Speaker 1: This recording is being made in Laura Ingalls Wilder Library
Speaker 1: of Mansfield, Missouri, the home of Missus Wilder.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty three, nineteen years after the first Little
Speaker 2: House book was released, librarians in California sent Laura Ingalls
Speaker 2: Wilder a present for her eighty sixth birthday, and especially
Speaker 2: they were homemade dolls of every member of the Ingles family.
Speaker 2: To thank the librarians, Laura recorded a response in the Mansfield,
Speaker 2: Missouri Library.
Speaker 3: I certainly do appreciate the gift of these clanked little
Speaker 3: figures that seemed to have walked out of my memory Chauvelona.
Speaker 2: Though this is the only known recording of Laura's voice,
Speaker 2: but more.
Speaker 1: Than all, I value the understanding and love for me
Speaker 1: and my family that prompted the gift.
Speaker 2: Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in
Speaker 2: the Little House on the Prairie series, was published ninety
Speaker 2: years ago this year. As we talked about in our
Speaker 2: very first episode, the last line of Big Woods reads.
Speaker 4: Now is now it can never be a long time ago.
Speaker 2: That line might be the most accurate description there is
Speaker 2: of the Little House series. The books still saw millions
Speaker 2: of copies, the television show still airs around the world.
Speaker 2: Little House on the Prairie might be about another time,
Speaker 2: but Laura's stories are very much alive in our time.
Speaker 4: We can't seem to let her go.
Speaker 5: Why is Laura still around?
Speaker 6: She's just really honestly going to sound like a ridiculous answer,
Speaker 6: but like why is a cup of tea still around?
Speaker 4: It's she's so cozy.
Speaker 2: A century and a half after a girl was born
Speaker 2: in a little log cabin in the big Woods of Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: her stories continue to hold some timeless truths.
Speaker 7: There's a rich family in town at the store who
Speaker 7: give them a hard time, and there's always a crop
Speaker 7: failure or blizzard.
Speaker 4: Her loco and they cling together and make it through.
Speaker 7: I think it's that these are the problems that people
Speaker 7: really deal with.
Speaker 2: Laura is still relevant, although often in ways that can
Speaker 2: be painful to consider.
Speaker 8: Many of the issues that Wilder raises in the Little
Speaker 8: House Books are issues that are still with us today,
Speaker 8: and in that sense, her work is more relevant than ever.
Speaker 2: We started this podcast in order to have an honest
Speaker 2: look at the woman behind the books, and what we
Speaker 2: discovered is that there is a lot more behind Laura
Speaker 2: than the simple, heartwarming tale of a sixty five year
Speaker 2: old farm wife deciding to sit down and write about
Speaker 2: her life. There is mind blowing poverty, relentless hardship, a
Speaker 2: father who made a lot of questionable decisions, an extremely complicated,
Speaker 2: some might say, backstabbing daughter, an authorship conspiracy that won't
Speaker 2: quite die, a Hollywood star with shiny hair, a perfect
Speaker 2: jawline and glistening abs.
Speaker 4: A lot of violent racism, and.
Speaker 2: The funding of some extreme political figures, and an army
Speaker 2: of fans that has fueled an entire international tourism industry.
Speaker 2: But where does that leave us? And where does that
Speaker 2: leave me? A person who has loved Laura so deeply
Speaker 2: for so long. I went into this project not knowing
Speaker 2: where our investigation would take us, and not knowing how
Speaker 2: I would feel on the other side. And now we're here,
Speaker 2: and what I feel is complicated, And I'm also shocked
Speaker 2: at the things that ended up upsetting me the most
Speaker 2: while making this show.
Speaker 9: What if doing this episode makes me never read Little
Speaker 9: House again?
Speaker 2: What I do know is I don't love Laura Ingalls
Speaker 2: wild or aney less, but I think about her and
Speaker 2: myself very differently than I did a year ago. You
Speaker 2: know what they say about truly loving something, sometimes you
Speaker 2: have to let it go. I'm Glennis McNichol, and this
Speaker 2: is the final episode of Wilder. We're going to start
Speaker 2: by going right back to where this entire project began.
Speaker 4: On the road. Oh that's you can see the beginning
Speaker 4: of the bad Lands right over there.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 2: Last summer, when we were driving around the Midwest visiting
Speaker 2: the lower Ingles houses, we didn't end our trip at
Speaker 2: de smet South Dakota. Unlike the Ingles family, Emily and
Speaker 2: I kept moving west. There are two sides to the
Speaker 2: state of South Dakota. The eastern side, where the Ingles lived,
Speaker 2: is largely farmland, but once you cross the Missouri River,
Speaker 2: things open up. You pass through a number of Native
Speaker 2: American reservations, including the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Speaker 4: One of the largest in the United States, and Buffalo
Speaker 4: Gap National Grassland.
Speaker 2: A little further is the Badlands National Park, and beyond
Speaker 2: that the Black Hills.
Speaker 11: So that seems like the start of the real Western
Speaker 11: landscape I've been imagining.
Speaker 2: The idea of the American West is at the heart
Speaker 2: of the idea of America, and despite never moving beyond
Speaker 2: the actual Midwest, Little House is.
Speaker 4: Very much a part of that narrative. Part of the
Speaker 4: reason we.
Speaker 2: Came out on the road was to try and walk
Speaker 2: in Laura's shoes and see at least some of what
Speaker 2: she saw.
Speaker 4: But we also came out.
Speaker 2: Here to get a better sense of the role Laura
Speaker 2: plays in our understanding of this history. As we drove
Speaker 2: further west, it became more apparent to us how Laura
Speaker 2: is connected to American myth making and the sometimes violent
Speaker 2: prioritizing of the white experience.
Speaker 12: Well, I see it.
Speaker 2: If you drive into the heart of the Black Hills
Speaker 2: and follow the many, many signs pointing the way, you
Speaker 2: will eventually come upon Mount Rushmore's just hollen than I.
Speaker 4: That was entirely my first response to I thought, it
Speaker 4: looks little to me.
Speaker 12: I expected to be blown away.
Speaker 2: By Mount Rushmore is an iconic American image carved into granite.
Speaker 2: It's shorthand for the permanence of the American idea of democracy,
Speaker 2: a tribute to its own greatness, a mascot for America,
Speaker 2: if you will. It's also carved into an extremely sacred
Speaker 2: place for Native Americans. And while we all know what
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore looks like, to encounter it in the midst
Speaker 2: of the lush landscape of the Black Hills underscores both
Speaker 2: its absurdity and the violation of Native American land by
Speaker 2: the US government.
Speaker 7: There's no reason for that to be there.
Speaker 11: Other than, Hey, we're here now, so fuck you to
Speaker 11: everyone who was here before.
Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty eight, with the signing of the Fort
Speaker 2: Laramie Treaty, the US government agreed that the Black Hills
Speaker 2: would remain exclusively Native land, but once gold was found
Speaker 2: in the Hills a few years later, the US broke
Speaker 2: the treaty and white settlers flooded the area. By the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties, the Black Hills was a tourist destination for many.
