Parents and teachers of Native kids should be able to spontaneously share a book about Native people with kids, without having That Conversation. If the Minnesota Native American Lives series stays true to its mission (and it seems sure to), it will allow us to have that confidence and comfort, with well-researched true life stories, written from Indigenous perspectives. 

So, check out the book launch if you are able. And ask your library to purchase the Minnesota Native American Lives series, and read it yourself! Children, Native and non-Native, need those books.