(NAME-MCE) Ahearn: 'Native’ book on 7th-grade list a 'slap in the face’

[KispokoT at aol.com]

Ahearn: 'Native’ book on 7th-grade list a 'slap in the  face’ 
By Lorraine Ahearn
Staff Writer 
Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007 3:00 am 
 
 
_http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/NRSTAFF/708180
25_ 
(http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/NRSTAFF/70818025) 

 
Sometimes, the road to hell is paved with multicultural intentions. 
Which appears to be the case with a book that was one of two titles on the  
summer reading list for seventh-graders at Kernodle Middle School. 
"The Education of Little Tree" sounds, on its face, like an attempt at  
inclusiveness — the 1976 bestseller told "the true story" of an orphan raised as  a 
Cherokee by his grandparents in Depression-era Appalachia. 
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a whopper of a literary hoax. Not only was 
 author "Forrest Carter" neither an orphan nor a Cherokee. His real name was 
Asa  "Ace" Carter, a white supremacist, KKK leader and, most famously, the 
writer  credited with penning Alabama Gov. George Wallace's "Segregation 
Forever!"  speech. 
"We've gone beyond a slap in the face," said parent Jennifer Revels, a Lumbee 
 whose son's summer reading list included the book. "This is not about 
political  correctness. This book is a lie." 
Kernodle's principal, Charles Burns, said teachers chose the title from a  
National Middle School Association list. Burns was unaware of the furor over the 
 book and said the goal of the reading was a standard lesson in content and  
grammar, and there was no consideration of the source. 
"I think you're reading too much into it," said Burns, who called the reading 
 suggested, not required. "If there's anything inappropriate in it that is  
pointed out to us, we have no problem removing it." 
Although the back story of the book remains well-known in literary and Indian 
 circles, where it has been dubbed "Little Fraud," the casual reader would 
today  have no clue to its bizarre lineage. The current edition has dropped the 
words  "A true story" from the cover, and the book has moved from the 
"biography" shelf  to "young adult/fiction." 
Still, the reissued edition by the University of New Mexico Press makes no  
mention of the hoax in its foreward or cover notes, and after selling a million 
 copies, the book in 1991 won a coveted ABBY, the American Booksellers Book 
of  the Year. That's the same award "Cold Mountain" received in 1997, as a book 
that  dealers "most enjoy recommending."  
At the Friendly Center Barnes & Noble, where Carter's book is kept in  stock, 
community relations manager Becky Carignan said several county schools  have 
used it in recent years, though Kernodle is currently the only one posting  
"Little Tree" on its list. Meanwhile, a customer service clerk enthusiastically  
recommended it as "a great little book." 
That was the initial consensus when the book appeared in 1976, a post-"Billy  
Jack" title that spontaneously kindled a huge following, with "Little Tree"  
clubs sprouting up. 
"It was a hot book," said Steve Sumerford, who was a branch librarian and is  
today assistant director of the Greensboro Library. "People were coming into 
the  library talking about the book, saying you really needed to read the book 
to  understand Native American culture. It was only later that people said,  
'Whoa!'" 
To be more precise, it was a Barbara Walters TV interview, in which Carter  
was promoting a Clint Eastwood movie based on his other best-seller, "The 
Outlaw  Josey Wales." 
Viewers in Alabama recognized him as Asa Carter, arch segregationist and  
radio commentator. Alabama journalist Wayne Greenhaw wrote an exposé in the New  
York Times, and years after Carter's death, his widow later told Publishers  
Weekly that "Forrest Carter" was an imposter. 
And not just any imposter, but a founder of the Ku Klux Klan of the  
Confederacy. The group, which wore gray robes instead of white, was responsible  for 
attacking Nat King Cole onstage during a 1956 Birmingham concert, and  
implicated in the abduction and castration of a black handyman in 1957. 
How Carter's book could withstand such high-profile scandal and still be  
included on national reading lists — and be adapted in 1997 into a movie  
co-starring Oneida actor Graham Greene — is something of a puzzle. 
On the one hand, the book is an entertaining, vivid romp through mountain  
moonshine country, and a deftly written coming-of-age story. 
On the other hand, Cherokee historians found significant inaccuracies in  
Carter's use of the tribe's words and customs. Many have also pointed to the  
short shrift the book pays to the cruelties of "Indian boarding schools," and  
see portions of the book as patronizing tributes to the mystique of the "noble  
savage." 
So here's a question: Can a book that is so patently a fraud still be worth  
making an assignment (or suggestion) that students read it? It depends on the  
goal. 
"Is the goal in teaching 'Education of Little Tree' to teach about Native  
American culture?" observed Karen Weyler, associate head of English at UNCG and  
an early American literature scholar. "Or, is it to put something on the  
syllabus about Indians so that the class looks inclusive and multicultural?" 
Longtime Indian educator Rosa Winfree said many teachers have assigned the  
book over the years without researching it, or considering authentic Native  
American alternatives. 
"They try to be inclusive, but this is the worst book in the world they could 
 choose," said Winfree, retired from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system. "This 
is  not the way to go about it. If you don't know something, ask someone who  
does." 
At Kernodle, principal Burns said the national middle school approved reading 
 list was "so extensive that there is no way of reviewing everything that's 
on  that list." 
But in an age when Google puts information at teachers' fingertips, observed  
a veteran Lumbee leader, such facts are readily available. 
"Ignorance is less and less of an excuse," said the Guilford Native American  
Association founder, Ruth Revels. She is Kernodle parent Jennifer Revels'  
mother, and is the widow of former Greensboro City Councilman Lonnie Revels. 
"I'm 71. I'm tired. Every time we go forward, we regress again. Would you  
assign 'Little Black Sambo' for black children to read? Imagine." 
Interestingly, the second of the two titles on the school's seventh-grade  
list, "Touching Spirit Bear," is also an adolescent tale with a Native American  
element, written by a non-Indian. The difference? Award-winning children's  
writer Ben Mikaelsen makes no claim to be Indian, or to be telling a true  
story. 
"We're not saying you have to be Indian to tell our story," said Jennifer  
Revels, who along with an Indian parent advisory committee planned to meet this  
week with school officials at Kernodle. 
"But when someone pretends to be Indian and writes about things that were so  
painful in our daily lives, that's very damaging to keeping our history 
truthful  and honest." 
In a broader sense, resistance to having Indian culture thus appropriated has 
 been a constant. 
Hollywood, with a few notable exceptions, continues to portray the Native  
American story through the eyes of white characters. Movies such as  
"Windtalkers," "Dances With Wolves" and "Little Big Man" no longer used the  
grease-painted braves of John Wayne movies, but in their own New Agey,  pseudo-Indian way, 
were just as inauthentic. 
In contrast to the ease with which native culture is usurped — by everyone  
from fraudulent "folklorists" to "hobbyists" who hold fake powwows — it has  
taken the tribe that comprises half of North Carolina's Native Americans, the  
55,000-member Lumbee Nation, 100 years to approach federal recognition. 
And in the state with the largest Indian population in the eastern U.S., they 
 are not there yet. 
Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 336-373-7334 or _lahearn at news-record.com_ 
(mailto:lahearn at news-record.com) 





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