All tagged native american

What Would Happen If Your Culture Was Disappeared and Erased?

Sara Stratton
historical fiction, being an author

Once upon a time, the Comanche people ruled the Texas Panhandle. Then they were disappeared and erased—saw both genocide and “cultural genocide.” Tammie’s Destiny, Volume 6 of my historical romance series, tells the coming-of-age story and forbidden love between an adolescent Comanche girl from a reservation in New Mexico and a young man from a Texas millionaire ranching family. The tale’s background is the generational hatred between Texans and Native Americans, seemingly making such a relationship impossible.

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Apologize & Recognizing the Wrong

Sara Stratton
historical fiction, being an author

It is inconceivable to me that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would do what California Gov. Gavin Newsom just did: issue by executive order an official apology on behalf of the citizens of California for a history of “violence, maltreatment and neglect” against Native Americans. (Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2019.) It is also inconceivable to me that the Amarillo Globe-News would do what the Los Angeles Times just did: publish an editorial challenging the City Council to likewise issue an apology for its complicity in the genocide to which Gov. Newsom refers in the text of his apology. (Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2019.)

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Become Wholly Indian: Lakota Woman

Sara Stratton

My novel, Little Alice Brings Solace to a Ghost Town, is about two little Indian girls: Little Alice and her sister, Harriet. They are mixed race: half white and half Native American. And their native half is also mixed: Navajo and Hopi. One theme of my story is the dilemma faced by these two sisters: whether to assimilate into the white culture of their beloved Aunt Julia, who has adopted them, or to remain true to their Indian cultures. Little Alice opts to become Christian, learn English and Spanish, and assimilate into the white culture of her aunt. Harriet opts to keep her native religion and language, and remain part of the Hopi culture of her mother. They are fortunate, in that their aunt does not try to force them to go one way or the other—assimilate or not.

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WRITING INSPIRATION FOR LITTLE ALICE LANDERGIN

Sara Stratton
love story

Suffering from “shell shock,” as they called PTSD in World War I, Billy had gone to New Mexico and married into a Navajo Indian tribe. In 1947, when he died in an automobile accident, he left two Indian granddaughters, Alice and Harriet Landergin. What if Julia went to Gallup next to the Navajo Reservation and brought the two little girls home, to raise as her own?

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