Penna Dexter

This past summer, the American Library Association renamed its Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. The prize is now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

The ALA says Wilder’s body of work, is inconsistent with its “core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness.”

At issue are three instances in which characters in Wilder’s beloved Little House on the Prairie series say, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and other statements that hardly anyone would defend today. References to the white settlers’ manifest destiny are seen as offensive to the black community. But, as The Wall Street Journal points out, “The Wilder Award was established in 1954, and its first recipient was Laura Ingalls Wilder herself.” The Journal writer wonders, “If we judge past luminaries by today’s standards, who’s next to go?”

World magazine’s entertainment writer Megan Basham heard this news and spent a couple of days digging into her family’s old Little House books and VHS tapes of the TV show.

One of the critiques of the Little House stories is that Ma’s character often expresses fear of Indians. But Megan Basham points out that Pa repeatedly contradicts that fear. His daughter Laura sums up Pa’s attitude:  “He figures that the Indians would be as peaceable as anyone else if they were let alone.” There are many examples where Pa explains the Indians’ practices to those who fear them. What the townspeople think is a war party is really a buffalo hunt. A prairie fire seen as meant to harm white settlers was set to clear grasses and make traveling easier. Ms. Basham describes an episode in which Laura sobs for the Indians’ forced relocation.

Wilder’s books were written in the 1930’s, well before the PC movement affected the way we teach history. Megan Basham’s deep dive into Wilder lore shows us that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s sensitivity to native history was actually ahead of her time.