Like I say, there are universal themes in all the books and things that kids can relate to, but I’m always centering who is depicted in that book and making sure that their full humanity is relevant and centered, and the focus on the page because that’s what has been missing. And when you see yourself depicted, as I did as a child, like I say, with the shell of characters and very gross stereotypes, you disassociate from that because you’re like, ‘This is not anything I recognize.’ How could you think this is what Indians are, or Cherokee people, or any tribe?
Nothing, of course, from my childhood ever addressed that we were sovereign nations. That our nations have existed for tens of thousands of years. Tthe Native Nations have always been here, and so that’s something else that I want to help children understand because that’s not been part of what we’ve ever talked about in this country, and yet it’s a reality from before it ever started and certainly since then.
Our history tends to be like, ‘okay, 1492 is where we’re going to start,’ and then there’s like a brief paragraph prior to that about the Bering Strait. Now thankfully science has finally caught up to our stories and what we have always known; that theory has been debunked in the last five years. But I was like, ‘We already knew that.’ You know? We’ve known about having thousands of Native Nations from the Arctic to Antarctica on this huge continent.
And their trade networks, and the fact that they got in boats and went across the sea to other places. I mean, people have been moving and doing things forever, and yet that’s not the story that children hear. So I really focus on centering that in my work.