Speaker 2: To further capitalize on this, the faces of four American
Speaker 2: presidents were carved in the face of a granite formation
Speaker 2: known to the Lakota people as six Grandfather's Mountain. When
Speaker 2: the monument was finished, this cliff was renamed Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty, the US Supreme Court ruled that the
Speaker 2: US had unlawfully taken control of the Black Hills and
Speaker 2: offered more than one hundred million dollars to the Sioux Nation,
Speaker 2: but the Sioux refused the money. To this day, they
Speaker 2: reject it and insist they want their land back.
Speaker 4: A little bit more.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at this side without the presidents, Like,
Speaker 2: look at George Washington's profile up there.
Speaker 13: It's just here.
Speaker 14: You up, get out, George.
Speaker 4: It's so it's so sterile.
Speaker 11: Also because you cut through and it's white compared to
Speaker 11: the red and everything. You could just tell, Wow, it's
Speaker 11: kind of like a permanent billboard for America. It's like
Speaker 11: you carved a billboard for America into the Hills.
Speaker 2: The Ingles family have a direct connection to the fate
Speaker 2: of the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore was completed in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one. By this point, Laura's younger sister, Carrie was
Speaker 2: married to a man named David N. Swansea, who was
Speaker 2: known as the person who named Mount Rushmore, and Carrie's
Speaker 2: step son Harold, helped carve it. But Laura's connections to
Speaker 2: the Black Hills goes back even further than that, to
Speaker 2: something called the Gordon Stockade. Yes, that's a stockade, right though,
Speaker 2: Oh oh my god, your destination is all the right.
Speaker 2: The Gordon Party was a private expedition that illegally ventured
Speaker 2: into the Black Hills in eighteen seventy four, looking for gold.
Speaker 2: The reason they did so is because a few months earlier,
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Colonel George Custer had been sent there to scout
Speaker 2: a good spot for a military post and reported back
Speaker 2: that there was lots of gold. The Gordon Party set
Speaker 2: out shortly thereafter, and once they reached their destination in
Speaker 2: October eighteen seventy four, built a stockade and settled in.
Speaker 4: For the winter.
Speaker 2: Hardcore Little House fans will recognize the Gordon stockade from
Speaker 2: the book These Happy Golden Years. When Laura's uncle Tom
Speaker 2: visits the Ingles family and desmet in the chapter titled Springtime,
Speaker 2: Laura comes home and finds a vaguely familiar man at
Speaker 2: the table. That man is Tom Kuiner, Ma's youngest brother,
Speaker 2: who Laura hasn't seen since she was a child. Uncle
Speaker 2: Tom tells the family of his experience as a member
Speaker 2: of the Gordon Party, when he was one of the
Speaker 2: quote first white men that ever laid eyes on the
Speaker 2: Black Hills. After surviving the winter, the Gordon Party was
Speaker 2: forcefully removed by the US cavalry for illegally settling on
Speaker 2: Native land, and when Uncle Tom gets to this part
Speaker 2: of the story, it gets a big reaction out of
Speaker 2: paw Paw was walking back and forth across the room.
Speaker 2: I'll be darned if I could have taken it, he exclaimed,
Speaker 2: Not without some kind of scrap. We couldn't fight the
Speaker 2: whole United States Army, Uncle Tom said sensibly. But I
Speaker 2: did hate to see that stockade go up and smoke,
Speaker 2: I know, Ma said, to this day, I think of
Speaker 2: the house we had to leave in Indian Territory, just
Speaker 2: when Charles got glass windows into it.
Speaker 4: As a kid.
Speaker 2: PA's anger in this scene is the only thing that
Speaker 2: stood out to me in a chapter that I was
Speaker 2: otherwise bored by. But as Ma points out, pause anger
Speaker 2: mirrors the outrage the Ingles felt at being removed from
Speaker 2: Indian Territory. The lesson in both these instances seems to
Speaker 2: be that white people have a right to land simply
Speaker 2: because they want it, and in the Black Hills, the
Speaker 2: history of this prioritization of white men and the decimation
Speaker 2: of Native people's land was impossible to miss.
Speaker 5: One west.
Speaker 2: Three miles after leaving the Black Hills, Emily and I
Speaker 2: continued on three hundred miles northwest to a spot that
Speaker 2: represents one of the most extreme versions of this erasure,
Speaker 2: The Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana.
Speaker 11: Little Bighorn Battlefield three miles.
Speaker 2: In June eighteen seventy six, the Seventh Cavalry, led by
Speaker 2: Custer was famously defeated by the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapahoe
Speaker 2: tribes led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of complicated reasons that led to the Battle
Speaker 2: of the Little Big Horn, including numerous treaties the government
Speaker 2: made about control of the Black Hills that were not honored,
Speaker 2: and we've included resources in the show notes for further
Speaker 2: reading on this. Even though the Lakota, and Cheyenne and
Speaker 2: arapa Hoe triumphed over Custer in the Battle of Greasy Grass,
Speaker 2: as it is known in Native American culture, it was
Speaker 2: in many ways the last stand of Native American independence
Speaker 2: in the West.
Speaker 4: In the aftermath of.
Speaker 2: The battle, most of the remaining Native American tribes were
Speaker 2: violently pushed onto reservations.
Speaker 4: Today, it's widely.
Speaker 2: Recognized that Custer's decision to ignore orders and go into
Speaker 2: battle was foolish and unnecessary. And yet, despite this failure,
Speaker 2: which resulted in the decimation of the Seventh Cavalry, for
Speaker 2: many decades Custer was still centered as the hero in
Speaker 2: this story. Until nineteen ninety one, the location of the
Speaker 2: battle was known as Custer Battlefield National Monument.
Speaker 9: It is wild, the Iron, Lost Cup, the pool, and
Speaker 9: yet this is still named Custer does It's still glorified.
Speaker 12: There's no way to spin this.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 7: It takes some amazing myth making to make this seem
Speaker 7: heroic in anyway, Not even Rose Wilderland.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like Rose level.
Speaker 7: Of yeah, rewriting history, the gas lighted Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument is located on
Speaker 2: the Crow Reservation. Every hour at the visitor center, one
Speaker 2: of the park rangers gives a talk. There is also
Speaker 2: a bus tour of the site run by the Crow Agency.
Speaker 5: My name Story Chevis, you guys tour guide today.
Speaker 2: The bus tour takes you right out into the fields
Speaker 2: where the battle took place and looking out over all
Speaker 2: the waving open grassland. It's not that hard to imagine
Speaker 2: yourself back in eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 10: After the right, we're passing the Little Big Porn River.
Speaker 10: This is the only place in the whole world you'll
Speaker 10: get to see a reenactment on the actual battle site.
Speaker 10: They have that every year on the anniversary you just
Speaker 10: basicedify Foople weekends. We'll also have seven Pobury reenactors who
Speaker 10: will spend about two weeks, you know, living exactly the
Speaker 10: way that those soldiers will have.
Speaker 13: Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Afterward, Emily and I stopped at the visitors center hoping
Speaker 2: to catch one of the park rangers talks. Since we'd arrived,
Speaker 2: we'd only encountered older, white male rangers, But when we
Speaker 2: got to the talk, we met Ranger Tanya Gardner, who
Speaker 2: was not what we were expecting in more ways than one.
Speaker 13: The battles the Little.
Speaker 15: Big Horn, Why did this battle take place?
