Laura Ingalls Wilder's name stripped from children's book award.....

[Little Star]

Laura Ingalls Wilder was on the brink of having an award named in her honor, from the Association for Library Service to Children, when in 1952 a reader complained to the publisher of “Little House on the Prairie” about what the reader found to be a deeply offensive statement about Native Americans.

The reader pointed specifically to the book’s opening chapter, “Going West.” The 1935 tale of a pioneering family seeking unvarnished, unoccupied land opens with a character named Pa, modeled after Wilder’s own father, who tells of his desire to go “where the wild animals lived without being afraid.” Where “the land was level, and there were no trees.”

And where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/06/25/laura-ingalls-wilders-name-stripped-from-childrens-book-award-over-little-house-depictions-of-native-americans/?utm_term=.3245769653ba

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. I don't have an issue with this. "Products of their time" shouldn't be held up as examples for the

present.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. Nor do I. I loved the books as a little girl, as did my daughter.

Now my granddaughters and my great granddaughter are enjoying the books as well.

This make no more sense to me than the controversy over "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" because of the use of the n-word.

These could be turned into a teaching moment.

[JI7]

2. While i don't have strong feelings about naming of ther award itself

I think it's more important to consider the times and see how it was for natives and others. And that we should make sure it doesn't happen.

After history of family separations of native Americans and black slaves and turning away jewish refugees and so many other things it should be in our policies and actions that should show we see that was wrong.

So my biggest problem is focusing more on something lije this while not really changing when it comes to our actions.

[Ilsa]

3. The only problem I have with LIW is her and her daughter pushing

Libertarian bullshit, railing against government and Keynesian economics.

[moriah]

5. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think study guides for such books that give the context...

... might be better. Talk about how they were the Little Squatters on the Prairie and Indian removal policies, how Europeans saw Natives as savages, etc. How even the time members of a tribe showed up and took cornmeal and tobacco (something Wilder herself doesn't remember, but was told by her sister and mother) as rent for squatting in their land, they didn't hurt women and children. Even perhaps the irony of the Natives taking plants whites had been introduced to by Native Americans.

Should we throw out To Kill a Mockingbird because it had certain language? Or would a study guide showing conviction rates for black men for "distressing a white woman", etc., be a better solution?

But I am weird. I think there are many teachable moments, and in the Wilder books a study guide written by a Native researcher would be awesome. Sadly, if trying to forget ancestors were bigoted and prejudiced worked, we wouldn't have the resurgence of it we're seeing now.

[Mariana]

8. Maybe you misread. The books aren't being banned.

No one is saying they shouldn't be read or studied. That's not what the OP is about at all.

[aka-chmeee]

6. It's so much easier to tear down and change the past

than it is to influence the future.

[Snotcicles]

7. this