This review was meticulously written by Beverly Slapin and Rachel Byington and posted to this blog with permission. If you are unfamiliar with their work, do a quick google search, they are incredible. This review is quite long, but that is because it is very detailed and they put a lot of time into this. This book could have been a good book, but unfortunately it falls quite flat. Their review is as follows:
Yellowhorn, Eldon, and Kathy Lowinger, Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People. Annick Press, 2017, grades 4-7
Purporting to be an overview of the Indigenous peoples of what’s currently called North America from 100,000 years ago to the present—in a little over 100 illustrated pages—Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People is packed full of historical, cultural and linguistic disinformation, misrepresentation, and equivocation. The book’s intended audience is young non-Native readers who, along with their non-Native teachers, might see it as a new, interesting and informative look at history. On the other hand, it’s an embarrassment for Indigenous youngsters (whose peoples are objectified—“othered”—on just about every page).
The book’s main thesis (if there is one) is that there are three methods of “discovering the past”: “The Story Myths Tell,” “The Story Science Tells,” and “The Story Your Imagination Tells.” These sections are filled with faulty hypotheses and off-the-cuff conclusions that make no sense at any level.
Chapter 1: Finding Our Way to the Past (pp. 8-13)
Here’s an example, from the section entitled “The Story Myths Tell.” After using the word, “myths,” seven times in two paragraphs, there’s this:
Indigenous people still tell the ancient stories because they value their spoken traditions as a vital way to understand history. For instance, geologists know that earthquakes were common in the past. We know the exact date in late January 1700 when the last great earthquake shook the West Coast. The tsunami it generated was even recorded in Japan. Perhaps it also inspired the story “Thunderbird and Whale.” (p. 10)
[Note: It would have made sense if the authors had written about the importance of oral tradition in transmitting history. The above, though, doesn’t.]
What follows is the authors’ cultural content-free, two-paragraph version “from the tradition of the people of the Northwest Pacific Coast,” and ends with this: “The story of Thunderbird and Whale is a memorable way to tell the story of an earthquake or a tsunami.”
Then, apparently to illustrate this example of traditional storytelling from the West Coast, the authors chose a drawing representing Native people in the East: “A Mohawk elder is speaking at a council meeting. In her hand, she holds a story belt, woven with reminders of what she wishes to say.” Below is a box with a design that inaccurately represents a wampum belt, followed by this:
Storytellers sometimes used stone carvings, shells, rugs, or pottery to illustrate the stories they were telling or to jog their memories. This wampum belt is a reminder for the Haudenosaunee people, who live near the Great Lakes. Special symbols and details of events were woven into wampum belts to act as cues to the storyteller. (p. 11)
The authors seem to imply that stone carvings, shells, rugs and pottery serve the same function as wampum belts, which are the actual encoded documents. Wampum belts are not “cues.” They are recordings of important documents, stories, treaties, or historical events. For instance, the Great Law of Peace—the oral Constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—was originally recorded on wampum belts as a narrative, and in a later era translated into English. This original Great Law of Peace still exists and can be read, word for word.
“The Story Science Tells” is discussed from the perspective of white Western archeology:
We leave traces behind after we are gone: our tools, clothing, art, garbage, and even bones and teeth…. Archeologists uncover those signs of life. They dig in the ground… One small piece of bone or stone can be like a book full of information, if you know how to read it. (p. 12)
This section is incongruously illustrated with a photograph of what appears to be a modern totem pole. The caption reads:
In the Northwest, totem poles, often carved from huge red cedar trees, are a way to record and remember important events from the past.
There are many different kinds of “totem” poles, and many different reasons and techniques for constructing them. There are poles that record stories, memorial poles, ceremonial poles, potlatch poles, art poles privately commissioned by museums, and many more. To write that they are a “way to record and remember important events from the past” implies that the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest did not and do not have storytellers or books.
And, perhaps the most egregious part of the triad of methods of “discovering the past” is “The Story Your Imagination Tells”:
There’s one more way to discover the past, and that is by using your own imagination. You can begin to understand what it was like to live in a different time or place only if you can imagine yourself there. Your imagination can fill in the gaps between myths and science to help make long-ago people come alive to you. What do you think they cared about? What did they think was funny? What songs did they sing? What hopes and dreams did they have? Myths, science, and imagination—together, they form a map of Turtle Island. (p. 13)
Adding to the discover-the-past-by-imagining-it technique, the authors instruct young readers in each “imagine” section what to imagine and how to react. Each scene, even of an everyday activity, contains biased cues to an oddity that accentuates the negative. “When you finally see Cahokia,” for instance, “all you can do is gasp. So much activity! Women are bent double under huge baskets of fish.” (p. 61)
Rather than encouraging respectful curiosity and imagination in Native and non-Native children, this introduction and the “imagine” sections in each chapter encourage non-Native children to make stuff up as part of the process of discovery—and shame Native young people. This is beyond atrocious—it encourages racism.
Chapter 2: North America in the Days of Ice 100,000 to 13,000 years ago (pp. 14-27)
“North America in the Days of Ice” is the tired old Bering Strait Theory, followed by text that tells us that we really don’t know any of this stuff, but “what’s more important than how and when is what life was like for people once they got here,” which we don’t know either. And the four people walking across “Beringia” in the artist’s rendition (p. 17)—with arms, legs and heads exposed—are severely underdressed for the weather and would surely have frozen to death.
[Note: For an excellent takedown of the Bering Strait Theory, read “Low Bridge, Everyone Cross,” in Vine Deloria’s Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (Fulcrum, 1997).]
This section contains what the authors refer to as a “myth” (which appears to be their label of choice for “traditional story”). This one, they write, is called “Beaver’s Transformation” and is “from the old Crow, Yukon, Vuntut Gwitchin Tradition.” The entire “myth” contains only 47 words. Here it is, in its entirety:
Once Beaver was as large as a black bear—so large that he was able to build a dam across the Yukon River. Ch’ataiiyúukaih, the Traveler, transformed Beaver and the other large animals into smaller ones so that they would not be such a danger to humans. (p. 23)
The text that follows—“What Were the People Like?”—encourages young (non-Native) readers to allow their imaginations to help them understand “how those long-ago humans saw their world.” And in imagining “A Day in Your Life” (which takes place 13,600 years ago), the authors recommend that young readers perform adult responsibilities:
Sometimes you make dyes from plants so you can tattoo beautiful patterns onto your friends’ skins. You make anklets and necklaces from shells to wear at special ceremonies. (p. 25)
[Note: the authors skip from 13,000 to 8,000 years ago, and sum up this period: “When the Ice Age ended, everything changed: the climate, the animals, and the very shape of the land itself. And then by 11,000 years ago, North America transformed into a very different place than it had been when the first humans lived here.” (p. 26)]
Chapter 3: Listening to the Land, 8,000 to 3,000 years ago (pp. 28-41)
The Ice Age has passed, and now we’re “Listening to the Land.” According to the authors, this is a time of adaptation (as if the past weren’t)—so readers are instructed to “imagine” several ways that Indigenous peoples adapted to their environments.