Speaker 16: What events set up to this battle?
Speaker 17: Or I'd like to begin where I'd love to begin
Speaker 17: this in fourteen ninety two Colma South, the Ocean Blue
Speaker 17: here what this is up until eighteen sis.
Speaker 2: It was immediately clear that Ranger Tanya wasn't just going
Speaker 2: to tell us about this battle. She was going to
Speaker 2: tell us how this battle was just one episode in
Speaker 2: the century's long resistance of Native Americans against colonization.
Speaker 4: It's the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 18: There are legal documents being signed out here land deals
Speaker 18: in the form of what we're called treaties between the
Speaker 18: people who are here, and the United States government.
Speaker 2: When we got back to New York, we couldn't stop
Speaker 2: thinking about Ranger Tanya's talk, so we called her.
Speaker 18: I'm Tanya. My maiden name is plain Feather, and I'm
Speaker 18: my married name is Gardner, and I'm married.
Speaker 13: To a Cheyenne.
Speaker 18: I'm I'm from Lodgegras, Montana.
Speaker 4: Are you the only park ranger who is local or
Speaker 4: who is Native American?
Speaker 13: There?
Speaker 18: There's a few that work there, but not like the
Speaker 18: seasonal rangers there. I'm the only one, and there's been
Speaker 18: like I don't know how many countless seasons where I've
Speaker 18: been only female.
Speaker 2: It had felt to both Emily and I when we
Speaker 2: were at the site that Tanya was shouldering the enormous
Speaker 2: responsibility of giving context to an event that had been
Speaker 2: simplified to almost cartoonish proportions in American history, a history that,
Speaker 2: like pause outrage over being removed from quote Indian territory,
Speaker 2: centered the white experience as the only one of value.
Speaker 2: What had struck us most strongly about Tanya was that
Speaker 2: she'd immediately gone to the origins of the myth making
Speaker 2: behind both Custer and America.
Speaker 18: The event that led up to this battle I always
Speaker 18: start with, didn't start in eighteen seventy six. We're going
Speaker 18: to go all the way back to fourteen ninety two
Speaker 18: Columbus South the Ocean blue, and he discovers America and
Speaker 18: all the misconceptions that we have there with just that
Speaker 18: statement and not knowing and not having that right information
Speaker 18: in our history books. Where the way that they hold
Speaker 18: him up to this high you know, he did all
Speaker 18: these great things and he really didn't. That's where the
Speaker 18: seed of that stuff.
Speaker 4: I was curious whether Tanya received any sort of pushback
Speaker 4: when she did her talks. She told us the response
Speaker 4: very much shifts depending on the age of the visitors,
Speaker 4: and that younger age groups that have had access to
Speaker 4: more diverse cultural narratives have a much different take.
Speaker 18: It goes with different age groups, and I think that
Speaker 18: people that are my age, they come up and they're like, oh, this, yes,
Speaker 18: this was crap. You know this, I can't believe. You
Speaker 18: can't really tell you know what you really want to tell.
Speaker 4: Older generations, on the other hand, feel a much closer
Speaker 4: connection to Custer.
Speaker 18: You have a lot of baby boomers, and they're kind
Speaker 18: of like the last kind of old school I would
Speaker 18: call them that there's still in love with Custer. There's
Speaker 18: a tremendous amount of people out there that are custom Bucks.
Speaker 18: They think he was right and he was honorable. But
Speaker 18: we have to think back to that time when they
Speaker 18: didn't have all these different types of heroes, so you know,
Speaker 18: they looked to the types of things like.
Speaker 13: A war hero.
Speaker 2: This idea of needing a hero is where Custer overlapped
Speaker 2: directly with Laura. For me, Tanya's observations reminded me of
Speaker 2: something doctor w Reese had said when we talked to her.
Speaker 5: Part of what I was realizing when I left our
Speaker 5: reservation and went to graduate school was how ignorant people
Speaker 5: are about who Native people are.
Speaker 2: Doctor de Wie Reese is a scholar and educator who
Speaker 2: runs a website called American Indians in Children's Literature.
Speaker 5: And that became very clear at the University of Illinois
Speaker 5: because it had a mascot that was quote unquote an Indian.
Speaker 5: And when I got to Illinois and there was this mascot,
Speaker 5: and people would invite me to come to their civic
Speaker 5: organization or whatever it was, and they wanted me to dance,
Speaker 5: and they wanted me to story and I said, well,
Speaker 5: I'm not a dancer. I don't dance that way. We
Speaker 5: dance in a spiritual way at a certain time of
Speaker 5: the year in a certain place, and so no, I
Speaker 5: won't dance. And they said, well can you? Can you
Speaker 5: tell stories? And I said no, I'm not a storyteller either.
Speaker 5: I am a professor. I want to be a professor.
Speaker 5: Nobody wanted that. They wanted someone to perform Indians for them,
Speaker 5: and I thought, what is going on? These are in theory,
Speaker 5: very very smart people in this area.
Speaker 13: But it was.
Speaker 5: It was so it spoke to the power of the mascot.
Speaker 4: A mascot and how do we wield mascots?
Speaker 2: Anyone who's been to a sports game knows is with
Speaker 2: bluntness and little space for anyone else. The Dictionary definition
Speaker 2: of a mascot is quote a person, animal, or object
Speaker 2: that is believed to bring good luck, or one that
Speaker 2: represents an organization. A mascot is an image we rally
Speaker 2: behind that represents a way of being and one that
Speaker 2: gives us identity.
Speaker 4: This idea of mascots was very.
Speaker 2: Much on our mind when Emily and I went to
Speaker 2: the Laura Ingalls House in Mansfield, Missouri, last September to
Speaker 2: attend Wilder Days. We're much like the pageants people loved
Speaker 2: dressing up as Laura.
Speaker 4: Plenty of girls in prairie outfits, but there's a handful
Speaker 4: of men, I would say, in.
Speaker 19: Their fifties and sixties, wearing some guys wearing suspenders.
Speaker 17: In Yah.
Speaker 2: Of all the ways I'd considered Laura, it was only
Speaker 2: after this conversation with Doctor Reese and our trips out
Speaker 2: west and down South, but I began to think of
Speaker 2: her as a mascot for many things, as a representative
Speaker 2: of some sort of ideal. A girl with enormous agency,
Speaker 2: frontier woman who lived with and against nature, a woman
Speaker 2: who had it ventures and wrote them down. She was
Speaker 2: an image I hoisted up as proof of identity, an
Speaker 2: evidence of what was possible. I didn't put her on
Speaker 2: a T shirt or a baseball cap, but I stabled
Speaker 2: a whole lot of yarn braids to my hats. Laura
Speaker 2: as the mascot for the team I wanted to be
Speaker 2: on felt a lot closer to my own experience. But
Speaker 2: to understand who I was willing to leave behind in
Speaker 2: order to be a member of this team. What this
Speaker 2: mascot of Laura's pioneer girlhood erased was something I had
Speaker 2: to come to terms with.
Speaker 7: I grew up completely obsessed with the Little House Books.
Speaker 4: It all starts with Laura Ingalls right, my.
Speaker 3: Little House Books for Christmas gifts, inscribed to me by
Speaker 3: my mother.
