Children, teen and family sessions

Festival highlights Indigenous authors, Native issues

By Carey Sweet

For thousands of years, the Golden State has been home to many groups of Indigenous people, spanning diverse cultures. Today California has the largest Native American population of any state, with more than 100 federally recognized tribes.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the Indigenous population in California at that time numbered more than 630,000 people who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native, in a nearly 74% increase from the official figure reported a decade ago. In the Bay Area alone, calculations peg the number of Native Americans at more than 18,500.

Part of the increase comes from recent corrections by the census to track a population that has historically been undercounted, and efforts put forth by California Native Vote Project and the California Indian Manpower Consortium to improve community outreach programs.

Nativethemed programs have been a mainstay for years at the Bay Area Book Festival, fostering some of the festival’s most historically and culturally important conversations, noted Managing Director Samee Roberts. This year’s highlights include:

The return of the annual Graton Writing Project, featuring Native youth from Sonoma County who took part in a weeklong writing workshop during spring break, in partnership with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Guided by professional writing coaches, the students composed essays about the cultural, environmental, social, political and healthrelated changes they have experienced over the last two years and ways they feel empowered to continue enacting transformational change in their community as they reemerge from the pandemic.

On Saturday, May 7, at 1:15 p.m., the students will read their works in front of a live audience on the festival’s Word Power Stage, utilizing skills they enhanced by working with professional public speaking tutors. Then, later this spring, the essays will be published in a printed, bound anthology that the students help design.

A group of accomplished authors and publishers will gather for a panel discussing What's New in Native American Literature for Kids on Saturday at 2:45 p.m. Held on the Word Power Stage, the event will cover the wide range of Native American issues, stories and characters represented in contemporary books for young people.

Panelists include NSK Neustadt Laureate and New York Times bestselling author Cynthia L. Smith (“Sisters of the Neversea”), who also is the publisher of HarperCollins’s Heartdrum imprint that celebrates Native American creators.

Joining her are authors Jen Ferguson (“The Summer of Bitter and Sweet”), David A. Robertson (“On the Trapline,” “The Great Bear”) and picture book author Traci Sorell (“Powwow Day”), all of whom will also participate in additional readings and discussions — on everything from inclusive middlegrade retellings of classic novels to YA novels on growing up queer — throughout the weekend.

In one such event, Sorell, an acclaimed author and Cherokee Nation member, will read her justreleased “Powwow Day” picture book in the festival’s StoryTime Circle space on Sunday, May 8, at noon (recommended for ages 48).

In the uplifting tale, a young girl, River, is recovering from illness and is too weak to join in her annual favorite Grand Entry procession dance at her tribe’s powwow. Her heart breaks as she processes the isolation of her medical confinement.

As she looks on from the sidelines on dance day, though, she finds she feels grateful to be even a small part of this beloved tradition and absorbs the healing power of her community. Illustrations by Chickasaw Nation’s Madelyn Goodnight add extra depth in sharing the history of powwows and the message that they are open to both Native Americans and nonNative visitors.

For adults, two prominent authors on Native history and experience appear on a panel together: revered poet Deborah Miranda, whose bestselling classic memoir “Bad Indians” (soon to be released in a tenthanniversary edition) explores ancestry, survival, and the indelible cultural memory of Native California. William Bauer’s awardwinning “We Are the Land: A History of Native California” shows how, before there was a place called “California,” there were “the People and the Land.” That program takes place on Saturday, May 7, at 12:30 p.m. at the Residence Inn Berkeley.