American Indian Youth of Today & Children’s Writers

According to Terry L. Cross’s article “Native Americans and Juvenile Justice: A Hidden Tragedy” from 2008, there are 560 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the USA.

There are 4 million individuals within these tribes and half of them live on reservations. 42% of these tribally enrolled individuals are under the age of 19. 

The suicide rate amongst American Indian youth is twice as high as white youth. It is the highest rate for any race. 60,000 American Indian children suffer abuse or neglect each year and 200,000 suffer serious “emotional disturbances”.

American Indian youth are over-represented in the Justice System and are 50% more likely to receive the harshest treatments while in our Justice System.

According to Wikipedia, one third of American Indians live in poverty.

I could locate no statistics on how many youth there are in the United States of Native American descent but not within a tribe. Youth whose ancestors were Native American. This is a touchy subject. All of the bad white apples who simply wanna-be of Native American descent, but aren’t really. This makes it difficult for those of who can actually prove our Native American descent through photographs, documents and/or DNA testing.

Needless to say, those of American Indian descent who live in the United States must be in the tens of thousands.

What’s the point of all of this?

It is time for assaults against the American Indian in children’s literature to end.

Recently, a published author whose picture book made it on the Oyate organization’s list of Not recommended books with Native themes asked me to read her yet-to-be published new book with Native themes.

This author is not Native American nor is she of Native descent.

Her new work is an invented Native American tale. She took American Indian tales that inspired her and kept about 25% of the tale or tales and made up the other 75%.  She claims her best work is inspired by reading Native American tales.

So, even though Oyate and Professor Debbie Reese of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have explained thoroughly to her how her first book is deeply offensive to the American Indian community, she wrote another book that will be deeply offensive to the American Indian community. And what is worse, harmful to American Indian youth.

And when American Indian youth are already suffering beyond what would ever be acceptable in a country of any kind of moral standards, this author wants to put out another book that will add to their suffering.

And she can’t hear the protests. She can’t hear them from the American Indian community and she cannot hear them from me.  After my protests, she thinks the story only needs further revisions.

Do not write your own American Indian tale when you are not Native. Do not use American Indian tales in your work when you do not have permission to do so. Do not lift elements of Indian tales and re-use them in your own tale. American Indian tales are often sacred and have sacred images, symbols, themes and meanings.

Do not do this simply because it is wrong to do so. Respect the American Indian by respecting their beliefs.

It’s not okay to make money off the American Indian by publishing offensive children’s books you know will, first of all, get published more readily, and secondly, sell more readily, because of its Native theme. 

It is far better to never be published than to publish a children’s book that is harmful to even one child let alone an entire population of children – we are talking about almost 2 million young people.

And we are talking about the offense it is to all of us who are descended of Native Americans.