Native Plant Stories

by Joseph Bruchac

These mythical stories draw upon legends from eighteen Native American tribes and illustrate the importance of plant life in Native American traditions.

Genres: Nature, Indigenous, Mythology, Native American, Plants, Childrens

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 1995

About the author

Joseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.

He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic, Parabola and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than 70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepers of the Earth (co-authored with Michael Caduto), Tell Me a Tale, When the Chenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman's Store and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over the Door and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea (Harcourt), an historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee & Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up The Sky (Dial), a collection of plays for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.

Reviews

[Joanna Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rya particularly really enjoyed this one. Stories from all over North America. I like that Folk Tales give clues into a culture's values.

[Brenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Bruchac did it again-brought stories to life in true storyteller's words. I love reading anything he has. His storytelling works wonderfully for middle-grade, YA, and adults alike.

[liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting, had me Googling a lot - I only wish it told me more stories!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet, short stories of plants and animals from 18 different peoples and traditions - I wanted them to be longer and more fleshed out!

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the Native way of thinking, though, the plant people are as aware and as deserving of respect as are those livings beings that do not have roots--such as humans."

I'm thankful for the Native perspective on balance and respect of all things: nature, gender, familial. In this collection, from 18 Native nations of the Americas, the stories are organized by meaning, such as creation and survival. Each story begins with an illustration as well as the tribe from which it originates and the location of their traditional lands. Bruchac retells each story in a way that non-Native readers are able to understand and appreciate. Once again I'm in awe of the reverence and protection given to their stories; for instance, one of Bruchac's criteria for selecting stories was that it had to have already been published or public. He did not want to be the first one to take the story out of the oral tradition. Along with the stories, readers are gifted with a Glossary/Pronunciation Key as well as Tribal Nation Descriptions which include pronunciations too.

The only teeny nitpick would be that I wish the map showing the culture regions of the Native North American groups was a) larger and b) not squished into the spine/binding so the middle can't be read.

4 stars

These stories first appeared in Keepers of Life: Discovering Plants through Native American Stories and Earth Activities for Children by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac.