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Indigenous Peoples Day Oct 11

10/08/2021

Indigenous Peoples Day

Monday, October 11th is observed in the United States as Indigenous Peoples Day, a day to recognize and celebrate the many diverse cultures that originally populated North America. Here at Penworthy, we have several books that include indigenous characters, stories, histories or biographies.  In honor of the holiday, here are a few to explore.

Once Upon a Time There Was a Little Bird is a sweet story of a bird whose broken wing prevents it from migrating south with the other birds in winter. She tries to find a tree that will shelter her and is rebuffed again and again until the evergreens tell her they will keep her safe, warm, and fed until spring. It is from an Anishinaabe tale explaining why coniferous trees stay green year-round. This delightful book about kindness is in board book form and can be found here.

Pocahontas Leads the Way is part of Disney’s “Before the Story” series of early chapter books.  Rather than the familiar stories we know of Pocahontas, a member of the Powhatan tribe in the Virginia Tidewater area, this book tells a tale of her as a child going on an adventure with a friend named Nokoma, where they learn about friendship, cooperation, and inner strength. Familiar Disney characters like Meeko, the raccoon, and Grandmother Willow also put in appearances. This is a fiction book and does not draw from either indigenous traditions or oral histories, but may get children interested to learn more.  Recommended for grades 2 – 3, you can find it in our catalog here.

Penworthy carries many biographies, including some notable Native Americans. Among them is Chief Joseph. Born in 1840, Chief Joseph was a leader of the Nez Perce people, who became tired of being pushed off their lands again and again by white settlers. Despite a treaty with the US government, when gold was found on their land in the Wallowa Valley, the Nez Perce were given 30 days to move to a small reservation in Idaho. The 700 members of the tribe packed up and began to leave, but some of them, angered by their treatment, killed some settlers, and in retaliation, the US Army, some 2000 strong, began to chase the Nez Perce, who, under the leadership of Chief Joseph, fled into Montana, hoping for assistance from the Crow tribes living there. Help was refused, and in the freezing mountains, with his people starving, Chief Joseph surrendered.  “I will fight no more forever,” were his famous words on that day. Although the Nez Perce were told they could go home to Washington, they were sent to a reservation in Oklahoma instead where many died, including Chief Joseph. This biography offers illustrations, photographs, maps, and a glossary of terms used, and is a great teaching tool for helping kids learn about the treatment of Native Americans in the United States. You can find it in our catalog here.

Another biography currently in our catalog is of Susan La Flesche Picotte. We reviewed that book on our blog on August 18, 2021. You can read that review here. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American doctor in the United States, having graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889, at a time when few women of any race were attending medical school. In addition to practicing medicine, Dr. La Flesche Picotte was also a social reformer and campaigned tirelessly for public health reform, temperance, and the fair treatment of Native Americans. You can find her biography here.

The Fact vs. Fiction series has two volumes that deal with indigenous peoples in North America. Perhaps most to the point for this article is Christopher Columbus and the Americas, as in some parts of the US, Monday is also still celebrated as Columbus Day.  Many grew up being told that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas, but this book points out the many fallacies in this story: the foremost of which is that indigenous people already lived here, a people known as the Taino. Columbus’s quest for gold and riches led him to kidnap some and send them back to Spain and enslave others to search for the gold he was certain he would find. Hundreds of thousands more perished of illness and diseases brought to the Americas by Columbus’s European crews. Columbus firmly believed he had found a part of Asia—it wasn’t until 1501 when Amerigo Vespucci identified North and South America as distinct landmasses that it was realized they were not a part of Asia at all. Not to mention that there is plenty of evidence showing that Norse explorers settled in what is now Canada about 500 years before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue”. You can find this fun book of facts here.

Another period of history that tends to romanticize how European settlers is The First Thanksgiving. This title in the Facts vs. Fiction in US History series tackles those stories and histories just as well. Most of the Thanksgiving traditions many of us are familiar with come from a painting called “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth”, painted in 1914. The clothing we associate with the Pilgrims, like tall black hats with shiny buckles and white caps and aprons, come from that painting and not from history, and the dress of the Native Americans in the painting is what would be worn by the Sioux in the Plains States, not the Wampanoag, the tribe that lived in the Plymouth area in 1620 and who were the ones that helped the travelers make it through their first years in the area. While it is likely that the settlers had a feast to celebrate their first harvest, they did not send an invitation to the Wampanoag; they were likely attracted by the hunting and other activity during the preparations for the event. Sadly, the goodwill and feelings of thankfulness engendered on that day did not last. Within 50 years, the settlers and the Native Americans were at war, and the relentless drive westward pushed the indigenous people from place to place for hundreds of years. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving Day is a National Day of Mourning, and they gather to mark what became a genocide of their people as European exploration and settlement took away their ancestral lands and customs. Find the facts versus the fiction here.

There are many ways to honor Indigenous Peoples Day, but perhaps the best is to use this day to learn more about the indigenous people who were in your area before Europeans came. Learn some of their stories of nature and their beliefs about the seasons or the stars. Many states are still full of native names and customs—take the time to find out of your area has any and teach your youngest patrons about them.

 

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