The Indian Readers Series and illustrator Oscar Howe

With President Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment of long-time Native rights activist John Collier to the position of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Commissioner in 1933, Indian boarding schools underwent significant change. Students’ Native languages were no longer prohibited and traditional handcrafts were introduced into the curriculum. With these progressive changes, the need for bilingual course materials and printed information on traditional Native arts and crafts arose.

The BIA enhanced printing programs at three boarding schools: Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma; Phoenix Indian School in Arizona; and Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Boys were trained to become professional printers and, at the same time, their institution’s needs for printed curriculum materials were met. The Indian Readers Series, published by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1934 to 1948, helped fill the need for bilingual readers. Diné (Navajo) artist and author Gloria Emerson deems these readers “the earliest significant Indian curriculum work funded by the federal government that sanctioned Indian-ness” (Rebecca C. Benes, Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children’s Editions. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2004, xiv).

White writer and educator Ann Nolan Clark was recruited by the BIA to adapt Native oral stories into English for the books, which featured illustrations by some of the best-known twentieth-century Native artists. Among them was Yanktonai/Dakota artist Oscar Howe. Trained at the Santa Fe Indian School, Howe conformed to the “flat-style” developed and promoted by non-Native teacher Dorothy Dunn early in his career. Dunn encouraged students to render their subjects in broad expanses of unmodulated color outlined in black. This technique resulted in a flattening of forms and conformed to a style of painting that Dunn deemed characteristic of Native North American painting. Later in his career, Howe deviated from such dictates, to develop his own style.

Against all odds, at a time when American artists—especially Native American artists—received little recognition in comparison to their European counterparts, Howe achieved an international reputation and influence. Widely regarded today as the grandfather of modern Native American painting and by contemporary Lakota/Dakota artists as “our Michelangelo,” he is widely recognized as a creator who challenged the status quo of mid-twentieth century Native art, dramatically influencing its direction and opening new opportunities for future generations of Native artists.

Adapted from Blackfeet oral legend regarding the origins of the horse and written in English and Lakota, Bringer of the Mystery Dog Sunka wan wakʻan agli kin he tells the story of Little Dog, an adolescent who encounters a “mystery dog” and a Pawnee warrior. Little Dog brings them back to his village, giving his people their first horse. Ann Nolan Clark asserts, “This remains one of the most distinguished of the bilingual picture books” (Clark in Rebecca C. Benes, Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children’s Editions. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2004, 95).

Links to other books in The Indian Readers Series

https://beach.emuseum.com/people/2424/andrew-standing-soldier/objects

Addition readers accessible through the online HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/)