Speaker 13: I was six years old, and I loved those books.
Speaker 13: I still do.
Speaker 2: Considering Laura under the guys of a mascot felt like
Speaker 2: the missing piece and the larger Little House puzzle. Mascots
Speaker 2: are created by organizations. Many hands go into their making.
Speaker 4: Part of the magic of the Little House Books, and
Speaker 4: one of.
Speaker 2: The reasons people including me, have such passionate feelings about
Speaker 2: them is because they are so successful at creating intimacy.
Speaker 2: We're not reading about Laura, We're living with Laura, and
Speaker 2: yet we know this is not the case.
Speaker 4: The Little House Books.
Speaker 2: And their entire legacy were very carefully crafted by Laura,
Speaker 2: indefinitely by Rose, then to a lesser extent, by the
Speaker 2: book publishing industry. Then they were crafted again by Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Laura the writer may have just wanted to recounter life,
Speaker 2: but Laura Ingles, the character, very intentionally represents something larger.
Speaker 2: This raises an important question if Laura is a mascot
Speaker 2: for a team? What are the other teams and who
Speaker 2: was representing them? What stories about girls and women in
Speaker 2: this part of the country are we not telling. A
Speaker 2: few years ago I stumbled across a story about the
Speaker 2: Battle of the Little Big Horn. Included was in aside
Speaker 2: that the Cheyenne believed a Cheyenne woman named Buffalo calf
Speaker 2: Road Woman may have been the person who caused Custer's death.
Speaker 4: This astounded me.
Speaker 2: Why was this not a more well known fact, especially
Speaker 2: considering the cultural footprint of Custer. I asked Tanya if
Speaker 2: she knew about Buffalo calf Road Woman. It turns out
Speaker 2: Buffalo calf Road Woman is quite famous in Cheyenne history.
Speaker 18: She's also known for being part of the Battle of
Speaker 18: the Rosebud or she picks up her brother because the
Speaker 18: Chaya's called that the battle or the saved her brother.
Speaker 18: That's what they refer to the Battle of the Rosebuda, the.
Speaker 2: Battle of the Rosebud, or the battle where the girls
Speaker 2: saved her brothers, the Cheyenne referred it took place a
Speaker 2: week before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, during
Speaker 2: the battle when all hope seemed to be lost for
Speaker 2: the Cheyenne, Buffalo Calffrod Woman went out onto the battlefield
Speaker 2: by herself to save her fallen brother. This action rallied
Speaker 2: the Native American forces and they defeated the US cavalry
Speaker 2: led by George Crook. This is why the Cheyenne named
Speaker 2: the battle after her.
Speaker 18: That's where I shine the light on her is in
Speaker 18: the Battle of the Rosebud, because they actually named it
Speaker 18: after her.
Speaker 2: Whether or not it was Buffalo calff Road Woman who
Speaker 2: was responsible for Custer's death, maybe secondary to why we
Speaker 2: don't know who killed him. The Cheyenne passed down their
Speaker 2: history orally, not in written form, but after the Battle
Speaker 2: of the Little Big Horn, many participants went silent for
Speaker 2: fear of retribution. It was only after a century of
Speaker 2: self impost silence that the Cheyenne revealed Buffalo caff Road
Speaker 2: Woman's role in the battle.
Speaker 18: After the battle, the United States time is going to
Speaker 18: spread noxense, going after anyone that's not on the reservation.
Speaker 18: And then if they are on the reservation, they're still
Speaker 18: going to come after you. And anybody associated with Custer
Speaker 18: Battle that you know, that's what it's called back then,
Speaker 18: would be horribly persecuted. So they didn't talk about it.
Speaker 5: Nobody did.
Speaker 2: The story of Buffalo Caffrod woman has all the heroic
Speaker 2: elements of an epic American tale, far more than Custer,
Speaker 2: and yet she remains nearly anonymous in mainstream culture. Women
Speaker 2: not getting a fair shake from history is hardly new.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons so many of us, and I
Speaker 2: include myself here in the strongest terms, cling to Laura
Speaker 2: is that she is a strong female role model, and
Speaker 2: for most of history there have been very few of those.
Speaker 2: The devotion so many of us feel towards Laura is
Speaker 2: not surprising, but it becomes a concern when this sort
Speaker 2: of devotion takes up so much space that it doesn't
Speaker 2: leave room for other narratives.
Speaker 4: I mean, Emily, what is your take on how empty
Speaker 4: it is?
Speaker 12: It's very empty.
Speaker 7: We on the Wyoming side we were seeing like ruins
Speaker 7: of ranches or active ranches, and now there's absolutely nothing.
Speaker 2: This stretch of the country is notorious for modern day reasons,
Speaker 2: having nothing to do with Custer or the so called
Speaker 2: Old West.
Speaker 15: In late twenty nineteen, the Crow tribe declared a state
Speaker 15: of emergency. Tribal chairman aj not Afraid cited a list
Speaker 15: of issues, including the failure to address the murdered and
Speaker 15: missing women crisis.
Speaker 2: In a story published earlier this year tied to a
Speaker 2: docuseries called Murder and Bighorn about the epidemic, the Guardian
Speaker 2: reported quote, Montana has one of the worst missing or
Speaker 2: murdered rates for Indigenous women in the country. Driving back
Speaker 2: and forth on this road, I thought a lot about
Speaker 2: who is deemed worthy of a story, and this led
Speaker 2: me to consider even more how the story of Laura
Speaker 2: is wielded. What does Laura's appeal say about what we
Speaker 2: want to believe and who are we willing to leave
Speaker 2: out for that comfort Because to many people, Laura is
Speaker 2: very comforting.
Speaker 6: She fulfills these basic traits that we need, oh, you know,
Speaker 6: putting a baby to sleep, or reading somebody a book,
Speaker 6: or just you know, even though nothing about the books
Speaker 6: that actually happens, it is comforting.
Speaker 2: That's Lizzie Skernick, writer and children's literature professor at NYU.
Speaker 4: There's nothing comforting about like living in a mud hut.
Speaker 6: She's able to make everything comforting and cozy.
Speaker 5: And I think that is a fundamental desire of human beings.
Speaker 2: I have read the Little House Books hundreds of times
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, the worst parts of the
Speaker 2: books only flagged to me as evidence that Ma was
Speaker 2: invested in Laura not enjoying herself, similar to how I
Speaker 2: sometimes felt about my own mother, and that Paw was exciting,
Speaker 2: which was similar to how I felt about my own
Speaker 2: father as a child. As a grown up, I recognize
Speaker 2: the racism in the books, and I also recognize that
Speaker 2: so many cultural things we loved growing up are very problematic.
Speaker 2: This is something that came up on our road trip
Speaker 2: a lot. On our second night in man Cato, after
Speaker 2: a long day of interviews, we just I had to
Speaker 2: order room service and camped out in front of the TV.
Speaker 4: Much to our delight, a childhood favorite of Joe.
Speaker 2: And Minds was showing sixteen Candles, a sleepover staple that
Speaker 2: neither of us had actually seen in years. It does
Speaker 2: not hold up, to put it mildly, but Joe especially
Speaker 2: had a strong reaction.
