Many non-Indian people—including authors and publishers—seem to have the notion that Indians are “history,” cut off somewhere in the early 1900s, or at best marginally existing on a few reservations. To hear these living voices is to recognize that Native people are still connected to history, to family, to land, culture and community. We are still alive. We are still here.

Most of these “living stories” appeared in A BROKEN FLUTE: THE NATIVE EXPERIENCE IN BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, and many are new. We invite and encourage Indian parents and grandparents, children and teachers to contribute to this living, growing section.

A PARENT’S STORY about The Courage of Sarah Noble and westward expansion
As part of my college coursework, I was in my daughter's classroom, correcting papers in the back of the room. The class was reading The Courage of Sarah Noble, and I saw my daughter squirming in her seat. So I picked up the book and saw why. As she was heading out for recess, she started to cry and told me that the kids were making fun of her and no one wanted to play with her because she was Indian. I remember she said, "Mom, the other kids won't play with me. They think what they read in the book is the way Indians are." (Read more.)

APRIL’S STORY about a school play about the California Gold Rush
One of the parents told me that there was going to be a play at school and I decided to go with her. The play was supposed to be about California history, the California Gold Rush. We had had problems with a teacher there who continued to present stereotypical plays about Indians. The whole school was there, including a lot of Indian kids. So we were watching the play, and they even said, "Eureka! I have found it!" Then they got to the part about Indians. (Read more.)

BARBARA’S STORY about great expectations
They wanted to meet with me to talk about the school and see if I’d be interested in being the director. I really didn’t want to go, but I fit it in between two soccer games. I walked in a little late, dressed in my coaching outfit. We introduced ourselves and Linda said, “So, Barbara, you are Native American? You don’t look like what I expected. I expected the Indian princess look.” I said, “No, that would be Pocahontas.” (Read more.)

CODY’S STORY about dreams and colors
I had a dream, and I told it in school. The Eagle came to tell me something, and I couldn't understand what he was saying, so the Eagle told the Wolf and the Wolf told Ruffie, so that Ruffie could tell me what the Eagle said. My teacher said my story was too long, and she didn't want to hear it any more. My teacher told me to tell her the colors. So I pointed to the color and said, this is the color of the grass. And the teacher said, no this is green. (Read more.)

CORA’S STORY about cartoon Indians
One time, I was watching TV. It was a cartoon show, “Yogi Bear,” and they had these little dogs and they were wearing feathers and different colors and going woo-woo-woo. It made me feel real bad. It made me feel bad because it wasn't true and it wasn't right. They had feathers in their hair that looked like they were dyed. And they were supposed to be like Indians. (Read more.)

CRYSTAL’S STORY about being invisible
I never felt like I was part of the class, I felt invisible. When the teacher asked me what I was, I told her and she said, you can’t be all that, you can only be one. I remember always feeling either kind of angry or uninterested; I was just a quiet little person in the back of the room. When the teacher talked about my culture, my voice didn’t count.  (Read more.)

DEBBIE’S STORY about going home
Last year when we were home for feast, my daughter, Liz, and seven of her cousins were dancing. We were doing the Comanche. The structure, steps and movements we do for the Comanche are similar to our other Pueblo dances, like the Yellow Corn, but the clothing we wear is bright and colorful, like the clothing worn by some of the Plains tribes. Our dances are tightly structured. We gather nightly in the kiva for several days prior to the feast day. (Read more.)

DORIS’S STORY about being a children’s librarian and an Indian
I am a children’s librarian. I’ve been a children’s librarian for a very long time now. So one night I’m working the night shift and these people come in—upper middle class couple with cute little girl, around four, maybe a little younger—and they’re looking for books on Indians. So I take them down to the section, show them this and that, tell them why one thing is good and another is not so good, and finally they ask me how come I knew so much about it. (Read more.)

DREW’S STORY about Pentecostals and lacrosse
I remember a summer a long time ago when a throng of Pentecostals came to our reserve. They were there to teach the poor Indians how to play lacrosse (and some religious stuff). After two weeks in which we had mastered the lacrosse stick and ball, they packed up and left. Taking the sticks and balls with them. Leaving behind a group of Native kids who could now play lacrosse but had nothing to play with except a bible they left behind. Maybe that best explains my view of the Church.. (Read more.)

