Ann Rinaldi is a respected and well-like author among our libary media
specialists and students. The report was, indeed, troubling. I doubt if
there was any malicious intent on her part to launder an episode in history
to reflect a favorable view of the Carlisle role in destroying the culture
of Native American people. However, even to a non-native such as I, the
distortions, omissions, and errors are glaring. The life stories as well
as actual reports filed by Carlisle staff with the BIA are public record.
This book, as well as others in the series, are already in our school
libraries, and have been purchased by students. I agree that it is time to
look once again at bias.
This is part of a trend that has been of growing concern for me:
fictionalized history and the use of the books, journals, tv docudramas,
and movies which they generate. These things give an essence of history,
but often take liberties for the sake of drama or marketing which are a
true distortion of the event being depicted. We cannot stop, nor could we,
the production of such media, but we can teach our students to informed and
literate consumers. We must teach them to routinely ask the kinds of
questions which send them back to the primary sources of history and, when
possible, to the people who were there. The greatest value this book could
serve at this time would be to provide an example for a teacher to use in
instructing students how to question, what to question, and, in turn, where
to protest, such biased pieces of mis-information.
If anyone missed an earlier posting, which was referred to in part by
Hulme's questioning, I have pasted it below. Hulme's posting did not
include all the documentation.
<<snip>>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 13:59:52 -0500
From: Debbie Reese <d-reese@uiuc.edu>
Subject: Native Am title in Dear America series
A Critical Review of
My Heart Is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, A Sioux Girl
"There I found the Indian burial ground, with dozens of white headstones
bearing the names of the Native American children from all tribes who had
died while at the school. The names, with the tribes inscribed underneath,
were so lyrical that they leapt out at me and took on instant
personalities. Although many of these children attended Carlisle at dates
later than that of my story, I used some of their names for classmates of
Nannie Little Rose." (page 195)
"Like Lucy Pretty Eagle, not all the children in the book were at Carlisle
that first year. But like Lucy Pretty Eagle, their personalities came
through to me with such force and inspiration, I had to use them. I am sure
that in whatever Happy Hunting Ground they now reside, they will forgive
this artistic license, and even smile upon it." (page 196)
The above is from the author's note from My Heart Is on the Ground: The
Diary of Nannie Little Rose, A Sioux Girl, by Ann Rinaldi. It is part of
the "Dear America" series of historical fiction diaries published by
Scholastic.
Many individuals in children's literature will dismiss the concerns
outlined in this review as extra-literary, and ask "but is it a good book?"
We think not. From a literary perspective, it lacks consistency and logic.
As a work of historical fiction, it contains glaring factual errors. As a
work of "multicultural" literature, it lacks authenticity.
Appropriation
Appropriation of Native lives and literature is nothing new. Native
American bodies and bones continue to be on display in museums all over the
US and Canada. For the last hundred years, our traditional stories have
been turned into books for children with little if any respect given to the
origins of the story. Now, Rinaldi has taken this appropriation of Native
lives and stories one step further. That she would take the names of real
Native children from gravestones and make up experiences to go along with
them is the coldest kind of appropriation we can think of. These were real
children who died lonely and alone, without their parents to comfort them.
They were buried without proper ceremony in this lonely and sad place.
Native people who visit the cemetery today express a sense of profound
sadness.
Factual Errors
Throughout the book, Rinaldi uses the voice of Nannie Little Rose to teach
non-Native readers about Native ways. It is an artificial device, and, in
fact, Rinaldi's presentation of Native culture is fraught with factual
errors. A basic criterion of historical fiction is that facts about people
who actually lived must be accurate. Here are just a few of the errors:
· Sitting Bull was Hunkpapa Lakota, not "of Cheyenne nation" (Dec. 13th
entry). He was Hunkpapa Lakota, not Cheyenne.
· American Horse was not a "chief of the Red Cloud Sioux." He was a
cousin to Red Cloud (Dec. 21st entry).
