AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Although Regina is a fictional character in a historical novel, federal termination laws were real. They had a detrimental impact on many Native American children and families in Native Nations from coast to coast from the 1940s through the 1960s. These tribes found their government-to-government relationship with the United States severed when Congress passed those laws.
Like Regina, I lived for a while on The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde reservation. However, I was one year old when my Umpqua tribe was terminated. I don’t remember much about that time, only what family and tribal members passed down to me.
One tribal member said it best: “There was no Chinuk Wawa word for termination except for mimɘlust·r.” That means “to die” in my Native language. For many, this loss of identity was exactly how they felt. They had become the walking dead.
Along with termination, Congress passed the Indian Relocation Act in 1956. This removed many more Native people from their reservation homelands and relocated them to big cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The government promised moving costs, jobs, higher education, and housing. Tens of thousands of Native people entered urban cities across the US.
My family opted for Los Angeles. Below is a photo of my sister and me in our new home on 58th Place, when we were younger than Regina and Peewee.
While living in Los Angeles, my sister and I did have friends upon whom I based the characters of Keith and Addie in the book. I have many photos of us posing for the camera, whether we were in our Halloween costumes or just playing around. Philip and Anthony are based on real brothers from Cuba who entertained the neighborhood kids with their circuses, magic shows, and marionette theater.
The memories of my time on 58th Place are mostly pleasant.
Later, in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress with his “Forgotten Americans” speech, requested their help in funding education, employment, and health care programs, and instructed federal agencies to build better relationships with Indian tribes. Terminated tribes began meeting with Congressional members about restoring their trust relationship. The Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin was the first tribe to have its status restored when, in 1973, Congress passed a bill which then-President Richard Nixon signed into law. This led to more tribes meeting with and testifying before Congress about how the termination law had devastated their governments, economies, and the lives of their citizens.
On November 22, 1983, after nearly thirty years of termination, President Reagan signed House Resolution 3885, also known as Public Law 98-365. That law restored The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community as a federally recognized Tribe.
After that, Regina Petit and I became Indian once more.
—Charlene Willing McManis (1953–2018)
CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE
I first met Charlene Willing McManis in New York City at Kweli Journal’s The Color of Children’s Literature Conference in 2016, where writers and illustrators of color and from Native Nations gather with literary agents and publishing professionals to learn, discuss craft, and network. Charlene and I visited about our work and backgrounds over lunch, so I came to know about this book she was writing. We stayed in contact after the conference. I interviewed her for Cynthia Leitich Smith’s children’s and young adult lit industry blog, Cynsations, when the formal announcement came out that Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, had acquired her manuscript. We looked forward to seeing each other again at the 2018 Kweli Conference.
But that reunion never took place. Charlene had had cancer previously, and though she had successfully completed her treatments, the cancer returned. When she reached out to me to ask if I would consider revising and polishing her novel for publication, I felt honored and also ill-equipped. Who was I to do this work? I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and not from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community (CTGRC). I’d written picture books and poems, not middle-grade prose. So I took some time to pray, consider, and consult others. My literary agent, Emily Mitchell, read the manuscript and told me unequivocally that she believed I could do this. Charlene certainly believed I could, as did Stacy Whitman, publisher of Tu Books.
I accepted Charlene’s request and still feel humbled to have done so. This book is the result of many years of hard work on her part to develop her craft in fiction writing, documenting her Umpqua family’s stories, interviewing fellow Grand Ronde tribal members about their experiences, and slogging through the many drafts to hone a story into the finished product you just read. It deserves to be in the world, shining a light on a very difficult period for many Native Nations and their citizens within the United States. While in the book Regina’s father desired to leave Grand Ronde for what he believed were better opportunities off the reservation, that idea was not widely held by those who relocated through the federal program. Most left their tribal homelands with a heavy heart, although driven by the same desire her father has in the book to provide for their families and themselves.
To that end, I have worked not just to refine and polish Charlene’s story for publication, but to help with its historical accuracy. No work can ever be perfect. But a historical novel highlighting real federal policies of removal, termination, and relocation as they impact an actual Native nation needs to be as correct as possible. There is also information about language and culture shared in