But first, the authors set the scene about how wise Native Americans were about everything by quoting from a speech purportedly given by Chief Seattle in 1854:
This is all we know: all things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. (p. 30)
First, the year 1854 was 163 years from the date of publication—way fewer than 8,000-3,000 years ago. In that year, the great Lushootsheed chief, Seeahth (one of many spellings), spoke before an audience of more than a thousand of his people just before signing a treaty with the US government (which ceded much of the area on which Seattle now stands). But, what’s quoted above is not even remotely what he said. It was written by screenwriter Ted Perry—in 1971—for a film about ecology. These words have been widely quoted in books, on TV, on postcards and t-shirts, wall hangings and souvenirs of all kinds—and all attributed to “Chief Seattle.”
Moving on: Before joining an exciting prairie hunt, readers visit Haida Gwaii for a few condescending words from the authors about Haida men and their relationship to Raven:
As in many Indigenous cultures, Raven is a revered hero for the Haida, helping to shape the world for the people. He can also be a trickster. Plenty of stories tell about his pranks. Raven is called by many names in Haida myths, but this doesn’t confuse anybody. Like Raven, Haida men may have more than one name. (p. 32)
According to the authors, this helping-shape-the-world apparently happened after Raven turned a group of frightened women into beautiful cedar trees, whose “silky bark and long branches make them look like women” (with silky bark and long branches?)
Now onto the prairies (6,000 years ago), where the authors describe the hunters and hunted of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump—all in an annoyingly passive tense: buffalo hides were removed, animals were cut into pieces, choice bits (really?) of meat were divided up and the rest of it was dried into pemmican, bones were turned into clubs, knives and digging tools, hides were used to make moccasins, drums, cradles and toy dolls, sinews were used as thread, the tail for brushes and the chips for fuel.
Further, the authors’ description of the buffalo hunt sets up the erroneous assumption that people dried meat, prepared hides, sewed moccasins, carved tools and utensils and toys—all at the kill site. In reality, people thanked the Creator and the buffalo for this great gift, and then quickly and expertly field-butchered the animals, packed the meat and skins onto drag sleds pulled by harnessed dogs (and, in a later era, by horses), and came back later for the rest. There would be no time or energy wasted during an enormous buffalo kill to gather “chips.” Rather, people would walk around—at another time—in places where buffalo had been and pick the chips up off the ground. (Nor would there have been buffalo chips at the kill site, anyway. Chips are dried buffalo droppings.)
The authors write, in the preface to this section, that “Hunting buffalo in those early years before anybody had a horse to ride or a bow and arrow to hunt with, much less a rifle, took great stealth and bravery.”
Certainly, hunting buffalo without horses took great stealth and bravery. However, an interesting article published by the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, in Montana and North Dakota (“Contrary to Popular Belief: Arrows, Guns, and Buffalo”) documents that Indigenous peoples quarried obsidian for arrowheads from the Obsidian Cliff in what is now Yellowstone National Park, and traded this valuable material across vast distances. “Archeological evidence,” the report says, “indicates that American Indians quarried that site for more than 10,000 years.”
[https://www.nps.gov/fous/learn/historyculture/arrows-guns-and-buffalo.htm]
In a later section (“The First Arctic Dwellers: The Tuniit, 5,000 years ago,” p. 69), the authors (who had written on page 33, above) that no one “had a horse to ride or a bow and arrow to hunt with” 6,000 years ago, write that the Tuniit, “the first people in the Arctic” who “appeared first in Siberia around 7,000 years ago, …brought a new technology with them: the bow and arrow.”
After describing how the hunters (“you”) run the buffalo, the authors then describe “your” helpers:
More hunters wait below. They kill every animal, even those that are only injured. If any buffalo survive, they could warn the rest. That would be a disaster: nobody could survive without the buffalo. (p. 34)
On so many levels, this scenario makes no sense. Injured or dying buffalo would not be able to get up, run off and “warn the rest.” Fort Union Trading Post Park Ranger and tribal historian Loren Yellow Bird (Arikara) explained to us that the people drove the buffalo over the cliff into corrals, so injured buffalo would not have been able to escape. Rather, the hunters quickly thanked the buffalo for their sacrifice and put them out of their misery.
This section’s ahistorical prop is an illustration of a painting of a buffalo hunt from thousands of years later. The caption reads:
Hunters round up buffalo using a “surround.” The hunters in this painting from 1853 ride horses, an advantage their ancestors didn’t have. For thousands of years before, people on the Plains conducted buffalo hunts on foot. (p. 34)
Moving on to “Life in the Desert: The Sacred Art of the Lower Pecos” (4,000 years ago):
The Lower Pecos was blisteringly hot, unpredictable, and dangerous. A misstep could mean a poisonous snake or spider bite. A gentle rainfall could suddenly give way to a raging flash flood. Yet people managed to survive there. Despite the hardships they endured, they sustained themselves with imagination and art. (p. 36)
This is preposterous—people didn’t and don’t sustain themselves with “imagination and art.” People did and do harvest and store wild plants or cultivate crops, hunt or raise animals, find or collect sources of water, locate or build shelters. And the illustration shows a woman grinding grain.
Moving on to “Life by the Great Lakes: The Wild Rice Reapers of Paradise Point” (also 4,000 years ago). Here, the authors write that:
…[O]ne of the challenges was to live in harmony with the four seasons, to take advantage of time when plants and game were plentiful, and to prepare for harsh, snowy times when food was scarce…to find a way to survive when snow blanketed everything and game animals were hibernating. By gathering wild rice in the summer they were able to stave off starvation through the lonely and hungry months of winter. (p. 40)
“The food resources in that environment were phenomenal,” Lois Beardslee, an Anishinaabe-Lacondón colleague, commented. “My family is from there. We not only had wild rice, but dozens of alternatives—black walnuts and starchy tubers and wild legumes—that were all easy to harvest and store for the winter. We made syrup and sugar from maple, birch and nut trees, and vinegar from mountain ash trees. We had all kinds of protein: there were fish and moose and deer and species of waterfowl whose habitat was in the wild rice. There were lichens that were full of protein and carbohydrates. There were large and small game. Up until modern times, the grouse were so dense they just walked around like chickens. We had wild turkeys and geese, and we caught all the fish we needed.”
