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The Natives and the English - Crash Course US History #3

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The Natives and the English - Crash Course US History #3

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The Natives and the English - Crash Course US History #3

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The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children’s Literature

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The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children’s Literature

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When I read about the controversy swirling around the children's book A Birthday Cake for George Washington, I gave a little shudder and thought, there but for the vagaries of fortune go I.

Years ago I collaborated on a children's book called Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit. The book was a retelling of several African American folk tales first collected by Joel Chandler Harris in the late 19th century and published in a series of books that all featured Uncle Remus, a fictional former slave, as the storyteller.

My co-author, Van Dyke Parks, and I agreed early in the process to do three things. First, get rid of the dialect used to tell the stories in the Chandler books. Second, get rid of Uncle Remus. Third, stay far, far away from the Tar Baby story.

The book got good reviews and sold well enough to justify two sequels. If there was any protest, it never got back to me.

Still I always felt like we'd gotten away with something, even if I wasn't sure what.

Because when you take a stroll through the territory of children's literature, you'd better know where the land mines are buried.

The folks at Scholastic Books were swiftly reminded of this-twice!-in the last few days.

For decades, Scholastic has been one of the biggest, most experienced publishers of books for young readers on the planet ( Harry Potter is just the tip of their iceberg). But clearly when they published A Birthday Cake for George Washington on Jan. 5, they had no idea of the ruckus they were kicking up.

Written by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, the book tells the story, based in fact, of Hercules, George Washington's jolly cook, who is baking a cake for his master and runs out of sugar. The problem, said critics, including the respected School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews, was that while the story notes that Hercules was a slave, it glossed over the plight of African Americans in bondage. Kirkus called it "an incomplete, even dishonest treatment of slavery."

The protests were successful. Scholastic bowed to the pressure and pulled the book from stores on Jan. 17.

That, in turn, set off another round of protests, this time from civil liberties champions such as The National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN American Center, and the First Amendment Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, who argued that "while it is perfectly valid for critics to dispute a book's historical accuracy and literary merits, the appropriate response is not to withdraw the volume and deprive readers of a chance to evaluate the book and the controversy for themselves."

Nor is A Birthday Cake for George Washington the only offender. Last year saw the publication of A Fine Dessert, about a slave mother and her daughter making a dessert called blackberry fool. Written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by Caldecott winner Sophie Blackall, that book, too, was criticized for eliding the horrors of slavery.

The irony here is twofold. First, the world of children's book publishing is achingly forward thinking and politically correct. This is due, in no small part, to the pedagogical impulse among publishers of books for children, and the books that result are too often drearily and relentlessly on the side of the angels. For every Stinky Cheese Man or Captain Underpants, there are five picture books dealing with LGBT issues, immigrant sagas, racism, or even the Holocaust. Yes, there are picture books about concentration camps for children not even old enough to read.

Second, children's book publishing is historically rife with examples of racism and prejudice. While this irony might seem at first to contradict the first one, it actually helps explain it: Over the past half century or so, children's book publishers have labored mightily not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. They will be inclusive. They will be vigilant in rooting out casual or prejudiced ways of thinking. This is kid lit in full instructional mode.

It's easy to see how they got to that point, because the troublesome thing about books is that they never completely go away. And a lot of the books with offensive material are in fact classics, so the whole industry is saddled with an ugly past that keeps breaking in on the present.

In the wake of the controversy over A Birthday Cake for George Washington, the Internet lit up with stories gleefully listing classic works of children's literature that contain offensive passages.

There are early 20th century counting books (yes, more than one) called Ten Little N**gers (also the original title of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians).

In one episode in The Story of Dr. Dolittle, a black man wants to marry a white princess, so the good doctor devises a way to bleach the man white.

Peter Pan and the Little House on the Prairie books demean Native Americans.

Tintin in the Congo depicts Africans as stupid grotesques who worship white people.

In The Secret Garden, the protagonist, Mary, says that "blacks are not people," and no one ever contradicts her, although the book is otherwise dedicated to correcting her behavior at every turn.

In early editions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa Loompas were black cannibals.

And many readers object to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because Mark Twain (in this regard at least the Quentin Tarantino of his time) uses the word n**ger more than 200 times.

With the exception of Twain, who knew precisely what he was doing, the authors in question were almost surely clueless about their casual or unthinking racism. They were the feckless prisoners of their times, and much as we'd like for people in the past to share our enlightenment, especially people we otherwise admire, it's just not going to happen in an unfortunate number of cases. And a couple of centuries from now, when people look back at us, they too surely will be thinking, how could they?

The case of Joel Chandler Harris is particularly relevant in this regard. A lifelong southerner and an Atlanta newspaper editor (and incidentally a friend of Twain's), Harris was probably as enlightened as a white person could be in his time and place. If you read his Uncle Remus stories, you'll see that to Harris, Uncle Remus was a hero. He's certainly the smartest and kindest person, black or white, in the narrative that frames the folk tales collected by the author from former slaves.

More important, had Harris not collected those folktales, we almost surely would have missed much of a vast trove of oral storytelling ("our most precious piece of stolen goods," Twain called them-so that's what we were getting away with!), because before Harris, no one else had the sense to realize how wonderful those stories were, much less that they should be recorded for posterity. Whatever sins he may have been guilty of, Harris knew at least that much. James Weldon Johnson called the 185 stories published by Harris "the greatest body of folklore America has produced."

(I'm completely ignoring the tangled history of Disney's Song of the South, the animated and live action film based on Harris's stories, since none of that can be blamed on Harris. I will only say that the racism and prejudice embedded in a host of Disney projects merits several dissertations.)

The point with Harris, and nearly all the other so-called racist writers of classic children's books, is that they weren't haters. Racism wasn't on their agenda the way it was with, say, D.W. Griffith or Leni Riefenstahl. Try watching The Birth of a Nation or The Triumph of the Will, and you've got a real problem to sort: here are films of genius with despicable messages at the very heart of the stories they tell.

But with most of the classic children's books tagged as racist, the prejudice crops up more as a reflection of the times in which the books were written. People on the frontier prairie did demonize Native Americans and they did go to minstrel shows, just the way Laura Ingalls Wilder describes them in the Little House books. To pretend otherwise does a disservice to history.

Or try this: excise or merely skip the offensive passages in problematical classics and see how much damage you do. Take away the dialect and the character of Uncle Remus, and the trickster tales he collected are in no way diminished. Rejigger the text and redraw a few illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the Oompa Loompas are, well, just Oompa Loompas.

This doesn't always work, of course. Tintin in the Congo, to cite but one example, is appalling no matter how you look at it.

The dilemma of racism and prejudiced language soiling certain works of children's literature is real enough. However, obsessing over racist passages in otherwise beloved books ignores a far more pernicious problem: until roughly the last half century, children's literature was overwhelmingly, unrelentingly white. The authors were white, and so were the characters in their stories. Imagine the damage it does to a child who isn't white to grow up reading books where he or she can't identify with anyone in the stories. Surely this corrodes a child's sense of self in far more lasting and insidious ways.

To be sure, children's book publishers have labored mightily-and yes, sometimes wearisomely-to redress this insult in recent decades. Books for children featuring people of color and varied ethnicities now abound, and if they do not redress the damage done by Anglo-centric books of the past, it's not for want of trying. Maintaining that progressive spirit deserves our energy far more than any effort to condemn or banish old books unfortunately tainted by the mores of the past.

Of course, parents, teachers, and librarians-anyone who puts books in the hands of children-should know what's in those books and be prepared to discuss with young readers where those books go astray. The first lesson they could teach would be that we live in a more enlightened time than the times that produced those classics. It doesn't mean we're better people, but it does mean we're luckier.

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The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children's Literature

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When I read about the controversy swirling around the children's book A Birthday Cake for George Washington , I gave a little shudder and thought, there but for the vagaries of fortune go I. Years ago I collaborated on a children's book called Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit .

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Native American Language Translations: Indian Words for Tattoos, Literature or Art

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Indigenous language organization offers translations of Native American words to and from English for tattoos or other artistic purposes. Translation proceeds benefit our American Indian language preservation efforts.

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In Tribal Justice, two Native American judges reach back to traditional concepts of justice in order to reduce incarceration rates, foster greater safety for their communities, and create a more positive future for their youth. A co-production of Vision Maker Media and American Documentary | POV.