· Wealth is not measured by the number of poles in a tipi (see Jan 30th
entry).
· The whites did not "give" (see Dec. 12th entry) the Lakota people the
Black Hills. By treaty, the Lakota were able to retain a small portion of
what had been their land for millenia.
· Red Cloud's speech at Carlisle, which Rinaldi translates into stilted
English (p. 103-104), is inaccurate and does not reflect what the records
say he said.
· In the historical note, Rinaldi refers to a ghost story about Lucy
Pretty Eagle, the first child to die there, as though it were credible.
Instead, it is based on hysteria and misinformation about where the Native
girls lived.
· Also in the historical note, Rinaldi says graduates of the school were
able to earn a living away from the reservation. There is no evidence of
this. The National Archives document that less than 10% of the students
graduated, and more students ran away than graduated: 758 of the 10,000
students graduated, and 1,758 of the 10,000 students ran away.
Lack of Cultural Authenticity. Again, there are numerous example of this,
but only a few are described here.
· A Lakota child in 1880 would not refer to herself as "Sioux." It is a
French corruption of an enemy-name used by the Ojibwe. She would have
referred to herself by her band or nation's self-name (e.g. "Lakota").
· A Lakota child would refer to Sitting Bull by his Lakota name, Tatanka
Iotanka. The same applies to other references to Native leaders.
· If a Lakota child had been encouraged to write in a diary that would
be read by the white teachers and/or matrons, she would not have made fun
of them in the pages of the diary (Dec 13th entry: ".there is
Woman-Who-Screams-A-Lot. She is bad to the eye. Fat and ugly.")
· Rinaldi's description of the Sun Dance, the most sacred ceremony of
Lakota people, is inaccurate and exoticized.
· Lakota children of that time period did not engage in the same
grieving rituals as adults (see Feb. 4th entry about a burial).
· Rinaldi's interpretation of Lakota belief is oversimplified and
distorted. (Apr 30th entry: "A war club has a spirit. A prairie dog has two
spirits. Birds, insects, and reptiles have spirits.")
Stereotypes
A basic criterion of good children's literature is that it be free of
stereotypes. However, they abound in children's books about Native
Americans and are usually found in descriptive passages about Native
characters. Again, Rinaldi has taken this one step further, by inserting
stereotypical images in the mind and words of a Lakota child. Here are a
few examples:
· Dec. 2: "Worst bad part is Missus Camp Bell see I am frightened. With
my people this is not good. We must be brave."
· Later, she writes "Our men are very brave and honorable. Our women are
noble."
The Title
The phrase "My Heart Is on the Ground" is taken from a traditional
Cheyenne poem, that reads as follows (Bataille and Sands, American Indian
Women Telling Their Lives):
A Nation is not conquered Then it is done, no matter
Until the hearts of its women How brave its warriors
Are on the ground. Nor how strong its weapons.
In its original form, the phrase suggests not sadness, but the conquering
of a Nation, the end of a way of life. Rinaldi uses the phrase throughout
the book when the protagonist is sad.
Final Comments
In writing this story, Rinaldi has done a tremendous disservice to the
memories of the dead children whose names she used, to their families, to
Native children today, and to any child who reads and believes what Rinaldi
has written. She has cast the government boarding school in a positive
light as though it was a good thing, when it is not regarded as such by
Native Americans, historians, educators, or sociologists. Carlisle was
founded by General Richard Henry Pratt, the man who said "Kill the Indian,
save the man." Pratt's administration of the school included forcing the
children to wear military uniforms and take part in military drills every
morning.
Rinaldi's story takes place in 1880, during a period in which Native
people were confined to reservations and not allowed to leave without
permission of the government-appointed Indian agent assigned to their
reservations. Parents were coerced into sending their children to these
early schools. Many times, the children were kidnapped. Children died at
the school, and died running away from the school. Children were beaten for
speaking their Native languages. Physical and emotional abuse is well
documented in boarding schools in the United States as well as Canada.
