Culture 5: Indigenous/Native American Literature

 

Culture 5: Indigenous/Native American

 

A.    Bibliography

Boulley, Angeline. (2021). Firekeeper’s daughter. New York. Henry Holt and Company.

B.     Plot Summary

Daunis is an 18-year-old who is about to start her first year of college. She recently lost her uncle and is now dealing with the health decline of her maternal grandmother. While she is showing around the new hockey team member, her best friend is killed by her meth taking ex-boyfriend. It turns out there is an undercover investigation trying to uncover the meth problem in the community, so Daunis joins the investigation to help uncover the truth.

C.     Critical Analysis Including Cultural Markers

Firekeeper’s Daughter is written in first person from the view of the main character. The novel takes the reader on an adventure trying to figure out what will happen next. Boulley adds important and serious topics like, half siblings, extended families, meth addiction, and sexual assault.

There are many cultural markers in the novel. Before Daunis goes for a run she goes through a ritualistic where she says prayers with an offering and sharing her Spirit name, clan, and where she is from. Daunis must apply to become a documented member of her tribe since her father was not on her birth certificate. When Daunis’ best friend passed away, she honored the 4-day process of honoring the dead. There are phrases throughout the story that come from her native language. Her culture values elders and this is evident as Daunis volunteers and helps elders in her community. There is much discussion on how tribes were given money for repayment of land, as well as the addition of casinos for additional income for tribes.

D.    Review Excerpts

Horn Book Magazine: “Recent high school graduate Daunis Firekeeper (known for much of the book by her white mother's family name, Fontaine) decides to stay in Sault St. Marie, Michigan, and attend Lake State with her best friend, Lily. She is then -devastated when Lily is killed by her meth-addicted boyfriend. Soon after, two undercover agents approach Daunis about taking her late uncle's place as a confidential informant investigating meth that included "hallucinogenic additives...Psilocybe caerulipes from near Tahquamenon Falls." Daunis has strong scientific knowledge and a close connection to the Native community, despite being unenrolled (her father, a member of the Sugar Island Ojibwe tribe, is not on her birth certificate). Readers are introduced to the Anishinaabemowin language and, as Daunis calls on traditional knowledge to assist her in the investigation alongside her scientific knowledge, to the customs of the Sugar Island Ojibwe. This is a gripping page-turner, multifaceted, authentic, and suspenseful, that will keep readers wondering who is responsible for the meth that is taking over Daunis's community -- and who exactly she can trust.”

Kirkus Reviews: “Testing the strength of family bonds is never easy—and lies make it even harder. Daunis is trying to balance her two communities: The Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, teen is constantly adapting, whether she is with her Anishinaabe father's side of the family, the Firekeepers, or the Fontaines, her White mother's wealthy relatives. She has grand plans for her future, as she wants to become a doctor, but has decided to defer her plans to go away for college because her maternal grandmother is recovering from a stroke. Daunis spends her free time playing hockey with her Firekeeper half brother, Levi, but tragedy strikes, and she discovers someone is selling a dangerous new form of meth—and the bodies are piling up. While trying to figure out who is behind this, Daunis pulls away from her family, covering up where she has been and what she has been doing. While dealing with tough topics like rape, drugs, racism, and death, this book balances the darkness with Ojibwe cultural texture and well-crafted characters. Daunis is a three-dimensional, realistically imperfect girl trying her best to handle everything happening around her. The first-person narration reveals her internal monologue, allowing readers to learn what's going on in her head as she encounters anti-Indian bias and deals with grief. A suspenseful tale filled with Ojibwe knowledge, hockey, and the politics of status.”

E.     Connections

Angeles, Janella. Where Dreams Descend. ISBN 9781250204356

Stead, Rebecca. Liar & Spy. ISBN 9780449014080

A.    Bibliography

Bruchac, Joseph. (2005) Code talker: a novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two. New York. Dial Books.

B.     Plot Summary

As a young child Ned Begay is sent away from his home and family to learn English at a boarding school. Like all the other Native American children, he is stripped of his name, language, belongings, and pride in his Navajo culture to learn English. During WWII Ned joins the Marines as a cold talker using his native language.

C.     Critical Analysis Including Cultural Markers

Code Talker is written with copious amounts of research of the Navajo culture, American boarding schools, World War II, and Navajo code talkers. The story is told in first person as a grandfather telling a story to his grandchildren. Story telling is a traditional way to share stories and information. There is much irony in how Native American children were sent off to boarding skills to learn English to help their communities in dealing with English speaking people. As we learned from Ned, the schools strip every piece of the children’s culture from them.

There are many significant cultural markers presented in Code Talker. The Navajo language is used explicitly to show how the Navajo code talkers created the code during WWII, as well as modify and grow the code as was needed during the war. Ned and other code talkers had several advantages over the other Marines because of the experiences and knowledge they gained in the Navajo culture, like when the Navajo men used water from plants to conserve their drinking water. Careful consideration was given to explain how there are so many tribes and how each tribe may present themselves to individuals from other tribes.

D.    Review Excerpts

Library Media Connection: “Six-year-old Navajo Ned Begay promises to learn the language of the white people as he leaves home for the mission school. His family realizes that to protect the Navajo, they will need to work within the legal system of the government including having leaders who can communicate in English. Ironically, while the mission school tries to extinguish everything Navajo about the children, it is their native language that becomes valuable. While still in high school, Ned enlists in the Marines during World War II and becomes a part of history that neither he nor the other involved Navajos could mention for many years-code talkers. Faster than Morse code and more secure than other code methods of the time, Ned tells of how he and almost 400 others were part of Marine units that relayed battle messages across the Pacific including the battle of Iwo Jima. Told from the perspective of a grandfather telling the history to his grandchildren.”

