Speaker 1: This episode contains racist depictions and racial slurs from The
Speaker 1: Little House Books.
Speaker 2: Listeners, please be advised.
Speaker 3: The name of one of the nation's best known children's
Speaker 3: authors is being removed from a major literary award.
Speaker 1: In June twenty eighteen, the Children's Division of the American
Speaker 1: Library Association, the group that gives out coveted children's book
Speaker 1: awards like the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott Medal, announced that,
Speaker 1: after much consideration, they were renaming their prestigious Laura Ingalls
Speaker 1: Wilder Award.
Speaker 4: The Association for Library Service to Children unanimously voted this
Speaker 4: weekend to rename the Laura Ingles Wilder Award the Children's
Speaker 4: Literature Legacy Award. Due to negative depictions of Native Americans
Speaker 4: and African Americans and Wilder's books.
Speaker 1: It would now be called the Children's Literature Legacy Award.
Speaker 2: Here was their reasoning.
Speaker 5: Although Wilders were called a significant place in the history
Speaker 5: of children's literature and continues to be read today, ALSC
Speaker 5: has had to grapple with inconsistency between Wilder's legacy and
Speaker 5: its core of values of inclusiveness, integrity, and respect.
Speaker 1: You will probably not be shocked to hear that people
Speaker 1: were upset and angry, outraged. Even it demonstrated the reach
Speaker 1: of Laura and Little House. It wasn't just regular fans
Speaker 1: who were upset. People like William Shatner aka Captain Kirk
Speaker 1: were very, very angry and took to Twitter to express
Speaker 1: that anger.
Speaker 6: I find it disturbing that some take modern opinion and
Speaker 6: obliterate the past isn't progress learning from our mistaches.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of young readers, I loved Laura obviously.
Speaker 1: If you've made it this far and wilder, you know this,
Speaker 1: and growing up, nothing that is in the books bothered me.
Speaker 1: Nothing stood out as a problem. But Laura is a problem.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: You push together this coziness with the decimation of Native.
Speaker 9: Tribes, or with you know, the.
Speaker 8: Erasure and bigotry about black people, and even the marrying
Speaker 8: off of girls who are very young, and you just
Speaker 8: have this confusing diet.
Speaker 9: But of course that's America.
Speaker 1: And the problems of Laura are also disturbingly relevant.
Speaker 10: I think it's important for us to remember that our
Speaker 10: past isn't always rosy, that there were controversies, There was,
Speaker 10: and racism is still part of our culture now. If
Speaker 10: we pretend the past was not as controversial and difficult
Speaker 10: and racist as it was.
Speaker 11: Then, how we're going to deal with the racist issues
Speaker 11: who are grappling with today.
Speaker 1: When we first envision this podcast, this was the question
Speaker 1: I was asking myself, how should I feel about Laura
Speaker 1: Ingalls Wilder. I'm obviously not a kid anymore. I'm a
Speaker 1: grown up, educated woman. I recognize all the problems with
Speaker 1: the books, So what should I be doing with my
Speaker 1: love of Laura?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: This question is really just a niche version of what
Speaker 1: the country has been asking itself about itself for a
Speaker 1: while now, what some citizens have been pointing out for centuries,
Speaker 1: and it's a question that finally went mainstream after twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: We've all been asked to consider what we love and
Speaker 1: how we love it, and often whether we should be
Speaker 1: letting it go. From historical statues to entire systems of
Speaker 1: government to deeply beloved children's books. Letting go of Laura
Speaker 1: is an impossibility for me. She was woven in too deeply,
Speaker 1: too early, So it seemed to me the next question
Speaker 1: to ask was, what is the responsibility that comes with
Speaker 1: this kind of love? In this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a deep look at the hardest parts of Laura
Speaker 1: Ingalls Wilder. There are a lot of hard parts, more
Speaker 1: than you might think. Even I, a person who thought
Speaker 1: they knew Laura all the way through, was surprised and
Speaker 1: sometimes shocked. I'm Glennis McNicol, and this is Wilder. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, nearly twenty years after the first Little
Speaker 1: House Book was published, legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom
Speaker 1: received a letter from the parent of a young Little
Speaker 1: House reader. Laura was in her eighties by now, and
Speaker 1: all her fan mail, and there was a lot, went
Speaker 1: through Nordstrom's office. The parent had written to Laura to
Speaker 1: say that their child had been upset by a line
Speaker 1: on page two of the Little House on the Prairie book.
Speaker 1: The line was describing the territory the Ingles were relocating to,
Speaker 1: and it read there were no people, Only Indians lived there.
Speaker 1: Here's how Nordstrom responded.
Speaker 12: We were indeed disturbed by your letter. We knew that
Speaker 12: missus Wilder had not meant to imply that Indians were
Speaker 12: not people. I must admit that no one here realized
Speaker 12: the words read as they did reading them now. It
Speaker 12: seems unbelievable to me that you are the only person
Speaker 12: who has picked them up and written to us about
Speaker 12: them in the twenty years since the book was published.
Speaker 1: Nordstrom then relayed that when Laura had been alerted to
Speaker 1: the line, she'd called it a quote stupid blunder.
Speaker 2: Of course Indians are people.
Speaker 1: I did not intend to imply they were not. Nordstrom
Speaker 1: went on to assure the reader the line would be
Speaker 1: changed for all future editions. If you buy the book today,
Speaker 1: the line now reads, there were no settlers, only Indians
Speaker 1: lived there.
Speaker 13: Half a while.
Speaker 14: Used the right lade to take the US seventy five
Speaker 14: rant too.
Speaker 7: Independence.
Speaker 1: It's late September and our producer, Emily and I are
Speaker 1: driving to the Little House in the Prairie Museum outside Independence, Kansas.
Speaker 1: We are a three hour drive from Kansas City and
Speaker 1: another three hours from Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2: We're really, for real in the middle of the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kansas, baby, Like, there's something about Wyoming that feels.
Speaker 8: Seventy five south for four miles.
Speaker 2: Wild and west. But this just feels very, I don't know,
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: In the opening chapter of Little House on the Prairie,
Speaker 1: when the Ingles set out from peppin Wisconsin, pa asked Laura, quote, do.
Speaker 2: You like going out where the Indians live?
Speaker 1: Laura said she liked it, and then asked if they
Speaker 1: were in Indian country now, but they were not. It
Speaker 1: was a long long way to Indian territory. The little
Speaker 1: house Emily and I are driving toward is the one
Speaker 1: pa illegally built when the Ingles arrived at their destination,
Speaker 1: the Osage Diminished Reserve, what is now southeastern Kansas. The
Speaker 1: site of this museum is the presumed location of the
Speaker 1: Little House in the book Little House on the Prairie,
Speaker 1: and it's not easy to find. It's down a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of side roads, and even Google Map struggles.
Speaker 2: To point the location.
Speaker 1: We arrived shortly before closing hours wow after hours admission.
Speaker 1: But just as we're about to wander the site, a
Speaker 1: woman named Ronda appears.