None of these atrocities receives any attention in Rinaldi's book. While
there is an entry in which she describes a child who was confined to a
guardhouse, the episode is glossed over. Throughout the book, greater
attention is given to tension between the children than is given to tension
between the children and their teachers and matrons. In reality, the
children drew on each other for support as they resisted the humiliation
and abuse inflicted on them by the adults in whose care they were placed.
Children wanted to go home, and many froze to death in their attempts to
reach their homes. However, in Rinaldi's story, the children do not want to
go home. Instead, they beg to be allowed to stay. One child even arrives at
Carlisle near death, according to Rinaldi, risking his life in his attempt
to run away from home to the school.
To those who would argue that "it is possible" that a Native child might
have had the experience Rinaldi describes, the overwhelming body of
evidence suggests otherwise. The premise of this book, that a Native child
would come in and within a period of 10 months move from someone who reads
and writes limited English and has a totally Indian world view to someone
who is totally fluent and eloquent in a language that is foreign and
totally assimilated to a foreign cultureand be better off for the
experience--is highly unlikely. The idea that a Native child would think
and write about her people and culture as presented by Rinaldi is also
highly unlikely.
The fact that this book will be more widely read than any other book about
the boarding school experience adds to the body of misinformation about
Native American life in the United States. This one book epitomizes the
utter lack of sensitivity and respect that characterizes the vast majority
of children's books about Native Americans. The difference here, is that in
the Rinaldi book, her "characters" were, in fact, real children. That these
children might smile upon Rinaldi from their "Happy Hunting Ground" is
both, arrogant and ridiculous.
Teachers who want to gain a deeper understanding of the boarding school
experience may read the following children's books: My Name is Seepeetza,
by Shirley Sterling; Daughter of Suqua, by Diane Johnston Hamm, and
"Mush-hole," Memories of a Residential School, by Maddie Harper. Teachers
may also want to read biographical information of Native authors who went
to boarding school. Two of these authors are Shonto Begay and Lucie
Tapahonso.
Finally, teachers may want to read To Change Them Forever: Indian
Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893-1920 by Clyde Ellis,
One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe
Indian School by Sally Hyer; Indian School Days by Basil H. Johnson, They
Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School, by K.
Tsianina Lomawaima, and Phoenix Indian School: The Second Half Century, by
Dorothy R. Parker.
This review was written as a joint effort by Debbie Reese, University of
Illinois; Beverly Slapin, Oyate; Marlene Atleo, University of British
Columbia; Barbara Landis, researcher of Carlisle; Jean Mendoza, University
of Illinois; LaVera Rose, South Dakota State Archives; and Cynthia Smith,
book reviewer. (Contact: Debbie Reese, 614 W. Calif. Urbana, IL
61801.<d-reese@uiuc.edu>)
Debbie Reese Doctoral Student, Early Childhood Education Department of
Curriculum and Instruction College of Education University of Illinois
Champaign, IL 61820 Office Telephone: 217-244-8061 Email:
d-reese@uiuc.edu
>
>Thought you'd be interested in this troubling report on a book in
>Scholastic's Dear America series. This book is undoubtedly going to be widely
>marketed and read -- the Dear America series (which has pretenses of
>>multiculturalism) seems to be extremetly popular among preteen girls.
>>
>>Additional messages on this subject have suggested commenting to
>>Scholastic at
>their feedback page at http://www.scholastic.com/custsvce/
>>and submitting comments about the book to amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com
>>
END OF <<SNIP>>
<*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*>
In the shelter of each other, the people live. Gaelic Proverb
Karen M. K. Stanley
K-12 Social Studies Consultant
Lincoln Public Schools
5901 O Street
Lincoln, NE 68510
402-436-1805 wk
402-436-1829 fax
<kstanle@lps.org>
<*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*> <*>
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