Burning Down the House: Laura Ingalls Wilder and American Colonialism

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: LAURA INGALLS WILDER AND AMERICAN COLONIALISM

By Waziyatawin, 2006

[The following essay remains one of the major works challenging the normalization of colonialism in U.S. public education and is, as such, a critical resource for other such decolonizing projects. The version here appeared as Chapter Three in Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America. Edited by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) AKA Don Trent Jacobs. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006, pp. 66-80.  Thanks to Tracy Navarro for help with editing. — George]

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[p. 66]

In the previous chapter, Dr. Johansen referred to Rush Limbaugh's contribution to anti-Indian hegemony, placing him on par with a number of academics who work to dismiss the truth about the origins of U.S. democratic ideals. In many instances both radio personalities and academics use the same propaganda strategies to support a colonizing agenda.1 This chapter adds popular literature to the list of harmful and immoral ideologies” that must be “laid to rest, not from the reaches of historical inquiry or discussions of racism, oppression, genocide and colonization, but as values with which we indoctrinate our children."

Waziyatawin narrates both a scholarly study and a personal story that relates to the example of Wilder's famous book, Little House on the Prairie, to show that, “Indeed, anti-Indian educational and ideological hegemony is so firmly established, most Americans cannot recognize it even when it appears before their eyes." The truth of her statement was reinforced just a few minutes ago when a good friend of mine who serves with me in a local Veterans for Peace chapter and who is usually a careful, critical thinker, sent me a recent 60 Minutes commentary of CBS correspondent Andy Rooney, referring to it as a ''great comment” on U.S. policy. Rooney's piece, entitled, “Our Darkest Days Are Here,” did speak eloquently of his sadness about the U.S. torture of prisoners in Iraq, but the anti-Indianism in his opening was not noticed by my activist friend until after I pointed it out: “If you were going to make a list of the great times in American history, you'd start with the day in 1492 when Columbus got here . . . and perhaps beating Hitler and putting a man on the moon would be up near the top as well.”2

Waziyatawin Angela Cavender Wilson is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Upper Sioux Reservation in southwestern Minnesota. She received her BA in History and American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1992 and her PhD in American History from Cornell University in 2000. In 2002 Angela served as co-coordinator for the Dakota Commemorative March, a 150 mile-long, seven-day event to honor the Dakota people, primarily women and children, who were force marched November 7-13, 1862, from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. She is currently an Assistant [p. 67] Professor of American Indian History in the history department at Arizona State University and is author of Remember This! (De Kiksuyapo!) Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives.

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We have been lied to so many times that we will not believe any words that your agent sends to us.

-SHORT BULL (BRULE' SIOUX), 1890

How do a country and its citizens justify genocide and land theft? How do they transform obviously wrong or immoral actions into something righteous and worthy of celebration? To answer these questions one need only examine the beloved classic Little House on the Prairie 3 to observe how expertly Laura Ingalls Wilder crafted a narrative that transformed the horror of white supremacist genocidal thinking and the stealing of Indigenous lands into something noble, virtuous, and absolutely beneficial to humanity. Unfortunately, rather than recognize the perversion of morality inherent in Wilder's book, the American public celebrates the work as laudable children's literature and the author as an American icon.

This book and the entire Little House series have been best sellers and favorites among the American public since the first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was released in 1932. As First Lady Laura Bush kicked off her campaign to fight illiteracy at the beginning of her husband's presidency, she proudly characterized Little House on the Prairie as a childhood favorite. 4 Similarly, in 2004 the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association selected Little House as one of the fifteen books for their “We the People Bookshelf,” chosen for exemplifying the theme of courage. Five hundred schools throughout the country were awarded the bookshelf of “classic” works. NEH Chairman Bruce Cole announced the program stating, “The We the People Bookshelf enables younger readers to examine the meaning of courage from many perspectives. These books inspire readers with stories of characters, real and fictional, who demonstrated personal courage when faced with difficult situations in uncertain times.” 5 In their 2002 spring/summer issue, “Adventures across America,” Travel and Leisure Family magazine promoted “A Little Drive on the Prairie,” which encouraged readers to relive the fantasy of Wilder's pioneer days: “Pack your bonnet and steer your wagon to America's heartland, where pioneer houses and pageants bring the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder to life.” 6 From these examples it is clear that the Little House love affair runs through all levels of the American populace, from school children all the way to America's institutions, media, and even First Lady.

