Virtual: Traci Sorell with Mary Ann Cappiello, We Are Still Here!

An emphatic, triumphant declaration: “WE ARE STILL HERE!”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Twelve Native American kids present historical and contemporary laws, policies, struggles, and victories in Native life, each with a powerful refrain: We are still here!

Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. This companion book to the award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people’s past, present, and future. Precise, lyrical writing presents topics including: forced assimilation (such as boarding schools), land allotment and Native tribal reorganization, termination (the US government not recognizing tribes as nations), Native urban relocation (from reservations), self-determination (tribal self-empowerment), Native civil rights, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), religious freedom, economic development (including casino development), Native language revival efforts, cultural persistence, and nationhood.

TRACI SORELL is the award-winning author of We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga (which is a Sibert, Orbis Pictus, Boston Globe-Horn Book and American Indian Youth Literature Award (AIYLA) honor book); At the Mountain’s Base (AIYLA Honor book); and co-wrote Indian No More which won the AIYLA Middle Grade category and was the 2020 Global Read Aloud selection for upper elementary. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and lives on her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. Her 2021 titles include her first picture book biography, Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer, and the upcoming nonfiction picture book, We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know.

Mary Ann Cappiello is a Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Lesley, she teaches courses in children’s and young adult literature and literacy methods, including a specialized course in nonfiction for children and young adults. She blogs about children’s and young adult literature currently at “The Classroom Bookshelf,” a School Library Journal blog, and is a founding member of the The Biography Clearinghouse, a project of the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE. From 2015-2018, Mary Ann was a member of the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction (K-8) Committee, serving two years as chair. She has been a guest on public radio and a consultant to public television, and is the co-author of professional books for teachers, including Text Sets in Action: Pathways Through Content Area Literacy (Stenhouse, 2021).

Register for the event on Crowdcast here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/stillhere