Speaker 2: I decided to know I.
Speaker 15: Close up everything aside that you can walk the rounds
Speaker 15: as long as.
Speaker 10: Oh, well, thank you, We're going to commit before them.
Speaker 1: Ronda is the person in charge of the museum today,
Speaker 1: and she is dressed in full prairie garb, complete with bonnet.
Speaker 1: On the museum grounds is a recreation of the little
Speaker 1: log cabin that Pap build for his family, and they
Speaker 1: believe the well out back is the actual one. Laura
Speaker 1: writes about Pap building in the book farm house was.
Speaker 5: Here around eighteen eighty and the post left around eighteen
Speaker 5: seventy one.
Speaker 7: Based on the eighteen seventy census in the well and back,
Speaker 7: they're pretty sure that this is the area where the
Speaker 7: Eagles were illegally squatting in Indian Territory for about a
Speaker 7: year and a half.
Speaker 1: H Emily and I had wondered on the way here
Speaker 1: how the museum would describe the Engle's time on the
Speaker 1: Osage Diminished Reserve. I asked Rhonda if squatting was the
Speaker 1: word she used with visitors. It is not a word
Speaker 1: used in the book.
Speaker 2: They were squatting, there's no ens abs or bits about it.
Speaker 5: They didn't pay for the land.
Speaker 2: They were here illegally. So you can't take away something
Speaker 2: that happened. Let's talk about what actually happens in this book.
Speaker 1: Little House on the Prairie is by far the most
Speaker 1: controversial book in the Little House series. This is the
Speaker 1: book that adults are shocked by when they returned to
Speaker 1: it to read to their own children. It's the book
Speaker 1: that often requires them to either skip entire passages or
Speaker 1: stop and do a lot of explaining.
Speaker 2: Here's writer Rebecca Taster.
Speaker 6: I would say, you know, at the first mention of
Speaker 6: Indians or whatever, would I would say, okay, so let
Speaker 6: me explain what's going on here. The house that they
Speaker 6: moved to or they're building is actually on land that
Speaker 6: belongs to people who've been there forever, and it's being
Speaker 6: stolen by Laura and Mary and mon Pa, right like
Speaker 6: I would sort of just the most rudimentary, sort of
Speaker 6: version of they are building a house on land that
Speaker 6: belongs to other people, and this is something that happened
Speaker 6: and it's part of how this country was built.
Speaker 1: The closest the book gets to implying that the Ingles
Speaker 1: are building on land that doesn't belong to them is
Speaker 1: that they are in a place called Indian territory. But
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other parts in the book that
Speaker 1: are not subtle at all. They are unequivocally racist. The
Speaker 1: most violent line from the book comes from the Ingles neighbors,
Speaker 1: the Scots, who say more than once quote the only
Speaker 1: good Indian is a dead Indian end quote. Laura also
Speaker 1: tells us quote Jack hated Indians, and Ma said she
Speaker 1: didn't blame him.
Speaker 16: End.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: In the book, Laura describes Native Americans entering the ingles
Speaker 1: illegally constructed house. First time it happens Ma's home alone,
Speaker 1: and the Native Americans eat all the food she is cooking.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: The naked wild men stood by the fireplace. Their faces
Speaker 1: were bold, fierce, and terrible. These wild men had no hair.
Speaker 1: Another time, two Native Americans come into the house who
Speaker 1: are quote dirty, scowling, and meat. They take all the
Speaker 1: corn bread, all the fur, all paws tobacco, but then
Speaker 1: drop the fur on the way out. At the end
Speaker 1: of the chapter, Laura asked Pa, quote, will the government
Speaker 1: make these Indians go west?
Speaker 2: Paw tells her yes. Quote.
Speaker 1: When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have
Speaker 1: to move on. The government is going to move these
Speaker 1: Indians farther west any time.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: That's why we're here, Laura.
Speaker 1: White people are going to settle all this country, and
Speaker 1: we get the best land because we get here first
Speaker 1: and take our pick. Laura does not leave a lot
Speaker 1: of room for interpretation when it comes to the opinions
Speaker 1: that the people around her express, but she doesn't pass
Speaker 1: judgment on them either. A lot of people, even those
Speaker 1: who are not Laura apologists, will tell you that in
Speaker 1: Little House on the Prairie, Laura was merely relaying what
Speaker 1: she heard others.
Speaker 17: Say their childhood memories, and the child's interpretation of the
Speaker 17: situation not necessarily filtered through an adult lens.
Speaker 9: That kind of memoir approach.
Speaker 17: This is how I remember it, this is how I
Speaker 17: saw it at this time, and I know my childhood
Speaker 17: memories are not always accurate.
Speaker 1: Gwen Westerman is a professor at Minnesota State University, man
Speaker 1: Cato and the director of the Native American Literature Symposium.
Speaker 17: Trying to view her stories through her childhood memories is
Speaker 17: a much different experience as a reader than coming in
Speaker 17: and say, here are all the terrible things that are
Speaker 17: said about Indians, and from what I've found, none of
Speaker 17: those things are Laura's thoughts. Those are the words that
Speaker 17: she remembers hearing.
Speaker 1: Adult Laura the writer does through her fictional child self,
Speaker 1: provides some necessary pushback to these views. Early on in
Speaker 1: the book, not long after the Ingles arrive in what
Speaker 1: they call Indian Territory, Laura asks her mother, quote, why
Speaker 1: don't you like Indians, Ma, to which mav replies, quote,
Speaker 1: I just don't like them, and don't lick your fingers.
Speaker 1: But Laura persists, this is Indian country, isn't it. She says,
Speaker 1: what did we come to their country for if you
Speaker 1: don't like them. Ma tells her she's not sure where
Speaker 1: they are exactly, but that PA has been assured the
Speaker 1: territory will be open to settlements soon.
Speaker 2: This is the extent of the questioning that happens.
Speaker 1: The defense that Laura is offering a child's view of
Speaker 1: this experience is valid, and that Ma personally is terrified
Speaker 1: is understandable. She's alone miles from other settlers, with three
Speaker 1: young girls and a husband who, while charming, behaves erradically.
Speaker 1: We talked in the last episode how the angles time
Speaker 1: squatting on the Osage Diminished Reserve happened in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the US Dakota War of eighteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: how the narratives that came out of that war about quote,
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty Indians and vulnerable heroic pioneers dominated the press and
Speaker 1: have shaped our understanding of that history ever since. Absent
Speaker 1: from that narrative and the books is any understanding that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons Native Americans might have been in
Speaker 1: the house was that they were starving and that the
Speaker 1: treaties that promised to feed them had been betrayed. Settlers
Speaker 1: were illegally on their land, and they often viewed food
Speaker 1: as rent. That's likely the reason they came into the
Speaker 1: Ingles home to begin with. One of the more complicated
Speaker 1: things Laura the writer pulls off time and again in
Speaker 1: the Little House series is letting us know Ma's views
Speaker 1: are wrong, but also that Laura loves her, which is
Speaker 1: a definition of family I certainly related to even as
Speaker 1: a young child. But Laura was also writing the books
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, and while she seems able to
Speaker 1: insert some awareness of conflicting views around the Ingle's presence
Speaker 1: on Native American land, this awareness is limited.