The destructiveness of this love affair hit me personally in October 1998 when my eight-year-old daughter, Autumn, returned from school in tears because she had heard “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” in Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, the book her third-grade teacher, Bev Tellefson, was reading aloud to her students. We were living on the Upper Sioux Reservation at the time, but like other reservation children my daughter attended Bert Raney Elementary in the Yellow Medicine East school district (YME), the public school in the town of Granite Falls, Minnesota, bordering our reservation. Very disturbed by the way this reading made her feel, Autumn asked me to speak to her class about “our side of the story.” Autumn's teacher was a fervent Wilder fan and had already commented to us that she loved the books so much she made a point of attending the Laura Ingalls Wilder pageant held in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, every summer. Our close proximity to the Ingalls family homestead sites was certainly a factor in the contestation over the interpretation of this issue. I did speak to the class with the teacher's permission and then wrote a critique of the book. I then presented this to the YME school board at a special meeting called for the purpose of addressing this issue, along with a request that the book be removed from the school curriculum. This began a year-long controversy primarily over the issue of “book banning” that gained local, state, and national attention.

The first reaction to this controversy, particularly by non-Indigenous people, has generally been one of anger and confusion. While there has been frequent outrage that an Indigenous mother would challenge an American canon, there is also a great deal of bewilderment. How could anyone possibly challenge a much-loved classic? The general populace does not understand what could be objectionable, let alone racist or colonialist, about Little House on the Prairie, especially the generation that grew up with the white-washed television series of the same name starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. Even those who read the books frequently do not understand what might be offensive about them. Indeed, anti-Indian educational and ideological hegemony is so firmly established, most Americans cannot recognize it even when it appears on paper before their eyes.

When I presented my critique before the school board, several of the board members admitted that they loved the Wilder series, had read the books as children, and had read them as adults to their own children. They admitted frankly that they arrived at the meeting prepared to defend the use of the book in the classroom. These members were intimately familiar with the book, yet they were blind to the racism contained in its pages. However, after hearing my appeal and reading the four-page critique of the book I presented to them, all but one of the school board members were persuaded that the book was indeed racist and did not belong in the classroom. They voted to pull the book from the curriculum, at least temporarily, until a committee could be established to review the book more thoroughly. Elmo Volstad, the school board member who voted to keep the book in the classroom, did so on the grounds that he was against censorship. This prompted the article that appeared in the next issue of the Granite Falls newspaper, which reported that I “came before the school board asking for the book to be banned.”7 I had never used the term “ban,” but this was enough to spark a debate over censorship throughout the state of Minnesota.

I argued that this was not a matter of book banning, but rather it was about making good decisions regarding curriculum in the schools. Clearly teachers, curriculum committees, and school boards make decisions all the time about what should be taught in the classroom and they don't call it censorship or book banning when they replace outdated material with more appropriate curricula. However, this is not the perspective of the American Civil Liberties Union, which views removing materials because of objectionable content as a violation of First Amendment rights. Thus after the teachers' union went to the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union (now the ACLU of Minnesota) about the Little House issue, they threatened to file suit against the YME school board unless they immediately rescinded their decision to pull the book temporarily until it could be further reviewed. According to them, “Under clear precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court, public schools are permitted to take such action only where a work contains extraordinarily offensive material or for sound pedagogical reasons. Little House on the Prairie could not possibly meet these requirements.” 8 As a consequence of the ACLU-Minnesota threat, on December 14, 1998, the school board voted unanimously to reinstate the book. The teacher had won and six books in the Little House series would continue to be taught in the Yellow Medicine East school district, two books per year in the third through fifth grades.

The ACLU, which prides itself on being a champion of rights for American Indians and other groups who have historically been denied those rights, is only committed to racial equality when it doesn't get in the way of First Amendment rights. Equal protection under the law does not seem to include children who face racism in the classroom or in the curriculum. Today the ACLU-Minnesota proudly declares the outcome of this controversy as its victory. However, from an Indigenous perspective, there was no sense of justice in this outcome.9

How is it that such dramatically opposed arguments could be made about a seemingly benign and favored book like Little House on the Prairie? This is the heart of the matter. Most Americans cannot even comprehend the problem because the problem helps them preserve their sense of superiority and entitlement to America's lands and resources. Those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo guarded every step in this process. Autumn's teacher at Bert Raney Elementary was white (as were the other elementary schoolteachers), the principal was white, the superintendent was white, the librarian was white, and all the school board members were white. Who at any of these levels would be able to recognize that there might be a problem? Which of them had specialized training in recognizing and addressing racism? How many of them grew up reading the Wilder books and watching the popular TV show? How many of them were capable of seeing racism in attitudes that had been normalized in their lives?