“They’re not as plentiful now as they were then, traditionally” Lois said. “Starvation moved in when we were moved from our land base or when people came in to clear-cut our forests.”
In a box about Nanaboozhoo, the authors write,
Nanaboozhoo (or Nanabush) is an important culture [sic] character for the Anishinaabe. Nanaboozhoo is a shape-shifter who teaches right from wrong through all his adventures. He teaches the people how to live in harmony with nature. (p. 41)
“No,” Lois responded. “Nanaboozhoo is not a shape-shifter. That’s a non-Indian term used to generalize about non-Western cultures and does not accurately describe any characters in our histories, traditions, or stories. Nanaboozhoo is the son of the West Wind and Winona, a human woman. His teachings are mnemonic devices and he does a lot of silly things to teach us how not to behave, and we use him to interject humor into common mistakes.
“We saw ourselves as part of the environment, part of the food chain, but we didn’t consciously teach lessons about ‘living in harmony with nature’—that’s a white construct. We used the stories to deal with issues as they came up, sometimes on a daily basis. That may have included understanding a specific microclimate or resource at any given time. We didn’t need to be taught how to live with the environment. We lived with the environment.”
Chapter 4: Ideas Spread, 3,000 years ago (pp. 42-53)
In “Ideas Spread,” we’re going to what is currently called “Mexico.”
In a painting under the map (p. 42), we see three adults on two platforms in a cornfield. Someone is resting in the shade of a small shelter on one of the platforms. “To protect their corn,” the legend reads, “farmers bang on pots to scare the birds away from their crop.”
Except no. The farmers are banging on metal pots (which they didn’t have at the time), they’re wearing clothing made of cloth (which they didn’t have at the time), there’s a tipi in the background (which is from the Great Plains), and keeping birds out of the corn fields was the responsibility of children, who chased away the crows by making noise and waving leafy branches in the air.
In the section entitled, “Corn Comes to North America, 2,500 years ago” (p. 49), the authors apparently attempt to draw a connection between young contemporary readers and the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere (here, the area is no longer limited to Turtle Island) by suggesting that they “thank” the original peoples for “french fries, pizza, and chocolate.” “At least half the foods we think of as staples,” the authors write, “are all good to eat.” Readers are to be forgiven for not knowing what this means.
[Note: If the authors had written that the staple foods of this continent contributed to modern favorites, it would have made sense.]
The authors continue by feeding readers an assessment of the superiority of one particular ancient food, proven by its contemporary popularity:
Of all the ideas shared between south and north, the most important by far was how to grow corn. It would become a way of life for millions of people. If you look at the ingredients in the food on a supermarket shelf, you will see that corn in many forms is still a big part of our diet. (p. 49)
The painting at the bottom of the page attempts to illustrate the importance of corn 2,500 years ago. The text reads:
In 1851 Cornelius Krieghoff painted Indian Family in the Forest. In his artwork he tried to show his view of what North America’s people and scenery were like. (p. 49).
The painting depicts a huge tipi on a slope in the middle of the forest, near a lake. A woman wearing what appears to be a Haudenosaunee dress made out of indigo blue cloth is placing ears of corn into an iron pot to cook over a fire. A man, holding a wooden oar in one hand and a string of fish in another, is standing next to her. There’s a baby in a cradle basket leaning up against a tree. A child, wearing a red cloth dress, carries a bucket of water; and a woman with short hair, wearing a Peruvian hat and clothing and a basket strapped to her back, stands nearby. There is a red-and-white checkered picnic basket on the ground and the heavy iron pot full of boiling water appears to be held up by one thin forked stick.
None of this makes any historical, geographical or cultural sense. The only thing it has to do with the text is “corn.”
Then, “from the Mayan tradition,” comes a section entitled, “Creation in the Book of the People (The Popul Vuh, written between 1554 and 1558).” The entirety of this alleged creation story is 76 words, and the authors’ prefaces to these pieces—“from the X tradition”—infers that they made the stuff up. Here is their entire text:
The Creator gods first made the earth, then the plants, and then the animals. When it came time to make human beings, the Creator gods first tried mud. But the mud just turned back into mud. Then they tried wood, but wooden creatures don’t have minds. Next they tried flesh, but flesh made humans too wicked. At last they tried dough made from corn. It worked. Ever since, human beings were said to consist of corn. (p. 51)
Again, if this has any relevance to anything, it’s not because it in any way carries the stories in the Popol Vuh, but because it refers to “corn.” (If it belonged anywhere—and it doesn’t—it would have been in Chapter 3.)
[Note: It’s known that corn came or was given to the people at different times, in different ways, and for different reasons. For better material, read Marilou Awiakta’s Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom, an excellent weaving of essays, poems and stories about strength, respect, balance, and cooperation, that references corn as its focal point (Fulcrum, 1993). Also read a beautiful and respectful adaptation for young people, Popol Vuh: A Sacred Book of the Maya by Victor Montejo and Luis Garay (Groundwood, 1999).]
Chapter 4 ends with a box entitled “The Written Word.” Here, the authors write:
Between 1826 and 1924, Indigenous communities founded at least fifty newspapers. In 1828, a Cherokee doctor and historian named Emmett [sic] Starr started the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly newspaper in the Cherokee language. The Mi’kmaq in Atlantic Canada, the Aleut in Alaska, and the Yaqui in the Southwest, among others, invented writing systems to communicate in and preserve their languages. (p. 53)
Actually, The Cherokee Phoenix (1828-1834), the national newspaper of the Cherokee Nation, was the first newspaper published by Native people in the US. Its editor was Elias Boudinot. Cherokee historian, genealogist and physician, Emmet Starr was born on December 12, 1870, and began collecting Cherokee documents in the early 1890s. He wrote History of the Cherokee Indians and their legends and folk lore in 1921.
