For most of my life, my perception of Native Americans was what I saw in the John Wayne and Disney movies and the yearly Thanksgiving feast my school would put on. I believed that Native Americans got "loads" of money from the casinos and that if you could prove that you were just enough Native American you could go to college for free. What I did not know was from a population that once lived off the land freely, Native Americans now only make up 1.5% of all people that live in the United States. I was not taught about the mass genocide of the Native American people that happen after the settlers landed on the Native's lands and the fight that this beautiful culture has to and has been fighting to stay alive.
After reading Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, for my TE 448, Issues of Diversity in Children's and Adolescent Literature class, my naive bubble of what I thought about Native Americans was popped. I was exposed to actual accounts of Native American history and exposed to what how Native Americans feel and face daily.
My interest in finding Young Adult Native American Literature increased greatly, as for why I chose this topic for my final project. I feel as though culturally-relevant books like that one had the possibility of teaching and exposing youth about the Native American culture, the hardships that their ancestors faced in the past, along with the hardships that they continually face daily.
When beginning my search on young adult literature representing the Native American culture today, most of what I found contained details that targeted a more mature audience. I did appreciate the authenticity of all the works that I found. All the authors were Native American writers writing stories about Native American Characters. I had no trouble looking up Native American Literature on goodreads.com and then asking my local librarian. The East Lansing Public Library had all of the works that I requested. A little while later I went back and asked about children's books that represented the Native American culture. I was led to a hefty stack of children's non-fictional books, but none that were fictional like Sherman Alexie's novels.
My question that still remains is why do we start educating our youth at such an old age of what really happened to the Native American people? I guess my thought process is Native American children had to live through this devastation and continually are living through its aftermath that exposing these truths to a younger demographic than first being at sixth or seventh grade seems necessary.
My interest in finding Young Adult Native American Literature increased greatly, as for why I chose this topic for my final project. I feel as though culturally-relevant books like that one had the possibility of teaching and exposing youth about the Native American culture, the hardships that their ancestors faced in the past, along with the hardships that they continually face daily.
When beginning my search on young adult literature representing the Native American culture today, most of what I found contained details that targeted a more mature audience. I did appreciate the authenticity of all the works that I found. All the authors were Native American writers writing stories about Native American Characters. I had no trouble looking up Native American Literature on goodreads.com and then asking my local librarian. The East Lansing Public Library had all of the works that I requested. A little while later I went back and asked about children's books that represented the Native American culture. I was led to a hefty stack of children's non-fictional books, but none that were fictional like Sherman Alexie's novels.
My question that still remains is why do we start educating our youth at such an old age of what really happened to the Native American people? I guess my thought process is Native American children had to live through this devastation and continually are living through its aftermath that exposing these truths to a younger demographic than first being at sixth or seventh grade seems necessary.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Reservation Blues, and Ceremony
These three novels are the ones that I chose to focus my project on. While I think that all three portray the Native American culture of previous and present times I do not think that each work is as culturally-relevant as some of the other Native American Literature works that I have read. I also noticed that in all three of these books the topic of sex comes up multiple times which then leads to the question of what age are these books really appropriate for. My thought on each were 9th grade classes at the lowest depend on the topics and issues that arise in classroom.
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