Tag: Indian Schools

The issues surrounding Native American Education

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn parents and teachers

Usually, August means excitement for children. Back to school means buying school supplies and new clothes for the school year, plus the benefit of seeing their friends again. However, for many Native Americans, it is a time filled with anxiety and stress because of negative school experiences. Not only is this an effect of family historical trauma but also an effect of low self-esteem and lack of cultural identity. There are numerous factors, but one deeply rooted issue goes unaddressed, year after year. The boarding school era (1860s-1960s) failed to offer the opportunities it promised Native people but succeeding in stripping them of their culture.

Source: The issues surrounding Native American Education

I like this organization because it provides hope for those who are often unheard and unnoticed. Lack of educational opportunities has been a huge problem for years, and it only got worse when the U.S. Government meddled in something that didn’t need to be “fixed” by outsiders.

One of my favorite pen pals over the years was a man who spoke fluent Blackfeet who was in the process of starting a school in Montana that would teach this endangered language. He knew was many off the rez don’t understand: the loss of a language is death to a culture.

I like the storytelling approach of Native Hope. We need more of it.

–Malcolm

Briefly Noted: ‘The Storyteller’s Bracelet’ by Smoky Zeidel

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors, fiction

Thomas-Jacob Publishing released a new edition of Smoky Zeidel’s The Storyteller’s Bracelet today, bringing the novel back into print after a twenty-two month absence. The book is available in e-book and Kindle editions. You can watch the novel’s trailer here.

From the Publisher

STBcover“It is the late 1800s, and the U.S. Government has mandated native tribes send their youth to Indian schools where they are stripped of their native heritage by the people they think of as The Others. Otter and Sun Song are deeply in love, but when they are sent East to school, Otter, renamed Gideon, tries to adapt, where Sun Song does not, enduring brutal attacks from the school headmaster because of her refusal to so much as speak. Gideon, thinking Sun Song has spurned him, turns for comfort to Wendy Thatcher, the daughter of a wealthy school patron, beginning a forbidden affair of the heart.

“But the Spirits have different plans for Gideon and Sun Song. They speak to Gideon through his magical storyteller’s bracelet, showing him both his past and his future. You are both child and mother of The Original People, Sun Song is told. When it is right, you will be safe once more. Will Gideon become Otter once again and return to Sun Song and his tribal roots, or attempt to remain with Wendy, with whom he can have no future?”

Smoky’s Description of the Cover’s Symbolism

“I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the meaning behind the symbols on the new edition of The Storyteller’s Bracelet. The wavy lines at the bottom represent water, which plays a life-changing role for my male protagonist, Otter/Gideon. The stairway through the clouds represents the gateway to the 5th World in Hopi mythology. The arrows point to the four cardinal directions and their colors represent the direction people of color scattered at creation. (These colors can vary from one tradition to another; these are the colors the Hopi use.) Finally, the rattlesnake is a symbol of new life, of transformation. Rattlesnake sheds her skin and begins life anew.”

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Smoky also released a companion short story on Kindle called Why the Hummingbird is So Small, “the enchanting story of Sun Song, a storyteller for her tribe, as she visits Fuss, her hummingbird friend, on the day before she is to leave for Indian School in the East.” You can visit Smoky’s website here.

–Malcolm