Chapter 5: Change-Makers, 2,500-1,300 years ago (pp. 54-65)
It is well known that Hohokam engineers designed and constructed one of the largest and most sophisticated and beneficial modifications of the environment for their society—ever. Built over several centuries and constructed by hand without modern survey instruments, machinery, or even wheeled vehicles, the Hohokam people’s enormous canal system, winding through what is now called southern Arizona, transformed thousands of square miles of previously arid land into fertile farmland.
In “The Canals of the Hohokam (2,500 years ago),” the authors of Turtle Island diminish the amazing work of the diverse, multiethnic, multilingual Hohokam peoples (“using pieces of broken pottery and digging sticks, women, men, and children all toiled under the hot sun to dig the broad, shallow canals to bring water from upriver”), and the illustration at the bottom of page 56 depicts five young people digging with sticks and pushing up mud with their hands to irrigate a thriving cornfield. The caption reads, “Farmers are channeling water that comes from a faraway river to irrigate their crops.” Both text and illustration diminish the enormity of what the Hohokam accomplished. Rather, the authors appear to imply that the Hohokam peoples were sophisticated enough to build a huge city and make pottery, but didn’t know how to make tools to help with irrigation.
It’s widely known that somewhere between 1350 and 1450, the Hohokam abandoned their settlements. The Great Drought of 1276-99, combined with sparse and unpredictable rainfall that persisted until approximately 1450, contributed to the decline.
But according to the authors, the Hohokam “faced some very modern problems. More people means pollution: getting rid of human waste is more difficult, so there is more disease. More abundant crops but fewer varieties were grown, so a bad harvest meant a hungry year. Bit by bit, the population began to decline.” Rather than citing several hundred years of natural catastrophes for the decline of the Hohokam settlements, the authors blame the people themselves: overpopulation, pollution, and lack of diversity in farming.
In a section entitled, “Apartment Living on the Colorado Plateau (1,100 to 850 years ago)” there is an image and description of Kokopelli. Here, the authors write:
The image of Kokopelli hunched over his flute has been found in art, on pottery, and on jewelry all over Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, but his origin is a mystery. Sometimes he is called a warrior or a roving magician or a trader come north from Mexico. Whether he is a symbol of trade or of the gifts of rain and fertility, he brings happiness with him. The music the mythical Kokopelli makes on his nose flute chases away the winter and invites the spring to come. (p. 58)
The cosmology of the peoples often referred to as “Pueblo” is complex. All of the Katsinam are spirits on differing levels; there’s a whole network of where each stands in the hierarchy. Traditional people who practice the rituals know this; it’s generally kept secret. Although little is known by outsiders of Kokopelli himself, his figure and his “flute” appear on a huge variety of merchandise, marketing, and logos, including clipart; and “educational” material such as children’s books and curricula. [See “Books about Kokopelli” in D. Seale and B. Slapin, eds., A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, AltaMira Press, 2005, p. 154.]
A traditional Hopi storyteller, said, “In our traditional beliefs, Kokopelli is a Katsina of fertility; he is a deity. He does not go around playing a flute; he’s carrying a cane or rod. And he’s not a “humpback,” he’s carrying a burden. Whenever he appears in our rituals, he is copulating. When the Katsinam come out, he goes around trying to hump people. Grown men run from him! It would be more appropriate to put his image on a bottle of viagra or on a condom vending machine than in a children’s book.” [Seale and Slapin, ibid., p. 154]
Besides the ever-present superlatives, there’s a lot here about Cahokia, all written in breathless excitement. But the section entitled, “Death, Cahokia Style” (p. 64) may be the worst. Rather than encouraging young readers to revere and respect those buried in the sacred mounds, the authors objectify the people in life and objectify them in death.
In three paragraphs that describe the “findings” of the archeologists who dug into a particular mound, the authors describe, in gruesome detail, the approximate number of dead bodies, how the sacrifices were killed and how their bodies were laid out, in what positions they were buried, and what body parts were missing.
Whether or not this information is accurate is beside the point. Our point is that these mounds are graves, and these graves hold the remains of a people’s ancestors. Whether or not it is proper to excavate other people’s ancestral graves, examine their remains, and publicly speculate how and under what circumstances they died or were killed is a question for others to decide. But here, for the authors of Turtle Island to offer gruesome details and anthropological theories of what might or might not have been done to the ancestors—in life and after death—and publish these lurid descriptions in a book for young people is beyond disrespectful. This is anthro-porn. It’s obscene, not to mention racist.
Chapter 6: First Contact, 1,000 years ago (pp. 66-73)
An alleged “myth” that the authors name “The Prophecy,” comes “from the Aztec Tradition.” It’s an outsider’s remake of the story of Quetzalcoatl, whom they refer to as “the Aztec god and founding king.”
After three short paragraphs that have nothing real about the traditional story, the authors recklessly veer from Aztec (Mexica) country to the Arctic, “a place that tests anyone who lives there. The sun doesn’t set in the summer, and the dark of night lasts all winter. For eight to ten months of the year the temperature is far below freezing. It can be minus 40 degrees for days on end.” (p. 68)
What’s the connecting link between a traditional Mexica story and the punishing Arctic weather? According to the authors, “the prophecy that pale strangers with beards would arrive from the east one day is not only part of the complex Aztec myth system. It also appears in ancient myths across North America. The prophecy came true. Bearded strangers did come from the east.” (p. 68)
Allegedly in order to appeal to the sensibilities of contemporary non-Native kids, the authors construct superficial, culturally disconnected interpretations of traditional Native life. And, of course, since this book is constructed in the form of a timeline, everything’s in the past tense.
Like this:
The bowhead whale was like a general store for the necessities of life. Thule people had a use for every part of it. They made their shelters from its bones, they ate its meat, and they used its fat to make oil for cooking and heating. Even the baleen, the webbing in its mouth, was woven into baskets. (p. 69)
On page 70, the “first Arctic dwellers” are depicted by a photograph captioned, “An Inuit family rests at home after a successful seal hunt. Every bit of the seals will be used for food, clothing, and shelter.” This photograph was taken by Edward Curtis in about 1899, so we know it was staged. This Inuit family is not “resting at home”—they’re posing outside a hunting lodge. At the time this photograph was “shot,” the people would have had to hold still for several minutes, obviously something their dog had not agreed to.
Hunting traditions are still practiced by the Inuit people. The life of a hunter is dangerous, and there’s a relationship of reciprocal respect between hunter and hunted. Things have to be done in a certain way to maintain this respect and ensure that the animals will continue to present themselves to the hunter. After seals or other animals are killed, they’re thanked, given a drink of water, and butchered.
