As we exit November and head into all things Christmas and exams, I want to leave you with a post that provides you with resources for how to include AND CENTER Native American voices and perspectives THROUGHOUT the year, rather than just during Indigenous History Month. 

Some questions you might ask yourself as you continue to ponder this month’s posts and this one, in particular include the following:

1. Where can I implement AND CENTER more Indigenous Literature in my curriculum?
2. What can I replace that doesn’t serve my students?
3. How can I use Indigenous Literature to supplement texts I am required to use?
4. Of these sources in this post, what is one I could pick up that might challenge how I am thinking about my curriculum?
5. Of these sources, what is one I could suggest to a student tomorrow? What is one I could suggest to my team tomorrow? What is one I could use in my classroom tomorrow? 

A couple of key terms to know
​
For me, one of the most important definitions we can know is the definition of Tribal Sovereignty. According to Google’s English Dictionary, sovereignty means supreme power or authority OR the authority of a state to govern itself or another state. Building on that definition, and at its most basic, Tribal Sovereignty means the right of Indigenous Nations to govern themselves. This right applies and extends to all aspects of life, but the three that seem the most prescient to our work as educators are food sovereignty, educational sovereignty, and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). All three of these examples tie directly to our daily interactions with children in educational settings, so I have included some resources, too, to learn more about these rights.

​SOME Young Adult authors to follow (there are soooooooo many more!)
​
There are so many amazing Indigenous authors of Young Adult Literature. The cool thing about following them on their socials (I like Instagram the best) and receiving their newsletters is that you learn not only about their past and upcoming books, but you also get to learn about their lives and passions, what current events are important to them and their communities, and about new Indigenous authors. In addition, you will know more about the land on which you live and teach. Some of these authors include: 

Just a quick Google search of “current Indigenous young adult authors” will pop up list after list of contemporary YAL authors and books written by Indigenous authors ranging from Publisher’s Weekly to local libraries across the country trying to get the word out. 

​If you end up following Cynthia Leitich Smith (I can’t recommend this enough because Cynthia is amazing), you will also get to enter into the world of Heartdrum Books, the Native American Imprint of HarperCollins. This imprint prints books by and about Native Americans; it prints picture books, middle grade novels, and young adult novels. In addition, there are educator guides that accompany many of the novels, there are excerpts from the novels, and there is so much more to help you use these texts in class and get them into the hands of the students who need them.  

If you have viewed the Weekend Picks for this month, you will see that 4 of the 5 are books from the Heartdrum Imprint and a couple are bridging into the horror genre, an exploding genre of YAL that is full of excitement, terror, and fun!

SOME social media accounts to follow:
​
In addition to following authors on social media (I’ve included the two I reference the most for my own work below), there are a few accounts I follow on Instagram to keep informed and keep learning:
@cynthialeitichsmith - this is her author account on IG
 
@davidrobertsonwriter - this is his author account on IG
 
@tumbleweed_nutrition - this is an account of a nutritionist who is Dine and lives on the Navajo Nation
 
@illuminative - this is the IG account for IllumiNative, a Native woman-led racial and social justice organization 
 
@indiancountrytoday - now known as ICT (Indian Country Today), this is IG page to disseminate news, entertainment, and opiniosn about and relevant to Indigenous communities 

​SOME state-level resources:
​
I also have included some state-level resources from my home state of Montana that anyone has access to and can use to support their teaching of Native American literature. What you might also find is that your state department of public instruction has Indian Education specialists who work with the tribes (federally recognized or not) in your state and also your subject-area curriculum specialists to bring Indigenous voices into the curriculum.
 
Montana Office of Public Instruction. (2020). Indian Education in Montana. Montana Office of Public Instruction. https://opi.mt.gov/Educators/Teaching-Learning/Indian-Education

​This is the link to the Indian Education for All page of the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Montana has a constitutional mandate to incorporate Indian Education for All in all subjects and in all grades.
 
The following are collections of activities and poems put together by educators and available for use in classrooms:
 
Fedulo, M. (2013). It’s like my heart pounding - Imaginative writing for American Indian students and implementation of Indian Education for All. Montana Office of Public Instruction.
Susag, D.M. (Ed.) (2012). Birthright: Born to poetry - A collection of Montana Indian poetry, for the secondary level. Montana Office of Public Instruction.

SOME theoretical and supplemental texts
​
Lastly, I have some theoretical texts that you might enjoy reading if you are hoping to ground yourself more deeply in the literature.
 
McCarty, T.L., & Lee, T.S. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), pp. 101-124.