ELIZABETH’S STORY about Tweedy Bird and Ten Little Indians
My name is Elizabeth and, um, I have a story to tell. It's about when I was at school, and I was four and a half. (Once when I was four) I was watching TV and Tweedy Bird was hitting Sylvester, he was hitting him on the head because Sylvester had a feather on his head because, um, he was pretending he was an Indian. (In school, when I was four and a half) we were sitting all around in a circle and singing “one little two little Indians” and then I came home and I wouldn't tell my mommy, because, um, I couldn't tell her, and it didn't make me feel good because, um, I was keeping it inside me, and it was really hard to keep it inside me.  (Read more.)

JANE’S SON’S STORY about mainstream culture and the Oregon Trail
Anpao’s in the third grade. I pick him up from school one day and in the usual “how’s-your-day” conversation he tells me he’s having a problem with one of his assignments. His teacher is making him write a diary like his family was on the Oregon Trail. He says, “I know we couldn’t have been, plus we weren’t allowed there anyway. The Oregon Constitution says only white people were allowed.” Anpao’s awareness and willingness to speak up makes me very proud. (Read more.)

JANE’S STORY about Indian tears
It is the third grade, 1972. I am a strong willed and vivacious child, popular and respected by my peers but aware that there is something about me that excludes me in some way. I am raised by white people who go to great lengths to raise me “normally.” In other words it’s a huge secret, my Indian self, but only from me. So I’m shamed when my teacher calls me “the smart little Indian.” I cannot now recall the context, only the emotion. (Read more.)

JUDY’S DAUGHTER JESSICA’S STORY about fighting back
Last fall in my daughter’s anthropology class, the topic of the Abenaki people came up. In a lecture, the professor said that all Native Americans are drunks and alcoholics. He said that there are no Abenaki in Vermont, and the ones who say they are, are “wannabes” and the only history and culture they know are what the anthropologists have taught them. Jessica called me when she got home, and said she wanted to drop the class because the professor was “attacking a different culture in every class,” and that this was the last straw. I told her she couldn’t let it drop, that what he was doing was wrong and that she knew it was wrong. She tried to talk with the professor. (Read more.)

JUDY’S STORY about Indian baskets and macramé
So I was sitting at this garage sale table and this woman comes over and says, oh, what are you doing? And I say, I’m making a basket and she says, it looks like an Indian basket and I say, yeah and she goes, oh, are you Indian? And I say, yeah and she goes, oh, my goodness, and she runs out to the car and gets her kids and brings the kids over and says, this is a real Indian and this is a real Indian basket, and I wanted to find a rock to crawl under. (Read more.)

L. FRANK'S STORY about reclaiming her culture (one event out of millions)
Down at Malki, the cultural center museum, they have a fiesta every year, Malki Fiesta Days or something like that. So about eight years ago, I went down there for fiesta, and they were making walking sticks out of pieces of palm, making traditional items everywhere. One of the people at the event was this white guy; he was making really fantastic throwing sticks, we call them rabbit sticks, it’s a non-returnable boomerang. (Read more.)

L. FRANK'S STORY about being brown in a white world
When I was about nine, my family moved to Palos Verdes. I remember it was a beautiful place, open spaces, canyons full of poison oak and wild animals. Truly overnight I was relocated from a brown world to a rich white world. Everywhere I went, people looked at me and thought I was the “gardener’s daughter” or the “maid’s daughter.” (Read more.)

LAVERNE’S DAUGHTER’S STORY about Columbus Day
My six-year-old daughter came home with her weekly homework packet and, like always, I looked it over. Every week they learn a poem and they recite it as a group on Fridays, and on the second or third page there was a poem about Christopher Columbus. When my husband came home, we decided to talk to our girls about Columbus. We told them that he came here for gold, that he was a slave trader, and that he killed a lot of Native Americans.  (Read more.)

LINDA’S STORY about museums and dead Indians
This happened when I went to Berkeley and was returning home on the BART train with my son Robbie and he was very young at the time, maybe only four or five. I decided to stop at the Oakland Museum. I wanted to see the regalia and the other exhibits in the California History Room or whatever it’s called. So Robbie and I were walking around and in walked this man with a long string of little preschool-age children in tow and they were walking about looking at the exhibits and the man announced to the children, “When the white people came, all the Indians died.” (Read more.)