Speaker 13: I wouldn't exaggerate how much she may have known about
Speaker 13: the history.
Speaker 1: Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser, thinks there were limits to Laura's knowledge.
Speaker 13: She tried to find out the name of the chief
Speaker 13: who her father may have encountered, but she didn't do
Speaker 13: very much in the way of reading history that we
Speaker 13: know of, and so I don't really know how much
Speaker 13: she knew. She did know that the land that her
Speaker 13: father had built on did not belong to ho much.
Speaker 13: She knew that, she knew he was a squatter, But
Speaker 13: I don't know that she had any kind of modern
Speaker 13: conceptions about the fairness or the ways in which her
Speaker 13: family was illegally appropriating things that didn't belong to them.
Speaker 1: That conception of fairness is, I think at the heart
Speaker 1: of what's most troubling in this book. Laura seems unable
Speaker 1: or unwilling to fully understand Native Americans as human beings.
Speaker 1: I want to turn to a specific scene in the
Speaker 1: final chapters of Little House on the Prairie. If you're
Speaker 1: familiar with the books, you've probably been wondering why we
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned it yet. It's so strange and disturbing. When
Speaker 1: the Ingles first set out for what they call Indian Territory,
Speaker 1: Pa promises Laura that when they quote came to the west,
Speaker 1: Laura would see a papoose, which Paw tells her is
Speaker 1: a quote little brown Indian baby. Near the end of
Speaker 1: the book, in a chapter titled Indians Ride Away, the
Speaker 1: Osage tribe who have been conducting what Pa understands to
Speaker 1: be war chants in the.
Speaker 2: River Valley every night for a week leave.
Speaker 1: The Ingles stand in front of their home as the
Speaker 1: osage foul by the house on their horses. Laura has
Speaker 1: a quote naughty wished to be a little Indian girl.
Speaker 1: Of course, she did not really mean it. She only
Speaker 1: wanted to be naked in the wind and the sunshine
Speaker 1: and riding one of those gay little ponies.
Speaker 10: End quote.
Speaker 1: Then Laura spots a Native American baby with hair quote
Speaker 1: as black as a crow.
Speaker 2: Those quote black.
Speaker 1: Eyes looked deep into Laura's eyes, and she looked deep
Speaker 1: down into the blackness of that little baby's eyes, and
Speaker 1: she wanted that one little baby.
Speaker 2: End quote. Laura says to Paw, quote, Paw, get me
Speaker 2: that little Indian baby. I want it. I want it,
Speaker 2: she begged. End quote.
Speaker 1: Paw, to his credit or to Laura's, decades later, tells
Speaker 1: Laura quote sternly to hush.
Speaker 2: It's one of the few moments in the series. Pa
Speaker 2: gets stern with Laura.
Speaker 1: Caroline Fraser believes this scene is a direct memory of
Speaker 1: Laura's who, as we talked about in an earlier episode,
Speaker 1: would have been just three years old at this time.
Speaker 1: When I said earlier that nothing had stood out to
Speaker 1: me as strange in the Little House Books, this scene
Speaker 1: is the exception. Even as a child, I found Laura's
Speaker 1: desire to acquire a Native American infant absolutely bizarre. I
Speaker 1: wasn't the only one. It stuck out to journalist Mariene O'Connor,
Speaker 1: who also loved the books growing up.
Speaker 18: And that moment also is like kind of horrifying because
Speaker 18: she wants this like just like, PA, go get me.
Speaker 18: That is my toy. I want it more than you know.
Speaker 18: And she didn't even beg for dolls that hard. But
Speaker 18: then she also in that same passage, I believe, describes
Speaker 18: how she also wishes that she was one of those
Speaker 18: children or she wants to own, and that sort of bizarre.
Speaker 18: The way that she sort of processes those feelings is layered,
Speaker 18: maybe I don't know, and horrified.
Speaker 1: It was emblazoned on my childhood brain also, And what
Speaker 1: I clearly remember is that I desperately wanted to know
Speaker 1: what the Native American baby was seeing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what the infant traveling with their mother alongside a
Speaker 1: pony into the unknown saw when they looked at Laura.
Speaker 1: But we are never given that. There's no mention of
Speaker 1: where the osage tribe is going, or any sense of
Speaker 1: what the future might hold for the Native American children
Speaker 1: Laura is so mesmerized by in this scene, including the
Speaker 1: violence of the government funded residential school systems.
Speaker 2: We've included links.
Speaker 1: With more information on these histories in our show notes,
Speaker 1: and we encourage you to learn more about these stories.
Speaker 1: We do know that while Laura did some research, she
Speaker 1: didn't seem too interested in finding out that much more.
Speaker 1: Here's Lizzie Skurnick, writer and professor of children's literature at NYU.
Speaker 8: What we do know is that she personally, as a
Speaker 8: human was not very interested in getting the larger story
Speaker 8: and never went beyond the context she was personally taught,
Speaker 8: which is just not true of everybody that's her age.
Speaker 1: Not once does Laura ever attempt to imagine someone else's
Speaker 1: impression of her. Never once does she wonder how she
Speaker 1: might appear and by extension, offer the same fullness of
Speaker 1: experience to anyone else that she gives to her own family.
Speaker 7: Books like Little House in the Prairie that have these
Speaker 7: like naked Indians who can't speak English, then we come
Speaker 7: to think of Native peoples as savage, primitive people. We
Speaker 7: were miseducated. That's not the truth.
Speaker 1: Here's doctor de wie Reese. Doctor Rees runs a website
Speaker 1: called American Indians and Children's Literature.
Speaker 7: We looked different, we lived different, but we're not less human.
Speaker 7: We had and have societies, and ordered societies, have leaders,
Speaker 7: and that's what we need to know about who we
Speaker 7: were before Europeans came to our homelands.
Speaker 1: Any awareness of that complexity or history is completely absent
Speaker 1: from the Little House books. As I said, Little House
Speaker 1: on the Prairie of the book didn't shock me when
Speaker 1: I went back to reread it for this podcast.
Speaker 2: I knew what was there.
Speaker 1: I was familiar with the arguments for and against it.
Speaker 1: What did surprise me was the extent to which the
Speaker 1: problems of Laura are not limited to just this one book.
Speaker 2: We're going to get to that after the break.
Speaker 1: Let's stick with the book Little House on the Prairie
Speaker 1: for just a little while longer. In addition to the
Speaker 1: ways Native Americans were depicted, there's also the issue of
Speaker 1: who was left out almost entirely.
Speaker 13: This is our dedication to doctor Oh.
Speaker 4: He's on the census in there, He's right above the ingles,
Speaker 4: So that's really cool.
Speaker 19: He is buried in Independence in the White Cemetery, which
Speaker 19: was a big deal back there.
