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NEG
E78.C15S8
DIGGER
Jerry Stanley
Random House, NY, NY 1997
Pages: 103
Grades:
7 +
Rating:
VERY Harmful - Stereotypical
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| "In Digger, Jerry Stanley
chronicles the fate of California's native peoples and the terrible impact
on them of the mission settlement and the gold rush -- two events all too
frequently romanticized in histories of the American West." (taken
from the book jacket.)
With audacity and white privilege Mr. Stanley has completed the
extinction of the California Indians as well as mangled the history of
California Indians in his attempt to tell the "true"
story. After wincing at the title of the book (a term equivalent to
the "N" word for African Americans), shaking my head at the
inside jacket cover (using the extinction, destruction as the fate of the
Indians), laughing at the introduction (the image of Father Junipero
Serra's "Centaurus" look to the Indians hiding in the brush),
getting a little ticked by chapter 1's incessant repetition of theories as
facts with no mention of traditional oral histories for comparison, and
wondering how we went from being Ice Age barbarians, that killed off all
the Animals and paid no attention to the plant life, to becoming a
12,000 year settled successful people. The contradictions in this
book are tremendous, and the Native voice is non-existent. There is
so much wrong with this book that when you do find something that could be
useful in sparking a students interest in learning you can't trust the
information to be true.
Marlette
Grant-Jackson – ITEPP-CRC
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