This statement perfectly captures what the art depicts on the page below. Centered on the right and left are current Indigenous peoples. Older individuals are depicted on the right with serious expressions on their faces. Even though it’s implied through the dark tones of the story flowing from the older woman that these events are scary, the image appears safe as the individuals are soft, kind, and even cuddling a small child. The children on the right page are attentive, and the expressions look both interested and sad.

This image is a direct reference to the Indigenous tradition of preserving history through Oral History (“Preserving the Wisdom”). As the older woman tells the history of “the stolen land strangers in our own world” (Maillard and Martinez-Neal 13), the history plays out around the characters as dark splotches of paint, almost like shadows or ghosts. Within the context of the book and the topic of fry bread, it’s impossible to ignore that the haunting watercolored images that swirl throughout the page probably reference something known as The Long Walk. The Long Walk is when the United States government forced the Diné, Navajo people to leave their home and walk over 250 miles to an internment camp (The Long Walk | The Navajo Treaties) where they tried to forcefully assimilate the Diné people. Considering the historical context of The Long Walk, the shadowy figures in the top right corner reference this event with the movement of the images implying that they are walking somewhere. Also, it seems like some of the people in the shadows are turning into crows which are flying amongst the pages. In many different cultures, even in Diné culture, crows are a taboo creature as they scavenge for their food from dead animals (Crow | The Tony Hillerman Portal). In the case of this image, the crows could represent the death that befell the Diné at the hands of US soldiers (The Long Walk | The Navajo Treaties).

The horrors of the topic are depicted in the top left of the page in shadow. Readers see the seriousness of the topic through the poses of the individuals: they seem distressed because of the way their hands are raised. Also, the individuals in the middle of the shadows could represent either people being forced into an area or death. The People Shall Continue might have influenced how these traumatic experiences like The Long Walk were depicted in Fry Bread, as they are both show the horrors of genocide in shadow. Both Fry Bread and The People Shall Continue do not shy away from depicting the horrors Indigenious peoples faced at the hands of the US government, but they do so in a way that is not triggering or horrifying for the book's intended audience: children.

Word Count: 600

Works Cited:

Crow | The Tony Hillerman Portal. University of New Mexico Libraries, https://ehillerman.unm.edu/node/2837. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.

Maillard, Kevin Noble, and Juana Martinez-Neal. Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. Roaring Brook Press, 2019.

Ortiz, Simon, and Sharol Graves. The People Shall Continue. Children’s Book Press, 1977, 14-15.

Reese, Debbie. “American Indians in Children’s Literature (AICL): Milestones: Indigenous Peoples and Children’s Literature.” American Indians in Children’s Literature (AICL), 21 July 2021, https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2021/07/milestones-indigenous-peoples-and.html.

The Long Walk | The Navajo Treaties. Smithsonian Institute: National Museum of the American Indian, 2019, http://nmai.si.edu/nk360/navajo/long-walk/long-walk.cshtml.

“Preserving the Wisdom: The Navajo Oral History Project.” Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education, 7 Feb. 2014, https://tribalcollegejournal.org/preserving-wisdom-navajo-oral-history-project/.