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American Indians in Children's Literature: a presentation by Dr.
Debbie Reese
by Marcia
Sarnowski
In 1992, public
libraries in Wisconsin participated in a project called the American
Indian Initiative, in which librarians were encouraged to update their
collections with materials which portray the lives of Native Americans
with accuracy and respect, and to evaluate the collections and weed them
of items which showed stereotypes and disrespectful images. Nearly 20
years later, there is still work to be done, according to Dr. Debbie
Reese, an Assistant Professor in the American Indian Studies program at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a tribally enrolled
member of the Nambé Pueblo from the Upper Village, in northern New
Mexico.
Dr. Reese was in
La Crosse on April 2 to give a presentation called “American Indians in
Children’s Literature” to a group of teachers, librarians, and education
students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
She spoke of the
power of image in conveying the understanding of a people, in shaping
the way children learn about their own heritage, as well as the heritage
of others. She discussed the continued media portrayal of Native
Americans as “the savage other” and then she displayed a photo of a
lovely little Native American girl and challenged the audience to think
about why – and how – they would tell this young girl that her people
were “fearsome savages.”
She gave examples
of several books which contain these stereotypes, including The
little house on the prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, first
published in 1935, and The Boston Tea Party, by Pamela
Duncan Edwards, illustrated by Henry Cole, published in 2001. Dr. Reese
displayed a picture from the Tea Party book, showing men
dressed in fringed shirts with feathers in their hair, but in fact, she
said, the colonists smeared their faces with ash and charcoal and wore
blankets around their shoulders, and called themselves Mohawks. This is
included in one of the posts on her blog, American Indians in Children’s
Literature,
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
[On
April 15, “Tea Parties” took place around the country, featuring
Americans dressed as Indians in tan shirts and feathers. Dr. Reese
featured some of the media coverage of these events on her blog (see the
entry for April 16), to demonstrate that the inaccurate and negative
portrayal of Native Americans continues.]
She suggests that
teachers and librarians seek out and add to their collections and
curricula books by Native authors and illustrators, the owners of the
cultures being described and represented. She recommended authors and
titles such as Cynthia Leitich Smith (Jingle dancer),
Joseph Bruchac (Heart of a chief), Louise Erdrich (The
birchbark house series) and Sherman Alexie (The absolutely
true diary of a part-time Indian). Many other authors and
titles are featured in the catalog from Oyate, a Native
organization working to see that Indian lives and histories are
portrayed honestly. The catalog is available online at
www.oyate.org
Dr. Reese also
provided a list of other helpful websites:
Images of Indians
in Children’s Books (another of her blogs):
the web site of
author Cynthia Leitich Smith:
Celebrating
Cultural Diversity Through Children’s Literature:
American Indian
Library Association:
Dr. Reese
concluded by saying “We are still here.” She urged the audience to
introduce their students and patrons to the diversity of Native American
culture, and to be tribally specific where possible: there are over 500
federally recognized tribes. Many of them have web sites where you can
find information about them:
There are
checklists which can be helpful in evaluating materials about Native
Americans. One of them can be found in the publication produced during
the 1992 Wisconsin initiative: American Indian Resource Manual
for Public Libraries, published by the DPI and distributed
widely to Wisconsin libraries (see p.10). You’ll find several copies in
the WRLSWeb catalog, available for request.
Dr. Reese shared
another checklist called “What to look for.” Think back to the
young girl I mentioned earlier. The final item on the list includes
these two questions: “Is there anything in the book that would make a
Native American child feel embarrassed or hurt about who he is? Can the
child look at the book and recognize and feel good about what she
sees?”
Dr. Reese
encourages people to visit her blog and share their comments and
perspectives. Her presentation was one of a series on multicultural
children’s literature, which has been hosted at University of Wisconsin
- La Crosse’s Murphy Library.
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