Speaker 1: That's Ronda again from the Little House Museum outside of Independence, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and she's showing us a display at the museum about
Speaker 1: a man called doctor Tan. Three quarters of the way
Speaker 1: through the book, the Ingles family comes down with malaria,
Speaker 1: then called agu In the midst of their illness, a
Speaker 1: black doctor arrives. Quote Laura could not take her eyes
Speaker 1: off Doc Tan. He was so very black. She would
Speaker 1: have been afraid of him if she hadn't liked him
Speaker 1: so much. Doc Tan had a quote rolling jolly laugh,
Speaker 1: and we're told the Ingles all wanted him to stay longer.
Speaker 1: Laura's very clear that Doc Tan saves their lives. We're
Speaker 1: also told he's a quote doctor with the Indians, but
Speaker 1: nothing else. In real life, Doctor George A. Tan was
Speaker 1: a well known doctor on the prairie. Of course he
Speaker 1: he's a real person.
Speaker 8: And by the way, what's fascinating is in the books
Speaker 8: he just sort of appears for a second.
Speaker 2: This is Lizzie Skarnick again.
Speaker 9: He delivered Carrie.
Speaker 8: He was the person who delivered carry He was their
Speaker 8: family doctor. And also he was in Oklahoma Territory. I
Speaker 8: think he finally settled in Oklahoma Territory and that's where
Speaker 8: his house was.
Speaker 9: But he was very successful.
Speaker 8: He treated the o sage, he treated the white people,
Speaker 8: he treated anybody else, and he was beloved and very
Speaker 8: famous and ended his life very wealthy because he actually
Speaker 8: owned the land he was on.
Speaker 2: He owned the oil rights.
Speaker 1: In the book, Doc Tan appears as a side character,
Speaker 1: which at the time is likely how Laura experienced him
Speaker 1: she was a kid. But here's what really stands out
Speaker 1: to me in this chapter. At the very end of it,
Speaker 1: Laura steps out of the narrative and takes the time
Speaker 1: to explain to the reader that agu was later discovered
Speaker 1: to be malaria passed on by mosquitoes. But nothing extra
Speaker 1: about Doc Tan was included, even though, as Lizzie points out,
Speaker 1: Doc Tan was very well known and it wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: have taken a lot of digging to find out and
Speaker 1: include a bit more information.
Speaker 9: My dad was Jewish, my mother was black.
Speaker 8: I had been exposed all my life to white people
Speaker 8: talking about black people, and to me, this was another
Speaker 8: way to see white people's views of people who.
Speaker 2: Were not white.
Speaker 8: So even then I was like I remember being glad
Speaker 8: to see Doc Tann. I remember being glad to see
Speaker 8: a person in the books who was a good person
Speaker 8: and a black person. But also when I learned more
Speaker 8: about him, because my own mother's family are people from
Speaker 8: all black towns in Oklahoma Territory, from a town called Bully,
Speaker 8: So when I learned more about that, I did feel
Speaker 8: like and I didn't blame this on Lora Angos wild
Speaker 8: or a Rose Wilder Lane. It was just something where
Speaker 8: I was like, oh God, we always get these small
Speaker 8: pieces of the story as if everybody here is an
Speaker 8: exception where's they're not.
Speaker 9: They're just a facet.
Speaker 8: Of what's an enormous world, and it's just the part
Speaker 8: of the story that the white person chows to tell
Speaker 8: that was interesting to them. And then I always do
Speaker 8: wonder you think back on it, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 8: does Laura remember who delivered baby Carrie? You know, did
Speaker 8: Rose Wilder Lane try to hide it?
Speaker 1: We don't know for certain what Rose or Laura decided
Speaker 1: to hide or why, but we do know there were
Speaker 1: plenty of black homesteaders on the prairie at the same
Speaker 1: time as the Ingles.
Speaker 2: Here's historian Flannery Burke.
Speaker 20: Black farmers were there, you know, for all the parts
Speaker 20: of the story, the hard winters, the family togetherness, the
Speaker 20: sleigh rides, the frustrated relationship with major corporations like the railroad,
Speaker 20: but they don't often ter common conversation.
Speaker 1: And black homesteaders had their own reasons for migrating west.
Speaker 2: Here's Lizzie Skernick again.
Speaker 8: It was the same reason my great grandparents went to
Speaker 8: is the same reason anyone went to the territories. But
Speaker 8: I think black people also went because it was this
Speaker 8: idea of, well, there's not going to be slavery, and
Speaker 8: we can sort of form our own communities here.
Speaker 9: We have a little more space, and hopefully there's not.
Speaker 2: So many white people that can round us up and
Speaker 2: kill us.
Speaker 8: Get the more space from this issue at this juncture.
Speaker 21: You know.
Speaker 8: And also, like everyone's a pioneer. People in general like
Speaker 8: to be pioneers of all types. It's just we only
Speaker 8: tell one pioneer story.
Speaker 1: Lauren Rose stuck to that one pioneer story throughout the
Speaker 1: entire Little House series. And as I said earlier, when
Speaker 1: I went back to reread the entire series, I realized
Speaker 1: there were a lot more problems. Some stand right out,
Speaker 1: like the chapter titled Indian Warning at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Long Winter, when Pa encounters an elderly Native American
Speaker 1: band who predicts the coming winter. This scene is fictional,
Speaker 1: by the way, and likely inserted by Rose. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of other examples, more than we can possibly get
Speaker 1: to in this episode. But when I went back to
Speaker 1: reread the series, some really stood out, and I talked
Speaker 1: them through with Joe. So, Joe, you have finished reading
Speaker 1: Little House on the Prairie, the book with Charlie, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious about if anything in there shocked you, and
Speaker 1: also if anything in there shocked Charlie.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Charlie's now almost six, and there are some.
Speaker 11: Things that definitely stand out to him.
Speaker 14: He knows things. He knows things that I didn't know
Speaker 14: as a kid, and he points them out. The things
Speaker 14: that really stood out were Ma's intense reactions to the
Speaker 14: Native Americans, who they call Indians in the book, and
Speaker 14: he corrected the book. He said they should be called
Speaker 14: Native Americans, and I said, good job, public school system
Speaker 14: of Philadelphia. But he said, He's like, I just don't
Speaker 14: understand why Ma hates them so much. And I asked him,
Speaker 14: I was like, well, do you think that she would
Speaker 14: be scared she was living alone Paul left them on
Speaker 14: the prairie, and he said, yeah, he's like, I'd be
Speaker 14: scared if any man walked into my house. She seems
Speaker 14: specifically scared of these Native Americans. And I thought that
Speaker 14: was interesting that he saw her whole reaction as so outsized.
Speaker 2: I love that Charlie spotted all that. It does speak
Speaker 2: well of the.
Speaker 1: Culture kids are growing up and now, because when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, none of this flagged to me, except
Speaker 1: that final scene, which I thought was absolutely bizarre. I
Speaker 1: have to say when I read the rest of the books,
Speaker 1: because Little House in the Prairie of the book is
Speaker 1: the one that gets the most attention.