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Information on the Native American tribes of Louisiana, with maps, reservation addresses, classroom activities and recommended history books.

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Come on in and learn something new, Read about the forgotten Creole culture of America. Home brewed mixture of African, French, Spanish, and Native American.

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For more information and updates about how New Orleans is addressing the Covid-19 outbreak - including restaurants that are currently open for takeout and delivery - please visit our homepage Read More

One of the most mysterious, fascinating and colorful pieces of New Orleans' cultural quilt belongs to Mardi Gras Indians. A unique and historic subculture of New Orleans, Mardi Gras Indians and their traditions date back to the 1800s when Native Americans helped shield runaway slaves. Mardis Gras Indian culture is influenced by both ancestral enslaved Africans and the friendship forged with Native Americans.

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For more information and updates about how New Orleans is addressing the Covid-19 outbreak - including restaurants that are currently open for takeout and delivery - please visit our homepage Read More One of the most mysterious, fascinating and colorful pieces of New Orleans' cultural quilt belongs to Mardi Gras Indians.

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Why America is NOT the greatest country in the world, anymore.

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Why America is NOT the greatest country in the world, anymore.

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Opening scene from HBO "The Newsroom (clean edit)

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Given the liberties Disney have taken with some of their stories, most audiences will take their films with a pinch of salt. However, if it's based on the life of a real person, the resulting taste can be a bitter one at best. In the case of Pocahontas, it can be positively poisonous.

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Disneyfied, or Disney tried?

Pocahontas vs. The Story of Pocahontas

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Court rules against Redskins trademark registration

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Court rules against Redskins trademark registration

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This decision is a setback for the team's ongoing legal and public relations battle that has taken course over the past year, but a win for Native American activists who oppose the logo, including five individuals who were faced with a lawsuit last summer, according to The Washington Post.

The cancellation will not officially take place until the team has exhausted all appeals in the Federal Courts.

The Redskins filed a lawsuit in August 2014 against five Native American activists after the group convinced a trademark agency to void the team's registration earlier that summer, the Post reported.

The group of activists argued the name and logo was offensive to Native Americans. However, among other legal arguments the Redskins voiced in court, the team rebutted stating that many Native Americans actually loved the name. According to the Post, the team even referenced a 1977 Thanksgiving game that featured hundreds of Native Americans participating in the half time show.

That argument didn't prove to be enough for the five individuals, who even organized protests outside stadiums where the team was playing and rallied support of Congress.

The team's president Bruce Allen said they're moving on to their next legal hurdle.

"I am surprised by the judge's decision to prevent us from presenting our evidence in an open trial," Allen said in a statement. "We look forward to winning on appeal after a fair and impartial review of the case. We are convinced that we will win because the facts and the law are on the side of our franchise that has proudly used the name Redskins for more than 80 years."

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redskins lose legal battle in federal court - cnnpolitics

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Redskins lose legal battle in federal court - CNNPolitics

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This decision is a setback for the team's ongoing legal and public relations battle that has taken course over the past year, but a win for Native American activists who oppose the logo, including five individuals who were faced with a lawsuit last summer, according to The Washington Post.

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The world's most famous provider of family entertainment for nearly 100 years, the Walt Disney Company has transported the masses to fantasy realms and cartoon wonderlands. From Mickey Mouse's first sound cartoon Steamboat Willie (1928) to Queen Elsa's trials and tribulations in Frozen (2013), Disney has gripped us with its unique medley of animation, comedy, music and sentimentality.

Disney has repackaged, or 'Disneyfied', a wide array of European folk tales and children's stories over the years, its chief success being the selling of child-friendly fiction for the masses. Disney has also, I would argue, turned history into popular entertainment.

For decades, Disney has shaped our cultural, environmental and historical lens, and has exercised tremendous power over children's education. In the mid-20th century, for example, Disney promoted early environmental awareness in the United States through a groundbreaking series of nature documentaries entitled True-Life Adventures that ran from 1948 to 1960. Disney also educated the masses on issues of popular science in the 1950s, explaining to schoolchildren the workings of nuclear energy through Our Friend the Atom (1957), a widely distributed television production and accompanying educational book.

Disney has also influenced popular perception of history. Scholar Mike Wallace argues: "It is possible that Walt Disney has taught people more history, in a more memorable way, than they ever learned in school". Indeed, as the examples below will show, Disney has routinely dabbled in depictions of the past. While the easiest option might be to label such movies 'Mickey Mouse history' and of no discernable value or impact, Disney is an international force in popular education.

So what, specifically, is 'Disney history'? Disney history is primarily about nostalgia and resolution. Disney offers a sentimental and largely positive reading of the past, often high in visual detail, that promotes the idea of history as leading to happy endings and universal progress. It is utopian and optimistic. As to be expected in child-focused stories, some of the moral complexity of the past is sidelined in the search for a simpler and more comprehensible tale of 'heroes and villains' and the triumph of forces for good over evil.

Storytelling is very important in Disney history. The corporation grasps the importance of narrative, scene setting and characters in getting people interested in heritage, and in recent decades the company has financed a range of serious historical movies. Disney has fuelled interest in historical periods and issues, and most of all made history exciting. However, Disney history has not always proved welcome.

In the 1990s, for example, Disney's plans for an American history theme park in Haymarket, Virginia, were dashed by an alliance of local residents, environmentalists and academics. Under the banner 'Protect Historic America,' around 200 scholars protested what they deemed to be a significant threat to historical monuments in the region. They called the theme park project 'Distory.'

Here we explore six historical Disney films...

Song of the South (1946)

Walt Disney himself was a big fan of the past. He was a deeply nostalgic man, particularly fond of his time growing up in the rural mid-West. He based his original designs for Main Street USA in Disneyland upon his own romantic recollections of Marceline, Missouri: the end result being a highly nostalgic and charming recreation of life in small town America in the early 1900s.

The same year as the release of the cinematic epic Gone with the Wind (1939), Walt purchased the rights to the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, which are also set in the deep South. Disney set about transforming Harris's work into a mix of live action and cartoon. In 1946, Disney released Song of the South starring James Baskett. The movie proved highly popular, with Baskett's rendition of 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' a huge Disney hit song - the 'Let it Go' of its day.

Song of the South provided a highly 'Disneyised' version of the American South, portraying plantation life as all happy families and bright colours, a world where white boys and black slaves were best friends and African-Americans had a "wonderful day". As a cultural product of a racially divided nation (with the full impact of the civil rights movement still 10 years away), the Disney film predictably avoided tackling race issues. Instead, it romanticised a difficult past; the Disney South was a world of dancing bees and hummingbirds.

Wisely recognising problems with how the movie presents history, Disney has kept Song of the South in its archive for several decades with little chance of re-release.

Movie poster advertising 'Song of the South' (Walt Disney), 1946. (Photo by John D Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images)
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955)

In the 1950s, Disney assimilated the Hollywood Western - all cowboys and Indians - and transferred it to a new setting. Opened in July 1955, Frontierland in Disneyland granted visitors a fully interactive experience of the Wild West, complete with Mark Twain steamboat, stagecoaches, pack mules and unfriendly Indians.

Used to promote the park (and linked to a finance deal with ABC), Disney's companion TV show Disneyland promoted both the brand and the fledging parkscape. The programme sported its own full-on Disney Western hero: Davy Crockett. Across a five-part series, initially released in 1954-45, Davy Crockett, starring Fess Parker, related life on the 'wild frontier'. The snappy tune 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' escorted Crockett everywhere, telling his story and celebrating the man's triumphs.

Audiences loved this Disney take on a real Western frontiersman, evidenced by the sale of around 10 million Davy Crockett fur hats and the addition of a Davy Crockett Museum and gift store to Frontierland itself. Humour, bravado and a fair amount of shooting marked the series (and the two films that came from it), and the 'Disney West' built on popular versions of American frontier history.

Davy Crockett (Fess Parker) and his sidekick, George Russell (Buddy Ebsen) in 'Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier' (1955). (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images)
Pocahontas (1995)

As well as 'Disney cowboys' there were also Disney Indians, the most famous being the Disney princess Pocahontas, who was the daughter of an Algonquin (Powhatan) chief. In 1995, Disney released its own cartoon version of the classic colonial encounter story. Disney consulted with Native Americans during the making of the movie and cast First Nation actors in key roles.

In many ways Disney's Pocahontas offered a redeemed narrative of Indians in America, a wholly positive and romantic depiction of native life. Turning Pocahontas into a Disney princess showed a corporation keen to be more inclusive, and welcome America's first indigenous groups into the Mickey Mouse fold. Disney's Pocahontas celebrated a group of people largely marginalised in traditional American history, and the movie valiantly attempted to tell 'their story'.

However, marred by historical inaccuracies (for example, the real Pocahontas was only 10 or 11 when she met John Smith, a character of dubious repute) as well as some old-fashioned stereotypes, the film arguably fell short of its lofty goals.

Pocahontas and John Smith in Disney's 'Pocahontas' (1995). (© AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo)
Pearl Harbor (2001)

In the Disney Touchstone blockbuster Pearl Harbor, director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer reconstructed the infamous 1941 Japanese attack on American soil into a story of romance, drama and visual spectacle. Despite protestations by Disney financiers, the movie proved highly expensive, with $8 million alone spent on constructing a giant water bowl for filming at Honolulu.

Great expectations surrounded the movie. However, upon release, critics were quick to attack Pearl Harbor, labelling it an insult to national history. As one Washington Post journalist bemoaned, "although this Walt Disney movie is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor, the movie is actually based on the movies Top Gun, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. Don't get confused". The National Geographic channel even commissioned a documentary to highlight the movie's errors.

Such a critical reaction reflected the hallowed status of Pearl Harbor in American history; an event that was, even 60 years on, unsuited for action movies, however patriotic they might be. Cognisant of growing criticism, Jerry Bruckheimer admitted "it's certainly not meant to be a history lesson".

Despite the criticism directed at the film, Pearl Harbor proved a massive commercial success, recording $450m at the worldwide box office.

Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett in 'Pearl Harbor' (2001). (© United Archives GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo)
National Treasure (2004)

Released in 2004, National Treasure quite candidly turned historical documentation into action adventure, and promoted history as something so exciting to kids that it's a wonder every child doesn't want to be a historian.

In the style of Indiana Jones (which Disney had options on but ultimately rejected) and the videogame/movie franchise Tomb Raider, National Treasure related the search of renegade US historian Benjamin Franklin Gates (played by Nicolas Cage) for Freemason artifacts.

National Treasure resembled an old-school Disney family movie: full of fun, charm and wit, presenting history as exciting and alive. It intriguingly depicted history as a 'treasure hunt,' a task rife in conspiracy and even necessitating a criminal heist in the National Archives. All old pipes, clues and riddles, Cage's Gates, frowned upon by the historical community, demonstrated keen knowledge of George Washington's campaign buttons and knew more about the Declaration of Independence than most, including the 'invisible treasure map' on its back. Nostalgic for the past, Gates read aloud the Declaration, lamenting how "people don't talk that way anymore".

National Treasure effectively cast the search and study of history as pure entertainment and successfully spawned a sequel.

Nicholas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates and Diane Kruger as Abigail Chase in 'National Treasure' (2004). (© ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo)
Lincoln (2012)

Steven Spielberg provided his own sentimental, eminently weighty version of presidential history with the epic Lincoln in 2012, which was distributed by Disney.

Applauded by the mainstream press but criticised by some historians including Eric Foner from Columbia, Lincoln is a historical biopic rich in emotion, detail and subtlety. The film offers a rare feeling of filmic immersion in American history, making viewers feel as if they were actually there witnessing the depicted events.

Spielberg's movie oversimplified the historical record, especially on the key issue of slavery, but Lincoln nonetheless highlighted how well Disney could 'do history' for a mainstream audience. As part of the film campaign, Disney Educational Productions gave DVDs and teaching guides ('Stand Tall: Live Like Lincoln') to thousands of secondary schools in the USA, making Disney history a standard education for schoolkids.
Dr John Wills is senior lecturer in American history and director of American Studies at the University of Kent. He has published four books on American popular culture and environmental history, recently completing his fifth on Disney culture for Rutgers University Press.

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Disney history: how has the corporation shaped our perception of the past?

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From Pocahontas to Pearl Harbor, over the course of its near-100 year history Disney has repackaged, or 'Disneyfied', a number of real historical people and events. Here, historian Dr John Wills explores how the corporation has turned history into popular entertainment...

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There’s a new way for novelists to sound authentic. But at what cost?By Everdeen Mason

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There’s a new way for novelists to sound authentic. But at what cost?By Everdeen Mason

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Disney history: how has the corporation shaped our perception of the past?

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Disney history: how has the corporation shaped our perception of the past

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Is It Offensive for Sports Teams to Use Native American Names and Mascots?BY MICHAEL GONCHAR  

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Is It Offensive for Sports Teams to Use Native American Names and Mascots?BY MICHAEL GONCHAR  

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Native American names and symbols have long been popular for all types of American sports teams at the professional, college and high school levels. Think of the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins.
Is it offensive for sports teams to use Native American names and mascots?

In " Obama Points to 'Legitimate Concerns' Over Redskins' Name," Ken Belson writes about the continuing debate over the appropriateness of the Redskins' name.

The long-simmering debate over the Washington Redskins' name took a new turn when President Obama said that he would consider changing it if he were the team's owner.

Obama's comments are likely to stoke the dispute, which has forced the team, the N.F.L. and politicians on both sides of the aisle into the awkward position of defending a nickname that some Native American groups find objectionable.

"I don't know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things," Obama said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Obama, who roots for baseball, football and basketball teams from Chicago, said he did not think that fans of the Redskins were deliberately trying to offend Native Americans. But advocacy groups and at least 10 members of Congress who insist that the Redskins name is derogatory are likely to embrace his comments.

Students: Tell us ...

Is it offensive for sports teams to use Native American names and mascots? Why?

Should teams, like the Washington Redskins, change their names? Explain.

Does your opinion change if the team in question serves a large Native American population, like Haskell Indian Nations University, or if a specific tribe gives its approval for a name, like the Seminole tribe did for the Florida State Seminoles? Why?

If you were to rename the Washington Redskins, what name would you choose?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Is It Offensive for Sports Teams to Use Native American Names and Mascots?

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Native American names and symbols have long been popular for all types of American sports teams at the professional, college and high school levels. Think of the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins. Is it offensive for sports teams to use Native American names and mascots?

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Native Americans: “THEY THINK WE’RE JUST HISTORICAL.”

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Native Americans: “THEY THINK WE’RE JUST HISTORICAL.”

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video

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Continuing the Conversation

Do you have questions about racist objects? We will be hosting a live chat next week with Dr. Pilgrim and some of our contributors. Bookmark this page to join us.

Logan Jaffe is a multimedia producer and filmmaker embedded at the New York Times in a collaboration with the independent documentary showcase POV. Produced by Angelica McKinley. Video by Logan Jaffe and Ainara Tiefenthäler. Senior producers: Damien Cave, Alexandra Garcia, John MacFarlane. Images of reader objects: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Jane Sprague, Theodore Presser Company, MSC International, Eli Rosenblatt, Mariana Vaca, Eddie Chambers, Irene Hoffman, Lauren Downing Peters

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Do you have questions about racist objects? We will be hosting a live chat next week with Dr. Pilgrim and some of our contributors. Bookmark this page to join us. Logan Jaffe is a multimedia producer and filmmaker embedded at the New York Times in a collaboration with the independent documentary showcase POV.

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It was never India...

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How does it feel to be called by a name you did not choose for yourself? Over time, people have used a long list of names for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, but those words have rarely been what they would call themselves.

The power and meaning of labels comes not only from the choice of words but also from how those words are said. Niin, an Anishinaabe woman of both Cree and Ojibway descent, talked in an interview about the first time in her childhood when someone called her an "Indian."

I'm not sure whether I was in grade one or in grade two; actually I think it was in kindergarten, because my Mom was home at that time. I remember being outside for recess. You know, everyone was running around, playing in the middle of the field. All of a sudden I stopped because I realized that a few of the kids who were in my classroom had formed a circle around me. They were going around and around the circle and I realized I was in the middle of this circle. I was trying to figure out what the heck is going on here? They were saying something and I started listening to them. They were saying "Indian, Indian, Indian." And I was like what? I really didn't understand myself, first and foremost, as an "Indian." Right in the middle of when they were doing that, the bell rang and everybody just turned toward the door and started walking in. I remember looking down on the ground wondering, what are they talking about Indian, Indian, Indian? I don't even know how that circle formed in the first place. I didn't catch it. It just seemed all of a sudden they were all around me and I just stopped, looking at them all. The bell rang right away. I just remember putting my head down, walking, looking at the grass, I was really thinking about, what was that all about? I didn't even remember it by the time we got to the door. Except for when I got home I asked my Mom.