Neither seals nor other hunted animals are traditionally hung on poles on the top of hunting lodges. And this scene wasn’t created, nor would it have existed, 1,000 years ago.
Chapter 7: In the Year 1491 (pp. 74-85)
In the section entitled “A Time for Ritual,” there is this:
The people of North America led rich spiritual lives and practiced rituals that expressed their beliefs. Here is just a sample of the rituals you might have taken part in if you lived in 1491. (p.77)
There are two images illustrating a “sample of the rituals”: On the right is a lithograph by George Catlin of three men, posing for the artist sometime between 1846-1850. The authors captioned this image, “Drawing of traditional ballplayers,” without giving readers any useful information—in fact, no information at all—about them. On the left is a contemporary color photo of two young men dressed in powwow regalia, with onlookers behind them. The authors captioned this image, “Dancers at Grand Canyon Park in 2011.” Neither of these two images depicts a “ritual,” nor does either image depict anything that would have taken place in 1491. Apparently, the authors see no difference between “tradition” and “ritual,” or, for that matter, between “past” and “present.”
The following section, “A Time for Storytelling,” is similarly unhelpful:
On the Atlantic coast you could hear a Mi’kmaq storyteller beating on a drum or log to signal that storytelling was about to begin. People of all ages gathered eagerly to listen to funny stories, scary stories, and many that mixed humor, horror, and life lessons. The stories were easy to remember and pass on to new generations. (p. 77)
Again, the authors decontextualize and simplify complex traditions that take place at certain times and in certain seasons, for certain audiences, and for certain reasons. The people the authors casually dismiss as “storytellers” are generally elders who have devoted their lives to teaching important life lessons through story. Stories are not just entertainment, nor are they necessarily easy to remember; and many are held by specific clans or families.
In the section entitled “A Time for Sports”—along with every “Indian sports” stereotype they could find, the authors describe “lacrosse,” which the Haudenosaunee people refer to as the Creator’s Game:
Lacrosse players, accompanied by shamans, spent the summer running, tumbling, and tossing a ball to get ready for the autumn games. In some places they ate a special diet in preparation, avoiding eating rabbits (which might make them too timid), frogs (so their bones wouldn’t become brittle like a frog’s), or certain fish (which could make them too sluggish). And they avoided having anything to do with women. (p. 80)
Besides continuing to pile layers of superstition over a bunch of ridiculous stereotypes, the authors confuse community ceremony with a European model of athletic competition. For the Haudenosaunee people, the Creator’s Game is a means of prayer, to give enjoyment to the Creator; and it’s also a means of settling disputes or perhaps to help someone who might be ill.
And on the next page, after a description of a rough-and-tumble ball game played by Cree women (a game which the authors anachronistically compare to “a mixture of modern hockey and soccer”), there’s a painting by George Catlin, who “drew many pictures of people living on the Great Plains in the 1830s and 1840s. Catlin’s depiction of Choctaw ballplayers from 1844 shows the many players involved in the game.” (p. 81)
Here, the authors conflate different games played by different peoples in different areas and in different eras—in a section called “1491.”
In another section, “A Time for Diplomacy,” the authors posit a brief discussion about the many reasons for “skillful diplomacy” in 1491, and describe a particular alliance:
One such alliance was the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We don’t know the exact date when five nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—came together to form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (sometimes called the Iroquois Confederacy) to live in harmony, but many believe it is a model for the Constitution of the United States. (p. 82)
By using the term, “many believe,” the authors escape responsibility for any inaccuracies here. Such as this: The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was not a model for the US Constitution. That would be the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, on which the US Constitution was based. The diplomats of the Confederacy wanted Americans to understand that it would be easier to work together than to have separate states.
In 1722, The Tuscarora Nation joined the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which became known as the Six Nations.
Oren Lyons, Faith keeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Council of Chiefs, painted Ben Franklin standing under the Great Tree of Peace, while seated Mohawk elders taught him the Great Law. This was the unwritten document—a gift from the oldest living participatory democracy in the world—that became the model for Franklin’s draft of the US Constitution. And, since the US Constitution became the basis (in both principle and form) for the charter of the United Nations, the Great Law of Peace is a basis for international law.
A lot more than living in harmony. And all of this, again, was not 1491.
On the next page, there is a painting of people in a longhouse. Most of them are sitting along the side walls. Three are standing up. The caption reads:
Dances have always been an important part of Indigenous life. People danced to give thanks, to ensure a successful hunt, or to bring about a good harvest. In the picture, the artist shows a medicine dance taking place in a longhouse. (p. 83)
No. Medicine dances should never be portrayed, since they are regarded as sacred and personal. And dances were not and are not done in longhouses.
Chapter 8: After the End of the World: The Circle is Broken, 1492 to the present
(pp. 86-99)
The authors begin this section with 43 words “From the Oglala Sioux Tradition.” It’s entitled, “The Power of the Circle.”
Everything in the world is a circle. The nests of birds are built in circles. Teepees are round, and they are set in circles. Every person’s life is a circle that leads from childhood back to childhood. There is great power in the circle.
This has apparently been cribbed from Black Elk via John G. Neihardt, which is probably why the authors labeled it “from the Oglala Sioux tradition.”
(http://www.inspirationforthespirit.com/native-american-symbolic-circles/ )
On page 88, there are two paragraphs about Christopher Columbus’ voyages to find “India.” Prior to 1492, no country, land, or sea in the world was named “India,” nor were any people in the world referred to as “Indian.” Columbus was searching for the place that was known by the Persian epithet, “Hindustan,” or “land of the Hindus.”
On page 89, the authors invite readers to “Imagine: The Rage of Manitou.”
Born in 1585, Tisquantum was a citizen of Patuxet, part of the Wampanoag Confederacy, living at present-day Plymouth. When he was a child, British sailors took him captive and sold him as a slave in Spain. Later, he escaped to England and eventually was hired by the Newfoundland Company and crossed the Atlantic twice. Fluent in English, he became a translator for the Pilgrims, and his political life was complicated, to say the least.
According to scholars, there are many possible interpretations of Tisquantum’s name. In English, one might be something like “person devoted to the female deity,” and in Wampanoag, it could mean something like “divine rage.” We don’t know for sure.
