Customer Reviews

We Are Mesquakie, We Are One

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For use in grades 3 and up.

A fact based story as told through the eyes of Hidden Doe, a Mesquakie girl from Iowa. Hidden Doe transforms from young girl, training to be an herbalist (medicine person), to a woman during the 1840's. The settlers and the U.S. Government force her people from their lands along the Iowa River to a reservation in Kansas, where her people face malnutrition, small pox, alcoholism and depression at the hands of the U.S. Agents and policies. Great Bear, one of the leaders of the Mesquakie, organizes the people in order to buy back their Iowa homelands with money's paid to them by the government for the lands originally taken, for settlers and mining claims. Bright Eagle negotiates the 80 acre land deal and earns the love and respect of Hidden Doe.

I would recommend this book for use in any classroom. It gives an alternative view point to the colonialism of the U.S.. The Mesquakie now own 3600 acres of land along the Iowa River, and are purchasing more.

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It teaches about the mystique of native american culture, about working hard to reap rewards and about the virtue of prudence.

Hidden Doe becomes a medicine woman. She has to learn about plants, work hard. She meets a white girl, and thinks: She is just like me, only her skin is white. Het tribe has to move around, but she goes back to find her Grandmother. On her way she meets a with woman and learns about the differences between her and White Gull.