Brenda J. Child – författare

Learn the true stories of Indian boarding school students and their families in this moving nonfiction book for young readers, filled with acts of hope and resistance. During the boarding school era, Native children were taken from their families to attend boarding schools, a devastating policy that threatened the wellbeing of Native people and their cultural practices. Far from home, students suffered from illnesses, poor living conditions, homesickness, and the suppression of their Native languages. With a special focus on the Haskell Institute in Kansas, the Flandreau School in South Dakota, and the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, this in-depth history offers an unfiltered look at letters written by parents, children, and school officials that reveal how profoundly entire families were affected. Their accounts are also filled with precious memories of friendship, football, and love.In Our Own Words is a powerful record of the rebellion and hope of young Indigenous people in the face of segregation and disastrous assimilation policies spanning 1870 to 1940.

The paperback edition features a new introduction by the author.Boarding School Seasons offers a revealing look at the strong emotional history of Indian boarding school experiences in the first half of the twentieth century. At the heart of this book are the hundreds of letters written by parents, children, and school officials at Haskell Institute in Kansas and the Flandreau School in South Dakota. These revealing letters show how profoundly entire families were affected by their experiences.Children, who often attended schools at great distances from their communities, suffered from homesickness, and their parents from loneliness. Parents worried continually about the emotional and physical health and the academic progress of their children. Families clashed repeatedly with school officials over rampant illnesses and deplorable living conditions and devised strategies to circumvent severely limiting visitation rules. Family intimacy was threatened by the schools' suppression of traditional languages and Native cultural practices.Although boarding schools were a threat to family life, profound changes occurred in the boarding school experiences as families turned to these institutions for relief during the Depression, when poverty and the loss of traditional seasonal economics proved a greater threat. Boarding School Seasons provides a multifaceted look at the aspirations and struggles of real people.

The paperback edition features a new introduction by the author.Boarding School Seasons offers a revealing look at the strong emotional history of Indian boarding school experiences in the first half of the twentieth century. At the heart of this book are the hundreds of letters written by parents, children, and school officials at Haskell Institute in Kansas and the Flandreau School in South Dakota. These revealing letters show how profoundly entire families were affected by their experiences.Children, who often attended schools at great distances from their communities, suffered from homesickness, and their parents from loneliness. Parents worried continually about the emotional and physical health and the academic progress of their children. Families clashed repeatedly with school officials over rampant illnesses and deplorable living conditions and devised strategies to circumvent severely limiting visitation rules. Family intimacy was threatened by the schools' suppression of traditional languages and Native cultural practices.Although boarding schools were a threat to family life, profound changes occurred in the boarding school experiences as families turned to these institutions for relief during the Depression, when poverty and the loss of traditional seasonal economics proved a greater threat. Boarding School Seasons provides a multifaceted look at the aspirations and struggles of real people.

A groundbreaking exploration of the remarkable women in Native American communities.

Too often ignored or underemphasized in favor of their male warrior counterparts, Native American women have played a more central role in guiding their nations than has ever been understood. Many Native communities were, in fact, organized around women''s labor, the sanctity of mothers, and the wisdom of female elders. In this well-researched and deeply felt account of the Ojibwe of Lake Superior and the Mississippi River, Brenda J. Child details the ways in which women have shaped Native American life from the days of early trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond.

The latest volume in the Penguin Library of American Indian History, Holding Our World Together illuminates the lives of women such as Madeleine Cadotte, who became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders, and Gertrude Buckanaga, whose postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. Drawing on these stories and others, Child offers a powerful tribute to the many courageous women who sustained Native communities through the darkest challenges of the last three centuries.

A beautiful collection of the art and life stories of regional Native painters   Dreaming Our Futures features twenty-eight Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe, who live in the Midwest or have family or tribal connections here. The artists represent a range of generations, professional experience, and genres-including traditional, historical, contemporary, and conceptual themes. The volume presents full-color reproductions of art by each painter, along with bilingual artist statements, biographies, and essays on the representation of Indigenous people in historical context; storytelling and the creative process; and scholarship on several specific artists.   The renowned Grand Portage Ojibwe artist George Morrison declared, “I have never tried to prove that I was Indian through my art. Yet, there may remain deeply hidden some remote suggestion of the rock whence I was hewn, the preoccupation of the textural surface, the mystery of the structural and organic element, the enigma of the horizon, or the color of the wind.” The variety of images painted by this gathering of artists demonstrates that the strong heritage and powerful traditions of Indigenous painting remain vital and dynamic today.   Dreaming Our Futures accompanies an exhibition at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in 2024, produced in association with the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts at the University of Minnesota.   Artists: Frank Big Bear, David Bradley, Awanigiizhik Bruce, Andrea Carlson, Avis Charley, Fern Cloud, Michelle DeFoe, Jim Denomie, Patrick DesJarlait, Sam English, Carl Gawboy, Joe Geshick, Sylvia Houle, Oscar Howe, George Morrison, Steven Premo, Rabbett Before Horses Strickland, Cole Redhorse Taylor, Roy Thomas, Jonathan Thunder, Thomasina Topbear, Moira Villiard, Kathleen Wall, Star WallowingBull, Dyani White Hawk, Bobby Dues Wilson, Wanbli Mayasleca/Francis J. Yellow, Leah H. Yellowbird, Holly Young.   Contributors: Patricia Marroquin Norby, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Christopher Pexa, U of Minnesota; Mona Susan Power; Diane Wilson.