Brave Bird at Wounded Knee: A Story of Protest on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

by Rachel Bithell, Eric Freeberg (Illustrator)

Overview

It’s 1973, and in Denver, Colorado, Patsy Antoine doesn’t usually give much thought to her relatives living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. After all, her classmates don’t even know she’s part Lakota. Then she learns the tiny town of Wounded Knee has been occupied. Now Patsy’s relatives are stuck amid the conflict between American Indian Movement activists and Oglala Lakota tribe members on the one side, and federal marshals and FBI agents on the other. When Patsy visits her relatives on Pine Ridge, she learns more about her heritage and the clashing perspectives on the Wounded Knee occupation. As she connects with her roots, Patsy must grapple with the complexities of the conflict and of being biracial.

It’s the storytellers that preserve a nation’s history. But what happens when some stories are silenced? The I Am America series features fictional stories based on important historical events about people whose voices have been excluded, lost, or forgotten over time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631636851
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	01/01/2023
Series:	I Am America Set 5
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	8 - 10 Years

About the Author

Rachel Bithell writes about history, culture, and science for kids and their caregivers. Her writing has been featured in several national magazines. This is her first book. As a foster and adoptive parent and former teacher, she has cared for and taught many children with diverse strengths, interests, backgrounds, and needs. For all these children, storytelling has served her as an invaluable tool for connecting and learning.

Eric Freeberg has illustrated over twenty-five books for children, and has created work for magazines and ad campaigns. He was a winner of the 2010 London Book Fair’s Children’s Illustration Competition; the 2010 Holbein Prize for Fantasy Art, International Illustration Competition, Japan Illustrators’ Association; Runner-Up, 2013 SCBWI Magazine Merit Award; Honorable Mention, 2009 SCBWI Don Freeman Portfolio Competition; and 2nd Prize, 2009 Clymer Museum’s Annual Illustration Invitational. He was also a winner of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award.

Editorial Reviews

2022-10-12
The American Indian Movement’s 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee lends impetus to a biracial child’s contact with her historical and cultural heritage.

Eleven-year-old Patricia Brave Bird Antoine’s mom is White, while her dad is Lakota, with family living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation not far from the site of the 1890 massacre. So it is that news of the tense armed standoff between AIM and the federal government kindles not only interest in the history of that tragedy, but enough anxiety about her relatives’ safety to join her father on a drive up from Denver for a brief visit. Following an introductory note on terminology, debut author Bithell uses this scenario both to sit Patsy down beside her grandmother for instruction in traditional customs and crafts and, in a mix of overheard conversations, news clippings, letters, and reproduced school reports, to explore the roots of the conflict and how local politics caused the violence to escalate. Though for the most part that violence, as well as the major events and personalities of the occupation, remains offstage, a hail of gunfire that leaves Patsy’s father wounded by unknown assailants provides a dramatic climax…and his refusal to be treated by a White doctor for fear of being reported to the FBI shines a light on the (justified) distrust that poisons, probably permanently, relations between the federal government and Native American nations. Freeberg’s pencil drawings add cultural and period details (if not action), and a lengthy afterword with photos expands on the occupation’s causes, course, and aftermath.

A respectful, evenhanded view of a pivotal historical event. (Historical fiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews

"A respectful, evenhanded view of a pivotal historical event." —Kirkus Reviews

"This absorbing, sensitively written work of historical fiction illuminates an important event seldom addressed in children’s literature." —Children's Literature

From the Publisher