How bởi you choose children’s books about Native peoples? Because most of us were socialized & educated lớn think of Native peoples in narrow and biased ways, we typically don"t recognize how deeply flawed many of the books we choose are. Too many children"s books present Native peoples exclusively as historical figures, for example, ignoring the presence và realities of the 500+ federally recognized Native Nations in the United States today. Too many present American Indians as "people of color," which they may or may not be, dismissing their defining attribute as people of sovereign nations.
Watch this Talking Kids and Race conversation with special guest, American Indians in Children"s Literature founder Dr. Debbie Reese. Dr. Reese offers an opportunity to lớn move beyond what you"ve been taught to lớn a place where you"re able to identify great books about Native peoples, the original people of the lands currently known as the United States of America.
Find the transcript (lightly edited for length và understanding), related resources and more about Debbie Reese below. Don"t forget to kiểm tra out about past and upcoming monthly Talking Race & Kids online conversations, too.
giasuviet.edu.vn: How did you come to lớn this work? Give us a little back story.
Dr. Debbie Reese is tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico
Dr. Debbie Reese: I was a teacher in New Mexico. I was a teacher và then I became a mom. I quit teaching & all the books that were in my classroom library became my daughter"s books & I started working more closely with the people at the Pueblo in our tribal nation on family literacy kinds of activities. So when I started thinking about grad school, I thought I’d study family literacy. So I moved to Illinois and started coursework with that in mind.
But there was a mascot at the University of Illinois, Chief Illiniwek, that would end up changing what I was doing. It"s a stereotypical mascot and I was trying lớn understand, what is this thing? and why vì people think it"s so wonderful when it was clearly not wonderful at all? So I shifted from thinking about family literacy to thinking about how and what are people seeing in their books that make them think this is a good image. This stereotypical image of a Native person. It"s not even really a Native person. It"s a fiction of who we are.
So it was kind of a culture shock to come here & think, wow, these people really don"t know a whole lot about why stereotypical imagery is bad for all of us. So I started looking at images of Native people in children"s books. That became the work that I vị pretty much 24/7, because books are everywhere. Books really matter khổng lồ parents. Parents read lớn kids at bedtime & the books that they"re choosing to read to their kids at bedtime or in the morning, at breakfast, wherever và whenever they choose to read really matter because these are people that love their children giving their children information in the books that they"re using with them. Và so I really felt that I could make an intervention in what people know about Native people by way of talking about the books that they use with their kids.
giasuviet.edu.vn: When you say 24/7, I believe you as a follower of yours on Twitter (
debreese)! I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what"s at stake because in addition khổng lồ helping people find excellent books that are true to the people they"re trying to represent, you"re also known as a #DiversityJedi . You"re huge on Native Twitter for also speaking out on all kinds of things that happen every day & that aren"t really directly about children"s books. Can you speak about sort of your broad activism? Dr. Debbie Reese: Yeah, I hit on something sometime last year or the year before that seemed khổng lồ resonate with a lot of people. The idea was that in most of the schools in the United States, there is a month for a particular group. So for Native people that"s November - a terrible month for us lớn be in because that"s Thanksgiving and that feeds into long-ago, far-away stereotypes about us - not good nội dung to be associated with. And so for a Native child, that"s kind of when the Native nội dung appears in the school curriculum. So that child only counts in the school curriculum in November.
Meanwhile non-Native children, trắng children especially, are affirmed in their existence as kids who play in the neighborhood, who go swimming, who go camping, vì all the things that kids do, their life is affirmed all year long wherever they go & whatever they bởi vì in books và movies, in toy products at the store. They will find some semblance of their existence as a person of the present mirrored or reflected back khổng lồ them. And that"s not the case for Native people.
We are Native people all year long, every day. That isn"t something that happens only one day or one month of the year. And so it is a 24/7 experience. Every time I xuất hiện my eyes in the morning, what I see on the news or on Twitter, it all impacts the work that I do because, I think, okay here is an opportunity to lớn talk about what I"m getting at. That we see these things all the time & our children see these things all the time & we need khổng lồ make what they see reflect their lives in a good way in the same way that non-Native children have that experience all the time.
American Indians in Children's Literature Best Books can be found here: https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2018/12/aicls-best-books-of-2018.html
giasuviet.edu.vn: When you talk about representation of Natives in books & in children"s books in particular, I know there are a number of dimensions. Some of the most obvious … Are Native characters in the books at all? Who"s writing the books? How are Native peoples being represented? Stereotypically, with more nuance? What about variation across tribal nations? All those sorts of things. When you look at the more holistic picture of representation of Natives, between 2006, when you started American Indians in Children"s Literature, and now, these last 13 years. What vày the trends look like to you?