Speaker 16: I mean, I'm like almost ready to start a petition
Speaker 16: to make sixteen channels not being put out.
Speaker 7: Of the times.
Speaker 14: Wow, we need to put the mic out. Okay, what
Speaker 14: a one eighty Joe. I was so horrified by that movie.
Speaker 14: I do not want and I can actually see different
Speaker 14: themes in my own life, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 14: all right, you know whatever, you get black out drunk,
Speaker 14: and like, who knows what happens. I don't think that
Speaker 14: movie should be on television anymore.
Speaker 2: There is no getting around the fact that looking at
Speaker 2: some of the things that made us who we are
Speaker 2: can be painful. Even with all this knowledge, it remains
Speaker 2: impossible for me not to understand Laura as a source
Speaker 2: of good in my own life. What she gave me
Speaker 2: in terms of possibility, an example of how to be complicated,
Speaker 2: a girl who loves it venture and clothes, who loves problematics,
Speaker 2: sometimes damaging parents, and maybe most importantly, how to be
Speaker 2: a writer. I was able to love these things because
Speaker 2: the damaging parts of the book didn't feel like they
Speaker 2: were doing damage to me, and even if they were,
Speaker 2: how much I loved the rest of it made up
Speaker 2: for that. And then, during the recording of the Problem
Speaker 2: of Laura episode, I read out loud the parts of
Speaker 2: the books that Little House comes under fire for the most.
Speaker 2: As I said the words out loud, I was shocked
Speaker 2: to discover that I actually felt physically ill. She says
Speaker 2: to Pa quote Paw, get me that Little Indian Baby.
Speaker 2: I want it, I want it, she begged.
Speaker 13: Oh what if doing this.
Speaker 9: Episode makes me never read Little House again? My reading
Speaker 9: this out loud has actually been way more upsetting to
Speaker 9: me than the reread. And it was not easy for
Speaker 9: the producers in the room either.
Speaker 4: Pah, when I look at you, guy, when you're like
Speaker 4: this stressful to listen to this.
Speaker 2: There is, after all, a difference between reading and saying,
Speaker 2: between sliding over the parts with your eyes that are
Speaker 2: a problem and putting them out in the world with
Speaker 2: your own voice. And the saying out loud part was
Speaker 2: where it turns out the buck stopped for me.
Speaker 4: My god, this episode is really upsetting. It's so much
Speaker 4: different to say it out loud. Maybe that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Everyone should have to read these books out loud. I
Speaker 4: considered it.
Speaker 2: I realized I'd only read the books to myself all
Speaker 2: these years that I had been able to internalize Laura
Speaker 2: without much mediation. I immediately thought back to doctor Reese
Speaker 2: and her belief that The Little Housebook should be taken
Speaker 2: out of children's classrooms.
Speaker 5: Part of what was shocking to me as I tried
Speaker 5: to have conversations with people about the books is that
Speaker 5: I had asked them to consider that sentence the only
Speaker 5: good Indian is a dead Indian, and I'd asked them
Speaker 5: to think about the impact that line has on that
Speaker 5: Native child in the classroom, And I asked them, would
Speaker 5: you really do that? You know, would you really do that?
Speaker 5: And they say yes, I mean, without hesitation, it was yes,
Speaker 5: because that's the way it was. That's the way they
Speaker 5: thought back then, and had all kinds of rationalizations for that,
Speaker 5: and none of the rationalizations centered on the experience of
Speaker 5: that Native child. And that was really hard because part
Speaker 5: of what I think that we as a society think
Speaker 5: is that we send our kids to teachers in schools.
Speaker 5: I mean, we're giving them our children, and we trust
Speaker 5: in some way that they are not going to be
Speaker 5: hurt by their teachers and what happens in their clussures.
Speaker 2: What I was left with was this question, is the
Speaker 2: fact the Little House Books brought me glynnis a lot
Speaker 2: of joy enough to justify the violence they had the
Speaker 2: power to inflict on others. After the break, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk through how and where we think the Little
Speaker 2: House Books belong and also hear from listeners on whether
Speaker 2: they too are thinking about Laura and Little House. Differently,
Speaker 2: what would you say to me that I struggled to
Speaker 2: let go of my love for these books even as
Speaker 2: I recognize the harm that they do.
Speaker 5: I would tell you, and this is something that I
Speaker 5: actually do in my workshops, is that I share my
Speaker 5: own attachment to the Five Chinese Brothers. You know, I
Speaker 5: can like smell that book when I say the title,
Speaker 5: because it's one that I read, and what you know,
Speaker 5: in first grade I learned to read this is one
Speaker 5: of the books I read. I thought it was awesome.
Speaker 5: But then when someone asked me to reconsider the book
Speaker 5: and the images that they were in there, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 5: you're right, and I own that and I admit that,
Speaker 5: And so I talk about that and how it kind
Speaker 5: of stings, It kind of hurts, and you feel kind
Speaker 5: of stupid because, yeah, why didn't I see that before?
Speaker 5: But it does take a conversation to be able to
Speaker 5: see something and start the journey of letting go of
Speaker 5: a particular book.
Speaker 2: I decided the best people to have this conversation with
Speaker 2: were Joe and Emily, the two women who had come
Speaker 2: out on the road with me more than a year
Speaker 2: ago to try and figure out how I felt about Laura. So,
Speaker 2: guys were at the end of the Wilder podcast, which
Speaker 2: we started eighteen months ago.
Speaker 4: We have read all the.
Speaker 2: Books, We've talked to, all of the people, we have
Speaker 2: driven around the country, We've done hundreds of hours of interviews,
Speaker 2: and so I thought this would be a really good
Speaker 2: time for us all to sort of sit down in
Speaker 2: separate locations and sort of talk through what we've learned
Speaker 2: and if our thinking has changed.
Speaker 4: How does everyone feel?
Speaker 16: Well, Glynn, I think you're the first person that should
Speaker 16: answer that, because when we started this whole wild journey,
Speaker 16: you weren't sure exactly what you were going to find
Speaker 16: and whether after you've found whatever it was, you would
Speaker 16: still be able to love Laura in the same way.
Speaker 16: And after all of this, after this journey of epic proportions,
Speaker 16: literally literally, how do you feel now?
Speaker 2: I still I have such deep love for Laura the person,
Speaker 2: like the individual writer who sat down and wrote it.
Speaker 2: But I think coming to terms with the fact that
Speaker 2: these books are not just a story that came directly
Speaker 2: out of her head as she was experiencing it, and
Speaker 2: really understanding that these books were a production of more
Speaker 2: than a few people, some of them very unlikable, and
Speaker 2: Laura has very unlikable parts of her, and so I
Speaker 2: really sort of split my thinking between the person and
Speaker 2: the product.
Speaker 16: I really like what you just said about splitting your feelings,
Speaker 16: and I think that's a very modern way of looking
Speaker 16: at creative production at a brand. And that's what I
Speaker 16: think about a lot when I think about celebrities or
Speaker 16: when I think about influencers, And all right, can I
Speaker 16: enjoy this movie that has been made by a director
Speaker 16: who is terrible in real life? Can I enjoy Michael
Speaker 16: Jackson with my kids, knowing what I know about him
Speaker 16: as a human? And so I think that this is
Speaker 16: a bigger thing that so many of us scrapple with
Speaker 16: with art.
