Native Voices

Book Club

Native Voices is a book club celebrating and learning from the lives and voices of Native American Authors and Poets. The goal of Native Voices is to help educators see Native American cultures accurately, to question established narratives and respectfully integrate culturally responsive teaching.

Dr. Anton Treuer

Anton Treuer (pronounced troy-er) is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and author of many books. He is building an Ojibwe teacher training program at Bemidji State University and his equity, education, and cultural work has put him on a path of service around the nation and the world.

Presentation Expertise

Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask

Racial Equity & Cultural Humility

Strategies for Student Success

Tribal Sovereignty & History

Ojibwe Language & Culture

Background

B.A. Princeton University

M.A. & Ph.D. University of Minnesota

40+ prestigious awards & fellowships, including

•American Philosophical Society

•National Endowment for the Humanities

•National Science Foundation

•First Nations Development Institute

•Bush Foundation

•John Simon Guggenheim Foundation

Deborah Taffa

Deborah Taffa’s memoir, Whiskey Tender, a 2024 National Book Award finalist in Nonfiction, she is also a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Prose, and her book has been named to best lists at Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, Elle, and Esquire Magazines. With praise from the The New Yorker, The NY Times, Zibby Mag, San Fran Chronicle, Publisher’s Weekly, Electric Lit, as well as an Amazon Editor’s Best Choice Book….and more recently the LAPS Native Voice book club.

Deborah received her MFA in creative nonfiction writing in Iowa City. A citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, she is the director of the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Kwatsaan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.

Ms. Taffa reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.

Session 3 Dec 6 - Rough Press Release Pass.mp4

“I want them to know the difficult truth of our country's history,....

You really want to choose the text that you use carefully and you really want to think about what’s age appropriate and you never want to call out Indigenous students to speak - don’t put them on the spot, like my teacher did. These kids need time to process. I will say that I have a very firm strong belief that the nature of education is a wounding. To become educated, is to be wounded. There’s no way to separate the two things, for all of us. There is not a single person in this room that learning history, as it has actually happened, should not wound you. It's wounding to all of us - we’re in this together. Our kids deserve to think that they could have a bright future.”

Deborah Taffa

Mrs. Taffa met with approximately 60 students from Ms. Batha and Ms. Mackey, Southwest Narratives classes in the Speech theater.

Deborah Taffa signing Whiskey Tender for Native Voices Book Club members

Mrs. Taffa met with members of the Los Alamos High School and Los Alamos Middle School Native American students in the LAHS LIbrary. Ms. Taffa spoke about the importance of education and persevering. Afterwards Ms. Taffa had lunch with students.

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