Speaker 2: It has the most overt racism.
Speaker 1: And so when I went back to reread the rest
Speaker 1: of the books, that's where I was like, wait a second, we're.
Speaker 14: Going to continue the series, and so could you tell
Speaker 14: me some more red flags that I have yet to encounter.
Speaker 1: The phrase you'll be as brown as an Indian is
Speaker 1: repeatedly aimed at Laura when she's not wearing her bonnet,
Speaker 1: including it being the final thing her family says to
Speaker 1: her when she leaves home.
Speaker 2: To marry Almonzo, and.
Speaker 1: It's greeted as this like phrase of affection and things
Speaker 1: like on the banks of Plum Creek, Laura writes it,
Speaker 1: they're now safe from wolves and Indians. Like there's this
Speaker 1: sort of persistent blending of Native Americans and as animals,
Speaker 1: as animals, as animals, wildlife. It happens more than once.
Speaker 1: It's not just that one phrase. There's also the phrase
Speaker 1: I'm free white and American that.
Speaker 2: Repeatedly comes up. I mean, on the one hand.
Speaker 1: That's the truth, right, Like, there is a truth to that,
Speaker 1: but that truth is not what's being conveyed when that
Speaker 1: phrase is used in these books. That phrase is being
Speaker 1: used as like manifest destiny. I guess, a phrase of
Speaker 1: total entitlement.
Speaker 14: A phrase of entitlement instead of a checking of privilege exactly.
Speaker 1: Like there's no there's no sort of like I'm free
Speaker 1: white in American and therefore I can do what I
Speaker 1: want unlike everyone else that currently is in this country.
Speaker 1: It's really just like it is a total entitlement, Like
Speaker 1: how dare you.
Speaker 11: I'm free white and American, so I deserve yep.
Speaker 2: You can't touch me.
Speaker 1: And then this really stood out to me I'd never
Speaker 1: noticed this before.
Speaker 2: At the beginning of The Long Winter, Laura wants to.
Speaker 1: Go help Paw in the field to harvest, and we're
Speaker 1: told that Ma doesn't like to see women working in
Speaker 1: the field.
Speaker 2: Quote only foreigners did.
Speaker 1: That Ma and her girls were American above doing men's work,
Speaker 1: and that when I read that, read that a couple times.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I think it never stood
Speaker 1: out to me before is because by that point in
Speaker 1: the series, we're so accustomed to dismissing Ma's racist views
Speaker 1: as like, not as problematic, but as like annoying because
Speaker 1: they're just keeping Laura from doing what she wants. So
Speaker 1: it is never like, oh, this is a problem that
Speaker 1: Mas says this because it's racist, it was a problem.
Speaker 1: Goes like, oh, there's Ma. She doesn't want Laura to
Speaker 1: have fun anymore, you know, And going back and seeing that.
Speaker 2: And just thinking like, oh wow.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the entire chapter in Littletown
Speaker 1: on the Prairie where there's a big blackface scene.
Speaker 11: Right, I have not gotten to that yet.
Speaker 14: And what I'm thinking, as you're going through all of
Speaker 14: this is how do I talk to Charlie about these
Speaker 14: things and about these issues because I think it could
Speaker 14: be used as a way to teach history, to say
Speaker 14: these our views that some people did have, this is
Speaker 14: what we believe now, and as a way to show
Speaker 14: him that sentiments evolve, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, I can tell you as a kid,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what blackface meant. And in the chapter,
Speaker 1: I remember it as Pa putting shoe polish on his face,
Speaker 1: and I just thought it was like a Halloween costume
Speaker 1: to disguise himself, and Ma's big concern is that he
Speaker 1: might have shaved his beard. Rose inserted this scene. This
Speaker 1: never happened. So Rose intentionally inserted a blackface scene in
Speaker 1: littletown on the Prairie that Laura.
Speaker 2: Was okay with. That's not actually a reflection of.
Speaker 1: What actually happened, although it is absolutely a reflection of
Speaker 1: the kind of entertainment that was happening, both at that
Speaker 1: time and at the time the books were being written
Speaker 1: in the thirties. But all of this, of course, without
Speaker 1: any context for Glenna's age eight, is just a scene
Speaker 1: in which we get to see Pau having fun and
Speaker 1: Laura enjoying it in the town, having a party. And
Speaker 1: when I went back and reread that chapter, it's breathtaking
Speaker 1: in the worst possible way, and a lot of discussions
Speaker 1: around the problems with the series. So much focus is
Speaker 1: on the one book, but it's the fabric.
Speaker 11: It's endemic to the whole series, is what you're.
Speaker 1: Saying, woven in in a way that I think reflects
Speaker 1: the degree to which it's woven in our storytelling. Like
Speaker 1: it's just sometimes when we talk about Laura, it's like
Speaker 1: she's a problem, and in understanding the degree to which
Speaker 1: it is woven throughout the books, you're like, it's all
Speaker 1: a problem.
Speaker 2: This is not just a problem of Laura.
Speaker 1: Remember that parent who wrote to complain about the opening
Speaker 1: pages of Little House. Here's the part of editor Ursula
Speaker 1: Nordstrum's response that stood out the most to me.
Speaker 12: No one here the words read as they did. It
Speaker 12: seems unbelievable to me that you are the only person
Speaker 12: who has picked them up and written to us about
Speaker 12: them in the twenty years since the book was published.
Speaker 1: In all those years, no one, including the people who
Speaker 1: had published the book, had spotted the problem.
Speaker 2: But perhaps it's.
Speaker 1: Not that surprising no one had noticed when you consider
Speaker 1: the problem is everywhere.
Speaker 8: You know, blackface is entertainment, right, that was always the
Speaker 8: problem that remains the problem.
Speaker 2: This is Lizzie Skarnick again that.
Speaker 8: People are like, ah, he loves these Confederate statues.
Speaker 9: We grew up with them.
Speaker 8: It creates a psychological hurdle that many people cannot get
Speaker 8: over clearly. And I think Laura fans that it's like, wow,
Speaker 8: you know, there's that Indian baby I wanted to steal.
Speaker 2: So God's great.
Speaker 9: And then you have this generation of.
Speaker 8: Children who want a papoos to think of Native children as.
Speaker 9: Dolls and not a little child. You know.
Speaker 8: You push together this coziness with you know, the decimation
Speaker 8: of Native.
Speaker 9: Tribes, or with you know, the.
Speaker 8: Erasure and bigotry about black people, you know, and even
Speaker 8: the marrying off of girls who are very young, and
Speaker 8: you just have this confusing diet.
Speaker 9: But of course that's America.
Speaker 1: Besides the beautiful descriptions and feelings of coziness, there's something
Speaker 1: else going on in the books that discourages us from
Speaker 1: questioning any part of what we're reading or someone else,
Speaker 1: and that's Paw. We talked a lot in a previous
Speaker 1: episode about reconsidering Paw with grown up eyes, and one
Speaker 1: of those reconsiderations is under standing the role he plays
Speaker 1: as the quintessential white savior. In Little House here's Rebecca
Speaker 1: Tracter again.