LIZ’S STORY about Caddie Woodlawn
This happened when I was in third grade. In my reading group there was this Newbery book called Caddie Woodlawn. I don’t think the teacher had read this book, but she picked it because we were studying pioneers and someone told her it was about pioneers. And my friend at the time, pretty much my best friend Emma, was in the reading group with me. She had read Caddie Woodlawn when she was like six and she didn’t know that it was offensive to Native Americans. And so we were reading it and when we got to the second chapter, it said, I’m not sure exactly what it said, that the Native Americans were sneaking around like dogs. (Read more.)

LOIS’S STORY about being a scary Indian
This happened in a school I subbed in a lot. It was a school close to the reservation district, a transition school with a very high population of Indian students. All the teachers knew me, and it was very common for them to ask me to do storytelling. I was subbing for an art teacher who had a prep period and the new principal came in. She grabbed me by the back of my collar and physically dragged me out of the room in front of the class.(Read more.)

MARIA’S MOTHER’S STORY about why she wanted to be like Doris Day
We were working in the kitchen, putting away the corn from our garden. My job was to bag it up after it had been cut off the cobs. We were listening to the radio, my mom and me, as we often did on these early fall weekends, when “Que Será, Será” came through our radio. “Oh! Doris Day! I loooove DorisDay! When I was little I used to want to be just like her!” my mother said, dancing past me to the sink. “Doris Day!?” I peered over from my task to watch her. (Read more.)

MAYANA’S STORY about dealing with Christopher Columbus
One day in third grade my teacher said that we were going to learn about Christopher Columbus. She said that Christopher Columbus was great, and that he had discovered America. She said all this great stuff about Columbus, but I told her that it was not right because Columbus cut off legs and enslaved the Indians whose land he was on. The teacher said that I was not back there 500 years ago. I said, “I know, but I have proof because my step-mom has read the diary of a man who was traveling with Columbus. So she has proof and I have proof.”  “Well,” the teacher said, “I’m sorry, you were not there 500 years ago.” (Read more.)

MONICA’S STORY about Indian books in the school library
I really don’t like the fake cartoon and illustration in Indian books that are here in the school library. My name is Monica Spencer and my tribe is Navajo, Laguna, Kiaoni and Pueblo, all full blooded. It makes me mad when children make fun of my culture. (Read more.)

NAOMI’S STORY about hanging scalps in school
One day, I walked into Will’s former elementary school and just as you go in, right next to the showcase, on the wall I saw a brown leather belt with two curly black wigs and some feathers hanging from it. A kid had done a book report and this was his visual aide. (Read more.)

QALA’S STORY about Indian coneheads
This happened a few months ago, around Thanksgiving. My art teacher, Diane, she made everybody make Indian heads. They were little Indian head cone-things, cylinders made out of yellow paper, they had big three-point noses. (Read more.)

RAVEN’S STORY about The Courage of Sarah Noble
My name is Raven. When I was in the third grade, our class read The Courage of Sarah Noble. In this book they said Indian people were savages and murderers, they chop your head off and eat you alive and that we were not really people. (Read more.)

ROBETTE’S STORY about being an extinct Indian
I was speaking at a conference and this woman came up to me and said, “Are you sure you’re a California Indian? I heard they were all extinct.” (Read more.)

ROBIN’S STORY about building a California mission
My son came home one day and told me that they were studying California Indians and they were gonna be building models of missions. I asked him if he really had to do this and he said yes. (Read more.)

SETH’S STORY about teaching Native American culture
Some people ask me how I teach the Native American culture in my classroom. I tell them that I teach the Native American culture by being Native. (Read more.)

SHELLY'S GRANDSON’S STORY about not wanting to be Indian
When my grandson Keegan was three years old, he told me he wanted to be a cowboy, not an Indian. I told him that he’s Anishinabe, not a cowboy, but he insisted on being a cowboy and not an Indian. (Read more)

TASHA’S DAUGHTER’S STORY about Santa and the Christmas Wars
‘Tis the Season and the Christmas Wars are here. Now, my family and I are not Christian. So we’re frustrated with Christmas being all over the place, even (especially) in school. My daughter, a first-grader, came home not long ago sighing and saying, "I don't want to sing about Jesus, and that Santa is creepy. Why is he always watching and seeing if I'm awake or sleeping?" (Read more.)