Some of the racism and anti-Indianism in the book is quite transparent. For example, we learn by the fourth chapter that Ma hates Indians and two other characters express the sentiment that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Even Jack, the family dog, hates Indians and growls whenever they approach. This hate and disregard for Indigenous life expressed in the book does not exist in a vacuum, separate from the actions of Americans during this era or subsequent eras. Rather it is reflective of the attitudes that attempt to justify America's treatment of its Indigenous inhabitants. This hate, coupled with tremendous greed, was often enough justification to incite the outright slaughtering of Indigenous People as well as the perpetration of gross human rights abuses in the nineteenth century. Just in the period of the 1860s (the decade of the Ingalls foray into Indian Territory), Indigenous People were brutally slaughtered at places like Sand Creek and Washita Creek, and nations such as the Dine, Apache, and Dakota faced forced removal and concentration camp imprisonment. The ideologies of this era supported these actions and resulted in horrific consequences for Indigenous People, and they are well represented in the Wilder text. In fact, this overt racism was the only racism my daughter could clearly identify in her eight-year-old mind, and she stated repeatedly that she felt like everybody must hate her because she is Indian. While she knew she felt violated and personally attacked because of attitudes expressed throughout the book, other than the blatant comments above, she could not pinpoint why.

When the book is given a critical reading, it becomes quite clear why an Indigenous child would walk away with feelings of shame, hurt, and embarrassment. There are literally dozens of derogatory, dehumanizing, and damaging messages-somewhat more subtle than suggesting the outright extermination of an entire race of people, but no less destructive in their outcome. The adjectives used to describe the Indigenous people in the book are revealing. There are at least eighteen references to Indians as “wild,” a handful of references to Indians as “savages,” numerous references to the Indians “throbbing drums” and “wild yipping,” and Pa refers to them as “screeching dev-.” In many other instances Indigenous People are compared with animals or characterized as animals: “Their eyes were black and still and glittering, like snake's eyes.” “The wild, fast yipping yells were worse than wolves.” In another telling passage we learn: “Laura thought [Pal would show her a papoose some day, just as he had shown her fawns, and little bears, and wolves.” In these examples, Wilder effectively dehumanizes Indigenous People by establishing their inferiority to white human beings and by suggesting they share more similarities with animals. On the second page of Wilder's story we are told that Pa wanted to leave their Wisconsin home and move further west because that is where the “wild” animals lived. “There were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.” Even though Indigenous People had long lived and farmed in Kansas, we are taught to distinguish between their settlement of the area and white settlement of the area. One of the most offensive passages is a statement made by Laura as the Osage are moving from their territory. As she is watching the procession she begs, “Pa, get me that little Indian baby ... Oh I want it! I want it! ... Please, Pa, please!” Laura Ingalls wanted a little Indian baby just as she would want a pet.

We learn at one point that Pa does not believe the only good Indian is a dead Indian; his idea of a good Indian is one who will fight his own people to prevent them from attacking the white settlers illegally squatting on Indigenous lands. In this story, the one “good Indian” is Osage leader Soldat du Chene, who is willing to fight his own people as well as other Indigenous nations if they threaten the white settlers. By most standards he would be considered a traitor to his people, but not by the standards in Little House. Instead, he is revered and the “bad Indians” in the book are, of course, those who resented white intrusion in their territory and who posed the most significant threat to the Ingalls family.

The issue of white invasion of Indigenous lands is at the center of the story, but Wilder repeatedly seeks to justify white actions throughout the narrative. While Indigenous People are demonized, the whites in the story are glorified. One of the most dangerous aspects of the book, therefore, is the extent to which the reader develops an affinity with and adoration of the white characters in the story. The humanity of the Ingalls family is so convincing that their righteousness is firmly established. The underlying message embedded in this work is one widely familiar to American audiences; the white settlers are the heroes and the Indians are the villains. In creating such a dichotomy between the goodness of the lngalls family and the badness of the Indians by whom they feel threatened, children reading this book are left to believe that Indians must be really bad if these good, moral, and wonderfully likeable people hate them. Most readers will never question how very “good” white people can hate Indians and still be considered “good.”