Dr. Debbie Reese: Well now more than before, because of my blog & because I am quite active, I vị have attention from the publishing industry. I hear things like, "Well, we don"t want Debbie to see this"
It would be hard khổng lồ quantify because there are more representations of Native people in children"s books & in chapter books và young adult novels I think than there are of anybody, but they"re mostly misrepresentations và I can"t possibly see them all because there are so many. So we have little things like when someone, a young adult novelist, will have “low man on the totem pole” in their book and then some will say, "Have you seen what Debbie said about that?" and they will go look and go và be embarrassed và grateful, some grateful, to have the information & then they will write to the editor và say, "Next time we print this, can we take that out?" So I know about some of that because they tell me. But I think it happens a lot more than I know. Và I think that it doesn"t happen, too.
So sometimes it feels like myself and the other #DiversityJedi have a huge impact. But we are just a little tiny group trying to effect change. And there has been change. I think there are more Native writers getting published now than there were in 2006. They are still being published mostly by small publishers, by tiny publishers. & what that means is that we can have all these wonderful books but all it takes is one Simon and Schuster
giasuviet.edu.vn: You have been able to lớn have impact in this kind of David và Goliath situation
People tend to say things that are very well-meaning but that are off, like: "Thank you for your tireless work.” “You tirelessly work." I get really tired!
What I"m talking about is stepping up & speaking up so that it doesn"t fall on a few people, on a very tiny group of people.
giasuviet.edu.vn: I find it effective to go in with a menu to a library or a bookstore. The librarians in the children"s library near us, we told them that you were going to be on & they"re like, "Debbie Reese!" They have so many of the books that you recommend. So we were glad about that, although like you said, it"s harder with the smaller publisher. They tend to lớn not have those as readily.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Right. And one thing that I think people can do, too, is when they learn about a book from a small publisher, they can go khổng lồ their library & ask for it. If the library doesn"t have it then they will try to lớn get it even though it"s from a small publisher. But also maybe donating, seeing if your library will accept copies of books or funding to go towards small publishing books from small publishers. I think it"s a lot of creative ways that people can try khổng lồ get those books into the libraries.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Debbie, you started khổng lồ touch on these but what criteria do you recommend for distinguishing the good from the bad when it comes to lớn children’s books about Native people?
Dr. Debbie Reese: Well, one of the things that I ask people to think about is that we are people of the present day. So when you"re looking for children"s books about Native people, I"d like you khổng lồ look for books by Native writers. There is no guarantee that a Native writer is going to bởi better in telling a story about his or her own tribal nation than a white person would. But it stands to lớn reason that they likely will, especially if that"s a part of where they grew up. So today we"re calling that #OwnVoices. It"s a hashtag #OwnVoices và I encourage people to lớn get books by Native writers.
They can bởi vì a lot with that because not only vì chưng they have a book by a Native person, they can say this book is by Cynthia Leitich Smith. That"s Jingle Dancer, & the use of that word "is" puts us right in the present day. Far too many children"s books are long ago, far away, said in the past. So that"s what we"re pushing very hard against. Using #OwnVoices lets you push against that. So that"s one thing - choosing Native writers because they"re doing own voice stories.
Second, choose books that are tribally specific. Books by Native authors are more likely also lớn be tribally specific, và to name their nation - that"s really important.
I"ve been using “nation.” and I realized we probably didn"t talk about that enough at the beginning.
Native people were và are citizens or tribal members of nations that existed before the United States existed as a nation. There are words that people read in their textbooks when they’re little kids
giasuviet.edu.vn: Well that brings us khổng lồ something we were talking about a bit earlier about the particular situation of race and Native peoples. So, we"re giasuviet.edu.vn và when we say race we mean something that"s mostly used to lớn divide & not something that"s very logical. Và we talk about people being racialized. So it can be a màu sắc of skin thing. It can be due to lớn religion. It can be due khổng lồ Native status. It can be because of the language you speak and oftentimes it"s a combination. So I just wonder how vị people get confused about race và nationhood?
Dr. Debbie Reese: Well my thinking about that is rooted in in graduate school và teaching in the college of education, going through the multicultural textbooks & articles and such not where if you think about it like a chart, and across the đứng top of the chart you have different underrepresented groups. Và generally speaking in the United States that is African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, & Native Americans. And then on the other grid axis you have lượt thích food, clothing, these kind of material aspects of who these people any people might be. & you can fill in those grids with those characteristics of those people, but there is no nationhood line in that grid. So that doesn"t even get taught. Và so that"s a key piece of who we are.
