I love comics and graphic novels! This format has such a cool ability to draw in an audience by being able to show emotion on character's faces, give extra details to non-fiction stories, and add in extra vocabulary while showing what the word means. These qualities of comics are really helpful in telling stories about people from diverse cultures. These five comics all tell stories about people from different indigenous nations and how their culture affects how they live.
By Cameron Mukwa
New York: Graphix, an Imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2024. Comic. 175 pages.
Anang, an Ojibwe tween wants to make a ribbon skirt—a traditional Anishinaabe clothing piece worn by women—to wear to an upcoming powwow, but Anang is worried about what the kids from school will think of them. Anang's classmates see them as a boy, when they are two-spirit and don't identify as a boy or a girl. They ask their grandparents for advice, who advise them to ask the spirits of animals and the lake for help. Anang embarks on this quest all while trying to find the pieces of the skirt with their friend, who insists that Anang's two-spiritness is just a choice they're making.
Written by Tina Rathgeber
Illustrated by Alina Pete and Jillian Dolan
Victoria, British Columbia: Orca Book Publishers, 2024. Comic. 91 pages.
Ilse Schweder didn't expect that she would be alone when the storm hit. While checking traplines with her brothers, Ilse was separated and became lost 80 miles away from home duirng a huge snow storm. She had to rely on her survival skills to fight off hunger and frostbite. Luckily, as someone who grew up in the Cree Nation, she had lots of experience dealing with low temperatures and a tundra landscape. Written by Ilse's grandaughter, fans of the I Survived series will enjoy reading the true story of how she made it through this adventure.
By Emily Bowen Cohen
New York: Heartdrum, HarperAlley, imprints of HarperCollins Publishers, 2023. Comic. 245 pages.
Mia has a mixed heritage: her mother and stepfather, who she lives with, are Jewish and her father, who she hasn't been in contact with since she was 3, is Muscogee. She goes to a Jewish school and is preparing for her bat mitzvah, but also holds to her identity as indigenous. When a bully insists that Mia isn't "a real Indian" because she doesn't fit the stereotypes, Mia questions how she can claim to be Muscogee if she doesn't know anything about the culture? What results is her decieving both of her parents so she can sneak away from Los Angeles to go visit her father in Oklahoma, until they learn about the lie. When she's brought back to LA, she'll have to discover how she can live as a member of both tribes.
Written by Thomas King
Illustrated by Natasha Donovan
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021. Comic. 171 pages.
"Nationality?" "Blackfoot." This simple exchange between a mother and a border agent turns into a multi-day standoff leaving a boy and his mom stuck between the border of Canada and the United States. Our main character is a boy who is excited to finally go visit his sister who lives in Salt Lake City, but is confused as to why his mom is packing so many sandwiches and blankets for what should be a single day drive. When they reach the border, they aren't allowed to pass into the United States because his mom won't identify as American or Canadian, only as Blackfoot. They then turn around to go home, just to not be let back into Canada for answering the question similarly. They are stuck between the two countries until his mom agrees to claim citizenship or the border agents relent.
Written by B. A. Hoena
Illustrated by Marcel P. Massegú
North Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, a capstone imprint, 2020. Comic. 32 pages.
World War II was a war marked by spies, secret messages, and intercepting those messages. When the U.S. military needed a code that couldn't be easily broken, they turned to the Navajo people. The Navajo language was unknown to the Axies and thus wasn't able to be broken. This non-fiction graphic novel shows the story of how the Navajo Code Talkers came to be and uses charts and pictures to show how they created words for military vocabulary. A glossary and discussion questions follow the story.
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