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The book I am going to review today is a rather old one, and is probably out of print. I was walking around a Quaker Meetinghouse, waiting for a meeting to start, when I discovered their library. Of course it was no accident that I discovered it. I make it a policy to discover libraries. The library had this very old, very dusty book there: Stiya, a Carlisle Indian Girl at Home by Embe. I picked it up, scanned it, and asked if I could borrow it. "Sure thing," I was told.
Stiya is written in very simple sentences, and could probably be read independently by an eight-year-old child. However, I would not recommend that an eight-year-old child be allowed to read it independently, because this book could create and/or strengthen a negative attitude towards Indians. The author's intent was clearly to show that the Indian way of life is/was inferior to the White way of life, and that acculturation is/was the only proper and beneficial course for Indians.
The story begins when Stiya, a young girl, returns to her Hopi reservation after five years of attending Carlisle. She had forgotten most of the Hopi language (having not been home for five years and having been compelled to speak English during all that time). However, the book doesn't say she has forgotten the "Hopi" language, but that she has forgotten how to speak "Indian," implying that every Indian in the Americas spoke the same tongue. When Stiya gets off the train and encounters her parents for the first time in five years, she says,
My father and mother, who were at the station waiting for their daughter, rushed in my direction as soon as they saw me, and, talking Indian as fast as they could, tried to help me from the train.
My father took my valise, and my mother, seizing me by the arm, threw her head upon my shoulder and cried for joy.
Was I as glad to see them as I thought I would be?
I must admit that, instead, I was shocked and surprised at the sight that met my eyes.
'My father? My mother?' I cried desperately within. 'No, never!' I thought, and I actually turned my back upon them.
I had forgotten that home Indians had such grimy faces. I had forgotten that my mother's hair always looked as though it had never seen a comb.
If this was the beginning of the story of a child who would reaffirm her ties with her community, this might have been acceptable. If it was even the story of a child who would gain real insight into what was happening to her family and her nation, this might have been acceptable. After all, in the 1880s, when this story took place, poverty, starvation, and disease would have marked the faces of the reservation Indians (Stiya had lost five siblings to diptheria and small pox, for example), and real shock would have been inevitable for a returning child.
But the book continues in this vein: condemning the tribal governmental system as being brutal and dictatorial, expressing the hope that the governmental confusion would create "circumstances (which would) give … those interested in Indian education the hope that a brighter day may now be dawning, when the home conditions will be so changed that there will be no more tribal tyranny, but all will be under the protection and enjoy the privileges of our good government." "Our good government" obviously means the government of the United States of America, and not a Native nation government. It condemns the Hopi dances as being evil. And, in the end, our heroine persuades her family to leave the pueblos and build a small, Euro-American style house elsewhere, so they could live in what Stiya saw as a more healthy and more cultured way.
Yet, despite all the negativity of this book, I do recommend it to you for reading. In its 115 pages, it manages to give one of the best pictures I have read of how the "liberals" of the 1880s, who were out to "save the Indians," really felt about Indians. If you are an Indian, prepare to be angry when you read this, although you will not be surprised. You already know the story of what happened then. I would also recommend it to Indian parents homeschooling their kids, as long as you are willing to spend time discussing with them how the ideas expressed in this book are an example of an attempt at cultural genocide.
I would not recommend it at all for most white kids, because I do not believe that most white parents would have the energy, the love, or the knowledge to offset the damage this book could do to their children's already distorted image of "Indianness."
On a scale of 0 to 10 (0 meaning, "Don't ever read this book, even if you are slowly tortured to death for refusing to read it"; 10 meaning "Drop everything immediately, including the baby at your breast, and don't do another blessed thing until you have read it"), I give Stiya, a Carlisle Indian Girl at Home a 3.
reviewed by Sondra Ball
