book 20: Hopi Kachinas: The Complete Guide to Collecting Kachina Dolls by Barton Wright

I've often summarized my early education about Native Americans in this way: 
- My K-8 school taught that all Natives had been killed and it was a good thing because they were all evil sinners;
-  My high school taught that all Native Americans had been killed and it was a bad thing that white people should atone for;
- My college had Native students, which blew my sheltered mind!

When I was a kid my half-sister often sent me children's books, many of which refuted my K-8 school's judgement but instead treated Natives as a more spiritual race lost to the past. And this was by far my favorite Gumby episode: https://youtu.be/ij5LtI4JFsg?si=yZ6Yfo-TVCj_aoOM

Since my K-8 school also taught me that I was a horrible sinner and should be dead, I felt very drawn to all things "Native." I also just wanted to spend more time outdoors in general, but that was forbidden so stories about connections to plants and animals were as close as I could get. The Field Museum's sections on Natives were among my favorites (I didn't know until adulthood just how awful those exhibits were) and they had this book in their gift shop. I connected the Kachinsa in this book to that Gumby episode and desperately wanted to learn more. My mother said no, it was a book of devil worship. 

My mother took me to Zion National Park for the first time when I was 15 and my grandma had given me some extra money to buy myself something special there. I bought this book! My mother was pissed but shut her mouth when Gramma was happy to see I had gotten this book with that money! 

Thanks to my college experience, I worked hard to unlearn everything I had been taught up until that point. Most of that effort has involved better media literacy: when you want to learn about a Native nation, seek information from members of that Native nation (duh!). 
This isn't a good book. There've been a few books in my personal library that I tried rereading and got rid of because they aren't as good as I remember. But I think I'll keep this one because of how I got it; I was genuinely trying to learn from a reputable source, I just had exceptionally limited resources as a sheltered teenager 25 years ago. Reading this immediately after Ceremony was a bit of whiplash, these books might be on related topics published at the same time but they are a world apart .


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1966612.Hopi_Kachinas 

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