When We Were Alone, written by David Alexander Robertson (Swampy Cree) and illustrated by Julie Flett, 2016. For many Indians who went to boarding school or whose parents or grandparents did, this book is likely to have a different impact than for non-Indian readers. The illustrations are a delight. A child spends time with her grandmother and asks many questions: what is that strange language she speaks; why does she spend so much time with her family; why does she wear such colorful clothes; why does she wear her hair so long? The answers are that she speaks Cree, the Native language of a Canadian tribe of 200,000 members, a few hundred of whom live in Montana; she spends time with her family now because she was separated from them for years when forced to go to a boarding school, those institutions designed to supposedly save the person by killing the Indian in them; she wears colorful clothes now because she had to wear a drab uniform along with the other children at that school; and she wears her hair long because it was forcibly cut short by the school authorities. I found this particularly painful going in places because my own grandmother was forced to go to boarding school where every attempt was made to rip away her language and culture. But the story is simultaneously sobering and uplifting.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie (Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Choctaw) and illustrated by Ellen Forney, 2007. Highly autobiographical, this work won the National Book Award for its nuanced depiction of reservation life, both bleak and beautiful. The protagonist is Arnold, a 14-year-old boy with a lisp who is mistreated on the reservation and decides to go to a white school 20 miles away. Like so many Indians, he’s caught between two worlds, neither of which is particularly enamored of him. As with the case of Alexie’s other writings, the book is simultaneously hilarious and serious. Its underlying theme is of hope and overcoming despair.
Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich (Chippewa), 1999. If you are looking for an alternative to the dreadful depictions of American Indians in Little House on the Prairie, this is a good one. The story of an 8-year-old Chippewa, Omakayas, who lives on a Lake Superior island in the 1840s, Erdrich turns the tables found in Prairie and other books of the 19th Century written with Indians consigned to the category of Other. Her story gives us an insider’s view under difficult circumstances. The protagonist survives a smallpox epidemic that kills members of her family. We learn about tribal customs and rituals, about getting food and the prospect of not having any, and the impacts on Native peoples of westward expansion by Europeans. Carol Hurst writes: “The non-Indian settlers and voyageurs, called ‘chimookomanug,’ are viewed from a variety of perspectives. One man, Fishtail, is going to the mission school to learn their language so that he will know what the treaties say. Deydey, Omakayas' father is half white and loathes and ridicules the chimookomanug, yet he trades with them for his living. Old Tallow refuses to have anything to do with them. Fishtail compares them to greedy children, always wanting more. Omakayas herself seems removed from their influence.”
In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse, written by Joseph Marshall III (Sicangu Lakota/Rosebud Sioux) and illustrated by Jim Yellowhawk (Cheyenne River Lakota Nation) 2015. The scene in this wonderful novel is set in modern times on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in southern South Dakota. Our hero is Jimmy McClean, age 11, a mixed blood, who, like many other mixed bloods throughout the nation, catches grief from both the white and Indian world. One of the biggest targets of this teasing is his light-brown hair. His grandfather decides to relate to him the story of the great Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) and travel along footsteps of that leader while imparting historical information to Jimmy. One of the first things he tells him is that Crazy Horse himself had light brown hair. As Amy Zembroski of the Indian Community School in Wisconsin writes: “Marshall transports readers back in time through Grandfather's stories. Italicized passages covering Crazy Horse's childhood, adolescence, and transformation into the famed Lakota symbol of courage and wisdom are distinguished from the modern-day narrative and achieve an immediacy and emotional resonance that most history books fail to capture. As the book progresses, Jimmy and readers learn about an important period of American history from the perspective of the Lakota; readers will walk away with the sober knowledge that in war, there are no winners. As Jimmy and his grandfather's journey comes to an end, the boy has gained much more than a history lesson—he learns a great deal about courage, sacrifice, and the ties that connect him to his ancestors.”