I remember when I went home, my mother was standing at the counter. She was baking something or other but she was working at the counter and I just walked up to her and I was watching what she was doing. I remember my chin barely touched the counter and I was watching her. I said, "Mom, what am I?" And she looked down at me and said really fast, "Were people asking you what you were?" I said, "Yes, they were calling me Indian." She said, "Tell them you're Canadian." I couldn't really figure out why she was sounding so stern and kind of angry. I just thought okay and I turned around but I remember that afternoon really clearly. I think why it stuck in my mind so much is because they were in a circle ridiculing me. And I don't even know. I didn't even take offence because I didn't know what they were doing. Even though they were calling me Indian, I was still going yeah, so what? So it always puzzled me about why, why they were calling me Indian. And because I didn't really feel any different from them, even though I knew my skin was darker, my hair was brown, and I had a shinier face. I really didn't feel any different from them or feel I was different from them.

I just felt we were all just kids. I think that's when I started learning that there were different kinds of people. I knew that there were different kinds of people by just looking and seeing like different looking people but not people who are different from one another.

Las Palabras Importan

¿Qué siente una persona cuando la llaman por un nombre que no eligió para usted? A lo largo del tiempo, las personas han utilizado una amplia lista de nombres para referirse a los pueblos indígenas de las Américas, pero tales palabras casi nunca han sido las que ellos usarían para referirse a sí mismos.

El poder y el significado de las etiquetas no solo proceden de la elección de las palabras, sino también de la forma como se dicen. Niin, una mujer anishinaabe, descendiente de las tribus Cree y Ojibwa, habló en una entrevista sobre la primera vez que alguien la llamó "india" cuando era una niña.

No estoy segura si estaba en primero o en segundo grado; en realidad, creo que estaba en el kínder porque en esa época mi mamá estaba en casa. Recuerdo que estaba afuera en el recreo. Ya saben, todos corrían alrededor, jugando en medio del campo. De repente me detuve porque me di cuenta que algunos de los niños de mi clase habían formado un círculo a mi alrededor; ellos caminaban en círculo y yo estaba en el centro de ese círculo. Trataba de entender lo que estaba pasando. Ellos estaban diciendo algo, así que empecé a escucharlos. Decían: "India, india, india". Pero yo no entendía nada. A decir verdad, yo no me veía a mí misma, en primer lugar, como una "india". Justo en el momento en que hacían eso, sonó la campana y todos se voltearon hacia la puerta y comenzaron a entrar. Recuerdo que miré al piso, preguntándome: ¿A qué se refieren con india, india, india? Para empezar, ni siquiera sé cómo se formó ese círculo. No me di cuenta; de repente todos me rodearon, así que me detuve y los observé. La campana sonó justo en ese instante. Solo recuerdo que agaché la cabeza, caminé y, mirando el césped, me preguntaba: ¿qué había sido todo eso? Ni siquiera recuerdo en qué momento llegamos a la puerta. Solo que al llegar a casa, le pregunté a mi mamá.

Recuerdo cuando regresé a casa, mi madre estaba de pie junto al mesón. Estaba horneando algo, o eso parecía porque estaba haciendo algo en el mesón de la cocina; caminé hacia ella mientras observaba lo que hacía. Recuerdo que mi barbilla apenas llegaba a la altura del mesón y que yo la observaba. Le dije: "Mamá, ¿qué soy?; y ella me miró desde arriba y rápidamente me dijo: "¿La gente te ha estado preguntando qué eres?"; yo le dije: "Sí, me han llamado india". Ella respondió: "Diles que eres canadiense". A decir verdad, no podía entender por qué sonaba tan seria y algo enojada. Pensé que estaba bien y me di vuelta, sin embargo, recuerdo esa tarde claramente. Creo que la razón por la que esto quedó tan grabado en mi mente es porque ellos hicieron un círculo para ridiculizarme. Y yo ni siquiera lo sabía. No me sentía ofendida porque ni siquiera sabía lo que hacían. Aunque me llamaban india, yo pensaba: "Sí, ¿y qué?"; así que siempre me desconcertó la razón por la que me llamaban india. Porque no me sentía diferente a ellos, aunque sabía que mi piel era más oscura, mi cabello marrón y mi rostro más resplandeciente. En realidad, no percibía ninguna diferencia ni me sentía diferente a ellos. Sentía que todos éramos simplemente niños. Creo que, en ese momento, empecé a aprender que existían diferentes tipos de personas. Sabía que había diferentes tipos de personas al mirarlas y percibirlas como personas de aspecto diferente; mas no como personas que son diferentes entre sí.

1. What do you think the word Indian meant to the kids in Niin's class? What factors might have shaped her classmates' understanding of the word?

2. Why do you think Niin's mother told Niin she was Canadian? What did she want Niin to understand about herself?

3. Considering the rest of the story, what might Niin's mother have wanted Niin's classmates to learn?

4. Do you have a memory of becoming aware of differences? If so, what was it?

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How does it feel to be called by a name you did not choose for yourself? Over time, people have used a long list of names for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, but those words have rarely been what they would call themselves.

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Native Languages of the Americas: Choctaw Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Native Languages of the Americas: Choctaw Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Choctaw Legends (Folklore, Myths, and Traditional Indian Stories)

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Index of Choctaw Indian legends, folktales, and mythology.

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Why write a novel about a race that’s not your own?

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Why write a novel about a race that’s not your own?

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Beneath the deadening lack of racial diversity in American publishing lies a subtler, affiliated kind of redlining. Whether it's a barrier constructed of ignorance or cemented by anxiety, it serves to keep most novelists - particularly most white novelists - working within the realm of their own racial heritage, creating characters that look like they do.

Almost 150 years after Mark Twain sent Jim down the Mississippi River, we still can't decide whether that portrayal was a breakthrough or another inscription of racism. But no matter how much the country has changed, there are few towns in the United States as monochromatic as the towns in American fiction. Even as we try to encourage more diverse books, our eagerness - and capacity - to rain down hellfire on authorial missteps and insensitivities, conscious or unconscious, has radically increased. At the National Book Festival last year, Gene Luen Yang, who was newly appointed the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, said, "I have noticed an undercurrent of fear in many of our discussions. We're afraid of writing characters different from ourselves because we're afraid of getting it wrong. We're afraid of what the Internet might say."

The exceptions last year were striking, sometimes daring. The leading character of Garth Risk Hallberg's mammoth "City on Fire" is a gay black man, a rare double-twist for a straight white novelist. In Nell Zink's subversive comedy "Mislaid," the white heroine and her daughter pass as black, moving undetected through a swamp of racism and white guilt. But perhaps the most interesting recent example comes from T. Geronimo Johnson, an African American novelist who realized while writing "Welcome to Braggsville" that his black protagonist should be white. That switch leaves a residue of ambiguity in this wickedly funny and disturbing satire about America's confused and confusing attitudes about race.

When I asked Johnson if he thought white authors were reluctant to create black characters, he quipped, "I wish more of them would be reluctant." And there's the rub: Crossing the color line and crossing it effectively are two distinct acts. Jabari Asim, editor of the NAACP's magazine the Crisis, singles out a few white novelists such as Madison Smartt Bell, Susan Straight and Colum McCann. But in general, he says, "Many books have black characters in them, but few seem to include black people."

[ Review:'Welcome to Braggsville,' by T. Geronimo Johnson ]

Into this fraught discussion now comes Charlie Smith, a 67-year-old white Southerner, who has just published a g orgeous, harrowing novel called "Ginny Gall," in which essentially all the characters are black. In fact, the few white characters who appear occupy the kind of peripheral, broadly drawn positions too often reserved for minorities.

