About this item
Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. This companion book to the award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people's past, present, and future. Precise, lyrical writing presents topics including: forced assimilation (such as boarding schools) , land allotment and Native tribal reorganization, termination (the US government not recognizing tribes as nations) , Native urban relocation (from reservations) , self-determination (tribal self-empowerment) , Native civil rights, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) , religious freedom, economic development (including casino development) , Native language revival efforts, cultural persistence, and nationhood.
About the Author
Traci Sorell writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction for young people of all ages. Her debut nonfiction picture book We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, illustrated by Frané Lessac (Charlesbridge, 2018) , won an American Indian Youth Literature Award (AIYLA) - Picture Book Honor, a Sibert Honor, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Honor and an Orbis Pictus Honor. Other titles include: At the Mountain's Base, illustrated by Weshoyot Alvitre (Kokila, 2019) , an AIYLA - Picture Book Honor; Indian No More, co-authored with Charlene Willing McManis (Tu Books, 2019) , won the AIYLA Middle Grade category and 2020 Global Read Aloud for Upper Elementary; Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer, illustrated by Natasha Donovan (Millbrook, 2021) , an Orbis Pictus Honor; and, We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know, illustrated by Frané Lessac (Charlesbridge, 2021) . A former federal Indian law attorney and policy advocate, Sorell is a 2021-22 Tulsa Artist Fellow and Cherokee Nation citizen who lives on her tribe's reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. For more about Traci, all of her books and accompanying teachers' guides, visit www.tracisorell.com.
