We Are Still Here picture book

 

Release date: April 20, 2021

eGalley generously shared by Charlesbridge (publisher) at NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English) Nov 2020 annual convention. I am writing this in November, but I will schedule this to go out in March.

From the publisher:

Twelve Native American kids present historical and contemporary laws, policies, struggles, and victories in Native life, each with a powerful refrain: We are still here!

Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. This companion book to the award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people's past, present, and future. Precise, lyrical writing presents topics including: forced assimilation (such as boarding schools), land allotment and Native tribal reorganization, termination (the US government not recognizing tribes as nations), Native urban relocation (from reservations), self-determination (tribal self-empowerment), Native civil rights, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), religious freedom, economic development (including casino development), Native language revival efforts, cultural persistence, and nationhood.

My thoughts:

As it says at the top, I am presenting at NCTE with three of my teacher education alum, but since it is online this year, and since we are an on demand workshop, that has given me the time and opportunity to sit in on many sessions. I heard about this book in one of my early sessions, and then while going into the virtual exhibit hall, this book was offered up as an eGalley (they used to be called ARCs).  In the old days, I would show up at NCTE with an empty rolling suitcase and the first day of the exhibit was the time to bring my rolling bag and park myself by the entrance doors until the official start of the exhibit. What the rolling bag was for was to run through the exhibit towards the book publishers and grab their ARCs (advanced review copies) of their yet unpublished books. Children's books came as colored, unbound pieces of art and text held together just as folded loose sheets. The YA books looked like real novels, just with the Not for Resale stamp on the cover. I missed the thrill of those times, but the publishers have been just as generous with their eGalleys and no running.

This children's book is not as easy to do a read aloud because it is heavy in research and the implications of that research, however, the potential for a brown teacher like me that teaches in a brown, yellow, minority majority classroom is that this is a wonderful mentor text to build a research unit on in the classroom. I love that the refrain, We are still here! travels through the book and shouts Amen, amen, amen.

As I am reading this, I can think of Hawaiian research on protests - from the woven mat in the Bishop Museum, the protest woven into the fibers and sent lovingly to their king to the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana protest against the military bombing of Kahoʻolawe to the Kū Kiaʻi Mauna occupation against the TMT telescope. Kū Kiaʻi Mauna, Kū Kiaʻi Mauna, Kū Kiaʻi Mauna! Eo! The opportunities are endless because as Indigenous people, as kanaka maoli, we are also still here and this book and the format acts as a template and a call to arms to all classroom teachers of brown, black, yellow red and white students.