Now there"s all kinds of ways that we present in terms of what we look like. You"re looking at me, và I have darker hair & have darker skin but there are Native people who don"t have darker hair và darker skin & they are Native because what makes a Native person is not what you look like. It"s about your nation and how your nation has determined who its citizens will be & that"s different for all of the different nations that we were talking about earlier. When we opened you said over 500. That"s over 500 different Nations, each of whom has their own way of determining who their citizens will be based on their history & their interactions with other nations. So you have some nations that are fairer in complexion and hair màu sắc and you have some that are not. You have some that are taller. There"s a such a range of appearance that when we mặc định to the idea that Native people have a culture of tepees và bows và arrows & dark skin and dark hair & high cheekbones we"re really shrinking who we are as a people into a very narrow and stereotyped existence.
giasuviet.edu.vn: So there"s no way khổng lồ be half Nambe Pueblo, for example.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Is there a way lớn be half American?
giasuviet.edu.vn: Exactly.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Right. I think that"s one way that we"re pushing back on that. People say, "Well you"re only 50 percent Native American." and I say, "No, I"m 100 percent Native American. Are you 50 percent American people?" No. Because we"re talking about citizenship, not who your parents are. Now who your parents are matters in in nationhood but those are two different ideas that get squashed together và really kind of mess with us.
giasuviet.edu.vn: We received a related question from a parent who had adopted a Native child who is not tribally enrolled. She said và wonders what does this mean for how she can tư vấn this child in his identity? I don’t have more details than that.
Debbie Reese: Wow. Yeah that"s a really dicey one because she should know about the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), first off. Because if she has adopted a Native child, or if anybody adopts a Native child, they should know about this federal legislation that came about in the 1970"s because Native children were being removed from their mothers, from their homes, parents were being declared to be unfit to lớn raise their children. And the numbers were astronomical. At the time, we got Native people into Congress & got this legislation passed. A lot of people don"t know about it. They adopt a child who, for one reason or another, they think is a Native child. Và when you are adopting a Native child, you"re in really slippery spaces with this law because the tribal nation has the authority lớn enter into the conversations about where a child will be placed. So that"s been in the news a lot in recent years because we have people in the country who will think, well that child"s got blond hair và blue eyes & is only one 1/32 Choctaw. So this doesn"t matter. & that"s a total misread of what it means khổng lồ be a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. & it undermines not only that child"s well-being as a citizen of that nation removed from that nation, but it undermines the well-being of the nation itself. Because if all your children get taken from you, then you cease khổng lồ exist as a nation.
So what can she do. First, she better read about ICWA và make sure that she"s not on a slippery space because these do end up in court and that"s unhappy & unpleasant for everybody involved. If the Native child did go through the ICWA & they are placed with a non-Native family, then I think that a parent should again look for ICWA-related resources
giasuviet.edu.vn: Thank you for that và let me take you back to your criteria for choosing books, và we have a lot of questions around books in particular. One question was about your point that preferably people would be buying books illustrated by, written by Native writers.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Yes.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Now so does this mean are you saying that books about Natives written by non-Natives, you would see that as a flag?
Dr. Debbie Reese: I would. Absolutely. It is actually quite rare that I find a book that is by a non-Native writer that is one that I would say "Here. You can use this one." and I can tell you some that I would recommend right now. Daniel José Older is writing middle grade novels that have Apache characters in them & he"s working very hard on it. And those are good. I would recommend those. But those are rare, very rare. It"s very rare for me khổng lồ find those kinds of books.
Discover the AILA's American Indian Youth Literature Award recipients at ailanet.org.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Another question: in addition to your site, what trustworthy sources, not only of books but of criteria, maybe of đánh giá of books about Native Americans might she go khổng lồ find out lớn get good recommendations?
Dr. Debbie Reese: One thing she can vì that everybody should also bởi vì is become familiar with the American Indian Library Association. I"m a thành viên and in the 1990"s, we started talking about having an award. Và so I worked with other people in the Association và came up with a mix of criteria on how we would identify books that we thought merited an award from the American Indian Library Association. So their website, has a page with all the awards <American Indian Youth Literature Awards> và you can read the criteria there on what lớn look for. I have some pieces of that when I"m reviewing certain books, but definitely that"s one place that they should go.
