Sky Dancers, and: Rattlesnake Mesa: Stories from a Native American Childhood, and: Beaver Steals Fire, a Salish Coyote Story (review)

For generations Mohawk steelworkers have "boomed out" from the reservations in upstate New York and Canada to work construction sites in New York City, the Northeast, and Canada. Sky Dancers is set in the 1930s, as a Mohawk child named John Cloud and his mother visit New York City, where his dad and uncle work on high cross beams on what will become the Empire State Building. John is afraid of heights, but his pride at seeing his father dance across the beams gives the boy the courage to climb an oak tree in his backyard.

Sky Dancers is flawed in a number of ways. For one thing, Mohawks who work the high steel call themselves "steelworkers," "ironworkers," and sometimes "cloudwalkers," but not "sky dancers"; and it seems the author gave her protagonist an "Indian" name that references the story rather than the reality—"Cloud" is not a typical Mohawk surname.

In Kirk's self-conscious attempt to make this an "Indian" story, the narrative is contrived ("He thought he could hear the wise old tree's heart beating like a drum") and the dialogue is forced:

"How do you do it, Papa?" John Cloud asked. "How do you walk across the sky?"

"Some people say anybody with courage can do it," Papa said. "But I listen to Mother Earth and Father Sky. If you trust them, they will hold you in their embrace just as they did our ancestors who built the bridge over the Great River years ago."

(n. pag.)

Compare this passage with Joel Monture's superior story in his excellent book of short stories, Cloudwalker (Fulcrum, 1996). Here, the conversation between Virgil and his dad is much more natural. Virgil asks his dad,

"Do you ever get scared going up so high?"

"Everybody gets a little scared," laughed his dad. "But that helps you remember to be extra careful and look out for your buddies. We work together to be safe."

(7)

Hale's artwork in Sky Dancers isn't very good, either: she has Mama doing beadwork in her lap in the dark, a train that is way too modern for the 1930s, the sun rising in the south, a steelworker literally dancing on a crossbeam, and an oak tree that looks really easy to climb.

Finally, there's this atrocious writing:

John Cloud leaned back against the tree trunk and felt its strength and wisdom. It was an old tree that had held many moons between its branches. The tree and Mother Earth and Father Sky would let him know when it was time to go higher.

(n. pag.)

Relying on "Indian" clichés such as "many moons," "Mother Earth," and "Father Sky" does not make a thing an Indian story. And working on the high beams—and risking your life to do so—is not the same as climbing a tree. It would have been good if Kirk had written about real people and real events rather than sacrificing the story to the message.

Rattlesnake Mesa is EdNah New Rider Weber's recollections of growing up in the early 1900s. After the death of her grandmother, young EdNah is sent to live with her father at Crown Point Indian Agency on the Navajo reservation and attend the Crown Point Indian School as a day student. Just as EdNah is starting to feel at home, her sense of herself and the world is shattered when she witnesses some children being whipped. "I carried a mortal shame, fear, and hurt away with me. [. . . ] I was just eight years old," she writes (49). At the end...