Choices for Essay #2

The Death of Bernadette Left Hand, by Ron Querry (Choctaw):

Set in Southwest. Strange circumstances surrounding the death of Bernadette Left Hand. Apache and Taos, set in NM and AZ among Navajo, Pueblo and Apache in the last 2 decades. About conflicting world views, not only white and Indian. Also about contemporary pan-Indianism: what it is, what it is not, and how we have created the complex relationships among Indian peoples and Whites in addition that exist today.


Power, by Linda Hogan (Chickasaw):

When sixteen-year-old Omishto, a member of the Taiga Tribe, witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther-an animal considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people-she is suddenly torn between her loyalties to her Westernized mother, who wants her to reject the ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance.


Gardens of the Dunes, by Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo):

Indigo, a young girl lives with her mother, her older half-sibling Sister Salt, and Grandmother Fleet near the CA-AZ border. Sometimes they live in a lush, spring-fed refuge in the dunes, the ancestral home of the Sand Lizard People, where they grow a variety of foods. White soldiers and Indian policemen break up their lives and set a series of journeys in motion. Indigo travels across the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and part of Europe; her sister remain closer to their longed-for home.  Indigenous and Imperial epistemologies meet in the process


Watermelon Nights, by Greg Sarris (Federated Coast Miwok):

A sweepingly epic story that also manages to maintain an intimate focus on the lives of an American Indian family living in Sonoma County. Grandmother, mother, son: Three generations of the Waterplace Pomo tribe take a bumpy (and often tragic) ride through the 20th century. This tough-minded tale of poverty, prejudice, and violence plays out, like Sarris' 1994 book, Grand Avenue, in the streets and fields of Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.


NOTE: A LIMITED NUMBER OF EACH BOOK HAVE BEEN ORDERED AT GROUNDWORK
THERE IS AT LEAST 1 COPY OF EACH ON RESERVE.

Book Title

Start

Finish

Due

A

The Death of Bernadette Left Hand

4/15/08

5/15/085

5/22/08

B

Power

4/15/08

5/22/08

5/29/08

C

Garden in the Dunes

4/15/08

5/29/08

6/6/08

D

Watermelon Nights

4/15/08

5/29/08

6/6/08


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