Speaker 13: Can we enjoy art.
Speaker 16: If we discover things we don't like about the human
Speaker 16: being behind it, because all human beings are flawed in
Speaker 16: different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the interesting thing in this case is I'm
Speaker 2: struggling less with Laura the individual. I recognize that she
Speaker 2: was complicated and had a lot of problems, but that's
Speaker 2: less difficult for me to accept because that just feels
Speaker 2: like every human than her art, which I am struggling with.
Speaker 2: And part of what's so complicated about that that we've
Speaker 2: talked about is her art is so much about her.
Speaker 4: That speaks to.
Speaker 2: Something that has come up from a lot of listeners
Speaker 2: too when we criticize Laura, which is she was a
Speaker 2: person of her moment. She was writing what she knew
Speaker 2: at the time, and when I think about the individual,
Speaker 2: I can recognize there's some truth to that, although lots
Speaker 2: of people in the nineteenth century knew that Indian removal
Speaker 2: was bad, and we have to hold her to today's
Speaker 2: standards because she exists as a relevant thing in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. So I keep thinking of it like you're
Speaker 2: allowed to look at an antique car and say, well,
Speaker 2: it was built in nineteen twenty three, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it doesn't have to pass inspection to be allowed
Speaker 2: on the road. And I feel like what we've been
Speaker 2: doing with Laura is holding her up to twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three inspection to say should you still be on the road.
Speaker 4: Essentially, you know, do you pass this inspection? And if
Speaker 4: you don't, what do we do about that.
Speaker 2: I am so aware of all the good she brought
Speaker 2: to my life, but my life as a little white
Speaker 2: girl in suburban Toronto with highly educated parents and a
Speaker 2: wealth of resources is not everyone's life. I might love
Speaker 2: my nineteen twenty three car, but is it dangerous to
Speaker 2: be on the road like it's it's yeah.
Speaker 13: I don't think you shouldn't drive.
Speaker 4: That car right right?
Speaker 2: It has to be updated. And I also think, like
Speaker 2: the flip side of that is, I can't unlove something
Speaker 2: that had a positive effect on me to the degree
Speaker 2: she did. I can only recognize that I loved her
Speaker 2: so much. I was willing to gloss over and not
Speaker 2: be bothered by all the problems. But I still you know,
Speaker 2: even reading parts of the book. I mean, parts of
Speaker 2: them are really upsetting, as we heard, but it's just
Speaker 2: like there is a magic to them. I get why
Speaker 2: I love them. I still love them.
Speaker 13: I think you're allowed to still love them.
Speaker 16: I think you're allowed to still love them and to
Speaker 16: also think critically about them and to talk critically about them.
Speaker 4: How do you guys feel, Joe, you came to this
Speaker 4: with very little knowledge, so you have the coldest eye
Speaker 4: on this of the three of us.
Speaker 16: You know, what I really enjoyed during this journey was
Speaker 16: experiencing the magic. It was actually really fun to experience
Speaker 16: the magic through your eyes, but as an outsider, I
Speaker 16: think the problems were always just so so clear to
Speaker 16: me with the TV show with the books. But all
Speaker 16: of that said, I don't think that they shouldn't be
Speaker 16: read anymore. I don't think they should be banned. I
Speaker 16: don't think they should be taken off library shelves. I
Speaker 16: do think that they should be approached with critical discussion
Speaker 16: and a critical eye. But I also think there's a
Speaker 16: lot of good in there that it would be a
Speaker 16: real shame to remove.
Speaker 13: From the world.
Speaker 4: Emily, what do you think You knew the show, You
Speaker 4: were familiar with the books, but you love the show,
Speaker 4: so yeah, yeah, I was a show lover.
Speaker 7: But I've really done the crash course in all aspects
Speaker 7: of Laura. In the past year. I reread all of
Speaker 7: the books. We took the two week long and then
Speaker 7: extra weekend road trip to all the sites, and to
Speaker 7: keep going with your car passing inspection metaphor, I think
Speaker 7: you have to make sure that everything is up to
Speaker 7: your standards. But then it's so important to go out
Speaker 7: there and get on the road because if we had
Speaker 7: made this all just in a vacuum in the studio,
Speaker 7: like it would be a completely different show. I think
Speaker 7: like half the insights we got to we wouldn't have
Speaker 7: even thought of because seeing how Laura landed in every
Speaker 7: specific place, from like seeing her embraced at Laura's sites
Speaker 7: like Walnack Grove and De Smet, but then going out
Speaker 7: to Custer and being in the middle of Native reservations
Speaker 7: and understanding how this lands differently with different audiences. Putting
Speaker 7: yourself in the shoes of people who are not white
Speaker 7: and who have been harmed by this narrative definitely has
Speaker 7: made me come to the conclusion that I don't think
Speaker 7: these should be taught in anything besides a higher level
Speaker 7: literature class or history class. I don't think they should
Speaker 7: be taught to young kids in classrooms. I think they
Speaker 7: can still be read. I really hope that one day
Speaker 7: there will be additions for children to understand all of
Speaker 7: the context, so that that's what parents can read to
Speaker 7: their children. But so, yeah, I don't think they should
Speaker 7: be banned, but I do think we should filter how
Speaker 7: they're understood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for me, the more painful conclusion I've
Speaker 2: come to. I've given this book set to every friend
Speaker 2: that's had a child. It was my go to you know,
Speaker 2: baby gift for a long time, and I wouldn't do
Speaker 2: that anymore. It's too violent. In in perfect world, how
Speaker 2: I'd like to see these books package because I don't
Speaker 2: think they should be taken off shelves. I think we're
Speaker 2: we're seeing books being taken off shelves and I can't
Speaker 2: support that at all.
Speaker 4: But I think the books need to be packaged.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the Disney movies now, which
Speaker 2: come when you start watching an old Disney movie, they
Speaker 2: come with this It's almost like a content warning of like,
Speaker 2: what you're about to watch is really problematic, and we
Speaker 2: recognize that. I think the books themselves need to be
Speaker 2: packaged with enormous context of who were the Native Americans
Speaker 2: that Laura watched leave quote unquote Indian Territory and what
Speaker 2: is their story? And it needs to be in the
Speaker 2: books in a way that makes it just as engaging
Speaker 2: as what you're reading. So I think it should be
Speaker 2: included in every one of these box sets. But I
Speaker 2: also think the largest solution to this is that, and
Speaker 2: this is already happening. We know from talking to Lizzie's
Speaker 2: college classes, the spotlight needs to be moved away from Laura, right,
Speaker 2: like Laura shouldn't occupy this much space in children's classrooms
Speaker 2: or in children's literature.
Speaker 4: There needs to be so much more space for the
Speaker 4: other stories.
Speaker 2: And I think you know, Shena, one of our other
Speaker 2: producers asked me earlier if I had the choice of
Speaker 2: giving up Laura and substituting her with someone who is
Speaker 2: less of a problem. And I think it brings me
Speaker 2: joy right now to know that I can give other
Speaker 2: books to kids with better representation, like I can let go.
Speaker 2: That's what I think I meant at the beginning of
Speaker 2: this when I say, you know, when you love something,
Speaker 2: you have to let it go.
