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I am happy to recommend The Apple Tree by Sandy Tharpe-Thee and Marlena Campbell Hodson. Published this year by Road Runner Press, the story is about Cherokee boy who plants an apple seed in his backyard.
Here's the cover:
Here's the little boy:
And here's the facing page for the one of the little boy:
I like this anthropomorphized story very much and think it is an excellent book all on its own, and would also be terrific for read-aloud sessions when introducing kids to stories about planting, or patience, or... apples!
When the apple tree sprouts and is a few inches high, the little boy puts a sign by it so that people will see it and not accidentally step on it. That reminds me of my grandmother. She did something similar. To protect a new cedar tree that sprouted near a roadside on the reservation, she make a ring of stones around it so people wouldn't run over it. The apple tree in Tharp-Thee's story grows, as does the boy, and eventually the tree produces apples.
When you read it, make sure you show kids the Cherokee words, and show them the Cherokee Nation's website, too. Help your students know all they can about the Cherokee people. Published in 2015 by The Road Runner Press. The author, Sandy Tharpe-Thee, is a tribal librarian and received the
White House Champion of Change award for her work. She is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.
~~~~~
Shuck, Kim (Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox, Polish), Smuggling Cherokee. Greenfield Review Press, 2005; grades 7-up
Smuggling Cherokee is full of powerful insight: part autobiography, part musing, part outrageous wit, and part punch-in-the-gut startling. Kim Shuck is a visionary: she knows who she is, what she comes from, and what she’s been given to do. Her poems are honest and passionate, and, without polemic, will shatter just about every stereotype about Indians that anyone has ever espoused: The man asks me,/ “Do you speak Cherokee?”/ But it’s all I ever speak/ The end goal of several generations of a/ smuggling project./ We’ve slipped the barriers,/ Evaded border guards./ I smile,/ “Always.”
Some of Kim’s poems are tenderly, achingly beautiful: The water I used to drink spent time/ Inside a pitched basket/ It adopted the internal shape/ Took on the taste of pine/ And changed me forever. And for those who didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, the many faces of depredation:
I call the slave master
Who lost track of my ancestor
A blanket for you
In gratitude.
I call the soldier
With a tired arm
Who didn’t cut deeply enough
Into my great-great grandfather’s chest to kill clean.
I return your axehead
Oiled and sharpened
Wield it against others with equal skill.
Will the boarding school officer come up?
The one who didn’t take my Gram
Because of her crippled leg.
No use as a servant – such a shame with that face…
Finally the shopkeeper’s wife
Who traded spoiled cans of fruit
For baskets that took a year each to make.
Thank you, Faith, for not poisoning
Quite all
Of my
Family.
Blankets for each of you,
And let no one say
That I am not
Grateful for your care.
Smuggling Cherokee, as with all of Kim Shuck’s poems, will resonate with Indian middle and high school readers. Students who are not Indian may not “get” some of them the first time around, but they will, eventually, if given the space to sit with them.
Kim Shuck—a poet, teacher, fine artist and parent of at least three—teaches college courses in Native Short Literature, creates phenomenal beadwork and basketry, curates museum collections, teaches origami to young children as an introduction to geometry, grows vegetables, converses with trees, takes long walks, and meditates while doing piles of laundry. She won the Native Writers of the Americas First Book Award for Smuggling Cherokee, as well as the Diane Decorah Award for Poetry, she has a fierce and gentle heart, and I’m honored to call her “friend.”
—Beverly Slapin
(Note: Smuggling Cherokee can be ordered from [email protected]. Discount for class sets, free shipping.)
Roy Boney's We Speak in Secret is one of many stories that will be in Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers: Volume 1, to be published by the Indigenous Narratives Collective (INC Comics). Boney's story was released in November and is available for $1.99. Here's the first page. The symbols at top are in the Cherokee syllabery, developed by Sequoyah. Development of that syllabery is included in We Speak in Secret:
Some months back,
I recommended Arigon Starr's comic about the Choctaw Code Talkers. Both Starr and Boney tell us a lot about the servicemen Americans know as the Code Talkers. Hopefully, readers of AICL have seen recent media coverage of code talkers.
In their respective comics, Starr and Boney, tell us who the code talkers were, as young people in the wars in which they served.
