And, okay, I am always late anyway, but I have been at this particular list for almost a year. I know because I read the first book, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, in October, because it was available online for free in October, and if I wanted to be able to find a copy at all, I had to read it then. Some of the academic things can be hard to find.
That was a collection of work, with Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K Wayne Yang acting as editors. Along with one other thing, it set the tone for this year's reading.
First of all, I also ended up reading Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. They covered different ground, but it was adjacent, and some of the inspiration flowed together.
Other books that went along well with other ways of thinking - for research and education and knowledge - included F. David Peat's Blackfoot Physics: A Journey Into the Native American Worldview, Paulette Regan and Taiaiake Alfred's Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada, and in its own way even Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians by Gilbert Livingstone Wilson.
There were many more books related to the residential schools, and I think that needs to be another post. For now I think it is enough to say that the residential schools did terrible things, even though sometimes the children were excited for things like learning how to read. Certainly, there would be ways in which literacy would be helpful. Being bilingual or tri-lingual could be great too, although the frequently successful goal there was to stamp out the native language.
I love language and books and schooling, so that is a thing for me. I started thinking about ways in which you could get the good of education without the harm.
Obviously the first obstacle to that was that the harm was generally intentional. Even when there were some good intentions there was a lack of understanding or a lack of will the go against the harm. Beyond that, though, was thinking about other ways of sharing knowledge and other ways of learning. That is where Dr. Smith's work was so helpful. There have been innovations. There are ideas already out there.
One result of this is that I added an education reading list. This is a common issue for me that contributes to my always being several books behind of where I want to be.
The other shift is not only related to this particular vein of reading, but it is a combination of things.
It was partly the frustrating paternalism in at least a couple of the books. I think it was also influenced by recently making a point of viewing more movies by Black directors, but also this desire I have had lately to catch up, and get all of the history read; so many of these books have been on my reading list for so long.
I am still trying to catch up on the history portions of each of the groups who have specific history or heritage months that I observe. When I started having that interest, I thought it would just be so that each month could from then on be for reading new books. I would be caught up and then keep up. In retrospect, it doesn't sound that probable.
Now it feels more like I want each month to be for authors and creators from those groups. Maybe less of it will be history, and that's okay. I have read a lot of history, by the time I am done with the lists I have assembled I will have read a lot more, and I won't ever stop reading history. I may not need to read any more Leon Litwack, and I certainly don't need to read him in February.
I intend to blog some more about residential schools, paternalism, and maybe some coincidences and technology. I am always thinking about how to do better. But also life is busy (and hard) and I give myself a lot of homework, so I don't know how things will go.
For the curious, current intended reading lists and what is remaining (mainly books but sometimes including movies):
Post-election reading - 21
Gendered Violence/feminist reading - 8
Education - 6
Latinx Heritage month (frequently called Hispanic Heritage) - 13
Asian American Pacific Heritage - 41
Black History Month - 126
(I had finished all of the death/grief books that I had listed, but I am reading four more related. Big surprise.)
Terribly, after 36 books I still have at least 31 new books to read for Native American Heritage Month 2019, not including some articles recommending different authors and poets. So maybe being caught up can't really be a thing, but I am trying. A lot of the new inclusions are Indigenous and Latinx and Asian and Black, though, so I am moving in the intended direction.
It's all about the journey anyway, right?
Here are the 2018 Native American Heritage books - at least a few of which were actually read in 2018 - in the order read:
Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, Smith et. al.
Fatty Legs: A True Story, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
Shi-shi-etko, Nicole Campbell and Kim LaFave
Shin'chi's Canoe, Nicole Campbell and Kim LaFave
As Long as the Rivers Flow, Larry Loyie and Heather Holmlund
Arctic Stories, Michael Kusugak
Not My Girl, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
My Name is Seepeetza, Shirley Sterling
We Feel Good Out Here, Julie-Ann Andre
Red: A Haida Manga, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
Kagagi: The Raven, Jay Odjick
The Little Hummingbird, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
The Education of Augie Merasty, Joseph Auguste Merasty and David Carpenter
Halfbreed, Maria Campbell
Trickster, Matt Dembicki, ed
Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, Gilbert L. Wilson
Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko
Mission to Space, John Herrington
Black Bear Red Fox, Julie Flett
I am Dreaming of... Animals of the Native Northwest, Melaney Gleeson-Lyall
Fall in Line, Holden!, Daniel Vandever
Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film, Neva Kilpatrick
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada, Paulette Regan and Taiaiake Alfred
Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Worldview, F. David Peat
A Stranger at Home, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
America Before the European Invasions, Alice Beck Kehoe
No Time to Say Goodbye: Children's Stories of Kuper Island Residential School, Sylvia Olsen with Rita Morris and Ann Sam
Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
Being Cowlitz, Christine Dupres
Harper's Anthology of 20 Century Native American Poetry, Duane Niatum
Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back, Joseph Bruchac and Jonathan London
When the Shadbush Blooms, Carla Messinger, Susan Katzh, David Kanietakeron Fadden
Fools Crow, James Welch
Book of the Hopi, Frank Waters
A Warrior of the People, Joe Starita
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