I’m just a white gal, just a reader, and not necessarily a scholarly or heavily critical thinker.
I had to get that out of the way before I posted a link to this. (The link appeared in a comment on my review of Caddie Woodlawn.) It’s by a Native American woman, a scholar, and one with a mission to change the way that Native Americans are portrayed in literature. All of which I can support. But something about her post on Caddie Woodlawn bothered me. It wasn’t that she couldn’t find evidence for scalp belts (probably there were never any), or that she disagreed with the use of squaw or brave to identify Native American men and women. Fine, that’s racist, and I can understand that. No, it was this:
With deeper knowledge of American Indians, we all might be able to get books like Caddie Woodlawn off the shelves. They have use for study and discussion of stereotypes and bias, but the misinformation they impart to children must not continue to go unchecked.
Tell me, how is this different from an ultra-conservative trying to get the book about the gay penguins off the shelves? Or the anti-Harry Potter diatribes? Or any other book that someone wants banned? Are there no allowances here? If her logic holds, then we should probably take everything off the shelves that wasn’t written before, oh, say 1970. Yeah, there’s a lot of racist and insensitive stuff out there. But even Shakespeare was racist. Does that mean it’s not good? What’s the line here?
The Book Nut 
I hardly came away from <>Caddie Woodlawn<> (or <>Little House on the Prairie<>, for that matter) feeling like the book was against Indians. I really don’t get this. A few offensive statements should ban a book. There are PLENTY of books with jibes about Mormons. Some are a hundred years old, others are written today. But good heavens, please don’t ban then.<>So Far from the Bamboo Grove<> is another book that some people want banned (I’ve gotten more than one comment on my blog about this one) since some people think it’s too positive about the Japanese in Korea. But when I read that book as a kid, I didn’t get anything political from it. It was just a book about a little girl who happened to be Japanese who suffered a lot in WWII. <>Caddie Woodlawn<> is the same. It’s a book about a little girl’s antics who is racist about Indians. For its time, <>Caddie Woodlawn<> is better than a lot of other books. Too many people think kids are getting way more out of these books than they are. Kids don’t have the same prejudices we do. You might be able to work to change how books are written in the future, but you can’t change what was written in the past and it is silly to hold people in the past to the same values we hold today.Have you read <>The Language Police<>? It points out that both liberals and conservatives play into this.
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When I read Gone With the Wind, I was aghast at how politically incorrect it was, and then, after consideration, I was very excited. Not because I want to read racist literature, but because it was the first time I felt like I was really seeing inside the mind of a racist person. Everything I read in school was so sanitized. How can we develop an accurate view of what racism really means if we only hear one side?
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I appriciate inkling’s comment – reading a racist today is very different than reading Gone With the Wind. I don’t feel that we will be will be better educated or be better able to prepare our children by removing all literature with any bias or misinformation in it from the world. Honestly, what would be left? Cultures and peoples are misrepresented and misunderstood often and everywhere and it is our duty to teach our children to seek the truth from literature and use their brains about what they read. Make the racism a topic of conversation when you read the book, don’t pretend it didn’t exist.Wow, that was a long one 🙂
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Hi all,Imagine yourself to be a Native child reading Caddie Woodlawn aloud in school, and having to read aloud the passages that say that Indians are savages that cannot be trusted. That, you never know when there will be a massacre. I am the parent of a child who went through that. So, is it a “diatribe” for a mother to speak up for the best interests of her child, and her child’s peers sitting next to her in class, or across the country in another state?
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Here’s the blog post about my daughter and CADDIE.http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2007/03/reflections-on-caddie-woodlawn-teaching.html
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Are people only reading the parts of “Caddie Woodlawn” that enrage them? I am Native American and I read this book for the first time when I was 10 or 11. Caddie is friends with the Indians and she knows that they are a gentle and hardworking people. Nobody is more outraged by the attitude of the grownups about the Indians than Caddie. If people would actually try to understand books before they get all outraged the world would be a better place.
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No, it’s not a diatribe to speak up for that? It becomes one when you want NO ONE to read about it. It’s one thing to read about it, have a negative experience and then discuss it. It’s entirely another for you to decide that no one should have to have that experience at all.Take Amira’s comment. I’m Mormon. My children are Mormon. They are often not portrayed positively in literature. Scary, cultists, etc. If my daughters read something like that and were disturbed about it, I’d talk to them, explain that there were different veiws about Mormons back when such and such books were written and move on. Ask her how it makes her feel. Relate it to other forms of discrimination. What I would not do is try to get the book pulled off the shelves.Thank you kookiejar. I totally agree.
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While I don’t think these books should be taken off our library’s shelves, I would like to see teachers who use it (do any of them? How many kids are actually reading “Caddie Woodlawn” these days?) do so critically. It would be nice if there were more books from a Native perspective, too – I just got a (free! from http://www.paperbackswap.com ) copy of Louise Erdrich’s “The Birchbark House”, and am wondering if it might be a good alternative for historic fiction for this age group.