The first page of Boney's story tells us a lot about his character. His name, written using the Cherokee syllabary is
ᎠᏟᏐᎢ.* Mr. Boney told me it is pronounced ah-thlee-so-ee.
ᎠᏟᏐᎢ thinks about his childhood, playing with his friends. He wants to soak his feet in the creek where he caught crawdads. He tells us his name in Cherokee, and that it means "I habitually run." Some fellow soldiers call him Runabout Smoke. He talks about stereotypes and how they shape the way some soldiers interact with him. One calls him "chief" and tells him that they won't be using "smoke signals" on the battlefield. For the most part, they call him Runny. He isn't keen on that name either, but in the midst of a war, he let such things slide off his back in order to stay alive. In his group is a Cherokee from North Carolina who is going by the name of Moses Mouse. He, too, speaks Cherokee.
Boney uses a sepia tone on some pages, to show us his character's childhood. On one, he's a six-year-old in Indian Territory, listening to his dad and uncle talk about how their mother, a full blood Cherokee, was declared incompetent, thereby making it possible for land grabs to take place. These land grabs were part of the US government efforts to dissolve Native Nations through the
Dawes Act. His uncle says "Allotment. Fancy word for stealin'."
The heart of
We Speak in Secret is about how the Cherokee language came to be used for transmissions. The Germans were intercepting communications and able to figure out where to direct their bombs. At one point, Runny's group is hit pretty hard. He looks for Moses, calling to him in Cherokee. Moses responds, also in Cherokee. Dauber, their sergeant, is already digging Moses out of the debris and hears the two men speaking in Cherokee to each other. Of course, he doesn't understand them. The two Cherokee men realize that they can use Cherokee for transmissions. Thereafter, "Using our language proved to be a winning strategy. We confounded the enemy."
Boney's story concludes by telling readers that "U.S. Public Law 110-420 states that the Code Talkers, first reported in use October 17, 1918, deserve immediate recognition for their dedication and valor." On November 30, 2013, the U.S. Congress honored Code Talkers with the Congressional Gold Medal. The
Cherokee Phoenix (the Cherokee Nation's newspaper) has an
article about it that includes an image of the medal the Cherokee Nation made, in collaboration with the US Mint. It, too, uses the Cherokee syllabary.
In twelve short pages, Boney conveys a lot of history. I enjoyed every word, and highly recommend his story. A curator at the Heard Museum Library purchased and printed it right away. He, too, found it exceptional. He catalogued it and
put it on World Cat.
If
We Speak in Secret is an indicator of what we'll see in
Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers: Volume I, we're all in for a magnificent treat.
A bit more info about Roy Boney. He's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He does terrific work, much of it described on his
website.
Order and download your copy today from the
INC website.
*Post updated to include the character's name, written using the Cherokee syllabary, and the way it is pronounced.
Some months ago I was asked if I could recommend a Native mystery writer. Because my area of expertise is books for children and young adults (and not adult mysteries), I asked colleagues in Native literature for names and learned about Sara Sue Hoklotubbe.
Right away I downloaded an e-copy of Hoklotubbe's
American Cafe. Published in 2011 by the University of Arizona Press, I liked it a lot and passed her name along.
American Cafe is the second book featuring Sadie Walela, a Cherokee woman trying to find her way in the world.
Hoklotubbe's writing is the real deal. Her Cherokee identity and knowledge are the foundation of her books. As you read, you'll be drawn into Sadie's world. There's no romanticizing, no stereotyping, and no mis-steps either like those you'll find in books by Tony Hillerman or Sandi Ault. Their books make me cringe (and yes, I did read some of them.)
Hoklotubbe will be reading tomorrow in Washington DC at the National Book Festival. For the last few weeks, I've been recovering from a broken ankle. Among the books I've read is the first Sadie Walela book,
Deception On All Accounts. I like Sadie and want to read more of her. I'll turn, next, to
Sinking Suspicions. Though it isn't marketed to young adults, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Hoklotubbe to older teens (or adults) looking for books--especially mysteries--by Native writers. I encourage you to get her books for your library and take a look at her
website, too.
At the end of May, I wrote about Elizabeth Warren (running for US Senate against incumbent Scott Brown) and her family story about how they are part Cherokee.
