Tag Archives: a conversation with Debbie Reese

About the Lelooska Foundation

In her review of Written in Stone Debbie Reese took issue with the work of Chief Lelooska. To be clear, Lelooska is not in the story and is mentioned only briefly in the author’s note. Lelooska himself died in the late 1990s and his work is carried on by the Lelooska Foundation. Here is a link to more information about him and the Lelooska Foundation, for those who maybe following the conversation and be unfamiliar with the work of this author, illustrator, carver, linguist and historian. And here is a picture of Chief Lelooska in his traditional regalia.

I’m well aware, as Debbie has mentioned, that Lelooska was adopted into one of the bands of the Kwakwaka’wakw (also known as the Kwakiutl) tribe of British Columbia. Not everyone enjoys his art and not everyone likes the living history programs that he has provided in Washington for almost 40 years. I’m not interested in changing Debbie’s mind on this point. However hers is not the only opinion on the topic. Native Americans are not monolithic in their views and some of them are very much in favor of sharing their traditional arts with the wider community.

Among the tribes of the Pacific northwest, the right to tell a traditional story with its accompanying song, dance, and regalia is conferred in a potlatch. Lelooska’s right to share the stories he does was given to him by Chief James Aul Sewide and witnessed and agreed to by all the tribal members and neighboring tribes present at the potlatch. If they did not wish for Don Smith to become Chief Lelooska they could have chosen not to come to the potlatch. But they came, which is all the evidence I need to determine that he is doing this work fairly and in keeping with the traditions of the Kwakwaka’wakw. The tribe had the opportunity to deny the Lelooska Foundation the right to perform their living history programs after Lelooska died. But they came to the potlatch for his brother Tsungani and again conferred on him the ownership of the stories his family continues to present to the public.

I received an email just last week from the head of the planning team who was hired by the Quinault to relocate the village of Taholah out of the tsunami inundation zone. My book was recommended to him by somebody from the tribe as a vehicle for understanding them better. He’s aware of the weight of this project, to move a village site more than a thousand years old. He and his team want to make sure that what they design really serves the tribe well. Simply sticking in some local art at the end of the process isn’t what they want. They want to really think through with the community what their village needs in order to be a home to them. And so the book is a vehicle for thinking and talking about what the land and ocean and river and lake means to the community. Not because it’s a perfect representation of Quinault and Makah culture, they already have non-fiction materials aplenty for that purpose. It does what fiction does best, it invites reflection and conversation.

The bottom line for me is that each tribe gets to decide for themselves what is an acceptable representation of their culture. One of the reasons I chose the Quinault and Makah rather than one of the many smaller tribes in the area, is that they are well-accustomed to speaking up for themselves at a national and international level. If something about my book bothers them, I’m confident they will say so publicly. So far they’ve had no criticism of the book. The community in Taholah has invited me to come and celebrate it with them later this spring. The curator of their historical collection recommends the book to people who are interested in learning more about that tribe. That is all the endorsement I need.

Petroglyphs and other made up elements of Written in Stone

Debbie Reese in her review of Written in Stone asked me about the petroglyphs in the story and why I invented them rather than using actual petroglyphs from the village of Ozette, where my story is placed.

In the story the petroglyphs play a key role in helping Pearl uncover and claim her vocation as a writer and historian for her tribe. The ownership of artwork is a matter I take very seriously and to use an actual rock carving done by a Makah artist and put it in my book with no way of asking permission or compensating that artist fairly for his work would simply be wrong. So instead I invented a group of rock carvings based the carving style and technique I’ve seen while hiking in this area but copying none of them. To my thinking this is the more just course. Taking what’s

written_in_stone260 not mine is wrong. Making things up is what a fiction writer does. When the cover team was meeting I sent them a bunch of photographs of the Olympic Peninsula so they could get a feel for the ecosystem. The pictures included one of a petroglyph which is on public land and which commonly appears in works of non-fiction. I was so happy to see Richard Tuschman, the cover artist, incorporate a few petroglyphs on the cover–inventing an element in the style of this art but not stealing what’s not his to copy.

The other major plot element which is made up is the natural gas vent at Shipwreck Cove and the stories the tribe uses to keep children away from a dangerous place. The accusation that I’ve made up stories that don’t exist is dead wrong. I’ve told no stories belonging to the Quinault or Makah, real or made up. I have pointed out something that is distinctive and interesting about their culture though. These tribes use monster stories to keep their children away from danger without having to hover over them constantly. I was struck by how much freedom young people in the community had during my time in Taholah. They walked all over town freely and without immediate supervision but still under the watchful care of the entire community. Places that might be dangerous, such as the ocean with it’s powerful undertow and the dump which attracts bears, were bounded about, not with fences, but with scary stories that kept kids from wandering into harm’s way. If there was a natural gas vent near the town (and there might be, there were places I was asked not to go myself when I lived there) then certainly there would be stories to warn children away.

As I say in the authors note the cove and its contents are my invention. Whether or not petroleum is present on the Quinault or Makah reservations is something you’d have to ask them about. Each tribe has a natural resources department and they are the ones to speak (or decline to speak) about their reservation lands. Natural gas is present all over the non-reservation areas of the Olympic Peninsula but it’s not abundant enough that anyone has drilled for it so far. Wildcatting in search of oil and natural gas was very common in the 1920s, and business men with an eye to a quick profit were often unscrupulous in acquiring mineral rights to land. This is not only an injustice directed toward Native Americans. Many white farmers and ranchers fell victim to their swindles as well. And frankly, I’m tired of stories that cast the Indian as the hapless victim. I wanted a story where the Native American kid won and did so, not in some wildly unrealistic battle or singlehanded act of heroism, but in the manner that most of life’s battles are won: with words, and community, and the hard work of many years.