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Yes, Erdrich’s BIRCHBARK HOUSE and its sequel, GAME OF SILENCE are both much better choices than either CADDIE WOODLAWN or LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE.Erdrich does not demonize or dehumanize any characters in her books. Instead, she offers a carefully rendered story about the coming together, the clash, the struggle, of that time period. We all know the outcome of that coming together, its ramifications for today’s Native peoples, and Erdrich could easily make the white settlers out to be evil people, but she does not. They weren’t evil, brutal killers. Neither were the Native people they encountered. They were all people engaged in struggle, trying to protect their ways of life. Native people weren’t bloodthirsty warriors. Their men fought to protect their mothers, their wives, and their daughters. Their homes, their crops, their hunting grounds. All that humanity is generally missing from the characterization of Native people in historical fiction.
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Book Nut: Thanks for the original post. I believe it takes courage to begin a discussion such as this, regardless of your own stance. I agree with debbie reece, but respect the different opinions expressed here. My own three girls are Sudanese immigrants with blacker than black velvet skin—and there are many representations of black African people that I hope they never encounter, particularly with the endorsement of a teacher. My fourth and fifth grade students have loved The Birchbark House both years we’ve read it together.
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I heard of <>Caddie Woodlawn<> when I was a kid, but never got around to reading it until last week (as part of my programme to read all of the Newbery Medal books). Therefore, it’s fairly fresh in my memory.I saw no negative portrayal of the Indians. The one we saw most of, John, was caring, kind to animals (left his dog in Caddie’s care because it was injured and unable to travel) and apparently a good leader of his people. The one scene set in the Indians’ camp showed industrious people working on the canoe.The people who were shown in a bad light were all white: The one who kicked his wife out, and the ones who wanted to do a pre-emptive strike on John’s people. And it was made plain that Caddie and her family neither agreed with, nor approved of, these actions.
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http://www2.oprah.com/presents/2007/girl/stories/ashamed_109.jhtmlSee the above very recent link for what a real-life psychologist says about hatred of self and self image and where it REALLY comes from! I think peers are more of a factor than this psychologist thinks, but I also find much to agree about with her. She gives some excellent insights and words of healing advice.Rinda M. Byersrindawriterhttp://www.xanga.com/rindawriter/http://www.rindarealm.com/
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The line that always got me was “the red was like music to their half-savage eyes” (page. 163). It’s one of those things that once you’ve started noticing non-blatant prejudices, jumps out at you.The question of whether the ‘half-breed’ boys were completely wild and without manners due to age or their race is something that I’m not willing to give the benefit of the doubt to, but is worth mentioning.And it’s not a question of open racism even, that’s easy enough to point out and say, “Don’t listen to that kiddos.”It’s the inherent ‘half-savage’ ‘wild’ ‘Father would never marry an indian!’ sort of things that worry me when I think about children reading them. It’s very rare for someone to be TAUGHT a stereotype, they are things that are believed after repeated exposure to such things. How many times do people consciously admit that they believe a stereotype.I’m not for banning the book, I am anit-censorship. But to say that this is along the same lines as gay penguins is incorrect. It’s more along the lines of the books that teach (through untrue stereotypes) that gay people are stupid, dangerous, and altogether inferior.It also isn’t a good idea to simply ignore the parts that ‘enrage’ you if you believe that it is a public threat (through whatever various means) then it’s a good idea to protest.I’m just speaking in general terms here. I don’t believe that Caddie Woodlawn is Satan, I simply believe that it’s not something that we should expose children to without giving an in-depth explanation as to why she, her family, and everyone in her times who believed such things were close-minded, racist, and ignorant.
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‘Caddie Woodlawn’ was read to my third grade class by the teacher over a period of time. I never forgot the book and the pictures it conjured in my mind. Stories like that encouraged me to want to read. I looked for that book for years for my children. Finally found it and reread it. Know what struck me? That the Woodlawns were very tolerant people in an age when tolerance was not common. This book teaches children to look at different people in different lights and white children would see that some Indians were obviously better people than some whites.
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Caddie Woodlawn is a horrible book to be banned from a library. The book is based on the true stories of the author’s grandmother. i couldn’t see any stereotypes in it of Native Americans. The girl had BE-FREINDED Native Americans. And if you’re speaking of “And Tango Makes Three” being a book about “gay penguins” that’s also a beautiful book that shouldn’t be banned. First off, the book isn’t about “gay penguins”. the 2 male penguins don’t kiss, or have sexual intercourse. it’s a true story of 2 penguins in the New York Zoo. penguins develop a strong bond with their mates, but instead, 2 male penguins developed a strong bond with one another. The book just implies to kids that there are other alternative ways of intimate relationships and opens their minds a little bit. It disgusts me that people are so narrow-minded and bias.
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I don’t know what the heck is wrong with you people. Caddie Woodlawn was a wonderful book. It was one of my favorite books that I read in elementary school. Along with the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and the Boxcar children series. The author was trying to protray what life was like in the 1800’s. She wasn’t predidous at all.
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My husband wrote the musical version of Caddie Woodlawn. For the latest production, he and his collaborator consulted Native American scholars, made John a Dakota, translated his dialogue into the native language and kept the rest of the story intact. Caddie is his friend, and Caddie's father treats the Dakota with respect. It was a small step to take to try and be racially sensitive and historically accurate while keeping the story intact:
http://sleeptillnoonproductions.blogspot.com/
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