Native American Literature of North Carolina
N C L R ONLINE
21
The impact of these two books to promote positive models of Native boyhood extends beyond the third graders and the UNCP students who were involved in these service-learning lessons with them, creating new sets of relationships through reading.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
ABOVE Detail from It’s Lumbee
Homecoming Y’all! bookcover
Whoz Ya People? and Locklear and Pacheco’s It’s Lumbee Homecoming, Y’all! are fulfilling a compelling community need for both Lumbee cultural expression and literacy education in Robeson County. Additionally, the fact that both Henry in Hunt’s book and Nakoma in Locklear and Pacheco’s book are eight-year-old Lumbee males is yet another intentional act of representation. Locklear explained that as professional educators, she and Pacheco gave a great deal of thought to what they observed as “a lack of American Indian male representation in any positive light, but also in terms of American Indian male literacy rates.” Therefore, they pondered “a way to build positive representation for American Indian males” and “spent a lot of time talking about character development.” The impact of these two books to promote positive models of Native boyhood extends beyond the third graders and the UNCP students who were involved in these service-learning lessons with them, creating new sets of relationships through reading. Ahelayus Oxouzidis (Kwakwaka’wakw), a student in my fall Intro to AIS class, felt that Whoz Ya People? “was a good choice for these third graders because it teaches some of the values as Native peoples we learn in class, [and] it also is a book made by one of their tribal members that speaks on their own nation[.] I love these kinds of books and I even recently bought a few just so I can read them and read them to my siblings.” In her reflection on teaching It’s Lumbee Homecoming, Y’all! with the third graders, Native Lit student Makaylie Jacobs (Lumbee) noticed that “All of the children, except for one, had been to Lumbee Homecoming. I think that this book made them feel seen.” She considered what having a book like It’s Lumbee Homecoming, Y’all! would have meant to her as a Lumbee third grader to “have had a book like this when I was younger.