Speaker 6: Paw is presented as the most humane in the family
Speaker 6: and the person who is able to acknowledge, even in
Speaker 6: very small ways, the humanity of the people who he's displacing.
Speaker 2: Lizzie Skernick spotted it immediately.
Speaker 8: I was like, oh, this is another situation in which Pa,
Speaker 8: as the white guy, gets to decide which Indians are
Speaker 8: good Indians are bad Indians.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rees notes that the so called good Indians are
Speaker 1: always the ones who help the white people.
Speaker 7: Paw has a line where he says he tries to
Speaker 7: rationalize what a good or a bad Indian is, and
Speaker 7: the good Indian, according to Paw, is the one that
Speaker 7: rides in to stop the other Indians from attacking the
Speaker 7: little House on the prairie. So that's a good Indian,
Speaker 7: according to Paw. So what are the ones that are
Speaker 7: in the river bottoms? I guess they're bad Indians and
Speaker 7: the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Applause is
Speaker 7: to those ones, but not to the one who saved them.
Speaker 1: This happens more than once and by the shores of
Speaker 1: Silver Lake, as the Ingles are crossing the desolate prairie.
Speaker 1: They are set upon by threatening figures and then rescued
Speaker 1: by a man named Big Jerry. Quote, everything's all right now,
Speaker 1: PA said, that's Big Jerry.
Speaker 2: Who's Big Jerry? MA asked. He's a half breed French
Speaker 2: and Indian.
Speaker 1: PA answered carelessly, a gambler and some say a horse thief,
Speaker 1: but a darned good fellow. Big Jerry won't let anybody
Speaker 1: waylay us.
Speaker 9: Yes, he's a half breed.
Speaker 2: This is Lizzie Skernick again.
Speaker 8: So as a half breed, and what he is is
Speaker 8: he's a half breed who protects all the white people,
Speaker 8: and so his role is.
Speaker 2: To protect Pa. Here's how Big is described. He looks
Speaker 2: like an Indian.
Speaker 1: He was tall and big, but not one bit fat,
Speaker 1: and his thin face was brown. His straight black hair
Speaker 1: swung against his flat, high bone cheek as he rode,
Speaker 1: for he wore no hat. As a kid, I was like, great,
Speaker 1: Big Jerry is here, Everything is going to be fine.
Speaker 1: Paul likes him, and therefore I understand he's both safe
Speaker 1: and probably fun.
Speaker 9: Of course, you love Big Jerry. He's like a hero,
Speaker 9: but he's also kind of bad.
Speaker 8: But what's also so clear about Big Jerry is that
Speaker 8: like he exists in the white world, you know, and
Speaker 8: he's almost like pause representative in the camp, you know, pause,
Speaker 8: not comfortable in like civilization.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 8: He doesn't really like his job there, so he sort
Speaker 8: of needs a heavy And that's Big Jerry.
Speaker 1: And his snow white horse wore no saddle nor bridle.
Speaker 1: The horse was free. He could go wherever he wanted
Speaker 1: to go, and he wanted to go with Big Jerry
Speaker 1: wherever Big Jerry wanted to ride.
Speaker 2: The horse and the man moved together as if they
Speaker 2: were one animal.
Speaker 1: As I said earlier, something else that stood out to
Speaker 1: me on this reread is that Laura and or Rose
Speaker 1: have a habit of aligning Native Americans with animals. I
Speaker 1: say or Rose because Big Jerry is a fictional creation,
Speaker 1: and of.
Speaker 8: Course Big Jerry again like totally made up story. I mean,
Speaker 8: I think the idea is that that person did exist.
Speaker 8: None of that ever happened, nor if it happened, it
Speaker 8: happened very differently.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we keep coming back to
Speaker 1: that with all this context, it's easier to see that
Speaker 1: it did happen very differently for everyone whether or not
Speaker 1: they are actually included in the books. But having that context,
Speaker 1: what do we do with it? How do we go
Speaker 1: forward with Little House and Laura knowing all this? After
Speaker 1: the break, we'll talk to doctor Reese again about how
Speaker 1: she believes we should think about and teach Little House.
Speaker 22: I think they are a good book to use in
Speaker 22: a college classroom. Get studies what we might call propaganda.
Speaker 1: So, now that we've taken a long, hard look at
Speaker 1: what's in the Little House books, it's time to start
Speaker 1: asking how should we be interacting with them, How should
Speaker 1: we think about them, Should they be in schools at all?
Speaker 2: And if so, how should these books be taught.
Speaker 1: Doctor Reese believes the book should be approached academically.
Speaker 22: I think they are a good book to use in
Speaker 22: a college classroom. Get studies what we might call propaganda
Speaker 22: or our critical media studies, where you're looking very carefully
Speaker 22: at perspective point of view, indoctrination.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about propaganda for a minute.
Speaker 1: Here's how the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the word propaganda.
Speaker 1: The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purposes
Speaker 1: of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.
Speaker 7: It is an indoctrination because it is asking us to
Speaker 7: identify with a people that came onto native homelands and
Speaker 7: took their lands and killed their families. But a lot
Speaker 7: of Americans need that narrative in order not to feel
Speaker 7: negatively about their own family histories here and.
Speaker 2: What they have today.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the ways that the Little Housebooks have
Speaker 1: some complicated politics baked into them, from the Fourth of
Speaker 1: July speeches to the heroic white settler head West fulfilling
Speaker 1: some sort of divine mandate. And then there's Rose's connection
Speaker 1: to libertarian ideology, and there is no question that the
Speaker 1: libertarian fantasy Rose tried to weave through the Little Housebooks
Speaker 1: falls under the heading of propaganda. We also know from
Speaker 1: the first episode that The Long Winter was used as
Speaker 1: actual American propaganda by General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. But
Speaker 1: can we really call the full Little House series a
Speaker 1: work of propaganda, or rather, is that the only thing
Speaker 1: they are. I'm not convinced that was Laura's intention, nor
Speaker 1: that the books would have lasted this long if that
Speaker 1: had been their sole purpose. Rose very much intended for
Speaker 1: her books to be tools of propaganda for her libertarian beliefs,
Speaker 1: and her books, as we know, have not stood the
Speaker 1: test of time. We do know, however, that the Little
Speaker 1: Housebooks can and have harmed people who are not white.
Speaker 1: But what if they were taught to children with some
Speaker 1: of the context we've attempted to provide here. I asked
Speaker 1: doctor Rees if she felt it would be enough to
Speaker 1: teach the Little House Books critically to kids, or in
Speaker 1: conjunction with books that describe the experience from the point
Speaker 1: of view of a native child. But doctor Rees thinks
Speaker 1: this wouldn't go far enough.
Speaker 2: When a book.
Speaker 7: Wins awards or is love, it is because of the writing.