In this article, McCarty and Lee build on the concepts of Culturally Relevant/Responsive and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies; however, McCarty and Lee focus specifically on how these prior theories might be turned towards and used within Native American communities. My favorite aspect of this article is its tie between tribal sovereignty and education sovereignty.

Tuck, E., & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), pp. 1-40.

 In this extremely powerful article, Tuck and Yang challenge educators who use the term “decolonization” to describe a changing of curriculum. Tuck and Yang argue that this term is not a metaphor but that decolonization is actually the physical unsettling of colonial mechanisms and is different from curricular changes. Educators need to be clear on their use of terms.
​
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). Zed Books Ltd.
           
Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a member of the Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou Iwi (Tribes) and is a professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. If you feel like you are moving towards wanting to do research of your own, then this book might be the place for you to look. In this powerful response and challenge to Western research methods, Tuhiwai Smith presents methodologies that see Indigenous people as subjects and agents able to conduct their own research in their own ways rather than objects to be the concern of other people’s (often dehumanizing and unethical) research.

First Nations Development Institute. (2018).  Indigenous Food Sovereignty Sources Guide. First Nations Development Institute. https://www.firstnations.org/wp-content/uploads/publication-attachments/Food_Sovereignty_Bibliography_FINAL2.pdf
           
This document presents the reader with a lengthy bibliography of sources, places to look to better understand Indigenous food sovereignty. It provides links to agricultural, health, and nutritional resources both nationally and internationally.

Adichie, C.N. (2009, July). The danger of a single story [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
           
In this Ted Talk, Chimamanda Adichie talks about the importance of presenting multiple stories about any group of people and of avoiding a single story. In other words, if the only stories students in school read/see about Black people are stories of slavery or from the Civil Rights Movement, then those are the only stories students know about Black people: ones of struggle. Instead, Adichie argues that students should see Black people in multiple stories and roles and understand that, just like any other race, Black people experience the full range of emotions, work a range of jobs, live in the current world not just in history, and more. These ideas apply to any group of people. 

Conclusion
​
My dear friends, I hope that any and all of these resources help you as you think about your curriculum throughout the year. Please reach out to me anytime with questions, and please reach out to your local/state experts for help, too. Thank you all for being the amazing educators that you are! 

Josh Galarza is a longtime Montessori educator, as well as a multidisciplinary visual artist specializing in printmaking and book arts. Galarza earned his BA in English and BFA in art from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he later taught printmaking. His research centers around male gender performance, queer issues, body liberation, and Chicano studies. His debut novel, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky is a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Josh currently lives in Richmond, VA, where he teaches in the English Department at Virginia Commonwealth University while completing an MFA in creative writing. ​

When I was seven, my parents got divorced. It didn’t happen overnight, obviously; it actually took two years, and, in that time, the judge worked to find an agreeable custody arrangement…unfortunately, the judge didn’t really take me and my brother into account while doing that, and the result was two years of upheaval, tears, and stress on everyone involved. Once the arrangement was set, though, it was something we adhered to for years. In particular, I remember our holiday schedule: Thanksgiving with Dad, Christmas with Mom (my mom’s birthday is Christmas Eve), New Years with Dad, back to Mom’s when school returned to session in January. This holiday schedule was something I lived by, relied on, and the first time I didn’t spend holidays with my parents, in that order, was HARD. This type of scheduling rigidity was something I counted on, a stabilizing force throughout the ups and downs of adolescence, college, and my early years of teaching. I know the way things are when we are growing up isn’t the way things will always be, but the loss of that holiday schedule was difficult for me (yes, I know how absolutely privileged I was to have two parents, to have two homes, to have parents who wanted to spend time with me, and to have parents with the ability to to keep up that kind of schedule, and so much more). 

As I entered my mid-20s and spent holidays away from family, I figured my way through and found ways to keep the joy in Thanksgiving, in particular. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday: there’s no gift giving or buying, no religious ceremonies to attend, no work, it’s the time of year for NCTE (the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention), I can put gravy on everything I eat with zero questions asked…what’s not to love? Well, probably the racism, the erasure of Native peoples from the history books, the white-washing of our past and the origins of Thanksgiving as times of peace and love between colonists and Native Americans…ya know, just those really big things. My tone may sound flippant here, but I promise that it is not. 
​
I’m not going to take a deep dive into the history of Thanksgiving because, I imagine, you already know anything that I could tell you.[1] Furthermore, I am privileged to say, Thanksgiving’s origins were not integral to my family’s celebration of the holiday. I remember learning about pilgrims as a young elementary school student, but I also attended Catholic school in Montana, and it’s pretty difficult to be Catholic in Montana and not have a solid knowledge of how Catholics treated Native Americans (and millions of other people illogically and wrongly deemed “savages”) throughout history, so, from what I remember, we did not romanticize the first Thanksgiving through plays or anything of that sort at school. And we definitely didn’t do any of that at home. Thanksgiving was pretty much just about food at our house.