Now we"re not monolithic either in how we feel about certain things. Lượt thích the American Indian Library Association awarded a book that has a lot of made up dialogue of a person that lived a long time ago, a Native person that lived a long time ago. I think it was Sitting Bull. Và I personally and professionally don"t lượt thích those kinds of books- making up dialogue, thoughts ,emotions và feelings about someone who lived a long time ago. It feels a little bit sketchy lớn me. I"d rather people not do that.
Another place to lớn go is to lớn Cynthia Leitich Smith. That"s another very good resource. She doesn"t look just at Native books though. She looks at a lot of books. Her website/blog is Cynsations.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Here"s another question, from Susan. She says, "I"m a curriculum developer. Beyond identifying realistic and respectful books for children, I"m seeking guidance on story related activities. That is, how to lớn engage children further in a story they"ve been offered about Native peoples. What activities can deepen children’s experience of the story and remain respectful, inclusive, potentially meaningful và not harmful or cultural appropriating?"
Dr. Debbie Reese: I"m going to lớn see if I can get this book off this pile without knocking the pile down! Yeah. <Holds up book.> This is a great resource for free for people lớn use - Lessons from Turtle Island - because it does have picture books for early childhood classrooms and activities to go with them. And it has lots of writing from the authors that talk about why you should NOT vị X Y & Z, lượt thích making totem poles or making dream catchers,
Dr. Debbie Reese: Another kind of activity that I see a lot that is highly problematic is taking what someone thinks is a Native folktale và turning it into a writing exercise. So lượt thích How Chipmunk got His Stripes, okay, thinking of a book lượt thích that. Và reading it và then saying "Now you make a story!" In the classroom, a writing exercise. But these stories are creation stories. They should have the same respect that people give lớn Genesis. We don"t bring Genesis into a classroom in a picture book and then say, "Now you make a story lượt thích Genesis!" We understand that it"s a sacred story and we don"t mess with it. That doesn"t happen with Native stories.
When
When
Dr. Debbie Reese, American Indians in Children's Literature
giasuviet.edu.vn: I hope I"m not taking us away, but you"re making me think about, I mean I"ve thought about before và you"re making me think more about, Native American as a term period right. The context in which it"s useful. So clearly there is something in common, right a relationship that pre-existed the United States as such. The sort of nation khổng lồ nation relationship with the United States Federal Government. You know there are commonalities as lớn circumstance, right. Although there"s also a wider range of circumstance. But I"m just wondering. You know in what context vì you talk about "Native Americans" as opposed lớn separate nations, particular units? và perhaps a related question that I"m sure you"ve heard often that we got here is about really what"s the right terminology? và I know there"s lots of disagreement, but people want to know is it, for you at least, Native America?
Dr. Debbie Reese: I use Native American và American Indian and Indigenous & Native when I"m talking about the larger group of people who are Indigenous lớn this land. But the best practice always is to be tribally specific. So when people are talking about me, people who are here tonight or who will watch it later, when they sign off and go out into the world và into the classrooms, rather than saying I listened to lớn a lecture, a webinar with Debbie Reese, she"s a Native American. I would rather they say with Debbie Reese she"s tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo because they"re gonna say, "What?" và that"s an opportunity for that person to tóm tắt what they learned tonight, that I haven"t talked about yet, but that Nambe is one of 19 pueblos in New Mexico. We range the state. We have different languages. We have different ceremonies & different dances and different songs. We"re different. & being able to chia sẻ just that much, I think, would help people understand a whole lot more than they vị when they just hear Native American or American Indian.
And each of these terms come out at different moments in history & in another couple of decades maybe we won"t be using Indigenous anymore. These things are very fluid. & that doesn"t make us less authentic. It"s really ridiculous to me that people think, "Well you"re not wearing feathers, so you"re not a real Indian."
giasuviet.edu.vn: We have a question: “It seems a staggering task lớn change the way history is taught in our schools where the accepted narrative has erased the stories of nearly all Black, Indigenous, and people of color. There is overwhelmingly systemic resistance to dismantling the canon. Vì you think it"s possible khổng lồ accomplish this one teacher at a time?”
Dr. Debbie Reese: I think that"s the only way we can vị it - is one teacher at a time. Going back khổng lồ again, what I talked about earlier, these ripples that we can effect change. We have khổng lồ start with where we are in a moment và hope & encourage people to giới thiệu that information. It"s not going to lớn be easy because the politics of the world right now seem especially difficult lớn make room for all of us to lớn have good lives being the people that our ancestors were. It"s a tough time.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Yeah, it really is a tough time.