Written in Stone and the Makah Whale Hunt of 1999

Debbie Reese who writes the Native Americans in Children’s Literature blog has posted a review of Written in Stone and invited a conversation about the concerns she raised about the book. I’ve been chatting with her in the comment section of her blog. If you’d like to see that conversation the link to her blog is highlighted above. I’m also putting my comments here for easy reference to teachers and librarians who may have questions about the material in the book. I have been a teacher myself. I really love talking to teachers and librarians so if you have questions about the story or about using this book in your class, please join the conversation.

I was happy to see both Debbie and Beverly Slapin comment on the controversy surrounding the 1999 Makah whale hunt. It was big news in the region and I’m glad to hear that the news made the national stage as well. The best information on how hunts are conducted is found here on the Makah website. http://makah.com/makah-tribal-info/whaling/ There is much additional information to be found at the Makah Cultural Research Center in Neah Bay.

The resumption of whaling by the Makah encountered some vociferous opposition, most notably by the Sea Shepherd Society, but it also found support from a number of places. The International Whaling Commission verified that the gray whale is no longer an endangered species. There were marine safety issues to work out with local agencies. The hunt took place near a very busy international shipping lane, so that called for some communication and planning. Those negotiations were lengthy and complex but it’s not my impression that they were acrimonious. Unfortunately the peaceful working out of details does not make for exciting news, so I think the national outlets in particular paid attention to controversy more than cooperation.

I heard the Chairman of the Makah Whaling commission speak in Portland about the day of the hunt shortly after its completion. He said that on the morning of the hunt, the media was not present when the whalers set out and arrived only after the whale had already been brought in. The helicopters and cameras did show up eventually and the atmosphere on the beach got a bit chaotic, but there was a brief window of time when the Makah were (not completely but nearly) alone with their whale, and that time meant a great deal to them. Cultural renewal is the phrase the chairman used to describe what that moment meant to the tribe.

That is the moment I wanted for Pearl and her great-granddaughter. The reader can deduce from the news helicopter chop that the moment of peace will be brief but it’s the prerogative of the novelist to pick the focus of a scene and I wanted to end with that one moment of connection for Pearl’s family and their whale.

Absolutely true that the activist that Pearl grew up to be would have been in the thick of the work of resuming the treaty right to hunt whales. In fact when I first thought about writing this story I wanted to write about the resumption of whaling. Self-determination of natural resources is a piece of the civil rights story that seldom gets told. It’s a rich history and one I’d love to see in books for kids.

Ahem! you publishing professionals who have said in my hearing that there’s a need for more middle grade non-fiction, this is the perfect topic for a non-fiction series! It involves geography, history, a variety of Native and Non-native cultures, biology, chemistry, climate change, economics, international trade. Think of the possibilities for critical thinking and curriculum connections!

Back to the topic at hand 🙂

I left the whaling controversy out of Written in Stone for several reasons. Most of all I wanted to keep the focus on Pearl as a teenager in the 1920s and leave the 1999 whale hunt to serve as a frame and show that although the Makah lost whaling in the 1920s, it was not lost to them forever. It also shows that the Makah have not vanished nor maintained an Amish-like distance from the things of modern life, but continue to live and thrive in the same place they’ve always lived.

As I researched the whale hunt, the piece of it that really interested me was that the Makah, who had organized their culture for centuries around whale hunting, had to gave it up when the whale populations plummeted in the Pacific as a result of industrial whaling. That cultural survival piece of how to go on being the people that you are when something that so defined you is gone. That’s interesting to me personally and I think it’s something that people from a wide variety of cultures can relate to.

It’s true that I’m writing as an outsider to the Makah experience. A fiction writer is always writing outside of her experience. However, the Irish have long suffered the suppression of their culture, language, music, literature, and dance. And I know how I feel about playing a jig or hornpipe on my violin that’s hundreds of years old or dancing a set from my father’s county in Ireland; it’s an avenue of insight for me. Many people have an experience of cultural loss in coming to this country and although it is not the same experience it does make the story more accessible to the reader. So I chose to focus on the cultural survival aspect of this story rather than the resumption of whaling.

I also felt that a contemporary story about the Makah whaling experience would be better told by a whaler or other member of the tribe. I’d much prefer to use my book, imperfect instrument that it is, to nudge local writers in the direction of writing and publishing. In fact I’m happy to hear you’ll be in Washington. I’ve been developing the position of Youth Outreach Coordinator in our local SCBWI, in part, for the purpose of fostering a more diverse generation writers. Perhaps that’s an area where we could work together. One of the benefits of having a book published at a large publishing house is that it can attract attention to an issue. There is still so little in print about tribes of the northwest, and my hope is that if this book does well enough, then other publishers will see the potential for more books set among these tribes and addressing these vital issues–a need that could be filled by local writers.

I’ll stop here for today but later this week I’ll get to the pirates and indians bit that Debbie asked about on her blog post because, yes, there is a story about that!

Below are maps of Neah Bay in case you are not familiar with the Olympic Peninsula, and a picture of the other thing the Makah are famous for–an excellent halibut fishery.