Speaker 4: I can still love her.
Speaker 2: Eight year old Glynnis loves her, but I can find
Speaker 2: other things to give to other kids, and hopefully they
Speaker 2: experience that degree of joy with stories that are less.
Speaker 4: Violent and less capable of harm.
Speaker 2: I guess I want kids to feel the degree of
Speaker 2: joy and passion I felt, but about better in different stories,
Speaker 2: and so then that becomes, you know, The challenge I think,
Speaker 2: certainly for those of us devoted enough to Little House,
Speaker 2: is to invest in finding what those others stories are
Speaker 2: and providing those stories. I don't have to be giving
Speaker 2: Little House out to anyone. I can just have my
Speaker 2: Little House memory and don't need to pass it on,
Speaker 2: I guess is my end result of this, which sort
Speaker 2: of makes me a little sad, But it makes me
Speaker 2: not sad too, because I think, oh, there's other stuff there.
Speaker 2: There's other stuff out there, and there's other joys for
Speaker 2: kids to have that I just want them to have
Speaker 2: the joy.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be about the same story I had.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think one of the things that really
Speaker 7: did change my mind about Little House, and I think
Speaker 7: this is true for a lot of our listeners too,
Speaker 7: is when we started to talk about Rose and all
Speaker 7: of the ways that she was involved in writing and
Speaker 7: editing the books. And there was one really key fact
Speaker 7: about our favorite line now is now it can never
Speaker 7: be a long time ago, which closes the end of
Speaker 7: the first book, and it's that a lot of scholars,
Speaker 7: like Caroline Fraser particularly, think that Rose might have written
Speaker 7: that line.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that? I mean, as a kid,
Speaker 4: Rose would have devastated me. As a grown up, I
Speaker 4: just recognized all the things Joe and I talked about
Speaker 4: about having a great editor and complicated relationships.
Speaker 2: So knowing Rose came up with that line. At this point,
Speaker 2: I just think I have mainlined Rose in a way
Speaker 2: that I this is. You know, when I talk about
Speaker 2: inhaling these books, I thought I was mainlining Laura.
Speaker 4: I was mainlining white a lot of Rose.
Speaker 2: And of course Rose is responsible for the line that
Speaker 2: sums up the entire book.
Speaker 4: She enabled Laura to be a genius, and that is.
Speaker 2: Extraordinary, and it might be that she articulated a truth
Speaker 2: about Laura better than Laura did. So it kind of,
Speaker 2: to be quite honest with you, it feels sort of
Speaker 2: perfect that a woman who refused to be associated as
Speaker 2: a writer of the book, who tried to undermine her
Speaker 2: mother at every turn, is also responsible for the truest
Speaker 2: line in the entire series.
Speaker 4: So it's like, that's a perfect distillation of this entire series.
Speaker 7: To be it is the perfect essence of I like
Speaker 7: what you said, that was already in Laura's work, and
Speaker 7: then Rose just was able to package the essence of it.
Speaker 4: There's no Laura, there's Rose and Laura.
Speaker 2: So in my DNA, when I talk about Laura's in
Speaker 2: my DNA, like Rose is in there too.
Speaker 7: Great Should we move on to listener comments.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's been so interesting to read all the comments
Speaker 2: and reviews from people, and it feels like they fall
Speaker 2: into one of two camps of criticism, which is either
Speaker 2: I still love Laura too much or we're being far
Speaker 2: too critical of Laura. But I'm really interested to know,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone who sent in their voice memos, and
Speaker 2: we're so grateful for everyone who did, whether they have
Speaker 2: been experiencing a similar struggle to what I've been going
Speaker 2: through over the last year, and whether there's an overlap
Speaker 2: in their respect this with mine.
Speaker 17: Hi.
Speaker 13: My name is Karen.
Speaker 20: I am a black female who grew up in the
Speaker 20: seventies and loved the Little House books, reading Little Town
Speaker 20: on the Prairie and The Menstrual Show. When I was
Speaker 20: a child, I always felt uncomfortable, but back then I
Speaker 20: didn't have language for what was happening to me. But
Speaker 20: reading Prairie Fires and listening to this podcast, I just
Speaker 20: see the racism within those books and am very torn
Speaker 20: about how I feel about them now High Wilder Podcast.
Speaker 4: My name is Maddie.
Speaker 21: I was raised in a very fundamentalist homeschooling community, religious
Speaker 21: homeschooling community, and it's interesting as y'all were talking about
Speaker 21: kind of these like libertarian ideals going over your head
Speaker 21: as a child.
Speaker 13: While I was reading them as a child, the.
Speaker 21: Adults in my life who were encouraging me to read
Speaker 21: these were drawing them my attention to them and using
Speaker 21: it as an education like they are being forced out
Speaker 21: of Indian territory because big government is bad, that kind
Speaker 21: of thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 13: I still have family in these communities.
Speaker 4: I am not a part of it anymore.
Speaker 21: But I talked to my nieces who are being homeschooled
Speaker 21: in that community, and you know, talk to them a
Speaker 21: little bit about their experience with the book, and they
Speaker 21: said that it's still going on, that's still kind of
Speaker 21: the message being attached with the books. I think that
Speaker 21: it just adds a layer of complication on how we
Speaker 21: should be approaching these books with children. I don't know
Speaker 21: if I'll read them to mine, honestly, because I don't
Speaker 21: know if I would want that propaganda shared with them
Speaker 21: if they're not old enough to comprehend it.
Speaker 22: My name is Caitlin. I was born into a family
Speaker 22: that or the Little House series. Most of my ancestors
Speaker 22: lived in eastern South Dakota at the same time she did.
Speaker 22: People today talk about how important representation is to kids,
Speaker 22: and I agree. I think that's why I adored Laura
Speaker 22: so much. There aren't many famous people who come out
Speaker 22: of South Dakota, but she was. She made me proud
Speaker 22: of who I was and where I lived. She was me,
Speaker 22: and if she could do great things, so could I.
Speaker 22: Modern South Dakota can be like the one Laura lived in,
Speaker 22: but can also be much different. A lot of your
Speaker 22: podcast has discussed the return to the prairie esthetic, but
Speaker 22: the prairies are emptying because of rural flight. There is
Speaker 22: some sense of community, but it's mostly reserved for those
Speaker 22: with the right last name. Outsiders are not very welcome.
Speaker 22: So my opinion on Laura has changed with the times
Speaker 22: and especially with this podcast. But I still want to
Speaker 22: read these books to my kids someday because our ancestors
Speaker 22: lived like Laura, and I feel it's important to teach
Speaker 22: my future children about their past. But I feel that
Speaker 22: I now have a more educated and mature view of
Speaker 22: the books and now how to use it as an
Speaker 22: educational tool rather than a propaganda tool.
Speaker 3: Hello, my son is getting married soon and his bride
Speaker 3: is Indigenous, and I imagined reading these things to my
Speaker 3: future grandchildren who would be indigenous, and it was pretty
Speaker 3: horrifying to see how it might be seen through their eyes.
Speaker 3: Whereas before, when somebody would bring it up, I would think, well,
Speaker 3: you can't apply modern sensibilities to the past.
Speaker 13: People lived in their times.
