They were told not to be themselves
A review of "Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education" edited by Robert Bensen (University of Arizona Press, paperback, 280 pages, $19.95).
Stories abound, in Alaska and elsewhere, of Native American children forced to attend boarding schools far from their village homes, punished for speaking their own language. These are not old stories; some people who experienced them are well under retirement age.
"Children of the Dragonfly" is an anthology of Native American voices speaking out about the struggle to reclaim Native American identities. It is the first anthology to document this struggle on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Featured are such well-known authors as Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Mary TallMountain (Athabascan from Nulato) and Luci Tapahonso, plus 20 new writers including Patricia Aqiimuk Paul (Inupiaq Eskimo).
The book's title is obscure until one learns that, in Zuni lore, a boy and a girl, separated from their people, fashioned a toy dragonfly from corn leaves. The spirit of Dragonfly entered the toy and helped the children weather their isolation, teaching them how to renew the community life of their ancestors.
"Children of the Dragonfly" is stuffed with hairdressers who refuse to cut your hair because it "dulls the scissors." Classmates who say "ugly words and hateful things."
Lee Maracle was not sent away to convent school, but one of the first, in the 1950s, to go to school near home. Still she was not safe from racism, which she defines as "an essential by-product of colonialism." She writes, "As a child I was humiliated by a string of teachers wearing brothel-tinted sunglasses. I was accused of sluttish behavior by a moralizing principal whose assessment of me was guided by the color of my skin rather than my character." She describes the contrast between her granny's welcoming kitchen and the cold school she began attending at age six as "a schizophrenic situation."
Peter Cuch writes about his father, a Ute boy kidnapped by Mormons at age 8. "It was common for Mormon and other churches to take Ute children from their impoverished families....It was part of a bigger plan of assimilation, a way of getting out of debt. (They thought) God has sent them to save these souls." His father was beaten with a baseball bat for two years, assigned to a series of foster homes, then drafted by the Marines for the Vietnam War. "For years my father searched for himself everywhere, except in a mirror. He still hasn't found the life he was stolen from."
"Children of the Dragonfly" is a sobering portrait of welfare and education systems but one that needed to be written, and needs to be read.
Ann Chandonnet can be reached at achandonnet@juneauempire.com