When I began to celebrate Thanksgiving on my own and learn even more about the history of our country, I thought deeply about this holiday and how I might celebrate it moving forward in my life. Growing up, it had been an important celebration with my dad, a break from school, and a time to celebrate food. When I moved away, I wanted Thanksgiving to be a time spent with friends, feeding them and caring for them, making them feel at home. So that’s what I started to do: I began with small dinner parties when I lived in Arkansas. When my partner and I moved to Arizona, we decided to start the tradition there, too. I wanted to invite my fellow graduate students because (1) no one in graduate school can afford to go home for holidays, and (2) I wanted the international students to eat really good food and have a warm home to go to over the Thanksgiving break.
​
During our time in Arizona, we hosted Thanksgiving every year (except in 2020) for between 25 and 35 people. I cooked some traditional dishes (turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry chutney, and, of course, pearl onions in cream sauce!), and everyone else brought dishes that might be considered traditional Thanksgiving fare OR, and even better, dishes from their home towns in countries such as Thailand, Korea, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico. We all came together to see old friends, find new friends, and to eat, relax, and find joy together. After my dad passed away in November of 2019, celebrating this holiday, which had always been ours, with my friends in Arizona kept me going and helped with my grief. It was a very special time.

Now, I bet at this point you are saying to yourself, “Okay, Becca, we get it: you love Thanksgiving. Enough already. What the heck does this have to do with Young Adult Literature and why should we care?!??!” Fair questions.
I told you all of this to show that how and why we celebrate holidays is deeply personal and often not at all connected to why the holiday exists or what the existence of that holiday can do. But, the mere existence of this holiday can cause pain to people we care about.

How do we move forward when we know traditions are deeply embedded and personal but we also know that the continuation of those traditions can be harmful? What do we do when the school districts we teach in or that we send our children into perpetuate Native erasure and a very rosy version of how America was colonized?

Listen. To Native American voices.
Listen. To Native American voices.
Listen. To Native American voices.

And not just during the month of November.

This is where Young Adult Literature comes in. I first encountered Cynthia Leitich Smith’s work when I read Rain is not My Indian Name in my Young Adult Literature (YAL) course back in Fall 2007. I had lost my older sister to a drug overdose in September 2007. Needless to say, a YAL course may not have been the best at the time, since, as we all know, YAL books often feature characters dealing with death and loss. I distinctly remember writing to my professor and telling her that all these books dealt with death and that I just couldn’t read much more. But I continued on with my professor’s understanding and support (she encouraged me to read what I could and provided me with some alternate texts) and made it through. 

​Over the past almost 20 years, I have returned to those moments in 2007 over and over again as inspiration for my own teaching and reading. But, when I picked up Hearts Unbroken, I didn’t expect to see Rain again or to be transported back in time to those fall days of 2007. What a different time I am living in now and what a different reader I am, too!

I’m probably late to this bandwagon since the book was published in 2018, but I have to say, “WOW!” to Hearts Unbroken. Cyn has absolutely done it again. Just as she did in Rain is not My Indian Name and has done in her other novels, Cyn weaves together a story that encompasses and portrays whole people and communities. Her novels center characters, and those characters experience the world, which is full of ups and downs, challenges and successes, and varied social issues. Louise, the main character of Hearts Unbroken, isn’t just a girl or just a Native American or just a high schooler. Cyn makes her a real person, with an intersectional - (hyperlink to this definition: https://www.britannica.com/topic/intersectionality ) - identity, who faces a variety of challenges: romantic relationships gone awry, friendships that need mending, sibling support, racism towards Native Americans (on the personal level, the community level, and the national level), sexism, the privilege that accompanies socioeconomic status, and more. Louise doesn’t gracefully meet each challenge because she is a real human being. But she does learn from them. She does become a more introspective person. She does consciously decide to make changes and to stand up for herself and others.
​
It’s amazing to live beside her through this novel. Accompanying Louise through the first couple of months of her senior year, we watch her become a solid journalist for the school newspaper; we see her school drama department have a reckoning with its history of exclusionary casting; we see how intertwined schools and communities are and how censorship and first amendment rights live in the high school classroom; we live through tough conversations about immigration, racism, sex, and censorship. 