But, based on little or no research, the authors here appear to be more certain of Tisquantum’s name and life than the scholars. They write:
The people at Plymouth knew the man as Tisquantum, but that wasn’t his real name. Where he was from, the word meant “rage of Manitou.” Manitou was the Great Spirit, the life force who gave the land to the people. Manitou had reason to rage when he saw what had happened to his people.
Tisquantum was his real name. The authors here are confusing Tisquantum’s name with Manitou, the Creator, who, they write, was enraged upon seeing the “skeletons, lying on the shore, bleached by the sun”—something the Creator would have created. That’s bizarre.
In the section entitled “Disease” (pp. 90-91), the authors devote a two-page—and inadequate—discussion to smallpox, which they describe as “the greatest disaster in all of human history.”
“Of course, everyone dies of something,” the authors offer.
People in North America suffered from their share of diseases just as they did all over the world. Infections, arthritis, tuberculosis, cancer, and syphilis were familiar afflictions. But this wave of disease was different. People in North America had no immunity to diseases such as measles, smallpox, and influenza. Nobody had the vaccines to protect them against these awful diseases, but the Europeans had built up immunities that protected them. By contrast, the Indigenous peoples were hit hard. (p. 90)
The Indigenous peoples of North America were indeed “hit hard.” The purposeful distribution of smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to Native people has been documented as the first case of biological warfare in North America. [For the research (umass.edu), see https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html.%5D
In a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, General Jeffrey Amherst wondered: “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”
In a letter to Captain Simeon Ecuyer, Amherst encouraged the tactic. There is another letter from Bouquet to Amherst, dated June 23, 1763, that indicates that both writers knew that the plan could be carried out.
On July 13, 1763, Bouquet’s letter to Amherst suggests the distribution of smallpox-infected blankets to “innoculate the Indians.” And on July 16, Amherst approved the plan, suggesting that they “try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.”
This is all documented, and none of it is mentioned in Turtle Island.
Also not mentioned, in the three-paragraph section about slavery (which is pretty much limited to Indigenous people), there is this:
When the Spanish settled in California in 1769, priests baptized whole villages and made the people relocate to missions, where they had to work voluntarily—or involuntarily. (p. 92)
Here, young readers aren’t told about the rapes and other tortures, murders, and disease spread at the missions. In 1987, after gathering an amazing amount of scholarly research, documentation, and oral and written testimony from Native Californian people who were descendants of those called the “mission Indians,” Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo wrote and compiled The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide (Indian Historian Press), and made information readily available. Just a glance at the titles of some of the testimony—including “The Serra-Mission Atrocities,” “Forced Labor Killed Indians,” “They even took our names away,” and “The ‘Crying Rock’ Where They Killed the Children.”
There is no excuse for how the authors of Turtle Island framed their “discussion” of slavery.
The Battle of Wounded Knee (pp. 93-94)
On December 28, 1890, the remnants of Big Foot’s band were camped not far from Wounded Knee Creek. They had been on their way to join Red Cloud at Pine Ridge when they were intercepted by the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s division. The soldiers had herded them into a ravine, where they were surrounded by the military and armaments. Big Foot was dying of pneumonia. The band consisted mostly of women, children and older people. They were starving and were not dressed for the minus 40-degree weather. No people could have been less capable of defending themselves, never mind being a threat.
The next morning, when the cavalry opened fire and the people realized what was happening, they grabbed up the children and babies and fled in terror. The men of Custer’s division were out for blood and revenge, and on December 29, 1890, they got it. Only a few escaped and the rest—some 300 women and babies and old men—were slaughtered. Black Elk, who witnessed the massacre as a young man, later said that
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.
Yet the tragedy that became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre is consistently portrayed in children’s books and texts—including Turtle Island—as a “battle” arising from a series of unfortunate cultural misunderstandings.
Some of the more egregious untruths here:
“The Sioux…were forced onto reservations after their food source, the buffalo, disappeared….By the 1890s, they were all but extinct.” (p. 93)
The buffalo did not “disappear,” nor did they “go extinct.” White “sportsmen,” shooting from trains, slaughtered the buffalo by the millions, leaving mountains of carcasses to rot.
“Chief Sitting Bull was arrested on December 15, 1890, to put a stop to the Ghost Dances. The arrest turned violent, and Sitting Bull was killed.” (p. 93).
Although Tatanka Iyotake (“Sitting Bull”) was never an adherent of the Ghost Dance movement, he defied government orders to stop it because he didn’t want to destroy his people’s last hope. He was warned that he would shortly be assassinated, and that’s what happened.
“Nobody was sure what happened on that cold morning, but a gun went off. Tragically, 487 US soldiers ringed the band and opened fire. When it was over, 256 Sioux lay dead.” (p. 94)
Everyone was sure what happened on that cold morning. A regiment of the Seventh Cavalry—Custer’s men—were out for revenge. Heavily armed and with four Hotchkiss guns aimed at the people, they opened fire. This is all documented. On September 25, 1990, a Wounded Knee Survivor Descendant, Celene Not Help Him, spoke before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs. Her grandfather was Dewey Beard, a Wounded Knee survivor, and she related his account as testimony.
Perhaps the worst thing the authors did here was to showcase the iconic photograph, taken right after the massacre, of the victorious soldiers posing around the open grave. The caption reads, “US soldiers buried the bodies of the Oglala Sioux who died at the Battle of Wounded Knee in a common grave.” (p. 94) This photograph, later sold to white tourists as souvenir postcards, became a portrait of the victory of US colonialism over the Indigenous peoples. The sight of the infamous photo of the people, including children, murdered at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, causes real pain.
In the section entitled, “Residential Schools” (pp. 98-99), the authors write:
How better to assimilate people than by education? In 1879, the first group of eighty-four Lakota children arrived at the new United States Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was a boarding school designed to remove young people from their own culture and remake them as members of the larger society. (p. 98)
First, the name of Captain Richard Henry’s Pratt’s “noble experiment” was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its express purpose was not, as the authors write, to remake the Indian young people “as members of the larger society.” Rather, as Pratt said publically, “In Indian civilization I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization, and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.” Poet Linda Tohe (Diné), who is a boarding school survivor, wrote:
Living in boarding schools was similar to serving a sentence. We are veterans of these institutions. While some of us survived these schools, others ran away or died trying. Some died from loneliness or from a broken heart. A cemetery adjoined almost every Indian school. (p. ix) [Linda Tohe’s small book of poems and short stories, No Parole Today (West End Press, 1999) is essential reading.]