Speaker 7: In some way, it is beckoning to the reader. And
Speaker 7: so when you try to ask someone to start reading
Speaker 7: the book and then stop and think critically about that character,
Speaker 7: you're doing this twist on their heart, their head, their emotions,
Speaker 7: all of that. If your goal is to understand racism,
Speaker 7: you don't need to do it using a book like this,
Speaker 7: where you're asking kids to read it from cover to cover.
Speaker 7: A professor friend of mine said, if you want to
Speaker 7: teach racism and older books like that, just rip the
Speaker 7: book apart. Give reading group number one, Chapter one and
Speaker 7: the second reading group.
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Doctor Rees believes it's impossible to give these
Speaker 1: books to children and expect them to understand the context,
Speaker 1: even if it is provided.
Speaker 7: I think the harm is too great because it's not
Speaker 7: just that harm, it's the context of larger, more widespread harms.
Speaker 7: So it's just one more saying that Native children have
Speaker 7: to endure, and it's one more thing that non Native
Speaker 7: children go through that affirms those mistaken ideas that they
Speaker 7: get just as a matter of life.
Speaker 11: In the United States.
Speaker 7: And why can't Native kids have stories that affirm them
Speaker 7: like other people do, instead of having to deal with
Speaker 7: that story in their classroom.
Speaker 1: Doctories advocates for Little House only having a place in
Speaker 1: the college level classroom, which made us curious, what does
Speaker 1: it look like when Little House is used in this manner?
Speaker 2: What is it like to encounter.
Speaker 1: Little House for the first time as a grown person,
Speaker 1: particularly for people from younger generations who have grown up
Speaker 1: with a lot more resources and viewpoints than many of
Speaker 1: us did. It turns out I would soon get an
Speaker 1: answer to this question. While we were in the early
Speaker 1: stages of making this podcast, I woke up one morning
Speaker 1: to a series of messages on my phone from various
Speaker 1: friends and even just acquaintances. They were all sending me
Speaker 1: the same tweet that had gone viral. Here's what the
Speaker 1: tweet said, did you read the Little House on the
Speaker 1: Prairie books as a child, and if so.
Speaker 2: How old are you now?
Speaker 1: I'm teaching a class and none of the students have
Speaker 1: heard of these titles, much less read them. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see when these books fell out of favor.
Speaker 3: So I just came home and threw up on Twitter,
Speaker 3: like did you read these books? And if so, when,
Speaker 3: because I kind of wanted to see maybe when they
Speaker 3: stopped being popular.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Julia H.
Speaker 1: Lee, professor of Asian American Studies at You See Irvine.
Speaker 1: She sent that tweet out not expecting such a huge response.
Speaker 3: I have a very small, small, small footprint on Twitter,
Speaker 3: but I was shocked at the number of responses I got.
Speaker 3: And I'm still getting responses almost two months later, So
Speaker 3: over four thousand people responding I read the books when
Speaker 3: I was this age. I never read the books, and
Speaker 3: so it was just really really interesting to see how
Speaker 3: many people wanted to talk about the books and their
Speaker 3: experience reading them.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, the amount of responses Doctor Lee
Speaker 1: received definitely proved the books are still as popular as ever.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the reaction was mixed. I would
Speaker 1: say that more.
Speaker 3: People were like, I love them and I've passed them
Speaker 3: on to my children, but there were I think a
Speaker 3: significant number of people who said, I read the books,
Speaker 3: but I'm not planning on passing them on to my
Speaker 3: own children or to young people in my life, because
Speaker 3: I realized now how problematic they are.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lee had sent out this tweet in the first
Speaker 1: place because of an experience she had had in her classroom.
Speaker 3: I'm currently teaching a class that you see I called
Speaker 3: the Asian American West, and one of the novels that
Speaker 3: we're reading is by Linda Sue Park and it's called
Speaker 3: Prairie Lotus and it's a Asian American retelling of Little
Speaker 3: House on the Prairie.
Speaker 1: As part of the preparation, Doctor Lee assigned Little House
Speaker 1: on the Prairie the book.
Speaker 3: And before we started talking about Little House, I always
Speaker 3: ask my students this, how many of you've read this
Speaker 3: book before?
Speaker 2: And none of the students.
Speaker 3: Raise their hand, which is quite common, but they kind
Speaker 3: of looked at me funny. While I was asking this,
Speaker 3: and I said, how many of you've heard of this
Speaker 3: book before? And none of them had, none of them.
Speaker 3: But I was really taken aback because these books have
Speaker 3: been huge in my own childhood, and I had assumed
Speaker 3: that the popularity still lingered.
Speaker 1: Once her students did read the book, they definitely had thoughts.
Speaker 3: I think it was really interesting to see it through
Speaker 3: the eyes of my students, because they had a lot
Speaker 3: to say about all.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a little bit of.
Speaker 3: I can't believe they let children read this, And their
Speaker 3: analysis was really spot on, you know. They talked about
Speaker 3: how not only the kind of representation of Native Americans
Speaker 3: and the kind of the hateful rhetoric directed towards them,
Speaker 3: but also the book's representation of gender and patriarchy and
Speaker 3: kind of all of those things. And so I don't
Speaker 3: think any of them would say, oh, yeah, this is
Speaker 3: a okay I put on reading to my own children
Speaker 3: or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Quite quite opposite.
Speaker 1: This got us curious had the Little House Books and
Speaker 1: all their many problems, finally lost their broad appeal to
Speaker 1: younger generations. In December, we went to a college classroom
Speaker 1: where the Little House Books were being taught. We wanted
Speaker 1: to try and dig deeper into this question. Lizzie Skirnik
Speaker 1: allowed us to participate in her class at NYU on
Speaker 1: historical fiction writing. The students had been assigned Little House
Speaker 1: in the Big Wood and Little House on the Prairie.
Speaker 1: There are about ten students in the class, and only
Speaker 1: a few had read the books as kids. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say the others were thoroughly unimpressed.
Speaker 23: I wasn't ever read these books when I was a child,
Speaker 23: and I'm so happy that my mom decided not to
Speaker 23: do that for me.
Speaker 11: It was kind of exciting to see what all the
Speaker 11: hype was about. But then it turns out there's no hype.
Speaker 23: I think that so many kids that idolized and romanticized this,
Speaker 23: why did they want to do?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 16: Like?
Speaker 23: Why did they want to put on aprons?
Speaker 1: When the students moved deeper into their analysis of the books,
Speaker 1: their thinking was very in line with everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about in the last six episodes, and the parts
Speaker 1: they found the most disturbing could definitely be categorized as propaganda.
Speaker 23: I was thinking, while reading this, what haven't they written?
Speaker 23: What histories haven't been written while reading this? And what
Speaker 23: have we been like glazy over what other side stories
Speaker 23: were happening. And I think as a child, I wouldn't
Speaker 23: have liked this because I would think where am I
Speaker 23: in this? And that's why I didn't enjoy it as much.
Speaker 21: I don't understand like why America would romanticize this period
Speaker 21: after these books, because everything in the books it just
Speaker 21: feels so traumatic and I don't know it.
