Having Native American ancestry and having been involved with Native associations over many years, I have taught myself the other side of history, and it is one I will pass on to our daughter. So when I get a book like this, I do a happy dance!
Synopsis: This book is a follow up to Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog. A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny, and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges, and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood.
In this fictionalized account of actual events, Nerburn brings the land of the northern High Plains alive and reveals the Native American way of teaching and learning with a depth that few outsiders have ever captured.
Author Info: Kent Nerburn is an author, sculptor, and educator who has been deeply involved in Native American issues and education. He developed and directed an award-winning oral history project on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation in Northern Minnesota. In addition to being a program evaluator for the Minnesota Humanities Commission and serving on their selection board, he has served as a consultant in curriculum development for the American Indian Institute in Norman, Oklahoma, and has been a presenter before various groups, including the National Indian Education Association, and the President's blue ribbon panel on Indian Education.In April of this year,he was awarded the 2010 Minnesota Book Award in the field of memoir and creative non-fiction for his most recent work, this book! Check out his website too http://kentnerburn.com
Book Review: This book grabs you and does NOT let you go! Good luck trying to not read it every chance you get! But what i really recommend is that you read it 1-3 chapters at a time, then STOP, and let things sink in. For most of you, what you will read will seems like TOTAL fiction, but it's not. The facts are true and ARE what happened in the Missionary Indian Schools after the Civil War. What you are presented with is the flip-side of history you were taught in school. And frankly, it's not pretty. Chapter 8 in particular focuses on cold hard facts. If it causes you to rethink and question history books, GREAT! The victors always rewrite their histories to show themselves in the best light. The best history books present BOTH sides. Unfortunately most books don't. And THAT is why you need books like this one- to open your mind!
If you read only one history book this year- make it this one please. And then condense and share with your older children/teens. Let them see the human side of history that is not frequently shared.
Disclosure; I received this book from New World Library free of charge for review purposes. iw as not told how to review it, or what to say however.
