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 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.