School Library Journal: “Protagonist Ned Begay starts with his early schooling at an Anglo boarding school, where the Navajo language is forbidden, and continues through his Marine career as a "code talker," explaining his long silence until "de-classified" in 1969. Begay's lifelong journey honors the Navajos and other Native Americans in the military and fosters respect for their culture. Bruchac's gentle prose presents a clear historical picture of young men in wartime, island hopping across the Pacific, waging war in the hells of Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and Iwo Jima.”

E.     Connections

Lord, Cynthia. Half a Chance. ISBN 9780545035330 

Marshall III, Joseph M. In the footsteps of Crazy Horse. ISBN 9781419707858

 

A.    Bibliography

Maillard, Kevin Noble. (2019). Fry bread: A Native American family story. New York. Roaring Press Book.

B.     Plot Summary

Fry bread is an important staple in Native American culture. The simple story tells how fry bread represents the art, family, food, and many other important aspects of the Native American culture. The back of the book has authors notes on fry bread, Native American culture, and his own culture.

C.     Critical Analysis Including Cultural Markers

Fry Bread is authored by Kevin Noble Maillard who is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. The story is written in metaphors where fry bread is compared to things like art and time. Interwoven in the story within the pictures are basket weaving, cooking, family time, and talks of pow wows. The illustrations also depict children and adults of various skin tones. There are historical aspects like stolen land, the long walk, and having to create new food recipes because of the ingredients of where they settled. Also introduced are many names of tribes and the fact that there are several hundred more tribes.

 

D.    Review Excerpts

Booklist: “Fry Bread celebrates the thing itself and much, much more. The simplicity of the ingredients, readers learn, belies the quality of the cooking process, the proximity with people, the historical tradition, the geography—for "fry bread is everything." Maillard and Martinez-Neal bring depth, detail, and whimsy to this Native American food story, with text and illustrations depicting the diversity of indigenous peoples, the role of continuity between generations, and the adaptation over time of people, place, and tradition. Fry bread becomes a metaphor for resilience, born ironically, as Maillard explains, from the most basic of government-issued ingredients.”

Horn Book Guide: “More than just food, ‘Fry bread is time...Fry bread is art...Fry bread is history.' An intergenerational group of Native American friends and family makes fry bread, a common Native food staple as varied as the people who make it; this diversity is reflected in Martinez-Neal's warmhearted illustrations. Back matter explains how fry bread became a part of many Native Americans' diet after being forced from their land and given limited U.S. government rations.”

E.     Connections

Gravel, Elise. What is a refugee? ISBN 9780593120057

Lindstrom, Carole. We are water protectors. ISBN 9781250203557

A.    Bibliography

Tingle, Tim. (2013). How I became a ghost: a Choctaw trail of tears story. Oklahoma City. Roadrunner Press.

B.     Plot Summary

A young boy tells the story of how he, his family, and his community are forced by white men to leave their homes. As they start the treacherous walk later called the Trail of Tears the young boy sees ghosts, shapeshifters, and much suffering and death.

C.     Critical Analysis Including Cultural Markers

The book is told through first person who is a small child then a ghost. The different chapters bring forth more tales and tragedy which occur on the Trail of Tears. Author Tim Tingle is a Choctaw storyteller, with a great grandfather who walked the Trail of Tears. There is a repetition of the song Amazing Grace in Choctaw throughout the chapters of the book. Through the chapters the truth of the Native Americans in American boarding schools being torn away from their families and their culture stripped from them. There are scenes which describe families fleeing their burning homes and forced out of the town. These families where then forced on a terrible mission to leave their land and relocate in an entirely different land.

 

D.    Review Excerpts

Horn Book Magazine: “Isaac is alive and well when his story begins, part of a happy family with his mother, father, older brother Luke, and his talking dog Jumper. But soon there is Treaty Talk, followed by the arrival of Nahullo (white) men with shotguns and torches, and the Choctaw must begin their journey west. Tingle, a Choctaw storyteller, relates his tale in the engaging repetitions and rhythms of an oft-told story. The novel comes alive in Isaac's voice and in the rich alliance of the living and the dead--Choctaw ghost walkers, a shape-shifting panther boy, the elderly bonepickers, a five-year-old ghost girl, a tough teenage girl, and the legions of Choctaw enduring their trek. Spare and authentic, this first book in a projected trilogy ends with much of the trail still ahead and legendary Choctaw leader Chief Pushmataha addressing his people by saying not good-bye but "Chi pisa lachike.”

Kirkus Reviews: “A 10-year-old Choctaw boy recounts the beginnings of the forced resettlement of his people from their Mississippi-area homelands in 1830. He begins his story with a compelling hook: "Maybe you have never read a book written by a ghost before. I am a ghost. I am not a ghost when this book begins, so you have to pay very close attention." Readers meet Isaac, his family and their dog, Jumper, on the day that Treaty Talk changes everything. Even as the Choctaw prepare to leave their homes, Isaac begins to have unsettling visions: Some elders are engulfed in flames, and others are covered in oozing pustules. As Isaac and his family set out on the Choctaw Trail of Tears, these visions begin to come true, as some are burned to death by the Nahullos and others perish due to smallpox-infested blankets distributed on the trail. But the Choctaw barrier between life and death is a fluid one, and ghosts follow Isaac, providing reassurance and advice that allow him to help his family and others as well as to prepare for his own impending death. Storyteller Tingle's tale unfolds in Isaac's conversational voice; readers "hear" his story with comforting clarity and are plunged into the Choctaw belief system, so they can begin to understand it from the inside out.”

E.     Connections

                                                                                                                       

Bruchac, Joseph. Children of the longhouse. ISBN 9780140385045

Cervantes, Jennifer. Tortilla sun. ISBN 9780811870153