Oyate - Avoid The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow

The Navajo removal—the Long Walk from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner in 1864—was an atrocity. It was a campaign of extermination; it was a death march for the Navajo families forced out of their territories by the U.S. government.

The Long Walk is a tragic journey over frozen snow and rough rocks. There are a few wagons to haul some food and some things that belong to the white soldiers. The trip is on foot. People are shot down on the spot if they say they are tired or sick or if they stop to help someone. If a woman is in labor with a baby, she is killed. There is absolutely no mercy. Many get sick and get diarrhea because of the food. They are heartbroken because their families die on the way. Right outside Fort Defiance when the trip just starts, they sleep there and leave lots of bodies there. That's the way it is for the rest of the trip. There are bodies here and there and everywhere along the trail. About four thousand Navajos make the walk from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner. (Bighorse, 1990)

Ann Turner, the author of The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow, knows (or has been told) that a Navajo child in 1864 would not have had a written language or access to pencil and paper, not to mention a diary to carry around on a death march. But in order to fit her version of the story of the Long Walk into the "Dear America" template, the author has a Navajo grandmother, a survivor of the Long Walk, dictating the story to her granddaughter, who transcribes it in diary format. In addition, because this is a "children's book," Turner whitewashes the gruesome historical events, and distorts cultural practices and lifeways to fit her story.

As an outsider, Turner has the presumption to step inside a community to tell its story, while ignoring the community's identity and the notion of how history is traditionally recorded and passed on. Instead, she takes a modern European technique for passing on history and pastes it onto this traditional culture.

"My granddaughter, this summer I want to tell you all that happened during the Long Walk so you can write it down in the book that white teacher gave to you. ...My pencil flies over the page as I write down everything Shimasani says. I only hope that this book is big enough for all the things she will tell me."

A Brief Digression

(A brief digression and math activity here. Grandma is 13 years old in 1864, when the Long Walk begins. When she dictates this "diary" to her granddaughter, she is described as "old," so if we guess she's between 80 and 100, the date of this telling would be between 1931 and 1951. In any event, white teachers in boarding schools did not hand out blank books to Navajo children, nor would it be likely that a 12-year-old child would have the skills to accomplish such a task. Rather, white anthropologists often descended upon reservations to "collect" stories from elders. They took notes and often used tape recorders.)

Navajo Storytelling

A Navajo child being told a story by an elder would be honored, she would just sit quietly and listen. She would not take notes—that would be rude, and grandma would just walk away. The elder would tell a story to be learned, not written down—oral tradition is alive and well in Navajo country. But here we have a child, frantically trying to get every single word down on paper, because her grandmother wants her to—as a transparent device to fit Scholastic's "diary" format.

"It's unreal," Gloria Grant told me, "that a Navajo grandmother would demand that her granddaughter write. Because it's an honor to be told a story; you just sit there and not do one thing, that's how you take in a story and learn." And Evelyn Lamenti said, "I can't imagine a Navajo child whipping out a paper and pencil; she just wouldn't have the need. It would only be a stranger who would do that."

This book doesn't work, on any level. Turner clearly knows nothing about Navajo ways of being.

"I can almost hear the land breathing—a deep, silent sigh. I think it says, You are the people I want to live on me—you Dinè. You will care for me, like a mother for her child."

Hasn't Turner ever heard the phrase, Mother Earth? As Danny Blackgoat says, "I am a Navajo and I belong to the earth. The earth is my mother, my provider, and my caretaker. I am her child. She nourishes me from her body and her soul." (Blackgoat, 1991)

Her attempts at "Indian humor" are pathetic: "Grandfather jokes, 'That dog of yours is from the Pouring Water clan, and he's pouring water all over my knees!'" While joking is often self-directed, clan names are not ridiculed.

Her metaphors are just more of those romantic-sounding imaginary Indian speech patterns that white writers seem to like so well: "I will weave the story into you, like a spun thread, to make you strong, for when we remember, we are strong." Grandma would have said, "I want to tell you a story" or just "Come, sit down." Or she'd just start talking.