The myth of manifest destiny is the pervading underlying theme throughout the work; it is introduced to the reader on the very first page, where we learn that “they were going to Indian country.” Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie are headed west in their covered wagon to make a new life. Rather than depicting this as an incredible act of violence, as invasion always is, it is celebrated and justified. In fact, the reader is encouraged to believe that this is necessary, inevitable, and even righteous. As they settle on the Kansas and Indian Territory border, Wilder writes, “Ma said she didn't know whether this was Indian country or not. She didn't know where the Kansas line was. But whether or not, the Indians would not be here long.” Similarly, Mrs. Scott says, “Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that'll farm it. That's only common sense and justice.” The fact that Indigenous People continued to be in the way as whites were moving in is apparent in Ma's comments throughout the book. For instance, at one point Ma derisively says, “I declare, Indians are getting so thick around here that I can't look up without seeing one.” She fears Indian influence on her children and works diligently to teach her children to absorb her notions of civility and savagery: “Dear me, Laura, must you yell like an Indian? I declare, if you girls aren't getting to look like Indians! Can I never teach you to keep your sunbonnets on?”

Despite the fact that Wilder has already described the family move into Indian Territory, the Ingalls family is frightened and angry when two Indigenous men go into their house. “Those Indians were dirty and scowling and mean. They acted as if the house belonged to them.” In this example we see the perverted logic of colonialism at work. While the Ingalls family is more than willing to invade Indigenous lands, showing no respect for Indigenous rights, they expect Indigenous People to accept their presence and theft without repercussion. In the world of colonialism created and supported in Wilder's fiction, Indigenous people become the aggressors and the thieves, “stealing” the hard-earned products reaped from land the Ingalls family (unjustly) occupies. At the end of the story, the Ingalls family packs up what they can to head back to Wisconsin because they are informed that the U.S. government is sending over soldiers to “take all us settlers out of Indian Territory.” While they are sad to leave their beautiful home, Pa is not too disappointed because they have profited from their stay, “Anyway, we're taking more out of Indian Territory than we took in.” They have exploited the land as best they could.

In an attempt to argue a more benevolent reading of Little House, some may try to distinguish Laura's fascination with Indians from the racism of other characters in the book. In this argument Wilder is not characterized as racist, but rather her accounts are considered to be accurate depictions of racist nineteenth-century attitudes. Her art is merely a reflection of the times. For example, toward the end of the novel, “Her eyes were full of tears and sobs kept jerking out of her throat,” as Pa told her to look at the long line of Osages finally leaving the area. The fact that she was saddened to see the Indians go (just after her pleading for an Indian baby), some might say, is an indication that she is not racist. Laura is not the only one who is moved at the site of the Osages moving westward; even Ma says she “didn't feel like doing anything, she was so let down.” From an Indigenous perspective, however, this bit of nostalgia is unconvincing evidence of a benevolent attitude. A twinge of remorse in the act of invading provides no grounds for celebration unless it prompts the invaders to leave. If there is no subsequent action, this bit of sadness means little, especially when other thoughts and actions reveal a far more consistent pattern. Thus we learn at the beginning of the next chapter, “After the Indians had gone, a great peace settled on the prairie.” In the end of the volume, it is not Indian removal that caused the Ingalls family to finally leave the area, but rather the threat of U.S. soldiers.

Not only is Wilder's description of Indigenous People in the story consistently derogatory, even when Laura presents something superficially positive, it is also couched in negativity. For example, in one instance, Laura reveals, “She had a naughty wish to be a little Indian girl. Of course she did not really mean it. She only wanted to be bare naked in the wind and the sunshine, and riding one of those gay little ponies.” Thus even here the sense of white superiority is apparent and a desire for anything associated with Indians is considered shameful and “naughty.”

