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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People! All they did was change the name of the award. Nobody is banning the books. Yeesh![/quote]
No. They are disparaging her name and portraying anything affiliated with her as wrong. If this act was just meant to broaden the name there would be no commentary on her being racist or not being inclusive of minorities.[/quote]

I’ve enjoyed the Little House Series but the way Laura protrays Indians (indigenous peoples) in her books is terrible and generally historically inaccurate.  Multiple characters say “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”    I can see why they renamed the book award (which I had never heard of before this controversy.)   I read the Little House series to my kids but make sure to point out the racist bits to them as unfortunate attitudes of time past.[/quote]

That is not historically inaccurate.

Such things and worse were common sentiments of the time.[/quote]

Saying the "only good Indian is a dead Indian" is the same as advocating ethnic cleansing.  I don't know that it was common sentiment of that time, but it's certainly a vile point of view that Laura's family made.  She also writes "there were no people there, only Indians" referring to the prairie.  As a person of color, those statements make me nauseous.  I'm sorry that you don't see that a child of color would feel similarly.

As for historically inaccurate, you need to read some reviews of the Little House series. What I was referring to was the portrayal of the Osage Indians in Little House on the Prairie.  In the book, we see the Indians "stealing" from Ma and Pa and Pa being unfairly kicked off his land at the end of the book.  But historians have noted that Pa had deliberately entered Indian Territory and was basically squatting on their land.  Whether Laura knew it or not, historians have noted that the Indians were taking food and items as what they saw as "rent" from a squatter.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

But why should it be portrayed any differently than it was since it was written from the perspective of a 5 or 6 year old child?

I guarantee that even if your modern child was put in that same situation, she would have similar memories, fear and shock as Laura did in the book and would not be thinking about rent.[/quote]

No one said that Laura didn't have the right to write what she felt.  But modern society doesn't need to honor her for her advocating harm to a specific population of humans.  [/quote]
This.[/quote]
+1  
 Laura Ingalls didn't even see Native Americans as people.  That's not something we should be celebrating in the name of children's literature.[/quote]

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