His story covers a great swatch of the Jim Crow South and conjures up the largely separate, ferociously repressed world of African Americans in the early 20th century. The protagonist is Delvin, born in 1913, to a "good-time gal" in Chattanooga, Tenn. Early in the novel, his mother unintentionally kills a white man and runs for her life. Delvin is left first to the care of an orphanage and then to a kindly undertaker, from whom he learns the mechanics of death and the rhythms of grief. He's a bright boy, "a wonderanemous child," quick to read and eager to make up stories, but his primary occupation is staying alive in a society that insists black men - even boys - remain dumb, shiftless and unthreatening.

In her "Glossary of Harlem Slang" (1942), Zora Neale Hurston defined Ginny Gall as "a suburb of Hell," and that's frequently - but not always - the terrain of this novel. In opulent, slightly antique prose that suggests Smith's parallel career as a poet, "Ginny Gall" portrays a region infected with the presumption of black depravity and violence. Delvin and his friends live with the visceral knowledge that any violation of the rules, even the shadow of an infraction, will inspire the full ferocity of white rage, "as if this furious clumping together, this scarifying, claiming vengeance or redemption, was as natural as sunlight."

One of the many outrages that Smith portrays so powerfully is that white atrocities must never be acknowledged, the veneer of Southern gentility must never be scratched no matter how horrific the crime. That unspoken rule constantly threatens Delvin's later employer, an itinerant curator of black photography. His collection is "built to blow the foolish, sanctimonious notions of these folks right out of the water," but he and Delvin step lightly around the South. "The world belonged to the white man," Smith writes. "Delvin and his kind were merely scumbling through it. They were stranded in a country whose language was not theirs and whose customs were foreign to them." Fortunately, Delvin's employer is a master at placating local town leaders with happy pictures of "antic burlesque," while secretly displaying photographs of lynchings for their real patrons.

Negotiating this treacherous landscape, Delvin is an incredibly endearing, absolutely heartbreaking figure. Without sentimentality or condescension, Smith follows him across the South, through periods of peace and sparks of terror, months of romance and long, unending trials of despair.

Despite being the author of more than a dozen well-regarded novels and collections of poetry, Smith has maintained an unfortunate degree of invisibility, which I pray his latest book corrects. He effectively left the South when he was 14, but his quiet, pensive voice is still inflected with a Georgia accent. From his home in New York, he admits that he came to the subject of "Ginny Gall" without any special knowledge of the material.

"I tend to write about stories and about characters that are not really part of my own life or my own experience because it's more exciting to imagine things than to try to just relate factual matters," he says.

"In one sense, I think in the world we're all frogs in the same bucket. Whatever is going on, whatever misalliances and misdelving of quiddities we get into, the human heart is still beating in the same way in everybody's chest. We want to be loved, we want to express love, we want to have our feelings about ourselves and our lives treated in an honorable way. We're all struggling along those lines. So to some degree, we're all the same."

He takes gentle exception to my suggestion that Delvin's story offers a powerful social critique.

"I'm attempting in a novel not to take a stand about anything or represent anything or points of view - that way of life or this way of life," he says. "I'm not any sort of polemicist or writer of that kind. But I was drawn to that sense of a life having to be lived in that way. I wanted to see, in a sense, how strong the heart could be. What I'm trying to do is get a character to be real, to be speaking from a body that has a heart in it, from a being that has blood rushing around its veins and has ideas and notions and thoughts and losses and joys. That seems to me to be my obligation and my task."

He was inspired by the trials of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African Americans who were accused of raping two white women on a train in the early 1930s. Smith says that "calamitous experience" caught his imagination. And for him, a novel is "a pure act of imagination." He admits, "There were a few matters that I felt I had to look up, things I just didn't know anything about. Hobo train riding was one." (The novel contains a freight of Depression-era slang.) But he makes no claims to historical fidelity. Nor does he feel as though he's trespassing on anyone else's material.

"As far as the matters of racial consciousness or whether or not this kind of person can write about that kind of person, that seems kind of dangerous to get into. To decide only certain persons can write about certain things, that's a kind of moral censorship, the most dangerous censorship - by the will of the collective - a way of looking at things that limits rather than opens. To hold myself back and say, 'I can't write about these matters because I don't have any experience of them' is to admit that the imagination itself must be limited, must be curtailed."

"Ginny Gall" is a dramatic demonstration of that ideal. The second half is largely the story of Delvin's adventures in jails and prisons - that vast network of cages that conveniently replaced the system of human chattel that the Civil War dismantled. The slowly turning gears of Southern law mesh perfectly with the teeth of racism. But Delvin persists through beatings and betrayals and the ravages of malaria, always reaching toward a life he imagines might be possible.

"It wasn't all grief," Smith writes near the end of the novel, but not near the end of Delvin's trials. "Mingled with the pasty, durable, extenuated sadness was a happiness, a new one, a stretching out of himself, long-shanked and agile - he was, in this moment of American time, free, a misplaced man, overlooked, drifting on the breeze, a wanderer amid the garrison of interlockedness, sunk deep enough in negro life for a while not to be missed, uncounted by any census, omitted by the tax man, skipped by the army."

Here, in these remarkable pages, he's not overlooked. He's seen and understood in a way that each of us - across the whole color spectrum of humanity - deserves to be seen and understood.

Ron Charles is the editor of Book World. You can follow him on Twitter @RonCharles.

Read more:

Gene Luen Yang's diversity speech at the 2014 National Book Festival gala

'City on Fire,' by Garth Risk Hallberg

'Mislaid,' by Nell Zink

Ginny Gall

By Charlie Smith

Harper. 451 pp. $26.99

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Why write a novel about a race that's not your own? The case of 'Ginny Gall'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beneath the deadening lack of racial diversity in American publishing lies a subtler, affiliated kind of redlining. Whether it's a barrier constructed of ignorance or cemented by anxiety, it serves to keep most novelists - particularly most white novelists - working within the realm of their own racial heritage, creating characters that look like they do.

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Native American Indian Legends - Eclipse of the Sun blamed on Black Squirrel - Choctaw

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American Indian Legends : A Choctaw Indian Legend - Eclipse of the Sun blamed on Black Squirrel.

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Uncharted Territory 157-160

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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American Poetry Review to National Geographic. Bruchac is the author of over 120 books.

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uncharted page 277

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August and the drive-in picture is packed. / We lounge on the hood of the Pontiac / surrounded by the slow-burning spirals they sell / at the window, to vanquish the hordes of

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Native Languages of the Americas: Tlingit Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Native Languages of the Americas: Tlingit Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Tlingit Legends (Folklore, Myths, and Traditional Indian Stories)

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Index of Tlingit Indian legends, folktales, and mythology.

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Raven knew that he must trick the villagers to steal their treasure, so he decided to turn himself into a grandchild of the great chief. Raven flew up on a tall tree over their house and turned himself into a hemlock needle.

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Assume the Position: History IS Pop Culture

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Assume the Position: History IS Pop Culture

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Art&Seek:  Robert Wuhl, Assume the Position

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Peter Blue Cloud: Tales and Poems of Coyote

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Peter Blue Cloud: Tales and Poems of Coyote

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Peter Blue Cloud Coyote makes the First People
Coyote stopped to drink at a big lake and saw his reflection. "Now there's a really good-looking coyote," he said, leaning farther over.

And of course he fell in. And of course you will think this is a take-off on an old theme.

But what happened was, he drank up the whole lake to keep from drowning. And because he didn't really like the taste of certain fish, he spat them out. And because he felt sorry when he saw them flopping around, he sang a song to give them legs.

"Maybe they'll become the first people," Coyote mused aloud.

"Oh no you don't," said the headman of that tribe of fish, "if it's all the same with you, could you just put us back where we were? And could you please take away these stupid legs?"

So Coyote regurgitated the lake and put everything back the way it was.

Again he saw his reflection and said, "Okay, you're pretty good-looking, but are you smart? I've been trying to make the first people for a long time now, but nothing wants to be people. So, what do I do - huh - can you tell me?"

His reflection studied him for a long time, then it squatted and dropped a big turd.

"Okay," said Coyote, "I guess that's as good an answer as any."

Then he himself squatted and began to fashion the first people...

_____
An Arrangement
Three dried stems of grass. A horizontally branching twig of bittersweet. A single, tiny, hand-like bit of cedar bough found upon the ground.

How to place their stems within the narrow neck of a delicate, ceramic vessel?