#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women, edited by Lisa Charleyboy (Tsilhqot’in) and Mary Beth Leatherdale (2017). This anthology is an exceptional collection of poems, essays, and prose with a focus on the intersectionality of being both female and indigenous. The hashtag part of the title exudes modernity. That princess reference dates back to 1969, when Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) critiqued the common occurrence of non-Indian persons telling him they had a great-great-great-great grandmother who was a “Cherokee princess.” Deloria noted that the lineage seemed always to be of a princess—a non-existent category among not only the Cherokee but also all tribes—never a prince and never just an anonymous tribal member. Indians have long been invisible in America, Native women’s voices even more so, and the strength of what they have to say in this series shows how exceptionally unfortunate for them and the rest of us that invisibility has been. As Tasha Saecker at Walking Brain Cells writes: “Beautiful, angry and insistent, this collection of the voices of Native women belongs on the shelves of every library serving teens.”
Blue Horses Rush In, by Luci Tapahonso (Navajo), 1997. Tapahonso has been named as the Navajo Nation's first Poet Laureate. As a girl, Tapahonso listened to the stories she was told by, among others, her grandfather. Many were originally told in Navajo in no more than 10 minutes. Tapahonso writes: "Yet, in recreating them, it is necessary to describe the land, the sky, the light, and other details of time and place. In this way, I attempt to create and convey the setting for the oral text. In writing, I revisit the place or places concerned and try to bring the reader to them, thereby enabling myself and other Navajos to sojourn mentally and emotionally in our home, Dinétah." Her poem Shisóí is one of my favorites: It ends:
Now each time she toddles into the room, we turn and say,
’Ahshénee shiyázhí. You want some juice? How about milk?
She-Who-Brings-Happiness smiles and climbs onto the nearest lap.
As she snuggles comfortably into the circle around the table,
we murmur, ‘She’s so sweet, we don’t know what do do.”
Beaver Steals Fire: A Salish Coyote Story, written by Johnny Arlee (Salish) and illustrated by Sam Sandoval (Salish/Navajo), 2005. Whatever your age, this story from the Confederated Salish and Kootenay tribes is compelling, and the engaging spirit of the watercolor illustrations by tribal artist Sandoval make it all the more so. The book was chosen as the picture book winner of the First American Indian Library Association Native American Youth Services Literature Award in 2006. An excerpt is the best way to give it justice:
A long, long time ago, the only animals who had fire lived in the land above, up in the sky. The animals on earth had no fire. They gathered and had a meeting. They wondered how they could obtain the fire from the sky world. The animals were very cold and needed to keep warm during winter. They made their decision, and they said, "The one who has the best song will be the leader of the raiding party to the sky world to steal fire." …
So Coyote went to the meeting lodge, where he was asked to sing. Coyote sang his song. Immediately they liked his song, and they began to dance. That was when Coyote was appointed leader of the raiding party.
The Blue Raven, a graphic novel written by Richard Van Camp (Tlicho) and illustrated by Steven Keewatin Sanderson (Plains Cree) 2009. The blue raven of the title is a bicycle. But it also has other meaning. Benji is the protagonist, and he has sometimes been called Tatso. In the Tlicho language, Tatso means blue, like the color of a baby raven’s eye, and like the color of Benji’s eyes. His bicycle is also blue. When it’s stolen, Benji is doubly unhappy because his now-absent father gave it to him. Sanderson has created fabulous illustrations for this story. After Benji’s bike is ripped off while he is in the library, he goes to his friend Trevor, and together they hunt for the bicycle, clash over tradition—Trevor being Metis but not raised as a Native culturally—and dance to the drums. Besides poetry, many short stories and two novels, Van Camp has now written four graphic novels, each with a First Nations-tinged theme. The Blue Raven has an underlying mental health focus; Three Feathers (published in Bush Cree, Dene, South Slavey and English) looks at restorative justice; A Blanket of Butterflies, takes on peace making; and Spirit is a suicide prevention comic book (which is also published in Bush Cree, Dene, and South Slavey and English).