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Kids' Nonfic About Native Americans
Feb. 15th, 2011 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinityThree photoessays about contemporary Native American kids, plus an entry in the "Learn About $Tribe" genre.
4. Sandra King (Ojibway), Shannon: An Ojibway Dancer.
Love, love, love! This was, hands-down, my favorite book in this group.
Shannon lives in Minneapolis, is thirteen years old, and is a fancy shawl dancer. She hangs out with her friends at the mall, designs and beads her own dance outfits, goes to a school with French and Ojibway language immersion programs, plays video games, and hangs out with her cousins at the powwow.
There are many photos of Shannon, her friends, and her cousins concentrating intently (their beading, their schoolwork, their video games, watching other dancers), and many, many photos of Shannon and her cousins laughing together. My favorite photo is the full page shot of Shannon in her dance outfit, helping Chantelle adjust the neck kerchief of her jingle dress, the fairway behind them, both of them giggling madly. There is such energy in the shot, and their laughter is infectious.
There is so much tucked away in here. In the conversation with her grandmother about how the newest dance outfit is coming along, Grandma mentions that shawl dancing is new since she was a kid. Shannon is part of a thriving urban community: there's her dance group (and a nice shot of her and her cousin in their embroidered jackets), and the bead store, and the immersion program, and simply hanging out and beading with her cousins after school. Feathers are gifted from elders, not just something you up and decide to wear. While there are many pages where something gets explained in detail -- all the components of a dance outfit, for example, and which are optional or what design choices a dancer might make -- it doesn't ever take on the heavy "explainy" feel that kids' nonfic sometimes gets.
What I most enjoy, however, is the seamlessness of Shannon's life. She is Ojibway, and a shawl dancer, and a contemporary American kid, and there are no contradictions or separations in any of that.
5. George Ancona, Powwow.
Lush, beautiful photoessay about Anthony Standing Rock and his family attending the Crow Fair. This book is far less personal in its point of view than Shannon's story: most of the text describes the events of the fair (setting up tipis, the parade, the grand entry, the drums, the different dances, honors and ceremonies), with only occasional pages about Anthony's participation in the Fair.
As a narrative, it runs toward the dry side (although I teared up at the introduction ceremony, because I am sentimental about little kids like that). But the photos! Ooh, the photos.
6. Monty Roessel (Dinè), Songs from the Loom: A Navajo Girl Learns to Weave.
Narrative and photoessay about the author's mother teaching the author's daughter how to weave in the Dinè tradition. Ceremonies, stories, styles, and culture. Sometimes the story narrows in on Jaclyn, other times it pulls wider to discuss history or economics. (I was surprised but pleased to see a spread about weaving for tourists and collectors, and the economics of that.)
The text isn't nearly as strong as that of Shannon, nor are the photos as strong as those in either Shannon or Powwow. Not until my second time through did I realize some of what bothered me about the photos: they were taken over two years: Jaclyn's apparent age changes erratically, while the narrative occurs over merely a few months. Those comments aside, however, there are standouts among the photos: Jaclyn the big sister on rollerblades, holding the hand of her absolutely gleeful baby sister; assorted photos of Nalí Ruth with her arms wrapped around her granddaughter, guiding her granddaughter through the motions. Also, I am charmed by how hard Jaclyn concentrates in these photos: she is intent on learning this, and learning on learning it well.
7. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Rosebud Sioux), The Apaches.
To borrow a phrase: kinda subversive, kinda hegemonic. Not so surprising, I suppose, given that this book is aimed squarely at the elementary education market (which is how I came across it), and is designed to fit easily into the "Learn About $Tribe" niche.
Kinda subversive: Sneve begins with an Apache creation story, and she tells it straight: no hedging about what "Apaches believe(d)." At the stories conclusion, she continues, "The people who emerged from the earth became known as the Apache," and from there she moves seamlessly into names, tribes, social customs, and history. At no point does she suggest that this creation story is a myth, a legend, or something that didn't happen.
Additionally, she doesn't use the customary white-centered viewpoint -- there are no assumptions about who the reader is, nor which parties in the book might be considered "us" or "them". Every section begins with an epigraph; every epigraph is from an Apache person, and is fully sourced in the acknowledgments. (It makes me sad that this even qualifies as "subversive", but I've got a whole box of "Learn About $Tribe" books in front of me which collectively suggest that yes, this is a subversive thing to do.)
Kinda hegemonic: Relentless Past Tense, complete with a single-page coda that uses the word "still."
Sneve is clearly stepping very lightly in the section about the violence of 1824 through 1886. She says that there was conflict, and names some of the precipitating events, but almost entirely skips over any description of what actually happened in any of those conflicts. (And having been in Chiricahua territory last winter, I can understand why she and her editor chose to glide over it: that history is still being highly sensationalized locally. I got to the point where I was having my partner pre-screen historical markers for me: "Does it say 'Apache' anywhere? Thanks, I'll skip it." New markers, even.) Post-1886, during the POW era, Sneve goes back to pulling no punches.
Sneve apparently has a whole series of these: at the very least, the series includes The Cheyennes, The Sioux, The Iroquois, The Cherokee, The Seminoles, The Hopis, The Navajos, and The Nez Perce.