In light of all the derogatory messages embedded within the Little House text, it would be difficult for any child to remain unaffected. Without critical intervention, Indigenous children would likely be hurt and ashamed while non-Indigenous children would further internalize ideologies' of white superiority and manifest destiny because of their reinforcement and validation within the story. In my daughter's classroom, even as the teacher interspersed such comments as “people do not talk that way today” to try to diffuse the racism expressed in the book, she was far from able to offer a critical intervention, since her own love of the stories came through more vividly than anything else. After reading six books in the Little House series by the end of fifth grade, children at Bert Raney Elementary are thoroughly indoctrinated with Wilder's racism, and the children most hurt in the process are the Dakota children from Upper Sioux. One of the other Dakota parents whose daughter was in the same third-grade classroom asked her daughter if she felt bad reading Little House and her daughter said “No.” However, when her mother pressed her, asking, “Doesn't it bother you when they say bad things about Indians in the story?” her daughter answered, “No, I just pretend I'm not Indian.” Realization of this disturbing choice for Indigenous youth, to either allow the feelings of hurt and shame to take hold or to shut off that hurt through dissociation, was one of the most disturbing realizations for all of the Dakota and white parents who felt Little House had no place in the classroom.

When my daughter first told me about her experiences with the Wilder book, I could not even fathom a scenario in which a teacher or school official would want to continue using materials that were hurtful to a child. I thought surely the teacher would apologize, reassure me that she never intended to harm my child, and then make the necessary changes to rectify the situation. In fact, rather than demonstrating any sensitivity to the racism, the teacher dug in her heels on the issue, insisting on her need to continue using the materials for educational purposes. The teacher loved the entire series and no amounts of evidence about the offensiveness of the writings were going to change her mind. In spite of the teacher's extreme position, in 1998 I still wanted to believe that education was the key to ending racism, that when individuals were exposed to an intellectual argument that demonstrated racism their minds would change, even if the change occurred person by person. In my first discussion with the school board, this seemed to hold true. With my careful critique, I changed the opinions of all but one school board member. When the dozens of examples of racism in the book were illuminated and they could begin to view the book through Indigenous eyes, they were surprised and a few were somewhat embarrassed that they hadn't seen it before. Warren Formo, the school board chairman, told a delegation from Upper Sioux that their “eyes had been opened” as a result of this controversy, welcome words in any discussion of racism.10 The educational success experienced in this first meeting, however, was short-lived. I soon realized that wherever racism is prevalent, intellectual arguments frequently hold little sway.

As the local news spread to the state and national levels, I was dumbfounded by the racist assumptions which began to surround the issue. Writers in editorials criticized the “chip on my shoulder,” insisting that Wilder offers an accurate portrayal of the past and therefore should continue to be taught. 11 This perspective always shocked me because Wilder's attitudes were racist in the 1860s, the setting of the Little House story, they were racist in the 1930S when the book was published, and they remain racist today. I agree that there is a difference between a critical discussion about racism in a nineteenth-century context and an uncritical discussion which serves instead to indoctrinate new generations of children in racist ideology. In my daughter's classroom, clearly it was a matter of the latter. Another letter to the editor directed the question to me: “Have you ever read another book besides 'Little House'?” Her argument was that if I had read other books I would realize Little House is not so bad and that it is in fact one of the “most wholesome books you can read.” 12 As a doctoral candidate in American history at Cornell University in 1998, I found the assumption that I was an ignorant and poorly read Indigenous woman both ironic and offensive. A similar comment came from Paul Sellon, Mitchell superintendent of schools, who referred to the Wilder novels as “history.” About the “American Indian mother” who raised the complaint, he stated it was unfortunate that anyone would want to “wipe out history.” 13 In spite of my educational background, I was positioned on the opposite side of “educators” and “historians,” a way to effectively delegitimize my intellectual position and capacity.

Another argument routinely articulated was that all books are offensive to someone, so if all offensive books were removed from the classrooms and libraries there would be nothing left. In fact, when a crew from Nickelodeon came to our reservation and school district to produce an episode on the Little House issue for their children's program Nick News, Linda Ellerbee publicly advanced this argument in the final production.14 This kind of argument disallows degrees of offensiveness and distracts from any acknowledgment of issues of power and control. When then Superintendent Bob Vaadeland repeatedly denied that power was part of the equation, I finally asked him why we didn't have erotica in the elementary school library or in the children's classrooms. He told me I was being ridiculous, that there were no similarities at all because erotica was clearly inappropriate for children. I argued that it was precisely the same thing. Erotica is not allowed in the schools because it violates the general public's sensibilities about what is appropriate for children. While I don't believe erotica should be in the classroom, the question demonstrates that those in power, usually in accordance with the values of the general populace, make determinations about what is appropriate for children. Similarly, though KKK literature is an obvious part of American history, why don't schools promote the incorporation of their writings directed at children such as Kloran (ritual) Junior Order Ku Klux Klan or the booklet for the branch of the Women's Klan established for teenage girls, Ritual of Tri-K Club? They don't because it would again violate the same sensibilities. At issue here, then, is whose sensibilities determine the point of violation and who has the power to enforce those sensibilities.