Ah, good...But no, perhaps I should break one of the grass stems, to give a sharp downward angle, to balance the bittersweet.

But that's manipulation, isn't it? Well - so's picking them in the first place.

"We're out of kindling," Coyote Woman said.

Hm, cedar kindling sure makes a nice, smooth, splintering, creaking, tearing-like-jerky noise as the axe penetrates. If I close my eyes I can daydream the sound into scenes and sensations and imagine all kinds of... ...

Yes, Coyote is even like this, sometimes.
_____ Coyote, Coyote, Please Tell Me - What is a shaman?
A shaman I don't know

anything about.

I'm a doctor, myself.

When I use medicine,

it's between me,

my patient,

and the Creation.

*
Coyote, Coyote, please tell me - what is power?
It is said that power

is the ability to start

your chainsaw

with one pull.

*
Coyote, Coyote, please tell me - what is magic?
Magic is the first taste

of ripe strawberries, and

magic is a child dancing

in a summer's rain.

*
Coyote, Coyote, please tell me - why is Creation?
Creation is because I

went to sleep last night

with a full stomach,

and when I woke up

this morning,

everything was here.

*
Coyote, Coyote, please tell me who you belong to?
According to the latest

survey, there are certain

persons who, in poetic

or scholarly guise,

have claimed me like

a conqueror's prize.

Let me just say

once and for all,

just to be done:

Coyote, he belongs to none.

_____
Elderberry Flute Song
He was sitting there on a stone

at world's end,

all was calm and Creation was

very beautiful.

There was a harmony and a wholeness

in dreaming,

and peace was a warming breeze

given by the sun.

*

The sea rose and fell

in the rhythm of his mind,

and stars were points of thought

which led to reason.

The universe turned in the vastness

of space like a dream,

a dream given once and carried

forever as memory.

*

He raised the flute to lips

sweetened by springtime

and slowly played a note

which hung for many seasons

above Creation.

And Creation was content

in the knowledge of music.

*

The singular note drifted

far and away

in the mind of Creation,

to become a tiny roundness.

And this roundness stirred

to open new born eyes

and gazed with wonder

at its own birth.

Then note followed note

in a melody which wove

the fabric of first life.

The sun gave warmth

to waiting seedlings,

and thus were born

the vast multitudes

from the song

of a flute.

Editor's note:

The Coyote ("Canis latrans") is related to the domestic dog, the wolf, and the fox - and based upon its proven adaptability to human settlement is one of the most reviled - and admired - North American animals of the last century-and-a-half.

*

And then there is Coyote ...

Coyote can be Trickster, Fool, Clown - and even The Creator - in Native mythologies of North America.

Often anthropomorphic, he is energetic, slyly resourceful, full of himself, goofy, embarrassing, a total liar and completely honest.

Coyote has been compared to Prometheus in Greek mythology and Anansi in the Ashanti mythology of Ghana.

But how about the Irish Leprechaun - or Bugs Bunny ? They share a lot in common with Coyote, too.

Encounters with Coyote are often spiritually transformative for Human Beings - and he himself is neither dog nor wolf nor fox but a synthesis-in-progress, with Us thrown in just to keep it weird. Life Lessons plus earthy humour - these are Coyote's "story".

*

Peter Blue Cloud (Aroniawenrate) (1935 - 2011)

was a Mohawk poet and short-story-teller - of the Turtle Clan - born in Kahnawake, Mohawk Territory, (Québec, Canada).

He travelled to the west coast of the USA where he spent years as an iron-worker, logger and ranch-hand.

He participated in the craziness of Beat and Hippy cultures in the California of the early 1960s through the mid- '70s - learning from those amorphous "movements" yet distancing himself from their excessive self-absorption. Spending time with Maidu Elders in California, he was strengthened by their wisdom and their stories.

In 1972 his history of the 1969 Native "Occupation" of the former Alcatraz Prison/Island - "Alcatraz is not an Island" - was published. In 1975-76 - and again from 1983-85 - he wrote for and edited Akwesasne Notes, a Native journal published out of Akwesasne, New York.

He was a recipient of the American Book Award in 1981 - chosen by other writers.

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Peter Blue Cloud: Tales and Poems of Coyote

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Peter Blue Cloud Coyote makes the First People Coyote stopped to drink at a big lake and saw his reflection. "Now there's a really good-looking coyote," he said, leaning farther over. And of course he fell in. And of course you will think this is a take-off on an old theme.

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

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"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them," Emerson wrote in contemplating the key to personal growth. Hardly anything does this for us more powerfully than art - it unsettles us awake, disrupts our deadening routines, enlarges our reservoir of hope by enlarging our perspective, our grasp of truth, our capacity for beauty.

This singular function of art is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929-January 22, 2018) reflects on in an interview by the polymathic marine conservationist Jonathan White, included in his wonderful Talking on the Water: Conversations about Nature and Creativity (public library).

In a roaming conversation over tea, "with only momentary interruptions by Lorenzo the cat or chimes from the grandfather clock," Le Guin tells White:

The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We're drawn in - or out - and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we're around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.

Art, Le Guin suggests a century after Kandinsky extolled its spiritual element and a decade after Susan Sontag considered its ethical responsibility, restores to secular culture the sense of sacredness and moral purpose:

Our culture doesn't think storytelling is sacred; we don't set aside a time of year for it. We don't hold anything sacred except what organized religion declares to be so. Artists pursue a sacred call, although some would buck and rear at having their work labeled like this. Artists are lucky to have a form in which to express themselves; there is a sacredness about that, and a terrific sense of responsibility. We've got to do it right. Why do we have to do it right? Because that's the whole point: either it's right or it's all wrong.

In a sentiment reminiscent of Albert Camus's reflection on the lacuna between truth and meaning, Le Guin - who spent the last sixty-five years of her life married to a historian - considers the lacuna between the events of the past and their selective retelling in what we call history:

History is one way of telling stories, just like myth, fiction, or oral storytelling. But over the last hundred years, history has preempted the other forms of storytelling because of its claim to absolute, objective truth. Trying to be scientists, historians stood outside of history and told the story of how it was. All that has changed radically over the last twenty years. Historians now laugh at the pretense of objective truth. They agree that every age has its own history, and if there is any objective truth, we can't reach it with words. History is not a science, it's an art.

The paradox, of course, is that because our notion of history is rooted in the written record, words are both our instrument of truth and our weapon of distortion. We use them both to reveal and to conceal - a duality which Hannah Arendt so memorably dissected in her meditation on lying in politics. Le Guin - who has written beautifully about the transformational potential of words - echoes Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize acceptance speech on the power and responsibility of language, and reflects on the challenging task of those who limn reality in words:

As a writer, you want the language to be genuinely significant and mean exactly what it says. That's why the language of politicians, which is empty of everything but rather brutal signals, is something a writer has to get as far away from as possible. If you believe that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

With a concerned eye to how our metaphors shape our thinking, Le Guin adds:

We can't restructure our society without restructuring the English language. One reflects the other. A lot of people are getting tired of the huge pool of metaphors that have to do with war and conflict [and] the proliferation of battle metaphors, such as being a warrior, righting, defeating, and so on. In response, I could say that once you become conscious of these battle metaphors, you can start "fighting" against them. That's one option. Another is to realize that conflict is not the only human response to a situation and to begin to find other metaphors, such as resisting, outwitting, skipping, or subverting. This kind of consciousness can open the door to all sorts of new behavior.

What literature does, Le Guin points out, is enlarge our understanding of our own experience by enriching its container in language:

One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist's job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It's one reason why we read poetry, because poets can give us the words we need. When we read good poetry, we often say, 'Yeah, that's it. That's how I feel.'

In a sentiment evocative of James Baldwin's assertion that "an artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian [whose] role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are," she adds:

Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want, too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant.

Complement this particular portion of the splendid Talking on the Water with Le Guin's immortal wisdom on the artist's task, growing older, storytelling as an instrument of freedom, her feminist translation of the Tao Te Ching, and her classic unsexing of gender.

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talking on the water: conversations about nature and creativity

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

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"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them," Emerson wrote in contemplating the key to personal growth. Hardly anything does this for us more powerfully than art - it unsettles us awake, disrupts our deadening routines, enlarges our reservoir of hope by enlarging our perspective, our grasp of truth, our capacity for beauty.