Dr. Debbie Reese: It is. I want lớn show you a book that is coming out this July, 2019, An Indigenous People"s History of the United States for Young People. I adapted <Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz"s original book> with one of my colleagues. & it"s for young people, và it will be out in June. And hope that teachers will, & people will get a copy of it and use it with kids in classrooms và help them to erase some of the misinformation they have và replace it with more substance.
giasuviet.edu.vn: That"s fantastic. We look forward to lớn that. There are a lot of questions coming in that Debbie has resources for on her site, so we will be sending you there for those, including book recommendations and more.
Dr. Debbie Reese: I"ve got them. They"re on my Website! The best books tab has best books each year. I try, lượt thích the last five years I started doing that.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Yeah. We appreciate it. Lots more questions. Can Debbie talk about the concept of curtains in American literature, please?
Dr. Debbie Reese: Yeah. Native people have been exploited by anthropology for over 100 years, and the outcome of that was that across our nations we have become very careful of what we share. Và most of the people maybe who are tuned in tonight know about Rudine Sims Bishop and her concept of Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glassdoors. Và I was going to vì chưng a workshop with some librarians in Alaska, và when I was doing my slides, I thought, well, I"m going khổng lồ find a window và a mirror that I can use about my Pueblo self & our Pueblo Nation & I want lớn use that as a visual. And I was looking for that và one of the searches that I did returned one of our ceremonial structures và there was a window, an adobe structure with a window in it, but there was a curtain & I was looking at that and my first thought was that"s not going lớn work. I thought, well there"s a curtain there!
Because our ceremonies were depicted in ways that caused the United States" government lớn pass policies that said you can not practice your religions, that made it illegal for us to vì chưng that, that made it possible for government agents khổng lồ come in & take our things away, our religious artifacts away. So those curtains are real. They"re there to lớn protect knowledge from being exploited và misrepresented. & so I"ve added, I saw Dr. Bishop recently và I talked with her about this idea that I"m adding curtains to lớn her metaphor. Was that okay? She thought yep, she"d seen that and thought it was fine. So expanding that metaphor to make it work in another way for Native people, for any people really. Và the interesting thing about this when I talk about that, a lot of people say, "Well, you"re trying to lớn censor. That"s not okay. The first amendment. In the United States, we should have access khổng lồ anything they want to." và all of this rhetoric about this nation comes out and the fact is lots of stuff is kept from the public eye for various reasons.
giasuviet.edu.vn: You know that is a really wonderful point that"s not often accounted for in how we think about representation. We actually don"t have a right khổng lồ represent, not everything wants to be represented.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Right. You can"t even go into the Vatican! You know, you can"t just walk into the Vatican và go into any room that you want to. That is a protected space.
giasuviet.edu.vn: và as you said earlier, there"s clearly some norms around how the Bible can be used và in what context. Và those are not questioned for the most part. I wonder, that"s a nice segue into questions around cultural appropriation.
Dr. Debbie Reese: Yeah.
giasuviet.edu.vn: You began lớn speak to this and a lot of people are concerned about that. What is the line, right, between respectful engagement và cultural appropriation? You spoke to it a little bit in the context of children & trying lớn engage children in a range of ways. Can you say a bit more about that if you have any guidance lớn offer?
Dr. Debbie Reese: It is massive, the appropriation, I mean, is massive and being able to lớn understand something that is that big is hard. I guess the questions that I would ask are: What are you doing? Who is it supposed khổng lồ represent? & why are you doing it? Kind of a self-reflection on the activity that you might want to lớn do and some honest
It"s not okay lớn dress up lượt thích an Indian. People want khổng lồ dress up lượt thích pilgrims và Indians at Thanksgiving & the question is, all right so who exactly are you dressing up as? and if you don"t know what Nation you would have in this first Thanksgiving reenactment, if you can"t name the nation, then you need to lớn stop! Because what you"re going to bởi vì is reproduce stereotypical construction paper feather bags and headbands và you"re just going to use this massive, massive misinformation that you"re carrying around to vị something that may actually be quite hurtful especially lớn Native kids in your classroom that you don"t know are Native.
It's not okay khổng lồ dress up like an Indian. People want khổng lồ dress up like pilgrims and Indians at Thanksgiving & the question is, all right so who exactly are you dressing up as? và if you don't know what Nation you would have in this first Thanksgiving reenactment, if you can't name the nation, then you need khổng lồ stop! Because what you're going to bởi is reproduce stereotypical construction paper feather bags & headbands và you're just going to lớn use this massive, massive misinformation that you're carrying around to bởi something that may actually be quite hurtful especially lớn Native kids in your classroom that you don't know are Native.