This reality was confirmed to me in 2001 during a diversity awareness training workshop when I presented the Little House controversy to a group of Phoenix-area teachers and staff. Upon completion of my presentation, a high school librarian came up to me and confided that she continuously exercises her power to decide what should stay and what should go in the school's library collection. She stated that the previous summer she and her staff were horrified to discover some very old books with extremely racist children's jump-rope verses on the shelf, many of which were created during the slavery days in the Old South. The staff quickly discarded the books, thankful that they caught them and disposed of them before someone else discovered them. They immediately recognized the overt racism in the books and as a small group made the decision that they were inappropriate for a school library today. Unfortunately, racism against Indigenous People is not readily recognizable to the various levels of gatekeepers in educational institutions.

If Indigenous People maintained control over the education of our children, literature which helped to justify our extermination and land dispossession would clearly violate our sensibilities. Little House on the Prairie would not need to be pulled today because it would never have made it into the curriculum or the libraries in the first place. However, in the context of colonialism, the people who have the power to make such decisions have directly benefited from Indigenous extermination and land dispossession (indeed, the YME schools sit on land stolen from the Dakota Nation). They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, in this case that which helps to justify their very presence in our homeland. In this tenuous moral position the monumental racism in a book like Little House must be minimized and placed on the same level as someone from the Christian right, for example, who might find the reference to the color purple in a piece of children's literature offensive because they feel it endorses homosexuality. There is no room for an acknowledgment that advocating genocide moves the issue beyond one of petty offensiveness.

Americans recognize this in other contexts. For example, if a teacher were to uncritically use a Nazi primer in the classroom for educational purposes (the kind typically used as part of Hitler Youth programs in Nazi Germany), there would be outrage from nearly all segments of society. In fact Europe went through a de-Nazification program after World War II, and any literature deemed anti-Semitic was removed. For example, Ich Kampje, the 100-page handbook distributed in the early 194°S to each new person enrolled in the Nazi party, was systematically destroyed by the Allied De-Nazification Commission at the end of the war.15 Along with the banning of the Nazi party and general reforms on German education and culture, textbooks written under the Nazis were withdrawn and were replaced with new ones. Obviously this notion of removing books because of objectionable content would fall under various American definitions of book banning and censorship, but the difference in the equation is power. The Allied forces had the power after World War II to dictate what the Germans should and should not be reading. In that context Americans clearly understood the link between promoting a specific ideology in written literature and the implementation of that ideology in atrocious governmental policies. Furthermore, they recognized the danger in allowing anti-Semitic and racist agendas in the classroom. We see a similar recognition in global politics today. The current Bush administration has supported the de-Baathification of Iraq to eliminate the ideologic residue of Saddam Hussein's political party, the Arab Baath Socialist Party. In the “Report on the Transition to Democracy in Iraq” created in fall 2002, plans for this de-Baathification include new textbooks as part of the educational reform.16

The real issue, then, is not that Americans are opposed to banning literature-or at least replacing problematic existing literature with more appropriate literature. Instead the question is, why does our society today still advocate the indoctrination of American youth in racist and genocidal ideologies regarding Indigenous People? It does so because the United States government is still in power, it still considers the Indigenous population an expendable one, and it is still in the business of exploiting Indigenous lands and resources with the eager help of the corporate world. Even in the late twentieth century, for example, government sterilization policies were aimed at Indigenous women and administered through the Indian Health Service (in direct violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). This aptly demonstrates U.S. disregard for Indigenous life even in recent times. The purposeful targeting of Indigenous communities for toxic and radioactive waste disposal by national and multinational corporations with full governmental sanctioning offers another example of contemporary beliefs in America regarding the expendability of Indigenous People.17 The American government and its citizens cannot seem to recognize the destructive ideologies because they have become essential to the ongoing colonization of Indigenous People and land bases. To question those ideologies would jeopardize America's capacity to further exploit Indigenous People and lands. Yet this is precisely what needs to happen.