Last night was the first debate between Warren and Brown. The first thing Scott Brown brought up was Warren's identity. He said "Professor Warren claimed she was a Native American, a person of color. And as you can see, she's not."
Scott Brown's ignorance is showing!
__________
Brown's remark suggests that a blue-eyed blonde could not be American Indian. He is wrong about that. __________
Being a tribally enrolled member or citizen of a federally recognized tribe is what matters (and yes, there is a lot of debate about federal recognition and state recognition). Is Native identity determined by skin color? Nope. Hair color? Nope. Obviously, his idea of what an American Indian should look like is based on stereotypes!
The Cherokee Nation has several videos about being a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Here's one:
As the video demonstrates, Cherokee's "look" lots of different ways with regard to hair and skin color.
Scott Brown ought to watch that video!
And maybe he should read Cynthia Leitich Smith's short story, "A Real-Live Blond Cherokee and His Equally Annoyed Soul Mate" in
Moccasin Thunder, edited by Lori Marie Carlson.
There's a lot of ignorance in America (around the world, in fact) about who American Indians are, but there are a lot of outstanding children's and young adult books that can unseat that ignorance.
Moccasin Thunder has short stories by several leading Native writers: Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, Richard Van Camp, Linda Hogan, Joseph Bruchac, Greg Sarris, Lee Francis, and Susan Power. Pick it up today. Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown could learn a lot by reading it.
[Note: This review may not be published elsewhere without written permission from its author, Beverly Slapin. Copyright 2008 by Beverly Slapin. All rights reserved.]
Rumford, James, Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing, illustrated by the author and translated by Anna Sixkiller Huckaby (Cherokee). Houghton Mifflin, 2004; unpaginated, color illustrations; grades 1-4.
On a family road trip to California to visit the redwood trees called Giant Sequoia, a father relates the story of the origins of the Cherokee syllabary and the perseverance of its creator, Sequoyah. Sequoyah is portrayed as an otherwise ordinary man, a metalworker, who undertook the daunting task of setting speech to paper so that the Cherokee language would not “fade away.” Neither ridicule nor harassment from his contemporaries—not even the destruction of his home by arson—could stop Sequoyah from creating the syllabary widely used in Cherokee writing today.
Rumford’s text, reminiscent of traditional storytelling, is concise and evocative. Each paragraph in English is followed by a parallel in Cherokee by Anna Sixkiller Huckaby. The book design, format and illustrations are a thing of beauty and perfectly complement this story within a story. The tall, slim format and mostly dark brown and forest green accents honor both the stately Giant Sequoia trees and the man, Sequoyah, whose name they bear. The bold-lined artwork—done with ink, watercolor, pastel and pencil on drawing paper adhered to a rough piece of wood, then “rubbed” with chalk and colored pencil—remind one of 19th-Century woodblock prints. The Cherokee writing serves both as an example of what Sequoyah accomplished, and as a beautiful design element that completes the wholeness of the book.—Beverly Slapin
____________________________
This book is available from Oyate.
The Cherokee Nation website has a page about Sequoyah.
She used a cook book as proof that she is Native American. Warren also never listed herself as a minority as an undergrad or graduate student. But she knew in fact that a minority status could get herself into Harvard. So, she did it. Those are the facts.
That's a rather ignorant thing to say. To begin with, why does he get to define how she identifies herself? His statement of "clearly, she's not" is what is revealling of his ignorance. My VERY white children (yes, one of them is blonde) does not mean that they can't claim MY ethnic background. Simply because they look like my husband does NOT negate the fact that I am their mother. And, incidentally, I did not necessarily claim minority status (although both my parents are "minorities") because I did not need some of the benefits that might be offered to me....I wanted them to be available to others not as economically fortunate as I was. Your assumption about Ms. Warren's motivation is wholly inappropriate.
Thank you for this article. I emailed the senator and asked him the same thing.
As a resident of Massachusetts, I'm finding this election difficult between the two candidates we are choosing between.
Tahleen,
Warren makes me very angry. As I said in my post a few minutes ago http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2012/09/dear-elizabeth-warren-i-know-kids-who.html, I knock on doors and make phone calls for Democrats. We Democrats need her to win that seat for the good of the country. I'm glad I don't live In Massachusetts.