Dr. Debbie Reese, American Indians in Children's Literature
I think that"s another piece is a lot of people don"t know they have Native kids in their classroom because they don"t have dark hair & high cheekbones and so the assumption is they"re not Native và there are no Natives in the classroom. Never make that assumption because there may be. That got away from appropriation but I think that again, The Lessons from Turtle Island takes up some of that conversation really well.
giasuviet.edu.vn: Yeah. Here’s another question. Do you recommend books by Sherman Alexie?
Dr. Debbie Reese: I vày not. I vày not. One of my own learnings in the last few years is, it"s been a hard one. And so I can talk about it with two books in particular. With his book Thunderboy Jr., when it came out, it was exciting because we had someone who was Native writing for children & experiencing success that no one had had before. That was exciting và it was phối in the present day. And I read the book, the first time I read it, & it made me laugh in parts và I thought that it was a book that I would recommend. But then other friends started talking about it, Native friends và gay friends, & I revisited the nội dung of that book & kind of felt myself pulling away from it. & since it came out, I have done some really close analysis of it & studies of Alexie himself and how he has shaped the mainstream expectation of what a Native story should be lượt thích and it"s just not good. It is pretty bad.
For example, there"s a lot of alcoholism in that book và a lot of abuse of alcohol in his young adult diary, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, & in his speaking engagements và online line, he says: "If a Native person tells you there"s no alcoholism in their family, they"re lying to lớn you. Every Native family has alcoholism. They are in denial." That"s not true. And he says that enough & in enough places that librarians think, okay, if a book does not have someone who is an alcoholic and then it"s not an authentic book about Native communities or Native families. That"s not true. There are research studies
giasuviet.edu.vn (Melissa): Thank you for that, Debbie. We have quite a few people asking about how to tư vấn their own Native children. Some are very specific but I wonder, I"ve heard you talk or maybe I"ve read a bit of you talking about what you did with your daughter when you came across these stereotypes in literature or on TV or in school & I thought it was actually a really helpful response và I wonder if you could talk about that.
giasuviet.edu.vn (Andrew): And actually I wonder if we can piggyback on that Debbie because there are another mix of questions that I"m sure you"ve fielded many times, about the “classic books,” right, like Little House on the Prairie, that feature representations of Native peoples that are admittedly problematic. Some people who really think about these sorts of identity và representation issues will say, "You know what, there are lots of good books out there. Don"t engage that one. Choose among the good books.” & other folks will say, “No, you can engage any book. They"re just better and worse ways of doing it." So with respect lớn dealing with stereotypes in general and stereotypical and other problematic images in books like Little House on the Prairie, what"s your advice on that?
Dr. Debbie Reese: A lot of parents think that they can edit and pause và have conversations with their child with a book like Little House On The Prairie when they come lớn the bad parts. But as they go through that they keep editing more and more và some parents say: "Forget it. I quit. We wasted all this time on editing this book." So I think what a parent should bởi is, if they want lớn use something lượt thích that, they should read it themselves first front lớn back very carefully, very critically. & then give it some thought whether or not they want khổng lồ go ahead & read that book with their kid và or how they are going lớn approach their teacher, the child"s teacher about that in the classroom.
I really want all parents khổng lồ raise these questions with teachers because what happens, what happened with our daughters is that we would go in third grade or in fourth grade when Little House On The Prairie was taught at her school, in the neighborhood school. Every time a Native family was in the school, that"s when they wouldn"t use the book. The Native family moves on, they bring the book back out. That"s horrendous. That wasn"t learning anything. But if parents did that every year pretty soon teachers are going to really move. I think teachers will really embrace the message that this book is not acceptable for use in a school classroom. I think part of what happens when we try to go ahead & use those “classic books” in a classroom và try to lớn push back on them in the classroom is that the weight of that is on the Native child in the classroom. There may be learning but it"s at the cost of the well-being of the Native child. The other children are going to lớn move from this moment, when their teacher is reading this book & talking about its racist characters & qualities, lớn taking a spelling kiểm tra or a math test. Và the children who are Native, in this case we"re talking about Native kids, are carrying this burden, this emotional burden into that thử nghiệm taking situation. That"s not fair. That"s not fair khổng lồ them. They should not be asked to lớn carry that burden. That kind of activity does not have to lớn happen in the classroom.