Names

If a traditional Navajo elder were telling a story in a formal manner, she would begin by stating her name, then her mother's clan, then her father's clan. She would say where she was from, and add any other identifying information. Then she would begin her story. This is not done in The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow.

Sarah Nita is not a traditional Navajo name, and would not have been a name given to the grandmother in 1851, the year she was born. She would have been given a name by which she was known and recognized, an indirect or relationship name by which she would be addressed by a family member, and a nickname, by which she would be referred to as a child. Later on, she might also have been given a ceremonial name. And they were all in Navajo. It was only after 1868, when Navajo children were grabbed up and forced to go to boarding school, that their traditional names were taken away and replaced with anglicized names.

It is quite possible that Sarah Nita might have been the name of a Navajo child at the time the "writing down" is taking place, sometime between 1931 and 1951. But in this book, the child has the same name as her grandmother. This does not make any sense.

The Narrative

The story as written here is not how a Navajo elder speaks or tells a story. It does not have a Navajo rhythm, it does not have a Navajo speech pattern, it is clunky and linear. The elder would be speaking in Navajo, and would not translate Navajo words into English. The granddaughter would be totally versed in the nuances of Navajo language, and—especially if she had gone to "white man's school"—she would be bilingual.

"There is no way for some of the words in our storytelling to be translated into English," Gloria Grant told me. "Translating into English just dilutes it, it loses a lot of meaning; it loses much of the sense of purpose. So this is unreal, that a grandmother would tell these stories in English."

And Grandma would not call herself "Navajo," she would call herself "Dinè," people.

"Storytelling would take place in the hogan, and with all family members present. There would be food, they would talk about things that have gone on, and it comes up informally. If a grandmother is passing something on to one of her granddaughters, it's a special quiet time. But if it's really negative, if it's really scary, it's just not told to the child alone. If there are a lot of bad thoughts that are plaguing the person, if she needs to talk in a way to relieve herself of a concern or worry, then that's handled by a medicine man. A grandmother would just not unburden herself to a child. If a child is in the hogan when the grandmother or grandfather is talking, that story becomes part of her, but it just wouldn't be done, something as unpleasant as this, just with the child. It just wouldn't be done."

In truth, some elders will not speak of every detail about the tragedy that came to be known as the Long Walk because the pain is too great. Others will not speak of it to spare their grandchildren the pain that they have experienced in the remembering of these stories. But—"Grandmother says she will not tell everything that happened, because it would take too long and my book would have no more pages left"—is just plain ridiculous!

Keeping Up Courage

During this time of incredible hardship and sorrow, it was the elders and leaders who kept the people going. This from Tiana Bighorse:

"Barboncito is glad he is with the people, and some warriors that are with him are really a great help to the people. Barboncito doesn't get tired, and he just helps everyone on their feet so they donÕt get shot. Barboncito...gets the captain to agree to let the kids take turns riding on the wagon when they get tired...Some old men and old ladies, they have a hard time. Barboncito doesn't know how long it is going to take. He just has to keep the people going. He just has to keep giving them courage to keep on their feet.... Barboncito is glad when they get there so the people can rest, even if it is a terrible place to be. He is glad not to lose everybody."

Some elders may have told stories when they got the chance—ancient stories, powerful stories, stories from the beginning of time, stories about coming up from the other worlds, stories of mothers and fathers and hero children, stories to keep up courage and hope.

Yet our young protagonist, who seems to be modeled more on Shirley Temple than a traditional Navajo child, takes on the task of cheering everybody up with a bunch of silly little "Don't-Worry-Be-Happy" stories that she makes up on the spot to "chase away sorrow." In one of them, "Worried Girl" learns from "Grandfather Owl" (who, trust this, is not a teacher in the Navajo belief system), Òthat singing could push sorrow away, that telling stories could keep sadness outside the hogan. She earned a new name—The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow.

Singing could push sorrow away? On a death march? In the face of starvation? With friends and relatives getting shot all around? What an outrageous trivialization this is!

Raiding

"Raiding happened," Gloria Grant told me, Òin order for us to survive. You know, they burned our fields, they killed our animals, they ran our sheep and horses off the cliffs. People to this day have never recovered. It's a very emotional topic for us. People starved, children starved, babies starved because they took away our sources of food. They burned our peaches right here in the canyon where we lived. It was filled with orchards that have still never been restored. Raiding was not our way of life. We were forced to somehow feed our families.

