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JUV
PJF11.16HOB
BEARSTONE
Will Hobbs
AVON, NY,NY 1991
Pages: 154
Grades: 6+
Rating:
Good
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Cloyd, a fourteen year old Ute/Navajo boy, has
been taken away from his grandmother to an Indian youth home for
troubled teens. During the summer "outing" program he
finds he has a home with an elderly white widowed man named Walter Landis
who has dreams of striking it rich in his gold mine in the Colorado
Mountains. Through trial and error the two find that they need each
other and Cloyd steps up to the challenge of accepting the teachings of
Walter, his new father figure.
Well written and filled with adventure, one might overlook the
stereotypical representation of Native families, and extremely
ethnocentric viewpoints perpetuating them. For years there has been
a belief in the United States that Native youth would be better off with
Non-Native guardians, which for some ethnocentric reason, are deemed with
a higher moral value than Natives. If for some reason Cloyd was not
thriving in the home of his Grandmother, the Indian Child Welfare Act
would have placed him in a relatives home, or with another Native family
before sending him to non-Natives to be "saved." The book
is captivating and well written, but why couldn't Walter Landis have been
a Native Elder that helped Cloyd rather than a White Gold miner?
Marlette
Grant-Jackson – ITEPP-CRC
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