We Are Still Here!: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know - Hardcover

by Traci Sorell (Author), Frane Lessac (Illustrator)

A 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Book
A 2022 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book

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.

Author Biography

Traci Sorell is the award-winning author of We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, a Sibert, Orbis Pictus, and Boston Globe-Horn Book honor book; At the Mountain's Base; and co-wrote Indian No More. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and lives in Oklahoma, where her tribe is located.

Frané Lessac is the award-winning illustrator of We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, a Sibert, Orbis Pictus, and Boston Globe-Horn Book honor book, and more than forty other books for children. She has lived on the small Caribbean island of Montserrat, in London, and in Australia, and her work has taken her on many adventures in numerous countries. www.franelessac.com