Episode 412: Indigenous Representation

Hello! Thank you for joining us on Reading With Libraries! We’re so glad you could be here to enjoy our book group podcast.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we support libraries of all types: schools, publics, academics, and special libraries and archives. We started this podcast to provide useful information for library people doing Reader’s Advisory work. There are so many books out there that it’s tough to be an expert on all of them. So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!

This week we’re discussing indigenous representation in literature and we are so excited to welcome Hannah Buckland to our show! Hannah is the State Library Program Specialist. Thank you for joining us and suggesting this fantastic topic!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages. However, this week we encourage you to explore the website Native Tech.org where they compile traditional Native American or First Nation recipes onto their database. 

Genre Discussion:

From Encyclopedia Britannica:

Native American literature is the traditional oral and written literature of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. These include ancient hieroglyphic and pictographic writings of Middle America as well as an extensive set of oral histories that were transmitted for centuries by storytellers and that live on in the language works of many contemporary American Indian writers.

From Encyclopedia.com: Early Native American authors wrote within a hostile political climate and in response to a dominant literary tradition that sentimentalized and condoned the death of Native Americans. But they found the means to engage with their detractors by authoring their own accounts of Native Americans that challenged stereotypical beliefs, demanded equal political rights, and proved that Native Americans were neither disappearing nor silent.

Earlier this season (Episode 404) we discussed books that are considered Own Voices. Own Voices books have main characters that are from a group often underrepresented in literature, written by an author that belongs to the same underrepresented group. Many of the books we’ll recommend during this episode are considered Own Voices, like Apple in the Middle by Dawn Quigley. The author is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe in North Dakota.

If you are in Minnesota, we definitely encourage you to visit Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, owned by the author Louise Erdrich, who is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. According to their website, the Twin Cities area has “one of the largest concentrations of urban Native people in the United States. Birchbark Books provides a locus for Native intellectual life. Our staff is of either Native background, or exceedingly Native-friendly!”

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

We are so glad Hannah is here to join us and talk more about her experiences with indigenous representation in literature. She also brought “American Indian Literature Resources for Educators: An Annotated Bibliography” to share with us.

This week we are linking to the Birchbark Books store, where you can find the books we discussed here:

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza.

Apple in the Middle, by Dawn Quigley

Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota, by Gwen Westerman and Bruce White

There There, by Tommy Orange

Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life, by David Treuer

Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (winner of the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir) by Linda LeGarde Grover

The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of My Ancestors by Louise Erdrich

We Are Water Protectors written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade is due out in 2020.

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion on this important topic! And a giant thanks to Hannah for coming to talk with us and share her knowledge.

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!