Cynthia seamlessly integrates the English and Mvskoke languages, accurately portrays the cultural setting of suburban Kansas, and effectively uses a really cool structural device throughout the novel – excerpts from Louise’s school newspaper – to keep the reader in Louise’s space.

Louise presents the reader with a beautiful example of what it looks like to make mistakes, listen, challenge oneself, and evaluate one’s beliefs. Cynthia takes her characters one by one, crafting real individuals that readers can relate to. What’s quite important here is that the characters are just that: individuals. Louise isn’t meant to represent all young Mvskoke girls; her family isn’t meant to represent every Mvskoke family. Joey isn’t meant to represent every Lebanese American. As we read, we are also learning to see people as individuals rather than groups as monoliths, all the same.

The reason this novel clicked for me at this time of year as I read it is it ends with Louise’s family celebrating Thanksgiving…but in their own way.
​
In the second-to-last chapter, Louise asks her boyfriend Joey if his parents, who are Arab American, believe in Christmas. He says they do, and Louise reflects internally, “It struck me, …, how much I didn’t know that I didn’t know” (281). With this scene, Cynthia has Louise model for the reader what it looks like to ask questions, to listen to the answers, to use the tools available to us (Louise also uses Google in this scene to get more information for herself about Islam, Christianity, and Arab Americans), and to be open to NOT knowing things.

At the end of the novel (spoiler ahead***), a tornado disrupts the annual Turkey Trot run, which Louise and Joey are covering for their school newspaper, and during which, of course, many of the runners who are Caucasian dress in Native American headdresses. This shocks Joey, but Louise is expecting it and braces herself for it. Rather than the holiday of Thanksgiving itself having an effect on Louise, it’s actually how some of the Turkey Trot runners have chosen to dress and celebrate that day that is the problem. Louise is prepared to see this kind of racist dress on Thanksgiving; Joey isn’t. Louise takes it in stride, but, as the reader, we realize she shouldn’t have to. 

After Louise and Joey have survived the tornado and are going to head home, Louise invites Joey and his mom to her cousin Rain’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, telling him that “everybody’s welcome” (279). When they arrive at Rain’s house, Louise tells the reader, “I spotted Dmitri and Marie carrying out platters of food, Hughie playing horseshoes with Shelby. The puppies frolicked in the grass with Rain’s black Lab.
Mama and Daddy waved like they hadn’t seen me in years. I waved back.
I love who I am. I love my family, my friends, my Native Nation. I love Kansas. And chances are pretty kick-ass that I love Joey, too.
Pu fvckvkes. We are happy.

My arm circled his waist. His arm circled my shoulders. He asked, ‘Do Native people believe in Thanksgiving?’
I kissed him. ‘We believe in gratitude.’” (285-286)
​
Cynthia’s style of writing puts the reader inside the character’s head and lets us live with them for the duration of the book. To read Louise and Joey asking questions of each other, working to understand the other’s background, learning from each other…what a joy! This is exactly how we move forward, I think. We listen to and learn from one another. We admit mistakes. We are open to growth. We see one another as individuals. We center people other than ourselves.  

One thing I am grateful for, already this month is, that this was the first book I picked up for my month of weekend picks because it gave me time to be introspective about how I have grown in how I see the world and relate to others, process issues, and approach challenges. It helped me articulate my thoughts about Thanksgiving and its importance to me but also to decenter that for myself and consider its effects on others, on people I might not even know. It also confirmed for me that, about any issue, there will be so many different points of view. We are all individuals. There will be Native Americans who have traditions around Thanksgiving, just as Louise’s family does. There will be people like me who love Thanksgiving and who also see that its portrayal of early American history is problematic and is something we must move away from. There will be people like the Turkey trotters in the book who wear Native American traditional regalia as a costume, something we know is wrong and racist. It’s books like Hearts Unbroken and so many others written by Native Americans, centering Native Americans, that provide an empathy-building space to make it so young people can learn about and have discussions about all of these types of people. This book centers Louise and puts us in her life. What better way to understand the joys and harms another person experiences than through their own eyes? 

One thing I am grateful, for already this month is, that this was the first book I picked up for my month of weekend picks because it gave me time to be introspective about how I have grown in how I see the world and relate to others, process issues, and approach challenges. It helped me articulate my thoughts about Thanksgiving and its importance to me but also to decenter that for myself and consider its effects on others, on people I might not even know. It also confirmed for me that, about any issue, there will be so many different points of view. We are all individuals. There will be Native Americans who have traditions around Thanksgiving, just as Louise’s family does.