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The True Story of Pocahontas as NOT told by Disney

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The True Story of Pocahontas as NOT told by Disney

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Most people are familiar with the story of Pocahontas - the Native American princess who fell in love with Englishman John Smith during the height of conflict between the English settlers and the indigenous people of the Americas. In 1995, Disney released an artistically beautiful animated film showing the supposed events that unfolded between John Smith and Pocahontas. Although Disney is known for creating fictional tales, many people believed that Disney's account of the life of Pocahontas was a true reflection of past events: the love between Pocahontas and John Smith, the bravery Pocahontas showed when saving John Smith's life, and the tragic ending when John Smith returned to England for medical treatment. However, this depiction is a far departure from the actual events that occurred, and from the real life of Pocahontas.

It is believed that Pocahontas was born around 1595 to a Powhatan chief. Her given name at birth was Matoaka, although she was sometimes called Amonute. "Pocahontas" was a derogatory nickname meaning "spoiled child" or "naughty one." Matoaka's tribe was a part of a group of about thirty Algonquian-speaking tribes located in Tidewater, Virginia.

During Matoaka's childhood, the English had arrived in the 'New World' and clashes between the colonizers and the Native Americans were commonplace. In 1607, John Smith, an Admiral of New England and an English soldier and explorer, arrived in Virginia by ship, with a group of about 100 other settlers. One day, while exploring the Chickahominy River, John Smith was captured by one of Powhatan's hunting parties. He was brought to Powhatan's home at Werowocomoco. The accounts of what happened next vary from source to source. In John Smith's original writing, he told of having a large feast, after which he sat and spoke with Chief Powhatan. In a letter written to Queen Anne, John Smith told the story of Matoaka throwing herself across his body to protect him from execution at the hands of Powhatan. It is believed that John Smith was a pretentious man who told this lie to gain notoriety. In the Disney version, Matoaka/Pocahontas is depicted as a young woman when she saved John Smith, but by his accounts, she was only a 10-year-old child when these events occurred, and therefore highly unlikely that there was any romance between them.

Matoaka often visited the settlement at Jamestown to help the settlers during times when food was in short supply. On 13 th April, 1613 AD, during one of these visits, Samuel Argall captured Matoaka to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father. She was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year. During her captivity, tobacco planter John Rolfe took a 'special interest' in the attractive young prisoner, and he eventually conditioned her release upon her agreeing to marry him. Matoaka was baptized 'Rebecca' and in 1614, she was married John Rolfe - the first recorded marriage between a European and a Native American.

Two years later, John Rolfe took Matoaka to England to use her in a propaganda campaign to support the colony of Virginia, propping her up as the symbol of hope for peace and good relations between the English and the Native Americans. 'Rebecca' was seen an example of a civilized 'savage' and Rolfe was praised for his accomplishment in bringing Christianity to the 'heathen tribes'.

While in England, Matoaka ran into John Smith. She refused to speak with him, turning her head and fleeing from his presence - a far cry from the undying love between the two as portrayed in the Disney movie. In 1617, the Rolfe family boarded a ship to return to Virginia. However, Matoaka would not complete this journey home. She became gravely ill - theories range from smallpox, pneumonia, or tuberculosis, to her having been poisoned - and she was taken off the ship at Gravesend where she died on March 21, 1617. It is believed she was 21 years old when she died. Sadly, there were no fairy tale endings for Matoaka.

The real story of 'Pocahontas' would make a greater movie than the one produced by Disney, as her tragic life
Sources:
Pocahontas - Biography. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/pocahontas-9443116#synopsis.

The Pocahontas Myth - Powhatan.org. Available from: http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html.

The Real Story Of Pocahontas Is Much Darker Than The Disney Movie - Business Insider. Available from: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-real-story-of-pocahontas-2014-4.

Pocahontas - Wikipedia. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas.

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The True Story of Pocahontas as NOT told by Disney

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Most people are familiar with the story of Pocahontas - the Native American princess who fell in love with Englishman John Smith during the height of conflict between the English settlers and the indigenous people of the Americas. In 1995, Disney released an artistically beautiful animated film showing the supposed events that unfolded between John Smith and Pocahontas.

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21 Absolutely Awful Life Lessons Disney Films Taught Us

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21 Absolutely Awful Life Lessons Disney Films Taught Us

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21 Absolutely Awful Life Lessons Disney Films Taught Us

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Who would have thought that a bunch of cartoon teenagers would be terrible role models?

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Blue Winds Dancingby: Thomas S. Whitecloud

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Blue Winds Dancingby: Thomas S. Whitecloud

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The early Native writers had to work within a political environment that was hostile to their success and within a literary tradition of the One of the primary genres that Native Americans borrowed from the writers in the dominant society of the time was the autobiography, , A Native of the Forest written in 1829, William Apess describes The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854) is considered to be the first Jaskoski, H. Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays. 1996. Native American Writers

day that condoned and sentimentalized the death of Indians. Somehow they were able to engage their detractors and author their own
which they used to address their own experiences and concerns. These autobiographies mostly involved experiences concerning their
conversion to Christianity and their education in the mission schools.
his escape from an abusive childhood by being converted to Christianity. Through his involvement in the Church he was provided
access to the same freedom and position with God that white society enjoys. Yet, his ongoing experiences of discrimination within the
Church as a minister in a white world reminded him that this ideal was elusive.

In his writing, Apess rejects the stereotyping of Indians and he does this by documenting his own accomplishments related to the
activities that white society values. Ahead of his time, Apess advocated a balance between accepting Christianity and retaining pride in
novel written in California, as well as the first written by an American Indian. The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta was extremely
Littlefield, D. F. Native American writing in the Southeast : an anthology, 1875-1935.1995.
Swann, B. On the translation of Native American literatures. 1992.
Walker, C. Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms. 1997.
Questions? Comments?
popular and was widely pirated. Versions appeared as books, were serialized in periodicals, and were translated into foreign
languages. Adaptations appeared in verse, and at least one motion picture was based on Ridge's story. Although many versions were
produced in the nineteenth century, others have appeared more recently, including Pablo Neruda's 1967 drama Fulgor y Muerta de
Joaquín Murieta.

Ridge, whose Cherokee name was Yellow Bird, wrote poetry which deals with nature and the poet's reaction to the natural environment.
Ridge's experiences with nature seem transcendental, which is frequently seen in writing by early Native Americans.
Like Boudinot, Ridge argued in his journalism that giving up ones Indian culture and adapting to white man's ways was the only path
Native Americans could take if they wanted to survive. This was a common theme among missionary educated Native American authors.

ones Indian identity. After the publication of his autobiography, Apess became more militant, helping to organize the Mashpee Revolt of
1833, to help the Mashpee regain lost freedoms.

At times they adopted the voice of the "authentic" Native American who had the knowledge of the practices and traditions of the tribe,
but at the same time, they were educated and Christianized by into the mainstream society.

For instance, in A Son of the Forest: The Experience of
accounts of Native Americans which challenged the stereotypical images and showed that they would not remain silent nor were they
going to disappear.

William Apess George Copway Early Native American literature was preoccupied with trying to change the political and social status of their people. Elias Boudinot

sons of the forest, now scattered over this vast continent. We have seen every where the poor aborigines melt away population. I merely state the fact, without at all referring to the cause. We have seen, I say, one family after another, nation after nation, pass away; until only a few solitary creatures are left to tell the sad story of Shall this precedent be followed? I ask you, shall red men live, or shall they be swept from the earth? With you and this public at decision chiefly rests. Must they perish? Must they all, like the unfortunate Creeks, (victims of the unchristian policy of
"There is, in Indian history, something very melancholy, and which seems to establish a mournful precedent for the future events

before the white
another, one tribe after
extinction.
certain persons,) go
down in sorrow to their grave? They hang upon your mercy as to a garment. Will you push them from you, or will you save them? Let humanity answer."
John Rollin Ridge's

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Make Your Halloween Costume: Witch, Zombie, Dracula, Werewolf and More Aquarium Fish Information Native American Jewelry and Artists
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Witches: Their Persecution, History and Costumes

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The early Native writers had to work within a political environment that was hostile to their success and within a literary tradition of the One of the primary genres that Native Americans borrowed from the writers in the dominant society of the time was the autobiography, , A Native of the Forest written in 1829, William Apess describes The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854) is considered to be the first Jaskoski, H.