On so many levels, these Indian residential schools were hell. Designed to train girls for domestic work and boys for low-skilled labor, the schools literally tortured the children—frequent beatings, sexual assaults, burning their mouths with lye soap, and withholding food were common. Today, there are healing coalitions all over Canada and the US, where survivors and families of survivors join together to speak their truths and bring about change—and justice.
This chapter would have been a perfect place to describe the cruel campaign to prevent Indian children from growing up, healthy and whole. Rather, the authors barely mention this: “Those who resisted were punished, sometimes brutally.” That’s it.
Chapter 9: Healing the Circle, to the future (pp. 100-108)
This final chapter is a weak attempt to address Indigenous issues today..
“Poverty and Loss” amounts to little more than poverty porn: Their ancestors’ lives and culture [sic] were ended due to war, disease, and starvation…With few ways to make a living and to feel purpose and a connection to the world at large, they struggle to create thriving and healthy communities. (p. 102)
“A Great Silence” implies that people have given up the struggle to maintain language and culture: With so few people speaking them now, Indigenous languages are in danger of disappearing forever… What follows are generations unsure of their culture [sic] and disconnected from their identity [sic]. (p. 102)
The problems most notably here, but in the rest of Turtle Island as well, is that the authors consistently refer to Indigenous peoples as “they” and “them” rather than “we” and “us,” which continues to objectify Native peoples.
The section entitled, “A New Kind of Adaptation” is a particularly egregious example:
Ancient people survived because one generation taught skills to the next, such as flint-knapping to make stone tools, which were useful for adapting to new environments. Like their ancestors, Indigenous people nowadays are adjusting to an unfamiliar world. Instead of bows and arrows, they are using computer skills to create a brighter future. However, many of their ancient discoveries (foods such as corn, plants such as tobacco, and technology such as rubber) still appear in our daily life. (p. 103)
People have been inventing new ways to do things forever as a way to adapt to the environment and make life easier. Each generation passes on new knowledge to the next generation. That is always how people have learned. To say that Indigenous peoples “nowadays” are struggling to adjust to an “unfamiliar world” implies that Native peoples are living relics, captured in the past—because it’s been difficult for “them” to evolve with time and technology—and dropped into the present.
In “New Paths to Success and Change” (pp. 104-106), there’s an almost imperceptible nod to Native individuals in professional sports, as well as in music and the arts—with the emphasis placed on men. That “Professional athlete is one career that has replaced the warrior path for Indigenous men” (p. 104) is a false equivalency.
And in suggesting that, “Although writing is a recent addition to the Indigenous cultures of North America, authors such as Wab Kinew and Sherman Alexie have received many awards for writing.” (p. 106), the authors also misstate that Native literatures don’t have a long history.
Indigenous authors and activists, who produced some of the earliest literatures in North America, wrote between 1630 and 1940. Those of the19th and early 20th centuries often incorporated traditional storytelling into their writings. Some of these writings, for example, Charles Eastman’s, were a “balancing act” between their traditional teachings and political-cultural significance to “American” readers. Some of these authors include (first publication only noted):
Caleb Cheeshateaumauk, Natik, 1663, Honoratisimi Benefactores
Samson Occom, Mohegan, 1768, A Short Narrative of My Life and Economies of the Racial Self
Sequoyah, Cherokee, 1821, Cherokee syllabary
William Apess, Pequot, 1836, Eulogy on King Philip
Maris Bryant Pierce. Seneca, 1838, Address on the Present Condition and Prospects of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of North America, with Particular Reference to the Seneca Nation
George Copway, Mississagas Ojibwa, 1850, The Life, letters and speeches of
Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, or G. Copway
John Rollin Ridge, Cherokee (writing as “Yellow Bird”), 1854, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta and other Celebrated California Bandits
Sarah Winnemucca, Paiute, 1884, Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims
Sophia Alice Callahan, Muskogee, 1891, Wynema, A Child of the Forest
Ora Eddleman Reed, Cherokee, 1898, Twin Territories: The Indian Magazine
Zitkala-Sa / Gertrude Bonin, Lakota, 1901, Old Indian Legends
Charles Eastman / Ohiyesa, Dakota, 1902, Indian Boyhood
Narcissa Chisolm Owen, Cherokee, 1907, A Cherokee Woman’s America: Memoirs of Narcissa Owen
E. Pauline Johnson / Tekahionwake, Mohawk, 1913, The Shagganappi
Buffalo Bird Woman, Hidatsa, 1917, Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden
Mourning Dove / Christine Quintasket, Okanogan and Arrow Lakes, 1927, Cogewea, The Half-Blood
D’Arcy McNickle, Cree Métis, 1936, The Surrounded
[Also see the excellent anthology, The Elders Wrote: An Anthology of Early Prose by North American Indians, 1768-1931, edited by Bernd Peyer. Berlin: D. Reimer Verlag, 1982.]
On the last page, in a one-paragraph section entitled “Looking to the Future,” the authors note President Barack Obama’s signing of the Native American Apology Resolution in 2009 and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which studied the impact on Native peoples of the residential schools and issued its final report in 2015.
However, there is nothing in Turtle Island about Indigenous revolts, big and small, that began in 1492; nor is there anything about Native political and environmental activism from the 1960s to the present, including the ongoing struggles around demeaning “Indian” mascots in schools and on professional football teams. An excellent overview of contemporary Native struggles, from the 1960s to the present, can be found at the Zinn Education Project’s “Native American Activism: 1960s to Present” by Lauren Cooper. Find it here. (We’ve added to the Zinn Project’s list, below.)
(https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/native-american-activism-1960s-to-present/)
● 1969: Claiming the right to unused federal land, the American Indian Movement, a student-led group of Native activists, occupy Alcatraz Island and hold it for 19 months. The occupation and its demands help transform federal Indian policy.
● 1970: United Native Americans, with support from AIM, occupy Mount Rushmore (which the government carved into the sacred Paha Sapa—The Black Hills) to reclaim the land promised to the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) in the Treaty of 1868.
● 1970: AIM activists and their supporters occupy Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, to protest the censoring of a speech by Frank James (Wamsutta), an Aquinnah Wampanoag, at the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims.
● 1972: Demanding the abolition of the corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs, more than 1,000 Native activists and supporters from across the continent come to Washington, DC, on the Trail of Broken Treaties.
● 1972: AIM members and supporters occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC, taking records and other materials that prove the US government’s corruption in the handling of Indian affairs.
