NCTE Day 2: Native American authors and publishing

Today at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference I went to some really interesting sessions, including a panel of female authors in the evening, including Newbery medal winner Megan Medina who chaired a session of three young female authors, including Brittany Luby, a Canadian writer of Anishinaabe-kwe heritage whose recent picturebook, Encounter, is about a first contact between an indigenous boy and a French boy on a sailing ship.

I met Brittany after the session and was interested to hear more about her next book which will be bilingual.

This linked to another session I had attended earlier in the day with four Native American authors entitled ‘Bringing indigenous voices into your classroom’. The chair of the panel was not American Indian, but a teacher who works in a school with Native American children. She began by quoting the data on books by and about people of colour and from First/Native Nations published for children and teens compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, showing that about 1% of books published in the last year were about Native American characters. The four authors in the panel  included Cynthia Leitich Smith from the Muskogee Creek Nation. She has an excellent website with recommendations of books featuring Native American characters. Kevin Noble Maillard  from the Seminole Nation who is a professor of Law and also is the author of a book I mentioned earlier: Fry Bread.  Traci Sorrell form the Cherokee Nation, author of We are Grateful and other books, was also part of the panel.

There were some great questions posed and discussed by the panel about how teachers should refer to Native people in their classrooms, which books to use in the classroom, and what the panel wanted educators to know about bringing indigenous voices into the classroom. The answers to this included making sure characters were contemporary, rather than treating Native Americans as if they only lived in the past; integrating such literature all year long and not just in November which is Native American Heritage month; ensuring that the culture reflected in stories was based in reality; and being aware that many Native Americans live in urban areas. It was interesting to hear that an imprint of Harper Collins called Heart Drum has just been established (to be led by Cynthia Leitich Smith) and should have books coming out in 2021. I guess the equivalent in New Zealand in Huia Publishers. It was interesting for me to reflect on the different situation between the two countries with regard to the publication of indigenous authors and stories.

It was a superb second day, and there is more to come tomorrow....