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KWO/Cornell Notes for Article Annotations

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KWO/Cornell Notes for Article Annotations

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Native Languages of the Americas: Chitimacha Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Native Languages of the Americas: Chitimacha Legends, Myths, and Stories

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Chitimacha Legends (Folklore, Myths, and Traditional Indian Stories)

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Index of Chitimacha Indian legends, folktales, and mythology.

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Life Lessons, humorous instances, history of the Chitimacha were taught to the people through oral tradition.

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6 Historical Inaccuracies In Disney's 'Pocahontas' — But That Doesn't Mean You Stop Painting With All The Colors Of The Wind

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6 Historical Inaccuracies In Disney's 'Pocahontas' — But That Doesn't Mean You Stop Painting With All The Colors Of The Wind

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To me, all movies require at least some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed, and Disney animated films are the rule, not the exception. And though fans of Disney are used to going along with talking-animal sidekicks, it was a little harder to swallow Disney significantly changing the history of Pocahontas for its 1995 movie. Pocahontas turns 20 years old in June, and the animated classic is a still a favorite of mine - hello nature-friendly songs like "Just Around the Riverbend" and "Colors of the Wind"! But even though I was a fan, I understood that Disney took some significant liberties with a real-life historical figure when it chose to Disney-fy Pocahontas.

Of course, history buffs knew the story of Pocahontas long before Disney made a movie about it, but, once the animated movie hit screens, those same buffs were enraged that the film perpetuated historical inaccuracies and romanticized the legend (as in, it literally made the legend romantic). A lot is also not known about Pocahontas - she lived over 400 years ago - and there are many different accounts. But according to the written history of her life on the website for Historic Jamestowne, which is part of Colonial National Historical Park, Disney definitely didn't stick to history's script.

According to the Historic Jamestowne website, Pocahontas's name was Amonute, although she also had the more private name of Matoaka. The name Pocahontas was a nickname meaning "playful one" and Disney did stay true to her playful nature. She was also her father's favorite child and though Disney doesn't show her having any siblings, she is clearly loved by her father in the film. Other than some basic facts though, the movie then diverges from history.

I will always love the film Pocahontas and sing Pocahontas's songs whenever I see a waterfall or go kayaking, camping, or hiking (seriously - e very. time.) and I do think the film inspires children to care about nature and accept others. But here are all the ways that Disney changed the real story.

1. Her Age

Pocahontas is said to have been around 10 or 11 years old when she met Captain John Smith in 1607, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The Historic Jamestowne website wrote that Smith was 27 years old at the time (the real Smith was sans dreamy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes) and the Disney film bumped Pocahontas's age up significantly to go the romance route with the two historical figures. The film did get it right that her father was Chief Powhatan (whose real name was Wahunsenacawh) and that her birth mother was no longer around - historians can't prove if her mother had actually died or not though.

2. Meeting John Smith

In the film, John Smith and Pocahontas meet almost instantly after he lands in America - with the exception of a quick musical interlude with the song "Mine, Mine, Mine." (History does not indicate any spontaneous singing.) In truth, Pocahontas and her father didn't meet any British people for a few months, according to the Historic Jamestowne site. Smith and the British landed in the spring and she didn't encounter Smith until he was captured in the winter by Powhatan's brother Opechancanough. The film was correct in portraying Smith as a well-traveled explorer and soldier and the Colonial Williamsburg Journal confirmed that he traveled to Virginia around 1606/1607 and did work with a man named John Ratcliffe. And Encyclopedia Virginia wrote that Smith came to America from England with the Virginia Company of London, so the details of the opening song "The Virginia Company" weren't far off from the truth.

3. The Romance

Because of the aforementioned age difference, there was no real romantic relationship between Smith and Pocahontas. They were close for a couple of years though since Pocahontas acted as a liaison between the British and the Powhatan Chiefdom. A fact that continued to come up when I was researching their history (particularly on the Historic Jamestowne website) was that young Powhatan Indian children wore little or no clothing (with maybe an animal pelt in the winter). This is an indication that she would have most likely been naked when she met John Smith. For me, this reinforces the idea that Smith probably did consider Pocahontas just to be a child in this new land he had traveled to. So no make-out sessions between the pair went down around Grandmother Willow. Shockingly, history has no record of a talking willow tree - or spunky raccoons and hummingbirds - either.

4. Relationship With Kocoum

In the film, Chief Powhatan wants Pocahontas to marry the stoic Powhatan warrior Kocoum, even though Pocahontas is resistant. Kocoum was a real person who existed, but he wasn't killed by the bumbling British man-boy Thomas like the film shows. The Historic Jamestowne site said that Pocahontas married Kocoum in 1610 ("Should I marry Kocoum?"), a year after Smith left Virginia. Not much is known about Kocoum - an Englishmen's account called him a "private captain," but he could have been a member of the Patawomeck tribe or a bodyguard to Powhatan. (The latter is what the Disney movie kind of went with.) Pocahontas may have agreed to marry him out of love since she would have had the choice to pick who she would marry and he wasn't a high ranking person in the tribe. After her marriage, the National Women's History Museum wrote that Pocahontas was held captive by Captain Samuel Argall in 1613 as ransom since relationships with the Powhatans and British had deteriorated. At that time, the Historic Jamestowne site said that Kocoum was either killed by Argall, or he just assumed he was divorced from Pocahontas (which wouldn't have been an odd event based on their culture) when it was revealed she'd be marrying the British man John Rolfe.

5. Saving John Smith

How John Smith is saved in the movie closely resembles Smith's account of events, according to the Historic Jamestowne website. He wrote that he was brought before Chief Powhatan and forced to put his head down on two stones after he had been captured by Powhatan's brother. A warrior had raised a club to smash his head, but Pocahontas (yet again, let's remember she was probably 11 years old) came and put her head on his to stop him from being executed. The Disney movie portrays Pocahontas placing her head atop Smith's to save him, but the circumstances of his capture were around the fact that he was taking the fall for killing Kocoum. Encyclopedia Britannica wrote that it has been debated whether Smith's account was just made up or perhaps the incident was a Powhatan ceremony that meant Smith no harm. Either way, the Historic Jamestowne site said that Smith was accepted by the Powhatan people and considered part of the tribe after this event.

6. John Smith's Return To England

The National Women's History Museum wrote that Smith left Virginia and returned to England due to a gunpowder wound, but not until 1609 - two years after meeting Pocahontas. In the film, the wounded Smith returns to England after Pocahontas saves him. In real-life, Pocahontas and Powhatan were told he died on his way to England, which was not true. Encyclopedia Virginia wrote that Pocahontas ended up meeting up with Smith when she went to England in 1616. According to Smith's book, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, Pocahontas was emotional upon discovering he wasn't dead and she wanted to call him "father" since her father had welcomed him into their tribe as a son. (Smith wrote that she said, ". . . you called him father being in his land a stranger, and by the same reason so much I doe you.") Yet again, history shows how odd it is that Disney would make Smith and Pocahontas romantically linked.

Pocahontas's story was continued by Disney in the straight-to-video Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (which I totally rented at a video store as a child), but that movie also appears to be inaccurate. The National Women's History Museum wrote that Pocahontas became ill with tuberculosis or pneumonia while on a ship to go back to America with Rolfe in 1617. She died shortly after at the age of 22 years old and is buried in England. Her father died within a year in America, according to the Historic Jamestowne site, and the relationship between the British and the American Indians worsened and never really improved with the "Peace of Pocahontas" (as it is called) ending.

In 2008, historian and writer Alex von Tunzelmann for The Guardian gave the film a B entertainment grade and a D+ history grade. And that's how Pocahontas is best looked upon two decades after its release: More than above standard entertainment (I'd even say it's great entertainment thanks to the songwriting by Steven Schwartz) - and not a reputable history lesson. But that doesn't mean you can't embrace the adventurous and compassionate spirit of Pocahontas forever since there are much worse ways for her to be remembered.

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Disney's 'Pocahontas' Vs. History's Pocahontas

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To me, all movies require at least some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed, and Disney animated films are the rule, not the exception. And though fans of Disney are used to going along with talking-animal sidekicks, it was a little harder to swall...

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Peter Blue Cloud (Aroniawenrate)

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Peter Blue Cloud on Native American Authors

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