“He called their namesakes, the animals, from each direction”: Kinship and Animals in Indigenous Children’s Literature

Abstract

“He called their namesakes, the animals, from each direction”: Kinship and Animals in Indigenous Children’s Literature Roxanne Harde (bio) Near the end of Chickadee, the fourth novel in Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark House series, Animikins despairs that he will never see his kidnapped eight-year-old son again. Believing that Chickadee’s twin, Makoons, will die from grief, “Animikins began to sing and play softly. He requested that the spirits enter the cabin. He asked them to gather around Makoons. He called their names, he called them out of each direction. He called their namesakes, the animals, from each direction” (189).1 His singing ties together the series’ many animal-centered narratives: stories from the oral traditional told by elders, comedic episodes, and highly charged scenes when the lives of the Ojibwe characters depend on animals, physically and/or spiritually. Notably, he sings from the cabin. Instead of the traditional birchbark houses in which he and his wife Omakayas, the lead character in the series’ first three novels, grew up, Animikins and his family now live in a cabin, signifying their forced migration from the northeastern lake region to the great plains. Animals, including those after whom his sons were named, contributed to the survival of this family and their community. Indigenous stories for children often uncover the meanings of animals and their intrinsic connections to their tribal context. The Birchbark House series offers a multiplicity of ways to think about animals in the terms of Ojibwe history, tradition, and culture. Ojibwe writer Basil Johnston notes that, Nothing is more graphic than the image of Nana’b’oozoo, half manitou, half human who symbolized all humankind, clinging to a makeshift raft and begging the animals to fetch a pawful of soil as a last, desperate measure to stave off death. Without the animals, he would die. With them, he lived. He ate; survived . . . and, in the end, restored the earth. The story exemplifies humankind’s relationship to the animals, a dependence that is absolute. (116) [End Page 230] And, of course, this dependence is about far more than physical need. The psychical, spiritual, communal, and medicinal dimensions of the dependence of human beings on animal beings are also absolute, and their meanings come through in many Indigenous books for children. While representations of animals in children’s books have long occupied scholars, I contend that traditional Euro-western approaches are not the best tools for understanding the meanings of animals in Indigenous literature. Cherokee writer Daniel Heath Justice notes that “Indigenous intellectual traditions have survived . . . because they’ve challenged” the dominant discourse, and those traditions should be used to understand Indigenous cultural production (“Go Away” 150). Seneca scholar Penelope Kelsey comments on the lack of engagement with Indigenous theory, the denial that “Native knowledges are legitimate,” and suggests that “Native American epistemologies and worldviews might be used for the purposes of reading Native texts in culturally appropriate ways” (4, 8). Over the past few decades, Indigenous scholars have built a robust body of Indigenous methodologies, and drawing on tribal interpretations of and relations with animals seems the appropriate way to analyze animals in texts like the Birchbark House series.2 Justice focuses on relationship as a key interpretive concept, arguing that “the principles of kinship can help us be more responsible and, ultimately, more useful participants in both the imaginative and physical decolonization and empowerment of indigenous peoples” (“Go Away” 149, 155). “At their best,” he argues, “relationships extend beyond the human to encompass degrees of kinship with other peoples” (“Go Away” 151). Conferring peoplehood on animals, Justice says that all the people are responsible for a community’s “survival through attention to their kinship rights and responsibilities” (“Go Away” 151, 152). Animikins’s song, calling on the animal namesakes of his sons, reflects these ideas of kinship and mutual responsibility. This article draws on Indigenous understanding of kinship to unpack the roles of animals in books for children written by Indigenous authors. As they translate original cultures into accessible stories for children, these writers embed traditional beliefs and narratives about animals. Animal stories, Johnston notes, often function as reclamation of Indigenous history and culture. At...