Speaker 3: There are things that our grandchildren will be horrified by
Speaker 3: that we do every day without thought. But I don't
Speaker 3: think it's appropriate for children anymore, and that sads me immensely.
Speaker 1: I'm someone who loves the Little House Books and I've
Speaker 1: written about them. I've thought of myself as pretty clear
Speaker 1: eyed about these issues in the books, and I figured
Speaker 1: I'd just done all that reconciliation work. So I have
Speaker 1: to say I really was not prepared for episode seven
Speaker 1: to hit me the way it did, you know, with
Speaker 1: the college class and just hearing how the Little Housebooks
Speaker 1: how they look to younger generations.
Speaker 13: That was a little rough. But also I get it.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who hold onto the
Speaker 1: books a certain way really try everything to avoid those feelings.
Speaker 1: And I get that too, But I'm thinking now that
Speaker 1: the more you let yourself just have those feelings, the
Speaker 1: more you realize how little it really costs you to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the other perspectives you know and just give them
Speaker 1: spacing your head. Okay, So, I guess here's a metaphor.
Speaker 1: I actually made a pigs bladder balloon, and anyone who
Speaker 1: who has done that knows how horrifying it is in
Speaker 1: real life. I mean like it looks like something like
Speaker 1: a serial killer would play with. But you can still
Speaker 1: hold that idea you had when you were a kid
Speaker 1: of you know, this pig ladder being just a fun
Speaker 1: balloon that is inside a pig, like a cracker Jack prize,
Speaker 1: and you can let that exist alongside the reality that
Speaker 1: it looks disgusting.
Speaker 2: What's so interesting about all this listener feedback is that
Speaker 2: we all seem to be struggling with similar things, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, further evidence that it's hard to interrogate
Speaker 2: the things you loved as a kid because it's so
Speaker 2: it runs so deep and it can be painful. So
Speaker 2: many of us are in the same place of wanting
Speaker 2: to do so and struggling to do so, and you know,
Speaker 2: coming up with similar answers. Once again, Little House is
Speaker 2: the zeitgeist of of reckoning with childhood love.
Speaker 13: Once again. It's complicated.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, Glennis, maybe one of the final questions I
Speaker 7: have for you is how do you think about yourself differently?
Speaker 7: Or what did you learn about yourself making this entire show.
Speaker 2: I mean, really understanding the degree to which I allowed
Speaker 2: things to be acceptable simply because I was so.
Speaker 4: Relieved to see a.
Speaker 2: Version of how I was in the world in a
Speaker 2: character is upsetting and really makes you consider. I don't
Speaker 2: know if selfishness is the right word, but all the
Speaker 2: things we let pass by because of our own enjoyment
Speaker 2: and enjoy and then subsequently flipping that and trying to
Speaker 2: understand not just the pain of not seeing a version
Speaker 2: of yourself in the world, but the pain of seeing
Speaker 2: a terrible version of yourself in the world, which is
Speaker 2: what happens in these books to not people and in
Speaker 2: so much of the narratives we have, and thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, just what I was willing to tolerate for
Speaker 2: my own pleasure into some degree survival.
Speaker 4: Is something I continue to think about. But I also
Speaker 4: think about this.
Speaker 2: I lived in the Little House Books for most of
Speaker 2: my childhood, and then the second I could, I stepped
Speaker 2: through the map on my parents' family room floor.
Speaker 18: You can see Lake.
Speaker 2: Preston, and then right to the left of that is
Speaker 2: to Smith and attempted to recreate what I had learned
Speaker 2: from Laura. I wrote, I traveled, I had and continue
Speaker 2: to have adventures, and I have a deep belief in
Speaker 2: the value of even the smallest parts of these stories.
Speaker 2: I took to heart some of the messages I found
Speaker 2: in Little House about honesty, bravery, adventure, and then we
Speaker 2: applied it to the person who gave it to me
Speaker 2: in the first place. And you've been listening to us
Speaker 2: do that. Thank you for coming along for the ride.
Speaker 2: Laura was a complicated, resilient, fascinating person, and it's been
Speaker 2: strangely wonderful to discover and accept that she is a problem.
Speaker 4: You want to hold on to her. You have to
Speaker 4: hold onto that too, and then keep going.
Speaker 2: There are other stories, and there are other nails, and
Speaker 2: it might be time for this to be a very
Speaker 2: long time ago.
Speaker 22: Let's just maybe think of it.
Speaker 13: Okay, I don't actually know where her grave is, but
Speaker 13: how big is this grape song? It's just that for
Speaker 13: the ones that look flowered, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 12: Wilder graves that way. It says it over there, oh here?
Speaker 19: Sure, though, I still go through the graveyard behind my
Speaker 19: house and try and find people who were born in.
Speaker 4: Eighteen sixty seven, because they were born and the same.
Speaker 23: Year Laura was yeah, yeah, Wilder, it's just a big stone,
Speaker 23: that says Wilder.
Speaker 12: Oh, here we go, they have more. Okay, that was
Speaker 12: the backside. Apparently ninety is a solid a yeah for
Speaker 12: what Laura ingles and.
Speaker 13: I mean months was ninety two.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 12: It's like everything in.
Speaker 23: Those books they could they were so close to death
Speaker 23: so many times, but she made it.
Speaker 12: She made it right here.
Speaker 19: I have to say I have no emotional connection to
Speaker 19: people's graves, and because I grew up behind your graveyard
Speaker 19: your people are buried does not have resonance for me
Speaker 19: where they lived.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, going to dismess.
Speaker 13: Is so much more emotional.
Speaker 4: Or listening to pause fiddle and visiting a grave.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 12: Isn't that kind of crazy that we're standing on top
Speaker 12: of her them.
Speaker 19: We're not sitting on top We're standing on top of
Speaker 19: her remains.
Speaker 4: This whole entire podcast is.
Speaker 13: Standing on top of her right.
Speaker 2: Wilder is written and hosted by me Glennis McNichol. Our
Speaker 2: story editors are Emily Meronoff and Joe Piazza. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Emily Meronoff. Our producers are Mary Do, She
Speaker 2: Knows Zaki and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.
Speaker 2: Production help from Asavarey Sharma, sound design and mixing by
Speaker 2: Amanda Rose Smith. Our amazing theme song and additional music
Speaker 2: was composed by Alice McCoy. We are executive produced by
Speaker 2: Joe Piazza, Nikki Aetore, Ali Perry and Me. Final special
Speaker 2: thanks to Ranger Tanya Gardner, Heatherley McFarlane and Pauline Facon
Speaker 2: from Bonzen Studio in Paris, Laura Ingles Wilder Home Association
Speaker 2: for the recording of Laura's voice Upsalquate tours at the
Speaker 2: Little Big Horn Battlefilip National Monument, Doctor DeBie Reese and
Speaker 2: Professor Lizzie Skernick, and every one of you who sent
Speaker 2: in your thoughts and feedback. As always, please see our
Speaker 2: show notes for further reading and links for the subjects
Speaker 2: we discussed in this episode.
Speaker 4: That's it for Wilder. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: We're going to keep posting on Instagram and TikTok, so
Speaker 2: keep an eye out. There may be more bonus content
Speaker 2: and news.
Speaker 13: Spre