The Negative Portrayal of Native Americans in Children’s Literature

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The Negative Portrayal of Native Americans in Children’s Literature

The American institution has raised countless generations with misconceptions and lies regarding various foreign cultures. During the 1950’s the educational system in America was given the responsibility of teaching children the horrors and injustices they would suffer if the "evil" communist took over the world. Schools taught students that communist wanted to take away music, apple pie, baseball, and anything else that Americans cherished. Students learned that it was best to believe in the righteous of America. The preceding discussion has much in common with the treatment that Native Americans have received from picture books in America.

The American society came to the conclusion hundred of years ago that it was in the best interest of America to misrepresent Native Americans, both in the past and present. The American continents were said to be inhabited with animal-like savages that had no cultural value. Schools have taught that it was the European's duty to civilize the new lands. One of the primary tools that have been used in the education of children is the picture book. Picture books have provided the American institution with a means of teaching our children that the Native Americans were bestial and animalistic, thus enabling us to ignore or justify the atrocities that Europeans and Americans have inflicted on the native societies.

Picture books are one of the first mediums of learning that children encounter. The picture book was first created in 1657 by John Amos Comenius. Comenius’s book was entitled Orbis Pictus (The world of Pictures) and was an alphabet book (Martinez 57). Picture books are used to lay the foundations of the histori...

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...York. 1969.

D'Aulaire, Ingri & Edgar Parin. George Washington. Doubleday, & Co., New York. 1936.

Edmonds, Walter D. The Matchlock Gun. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York. 1941.

Fritz, Jean. The Good Giants and the Bad Pukwudgies. Putnam, New York. 1982.

Goble, Paul. Buffalo Woman. Bradbury Press, New York. 1984.

Hoyt-Goldsmith, Diane. Arctic Hunter. Holiday House, New York. 1992.

Lewis, Richard. All of You was Singing. MacMillan Publishing Co., New York. 1991.

Lindgren, Merri V. The Multicolored Mirror: Cultural Substance in Literature for Children and Young Adults. Highsmith Press, Wisconsin. 1991.

Maxim, George W. The Very Young: Guiding Children from Infancy through the Early Years. Prentice Hall, Ohio. 1993.

Monjo, F. N. Indian Summer. Harper & Row Publishing, New York. 1968.

Parish, Peggy. Little Indian. Simon & Schuster, New York. 1968.

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