All tagged Native writer

Lost Journals of Sacajewea

Certain stories resonate in history. Specific people become fascinating characters lodged in the minds and hearts of a nation; their feats become a part of culture. Yet, often these fictions fail to realistically reflect the history; over time characterizations and backgrounds shift. This is especially true for famous historical figures who left no written records, many of them women and people of color. Such has certainly been the case with Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, particularly with regard to the young Shoshoni woman who accompanied them for most of their journey. Even the spelling of her name—Sacagawea (derived from Mandan for “Bird Woman”) or Sacajewea (from her native Shoshoni meaning “boat-launcher) is uncertain. And yet, she was a woman with a voice, even if written history fails to capture any of her actual words. Debra Magpie Earling’s The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (May 2023) provides her a voice and a story in a spectacularly crafted novel that provides Sacajewea with her own journals, in an answer of sorts of the famous Journals of Lewis and Clark.

Perma Red

Nearly twenty years ago, I read a book about Native life western Montana that shook me with its vivid descriptions of place, its unsettling scenes of poverty and institutional Indian schools. Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red (originally published 2003) was beautiful in its intensity, startling and raw. It captured the harsh conditions of life on the Flathead Indian Reservations in the 1940s. And then it went out of print. Happily, the good folks at Milkweed Editions rectified the situation and Perma Red returned to print in the fall 2022; and I eagerly revisited the story that wowed me all those years ago.