● 1972: AIM opens survival schools—community schools for Indian children in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, to focus on basic learning and living skills, and promote Native cultures.
● 1973: About 250 Oglala Lakota activists led by AIM seize and occupy the town of Wounded Knee, SD, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, to protest government-sponsored corruption on the reservation.
● 1978: In the Longest Walk, which calls attention to ongoing problems facing Indian communities, some 30,000 people march from Alcatraz Island to Washington, DC.
● 1981: The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation of Arizona wins their struggle against the building of the Orme Dam that would have flooded more than half of their reservation, most of their farmland, and the remnants of ancestral homeland.
● 1989: Vernon Bellecourt and other Native leaders establish the National Coalition of Racism in Sports and Media.
● 2004: A multiethnic coalition of activists and educators, led by tribal and spiritual leaders, rally to protect Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, land that has spiritual and cultural significance to at least 13 surrounding tribes.
● 2011: Native and environmental groups launch a massive campaign to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline project that would run through and near tribal lands, water resources, and place of spiritual significance.
● 2012: The Walking With Our Sisters project was initiated by Métis artist Christi Bellecourt to acknowledge the grief families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) continue to suffer. Bellecourt sent out a call to invite people to create vamps ( moccasin tops) and thousands poured in. Later, the call was raised to include memorializing the children who had died in the Indian residential schools.
● 2013: Raising decades-old concerns about tribal rights, environmental impacts, and safety issues, the Havasupai Nation files a lawsuit to stop the operation of a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park.
● 2016: Tribal citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and Indian allies come together to protect the water resources of the Missouri River, establishing a spirit camp along the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A NOTE ABOUT “TRADITION”
Throughout Turtle Island, the authors reinvent and rewrite snippets of Indigenous stories, which they then refer to as from a particular Indigenous tradition. This technique appears to substantiate the authors’ research and knowledge of each particular Indigenous culture.
However. Storytellers from particular Native nations have particular responsibilities. All traditional stories have rules, and traditional storytellers must be familiar with those rules and stick to them. Some stories can be told only at certain times or in certain seasons, such as from first frost to first thaw. Some stories are teaching stories, some stories are how-it-came-to-be stories, some stories are about cultural heroes, some stories are mnemonic devices used to teach specific skills or behaviors, some stories teach the opposite of what they purport to teach, and some stories are just for fun.
To tell a traditional story, you have to know all aspects of the story. You have to know the people who own the story. You have to know the language in which a particular story originated. You have to know how the story originated and why and under what circumstances it was originally told. If there are different versions of a particular story, you have to know them as well.
You have to have permission from the people who own the story to tell a traditional story.
If you’re inventing a story and telling it or writing it, you do not have permission to label it as coming from a particular people’s “tradition.”
So if author X reads a certain rendition of a certain story and then reworks that story to conform to that author’s specific needs, it’s no longer a story from the “tradition” of the people who own that story.
In nine short, reinvented stories, this is exactly what the authors of Turtle Island did and mislabeled. Here is an example, “From the Anishinaabe Tradition: How Wild Rice Was Given to the People”:
The Anishinaabe people once lived along the Atlantic coast. Spirits directed them to travel west until they came to a place where they would find “food that grows on water.” When they got to the Great Lakes, they saw broad beds of wild rice.
The hero Nanaboozhoo learned about rice from a duck. One evening he came home from hunting without any game for his supper. A duck was perched on the edge of his kettle of boiling water. The duck flew off at Nanaboozhoo’s approach. Nanaboozhoo peered into the kettle. Wild rice, or manoomin, was floating on the water. He had never tasted anything better. He followed the duck until he came to a lake full of manoomin. This was surely a gift from the Creator.
According to Anishinaabeg-Ojibwe storyteller, Anne Dunn, the authors’ version is not even close to a traditional story of how Waynaboozho learned about rice. She said:
Our traditional stories are feasible. This one is not. Good rice sinks; rice separates itself and the good stuff is always at the bottom. Good rice is heavy rice that’s got a lot of substance and food value, such as carbohydrates. Bad rice floats. Bad rice is thin rice with air in the husk or empty hulls. If a boat full of rice tips over and people see all this rice floating, they dump it and go somewhere else, to a different rice bed. Also, ducks don’t know how to process rice. And it’s just not feasible for a duck to go into someone’s house carrying a few seeds of rice, drop them into a pot of boiling water, “perch” on a pot of boiling water, then go back to the rice bed and get some more rice. If these stories had any value at all, the authors have destroyed them. They’re not worth listening to. They’re disrespectful to the spirit of the stories—and disrespectful to the people. The way this story is traditionally told—“Waynaboozho was down by the water and he saw a duck diving for something. So he waded into the water”—gives listeners a lot of
information.
And ducks aren’t built to “perch.”
CONCLUSION
In inviting non-Native child readers to “imagine” themselves transplanted into a particular historical time and place (absent knowledge of tradition and cultural norms), the authors present Native peoples as “other” (e.g., “The Olmec may appear strange to you, but they have their own ideas of beauty.”)
In presenting their original versions of Indigenous stories as short “myths,” each of which they attribute to a particular Native “tradition” (e.g., “From the Inuit Tradition,” “From the Mayan Tradition”) and present as entertaining snippets, the authors escape responsibility for getting the stories and their lessons right—or even knowing the stories and their lessons.
Poorly researched and abysmally written with speculation presented as fact, the chapters and their contents recklessly dart from one geographic area to another and from one timeline to another, mixing modern images with older timeframes and making numerous mistakes in presenting historical events, traditions, and literatures—and even quotations and maps. The authors’ superficial assumptions misinterpret Native sciences as simplistic and educational devices as “myths.”
There is nothing redeeming about Turtle Island: The Story of America’s First People. Instead, its overt and covert messages encourage non-Indigenous young people and their teachers to “play Indian”—just make stuff up and pretend it’s about real people from long ago whose descendants are actually here today. In the classroom, being humiliated.
—Beverly Slapin and Rachel Byington
Great thanks to Lois Beardslee (Anishinaabe-Lacandón), Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), and Anne Dunn (Ojibwe-Anishinaabe) for their great generosity.—BHS and RB
And to Michael Lacapa, who is probably still laughing and creating beautiful art in the Spirit . World. I continue to learn from you.—BHS
And to the amazing philosopher, Marcus Guytón, who said, “Upholding traditions, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”—BHS
And for Native youth for whom we need to get it right.—RB and BHS