Speaker 11: It's just so messed up.
Speaker 19: I did interact with these as a kid, and I
Speaker 19: wasn't into it. I was like I was kind of warned,
Speaker 19: not like not allowed to, but kind of like warned
Speaker 19: against reading them by my mom because she was like
Speaker 19: the racist straight up. And I was like a little kid,
Speaker 19: like Okay, I'll take a look for myself. And like
Speaker 19: you said, like it's it's it's hard to romanticize it
Speaker 19: because it's like I'm not going to romanticize being a settler.
Speaker 16: I also think like it's like very concerning that the
Speaker 16: global audience is influenced by this text of what American
Speaker 16: history is or what the ideals of American self sufficiency
Speaker 16: were and then be romanticized in this book series like
Speaker 16: by a Little Girl is just sort of like it's
Speaker 16: like the maple syrup on America.
Speaker 1: I was still thinking about doctor Reese's argument that the
Speaker 1: Little House books should not be read to children in classrooms.
Speaker 1: So I asked these students what they thought. Would these
Speaker 1: be books you would give or suggest being read by
Speaker 1: small kids, not like you have to.
Speaker 7: Like there is sort of in my family there was
Speaker 7: like a this is like required reading to be a
Speaker 7: little kid.
Speaker 2: But like it might not. I won't ban it from
Speaker 2: a bookshelf, ye like, but not be like you must.
Speaker 2: I would never give it to my child.
Speaker 24: I feel like it's just much more important at this
Speaker 24: point to have more diversity, Like at this point, it's
Speaker 24: like I'd rather that that the focus be on reversing
Speaker 24: a lot of the harm that children's books have done.
Speaker 1: These days, kids have a lot of options when it
Speaker 1: comes to what they want to read, even when it
Speaker 1: comes to pioneer stories. Doctor Julia Lee remarked on how
Speaker 1: much things have changed since she was a kid.
Speaker 3: Children's literature and young adult literature is so much richer now,
Speaker 3: Like there's so many Like when we were kids, we
Speaker 3: were reading probably Little House on the Prairie. We read
Speaker 3: Ramona quimb Like you know, it was very like everybody
Speaker 3: was kind of reading the same thing, and now I
Speaker 3: feel like there's just so much representation that was not
Speaker 3: my experience reading as a child. I never expected to
Speaker 3: read about Asian people, Korean folks, anything like that.
Speaker 2: So I wasn't even looking. I didn't even know to
Speaker 2: look for it.
Speaker 7: Like I just accepted like this was this was what.
Speaker 2: These were the types of characters that people read about.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're in a time where there's so many options
Speaker 1: for kids, so many wonderful ways for them to see
Speaker 1: themselves in writing and on screen. The Little House is
Speaker 1: no longer necessy. This reminded me of something we had
Speaker 1: heard in Just Met South Dakota when we talked to
Speaker 1: the kids participating in the pageant there.
Speaker 2: I've actually never read the books.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 15: I worked at the Memorial Society for a while and
Speaker 15: I had to read all the books, and did you
Speaker 15: I mean, not my genre, but as a general book,
Speaker 15: it's good.
Speaker 2: Fantasy, gay roman.
Speaker 1: When it comes to children's books series that offer alternate representation,
Speaker 1: Louise Erdrich's Birch Bark House series is perhaps the most
Speaker 1: well known, but we're going to list others. In the
Speaker 1: notes to this episode, Doctor Reese also had some suggestions.
Speaker 8: Right now, I'm very keen, very high on Forever Cousins.
Speaker 7: It's a new picture book.
Speaker 22: And it's about these two little girls their cousins. They
Speaker 22: actually live in the San Francisco Bay area, but why
Speaker 22: are they there? And so in the authorish notes, the
Speaker 22: author tells it about one of the government programs that
Speaker 22: ask Native people to leave their.
Speaker 7: Homelands in seat up a life in a major city.
Speaker 7: And so San Francisco has a huge Native community, and
Speaker 7: so these little girls are part of that. So I'd
Speaker 7: like people to just use books by Native writers, because
Speaker 7: the author's notes that are in there that give context
Speaker 7: to what this story is about are vital to undoing
Speaker 7: or filling in what teachers did not get when they
Speaker 7: were in school.
Speaker 1: So if we have all these other options, why does
Speaker 1: Little House continue to have such appeal? In part, it's
Speaker 1: for the reasons we've discussed. The coziness and the familiar
Speaker 1: mythology are comforting to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: But we also have to recognize that the legacy of finding.
Speaker 1: Comfort in these stories has resulted in an enormous cultural
Speaker 1: footprint that is very difficult to extricate from because it
Speaker 1: is so comfortable. In the next few episodes, we're taking
Speaker 1: a look at the enormity of that cultural imprint.
Speaker 2: Without question.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons Little House is so ingrained in
Speaker 1: our culture is that somewhere in the world right now
Speaker 1: you can turn on a television and watch the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies TV show that was based on the books. Would
Speaker 1: the books even still be around if it weren't for
Speaker 1: that iconic show? Do Laura and Rose owe their legacy
Speaker 1: to the vision of one man and his rippling pecks
Speaker 1: and shiny thick hair.
Speaker 2: Enter Michael Landon.
Speaker 1: For all of Rose's dreams of Little House as a
Speaker 1: commercial for libertarian fantasy, even Rose could not have dreamed
Speaker 1: up the Little House fantasy that emerged only a few
Speaker 1: short years after her death. Next week on Wylder, We're
Speaker 1: Going to Hollywood. Wilder is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Glennis McNichol. Our story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meroanoff.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Emily Meroanof. Our producers are Mary Doo,
Speaker 1: Shina Ozaki, and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.
Speaker 1: Sound design and mixing by Amanda ro Smith. Production help
Speaker 1: from Asavay Sharma, Christina Everett, Julia Weaver and Abou safar
Speaker 1: Our scene in additional music was composed by Elise McCoy.
Speaker 1: We are executive produced by Joe Piazza, Nikki tor, Ali
Speaker 1: Perry and me. If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating
Speaker 1: and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ronda in the Little House on the Prairie
Speaker 1: Museum Outside of Independence, Kansas. Special thanks to Lizzie Skernick
Speaker 1: and her wonderful class for letting us join their discussion
Speaker 1: and sharing their.
Speaker 2: Thoughts with us.
Speaker 1: And thanks as always to doctor de Wi Reese who
Speaker 1: was so generous with her time in scholarship. Thank you
Speaker 1: as always to CDM Studios. Listen extensive resources in our
Speaker 1: show notes on all the topics we've discussed in this episode,
Speaker 1: as well as reading options for the children in your life.
Speaker 1: You can also find our contact and go there if
Speaker 1: you want to write to us with your own thoughts
Speaker 1: and questions. Follow us on Instagram at Wilder Underscore podcast
Speaker 1: and on TikTok at Wilder Podcast, where you can see
Speaker 1: behind the scenes footage from all our travels.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.