Native American Language and Literacy
We have brought together some highly recommended resources for teachers, students, families and community members who are looking for good literature on or by Native Americans. There is a vast body of such literature, but it is often not readily available in school or public libraries outside of areas with large Native American populations. We hope to help make this literature and the resources that promote it more widely known and available. On these pages, we offer links to some outstanding on-line bibliographies, such as Oyate, as well as reprinted material from collections and annotated bibliographies, such as Through Indian Eyes and Roots and Branches. Almost all titles found in these bibliographies offer guidelines on appropriate grade level, subject area, and interdisciplinary applications. In addition, we have culled titles from two of these bibliographies and organized them according to subject area.
We offer these titles as a means to gain them a wider audience both among Native peoples who seek good literature that reflects their experiences and among non-Natives who seek to learn the diversity and complexity of Native history and contemporary life.
Indian Reading Series: Stories and Legends from the Northwest
The Indian Reading Series, 140 culturally relevant stories written by local Indian authors and illustrated by Indian artists from 1972-1983, is a community-based reading and language arts program especially for Indian children. Twelve Northwest Indian reservations actively participated in the program from its 1972 beginning, producing a unique supplementary reading and language development program for Indian and non-Indian children. The materials were authenticated by the participating tribes and field tested with over 1200 Indian and non-Indian children in 93 classrooms throughout the Northwest.
Online at: www.nwrel.org/indianed/indianreading/
Publications
A compilation of work by Native parents, educators, poets, and writers, is for anyone interested in presenting non-biased material about indigenous peoples to children. It contains, from a Native perspective, essays and poetry, critical reviews of more than 100 children's books by and about Indian peoples, a guide to evaluating children's books for anti-Indian bias, a recommended bibliography, and a resource section of Native publishers and organizations.
Here we provide a sample of some of the probing, insightful book reviews found in this book. We have reproduced the authors' introduction to the reviews and a couple examples of positive and negative reviews. The book also offers a guide (pp.179-203) for teachers and parents on how to tell whether literary, scholastic, or artistic depictions of Native people are historically and culturally accurate.
Download a sample of this publication in pdf format: indianeyes_sample.pdf [1,044kb]
Ordering Information:
Oyate
2702 Mathews St.
Berkeley, CA 94702
(510) 848-6700
(510) 848-4815 fax
oyate@oyate.org (E-mail)
www.oyate.org
This valuable resource book offers teachers an opportunity to learn and to teach about Native American literatures in context. Starting with a discussion of themes, rationales, and subthemes. Dorothea Susage moves to an examination of the historical and literary contexts that frame the literary work of Native peoples. Lessons, units and activities keyed to grade level offer practical support. Detailed annotated bibliographies direct the teacher to a wealth of possibilities and to other resources—historical, cultural, and educational. Teachers will find reference lists of anthologies containing every genre of writing from biographies and memoirs to poetry and traditional stories; even works about Native peoples by non-Native authors are listed, offering yet another perspective to the collection. Supporting materials include discussions of stereotypes and of the cultural and spiritual context of tribal cultures.
Download a sample of this publication in pdf format: rootsbranches_sample.pdf [1,530kb]
Ordering Information:
National Council of Teachers of English
1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096
800.369.6283
www.ncte.org
Bibliographies
Books and other materials reviewed by Oyate and Through Indian Eyes are here organized by subject area. We have divided the books under topics such as "History," "Fiction," "Contemporary Experience," and "Central American Natives." Full references and more detailed summaries of each book on this list are found in:
TIE: Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children. B. Slapin and Doris Seale, eds. California: Oyate.1998
Oyate: The Oyate Catalogue www.oyate.org/catalog/index.html
To view the Portable Document Format files (PDFs) on this site, download a free Acrobat Reader from Adobe http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/readstep.html