As an antidote to current anti-Indianism and colonialism in American educational institutions, Americans must engage in the decolonization of curriculum and literature available to our schoolchildren, similar to the de-Nazification or de-Baathification this country has supported in other contexts. While this is a project in which we must engage at all levels of society and in all contexts, the literature read by our children is an appropriate place to start. This decolonization project will require Indigenous People and our non-Indigenous allies to continue to challenge the hegemonic structures which have justified and advocated our ongoing oppression and colonization. Justice demands that these harmful and immoral ideologies be laid to rest, not from the reaches of historical inquiry or discussions of racism, oppression, genocide, and colonization, but as values with which we indoctrinate our children.

Six years after our experience with the Little House controversy, our family still feels its effects. While writing this article I asked my (now teenaged) daughter Autumn what she thinks about the issue today, and she simply stated that she tries not to think about it too much because when she does it still hurts. Indeed, the anger, frustration, and hurt resulting from our battles have not subsided. Fortunately, despite the school's efforts to instill in her a sense of inferiority, she remains fiercely proud of being Dakota, in part because of our critical intervention in 1998. In recent years I've watched my daughter courageously and consistently fight other issues of racism in her schools on a near daily basis and because of that I am filled with a profound sense of hope. While we lost the fight over Little House on the Prairie in a southern Minnesota school, Autumn reminds me that the spirit of resistance to anti-Indian hegemony is active and preparing for the future struggles. Perhaps next time Americans will not cling as tightly to their oppressive ideologies and there will be sufficient support for more lasting and comprehensive positive change.

NOTES

The epigraph to this chapter is taken from ]ames P. Boyd, Recent Indian Wars under the Lead of Sitting Bull and Other Chiefs (Philadelphia: Publishers Union, 1892), 207.

I. Rush Limbaugh, See I Told You So (New York: Pocket Books, 1993), 68.

2. Andy Rooney, “Our Darkest Days Are Here,” 60 Minutes, CBS, May 23, 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/storiesl2004/05/20/60minutes/rooney/ main618783.shtml. Accessed December 17, 2004.

3. The main title of this chapter is taken from an excellent editorial written amidst the Little House controversy which erupted in Minnesota in 1998. See W Roger Buffalohead,” Burning Down the House: A Little 'Teaching Moment,'” The Circle 20.2 (February 1999).

4. For example, see Associated Press, “New 1st Lady Set to Fight Illiteracy,” The Arizona Republic, January 20, 2001.

5. See the National Endowment for the Humanities website, www.neh.fed .us/, for further information. For this news story visit www.neh.fed.us/news/ archive/20040316.html.

6. Sunshine Flint, “A Little Drive on the Prairie,” Travel and Leisure Family (spring/summer 2002): 14-18.

7. Faith Kammerdiener, “Little House Pulled from YME Curriculum,” Advocate Tribune, October 29, 1998.

8. Letter to Superintendent Bob Vaadeland from Lucy A. Daglish, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, December 11, 1998.

9·For their statement on this issue visit their website at www.aclu-mn.org and view “Little House on the Prairie (Direct-Won)” under their category for Censorship.

10. Cited in Tom Cherveny, “YME reinstates 'Little House,'” West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota), December 15, 1998, front page.

11. V. G. Haaland, Letter to the Editor, with the headline “Let's Not Continue with Chip on Our Shoulders,” Advocate Tribune (Granite Falls, Minnesota), November 12, 1998.

12. Lea Pederson, Letter to the Editor, “Today's Books, Entertainment More Offensive Than 'Little House,'” West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota), December 8, 1998.

13. Associated Press State and Local Wire, Mitchell, South Dakota, “Historians, Educators Defend Accusations against 'Little House' Series,” December 8, 1998.

14. Nick News #166, “Book Banning,” Lucky Duck Productions, New York.

15. This work is now available in the United States with an English translation, Ray Cowdery, Ich Kampfe (I Fight) (Rapid City, S.D.: U.S.M., 1982).

16. Paul Berman, “Learning Not to Love Saddam,” New York Times, March 31, 2003.

17. For numerous examples of this see Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999), and Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992),241-266.