But Turner uses this occasional raiding—the rationale the U.S. government used for the mass destruction of Navajo lands and livestock, and for the removal of the people—as historical fact. In her historical note, she says: "For many years, Navajo peoples had raided the white settlers in New Mexico," and one of the captions says, "In the 1860s, many white Americans feared the Navajo because of their nomadic and raiding lifestyle." In this story, raiding is an everyday thing, an occupation of sorts. Our young protagonist says, early on, "The only thing I can do is pretend to be brave, like my father going off on a raid.

The "Kindness" of Soldiers

The soldiers during this time period were vicious characters who joined the military because it allowed them to raise hell on the frontier. Throughout the Long Walk, they shot, they beat, they raped, they committed acts of unheard-of cruelty and barbarism. There may have been isolated instances of humanity during this death march, but it's a disingenuous thing to focus on this, as Turner does, without taking a hard look at the brutality, without looking at the underlying issue, the theft of land.

Yet, while the protagonist in this book makes vague references to "mean" soldiers, and even rape ("some of the soldiers are cruel to our women"—a reference children are not likely to understand), I counted 17 instances of the kindness of soldiers—and of one soldier in particular with whom a young woman falls in love—in this little book. There are shots heard in the background, and one shooting of an unnamed pregnant woman. It is only when we get to the historical note that we find that "the sick, the old, and women giving birth were sometimes shot along the way, for they could not keep up." Even here, it is implied that it was the people's fault that they were shot. And using the word "sometimes" disingenuously implies that shooting people was an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence and a practical necessity.

"When they talk about white soldiers being nice," Gloria Grant says, "they're trivializing our experience. They're trivializing our history, and romanticizing it. They were real successful at hurting us, at removing us, at exterminating us. That's what the Long Walk was about, and they're just trying to pretty it up."

A Continuing Whitewash

Some would argue that, however this book has been cleaned up, at least children will learn something about the tragedy called the Long Walk. The notion seems to be that translating Native experiences into a European worldview and form—while pretending to be an indigenous worldview and form—is a good thing.

"This same story could be told in a way that respects what the people went through, and doesn't use an artificial device to tell it. It could be told by watching from the outside as this grandmother and this girl interact over this terrible story, seeing the spaces where she can't tell her, seeing the things that can't be said, seeing the things that the child understands even without words, seeing the deep attachment to the land, and the blood that's been shed along the way. It could be a powerful story of a tragic time."

But in the guise of trying to educate, what Scholastic is actually doing—in both My Heart Is On the Ground and The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow—is continuing to whitewash the Native experience and continuing the historic campaign of extermination, only this time in books for children.

"The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow—this whole story—is about white America's guilt trip," Gloria Grant told me.

"They're always going to trivialize our history. To us, there are oral accounts of the Long Walk. They are things that happened, they are our stories. We still have to live with it today. White America just doesn't want to account for the atrocities that they committed against us. They don't want to understand—or teach their children—that we put our umbilical cords in this earth. This is our land, this is where we're from. And this is where we're staying."

I hope this book does not fall into the hands of non-Native children who think that reading it will teach them anything about Indian history. And I sincerely hope that well-meaning white teachers will not give Navajo children this book, but I fear that the opposite will be true.

I thank my dear friend Marge Bruchac for helping me to conceptualize this piece, and, as always, for gifting me with her kindness. And I thank Gloria Grant and Evelyn Lamenti for their fine-tuning, and for sharing with me their family and historical memories. And, of course, I thank my cohort, Doris Seale, for keeping me on a short leash. This would have been much less without you all.

Bighorse, Tiana (Navajo), Bighorse the Warrior. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (1990).

Hooker, Kathy Eckles, Time Among the Navajo: Traditional Lifeways on the Reservation. Foreword by Danny K. Blackgoat (Navajo). Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press (1991)

Johnson, Broderick H. (Navajo), editor, Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period. Tsaile: Navajo Community College Press (1970).