​There will be people like me who love Thanksgiving and who also see that its portrayal of early American history is problematic and is something we must move away from. There will be people like the Turkey trotters in the book who wear Native American traditional regalia as a costume, something we know is wrong and racist. It’s books like Hearts Unbroken and so many others written by Native Americans, centering Native Americans, that provide an empathy-building space to make it so young people can learn about and have discussions about all of these types of people. This book centers Louise and puts us in her life. What better way to understand the joys and harms another person experiences than through their own eyes? 

​The thing is traditions are personal. I do love the time of Thanksgiving, the food, the friends, the memories of cooking with my dad, eating my gramma’s cornbread stuffing, learning how to make gravy and pearl onions on my own. I want to share those memories and foods with my daughter. I want to make my home a welcoming space to my colleagues and students here in North Dakota and Minnesota. I want to put my feet up and eat a pile of food covered in a pound of gravy when I come home from NCTE. But I can do those things anytime, too. I don’t necessarily have to do them in the last week of November. I probably will, as long as I have the time off to do that much cooking at that time and as long as climate change lets where I live stay cold in November. 

So, yeah, traditions are personal…but so is reading. Words dive into our minds and souls and help us understand ourselves and the world.[1] What better way to begin to ask and answer questions and to challenge our own ways of being and thinking than to read a book? Thanks, Cyn, for giving us and our students a book that helps us listen, that helps us think, that gives us space to build empathy, and that helps us move forward together. This month and throughout the year, let’s all read books that center Native American voices and the voices of individuals we want to know more deeply. And, this month, in particular, let’s agree that we can all believe in gratitude and that, together, we can go from there

References
A&E Television Networks. (2024, January 31). Thanksgiving 2023 ‑ tradition, origins & meaning. History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving 
Citizen Potawatomi Nation Public Information Office. (2022, November 21). The true, dark history of Thanksgiving. Potawatomi.org. https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2020/11/25/the-true-dark-history-of-thanksgiving/
 
Conference on English Education (2007). Globalization and English education. [attached as PDF]
 
Sims Bishop, R. (Summer 1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and using books for the classroom, 6(3). https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf
​

​This is the second autumnal season that I’ve been back in Indiana, and as I drive to my rurally located school every morning, I’m still struck by a sense of home that I didn’t feel the entire eight years that I lived in Texas. Every red maple aflame, every red oak, every burning bush, every yellow elm and ash (you get the picture) tell me what my body already knows — that the seasons are changing and that I am home. The fog that rises from the fields on early fall mornings sings—cool air meeting ground warmed from the day before. No more Texas ‘hotumn’ for me. 

​This year, because The Rural Assembly on English Language and Literacy Education (TRAELLE) and the Whippoorwill Award for Rural YA and MG Literature have joined forces, the changing of the leaves has been coupled with the announcement of the Whippoorwill Book Award winner and honor books. They have both reminded me of the importance of allowing readers (rural and otherwise) to read books that reconnect them to the land. To read books that remind them that we are part of the ecology and not masters of it. 

​Similarly, Northranger by Rey Terciero and illustrated by Bre Indigo, allows students to feel connected to the land by showcasing the kind of work that happens on farms and ranches. A Whippoorwill Honor book, Northranger is a graphic novel that tells the story of Cade Munoz, a closeted queer teen growing up in rural Texas. He spends the summer working as a ranch hand to make extra money for his family. Once on the ranch, we see the kinds of farm chores and hard work that take place on ranches. The illustrations are particularly powerful in allowing farm kids to feel seen. I never got the chance to see myself reflected in a text this way. I related to the early mornings and hot afternoons, the physical exertion and exhaustion and more. And because it was inspired by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, it’s a way to help students see their experiences connected to canonical literature in interesting ways. Like Cadow, Terciero explains that his motivation in writing Northranger was to give young people who grew up like him a chance to see themselves in literature. 

​All of the Whippoorwill Honor winners this year highlight how the connections between people and land in rural communities shapes those people and communities. Conflict around who gets to claim and own land and what that means for the people, plants, and animals who call that land home. This seems like particularly salient reading for rural kids who are still thinking about figuring out what their connection to the land means to them but is important for everyone to think about. Realizing that we work in collaboration and reciprocity with the land for our survival is necessary for us to sustain both the natural world and our own survival. And these books offer opportunities to do just that.