(Additional tags: children's lit, picture books, nonfic, Apache, Ojibway, Dinè, Crow, indigenous)
4. Sandra King (Ojibway), Shannon: An Ojibway Dancer.
Love, love, love! This was, hands-down, my favorite book in this group.
Shannon lives in Minneapolis, is thirteen years old, and is a fancy shawl dancer. She hangs out with her friends at the mall, designs and beads her own dance outfits, goes to a school with French and Ojibway language immersion programs, plays video games, and hangs out with her cousins at the powwow.
There are many photos of Shannon, her friends, and her cousins concentrating intently (their beading, their schoolwork, their video games, watching other dancers), and many, many photos of Shannon and her cousins laughing together. My favorite photo is the full page shot of Shannon in her dance outfit, helping Chantelle adjust the neck kerchief of her jingle dress, the fairway behind them, both of them giggling madly. There is such energy in the shot, and their laughter is infectious.
There is so much tucked away in here. In the conversation with her grandmother about how the newest dance outfit is coming along, Grandma mentions that shawl dancing is new since she was a kid. Shannon is part of a thriving urban community: there's her dance group (and a nice shot of her and her cousin in their embroidered jackets), and the bead store, and the immersion program, and simply hanging out and beading with her cousins after school. Feathers are gifted from elders, not just something you up and decide to wear. While there are many pages where something gets explained in detail -- all the components of a dance outfit, for example, and which are optional or what design choices a dancer might make -- it doesn't ever take on the heavy "explainy" feel that kids' nonfic sometimes gets.
What I most enjoy, however, is the seamlessness of Shannon's life. She is Ojibway, and a shawl dancer, and a contemporary American kid, and there are no contradictions or separations in any of that.
5. George Ancona, Powwow.
Lush, beautiful photoessay about Anthony Standing Rock and his family attending the Crow Fair. This book is far less personal in its point of view than Shannon's story: most of the text describes the events of the fair (setting up tipis, the parade, the grand entry, the drums, the different dances, honors and ceremonies), with only occasional pages about Anthony's participation in the Fair.
As a narrative, it runs toward the dry side (although I teared up at the introduction ceremony, because I am sentimental about little kids like that). But the photos! Ooh, the photos.
6. Monty Roessel (Dinè), Songs from the Loom: A Navajo Girl Learns to Weave.
Narrative and photoessay about the author's mother teaching the author's daughter how to weave in the Dinè tradition. Ceremonies, stories, styles, and culture. Sometimes the story narrows in on Jaclyn, other times it pulls wider to discuss history or economics. (I was surprised but pleased to see a spread about weaving for tourists and collectors, and the economics of that.)
The text isn't nearly as strong as that of Shannon, nor are the photos as strong as those in either Shannon or Powwow. Not until my second time through did I realize some of what bothered me about the photos: they were taken over two years: Jaclyn's apparent age changes erratically, while the narrative occurs over merely a few months. Those comments aside, however, there are standouts among the photos: Jaclyn the big sister on rollerblades, holding the hand of her absolutely gleeful baby sister; assorted photos of Nalí Ruth with her arms wrapped around her granddaughter, guiding her granddaughter through the motions. Also, I am charmed by how hard Jaclyn concentrates in these photos: she is intent on learning this, and learning on learning it well.
7. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Rosebud Sioux), The Apaches.
To borrow a phrase: kinda subversive, kinda hegemonic. Not so surprising, I suppose, given that this book is aimed squarely at the elementary education market (which is how I came across it), and is designed to fit easily into the "Learn About $Tribe" niche.
Kinda subversive: Sneve begins with an Apache creation story, and she tells it straight: no hedging about what "Apaches believe(d)." At the stories conclusion, she continues, "The people who emerged from the earth became known as the Apache," and from there she moves seamlessly into names, tribes, social customs, and history. At no point does she suggest that this creation story is a myth, a legend, or something that didn't happen.
Additionally, she doesn't use the customary white-centered viewpoint -- there are no assumptions about who the reader is, nor which parties in the book might be considered "us" or "them". Every section begins with an epigraph; every epigraph is from an Apache person, and is fully sourced in the acknowledgments. (It makes me sad that this even qualifies as "subversive", but I've got a whole box of "Learn About $Tribe" books in front of me which collectively suggest that yes, this is a subversive thing to do.)
Kinda hegemonic: Relentless Past Tense, complete with a single-page coda that uses the word "still."
Sneve is clearly stepping very lightly in the section about the violence of 1824 through 1886. She says that there was conflict, and names some of the precipitating events, but almost entirely skips over any description of what actually happened in any of those conflicts. (And having been in Chiricahua territory last winter, I can understand why she and her editor chose to glide over it: that history is still being highly sensationalized locally. I got to the point where I was having my partner pre-screen historical markers for me: "Does it say 'Apache' anywhere? Thanks, I'll skip it." New markers, even.) Post-1886, during the POW era, Sneve goes back to pulling no punches.
Sneve apparently has a whole series of these: at the very least, the series includes The Cheyennes, The Sioux, The Iroquois, The Cherokee, The Seminoles, The Hopis, The Navajos, and The Nez Perce.
(Additional tags: children's lit, picture books, nonfic, Apache, Ojibway, Dinè, Crow, indigenous)
