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Brown, Sharon Kit’s Indian Summer PublishAmerica, 2004 68 pages grades 4-6 Karuk

It’s 1852 and after her mother dies, eleven-year-old Kit is sent to live with her aunt while her father works in the Sacramento gold fields. Her twin cousins make her year-long stay unbearable, so, “headstrong and impulsive,” Kit disguises herself as a boy and secretly follows her father up north to the area now known as Arcata. Without money to send her back, Kit’s father allows her to stay with him. At Clear Creek, Kit befriends an Indian girl who introduces herself as “Yeenipaxzuh,” and together, the two girls spend most of the summer swimming and hanging out in the village. During this time, Yeenipaxzuh learns lots of English, but virtually no syntax; and Kit learns a few words in Karuk. When she is invited to participate in a week-long Karuk ceremony, Kit completes a ceremonial dress in a week. After the first night of ceremony, the miners attack and burn most of the village, killing Yeenipaxzuh’s father and all her relatives.  Yeenipaxzuh helps Kit and her wounded father navigate the Klamath River and watches as they sail back to San Francisco. As for Kit, “[s]he’d never forget Yeenipaxzuh. Kit would always have her memories and the brief moments when she first awoke from a distant dream of her Indian summer.”

This is such a piece of Eurocentric trash that it must be dealt with in some detail.

Who talks like this? Although Brown thanks Susan Smith (Karuk Language Director at the Karuk Tribe) and Sue Masten (former Yurok Tribal Chairwoman) for helping her with the Karuk language, both women say that Brown never contacted them nor were they ever asked to assist her in any way. I will not go into detail that might be used by another cultural outsider to validate another children’s book about us, but I will say this: Just about every single Karuk term in this story is either spelled wrong or has been assigned the wrong meaning.

Whose summer? It’s the Indians who suffered from white encroachment and violence during the “gold rush” years. Why then, would Brown name the book “Kit’s Indian Summer” if not to trivialize this horrible event, one of many in the history of California? And, as the unexpected warm weather of an “Indian summer” sneaks up on and deceives the flower bud, the term itself is one to avoid.

Indian settlements? In a badly written appendix, Brown refers to “burning of Indian villages” this way: “Between 1850 and 1855 many Indian settlements were burned by miners over land disputes. The miners wanted to mine in areas that were considered sacred.” The miners did not burn “Indian settlements”; they destroyed Indian villages and massacred Indian families. There was no “land dispute” issue; the issue was gold, greed and genocide. The lands were not “considered sacred”; they were—and remain—sacred.

Who’s having fun? Kit and Yeenipaxzuh go swimming in Clear Creek every day, before June. Most of the creeks in our area run cold with snow runoff until mid-July, and the hottest part of our year is August and September. Even then, Yeenipaxzuh would not have been swimming and playing every day; as a functioning member of a communal society, she would be needed at home, to work.

Guess who’s coming to the Pikyavish? Brown makes short shrift of one of our most sacred ceremonies; women and girls do not dance in a Pikyavish or Karukithivthaaneen upikyáavish, therefore, the girls would not have needed dance regalia. Even if they had, they would not have allowed a cultural outsider to participate without any training.

She made it in a week? Kit decorates a dress with shells and puts this “ceremonial dress” together in a week. Most dance regalia or ceremonial dresses take years to make. You must collect the shells, nuts, grasses, and deer hide, each during its proper season. Then clean the materials and assemble the dress with the proper attitude and spirit. It’s a religious item and a spiritual process. The dress I made for my daughter took over seven years just to put together; I started collecting the materials when I was eighteen and finished it when I was thirty-five, in time for my daughter’s coming-of-age ceremony.

Stoic Indians? In California? After her entire family has been massacred and her village set afire, Yeenipaxzuh helps Kit and Kit’s wounded father to a canoe and steers them down the Klamath River during the night. “It was hard to see Yeenipxzuh’s expression,” Brown writes, “but the girl’s face looked like a mask. Tears trailed down her cheeks but she was stone-faced.” How could anyone possibly believe that a pre-adolescent girl who has just seen all of her relatives slaughtered would respond this way? “What happened,” Yeenipaxzuh says, “not be changed. Tears not change. No look back. Look in front. We go to new home.” This is no different than the stereotypic hack writing about Indians white authors were doing fifty years ago.

I read this book. I set it down for a week. I read the book again. Each time I got a sick feeling. We have struggled for so long to survive and fought so hard to keep our languages, religions, lands and cultures intact. Isn’t it time for authors who are cultural outsiders to stop writing this Eurocentric, racist garbage? Isn’t it time for publishers to stop producing it? Isn’t it time for white people to stop shaming our children? Isn’t it time that we be allowed to tell our own stories in our own ways?

—Marlette Grant-Jackson