Author discusses new book ‘Buffalo Dreamer’

From 1819 through the 1970s, nearly 1,000 Native American children died while attending residential boarding schools set up by the U.S. government. These residential schools forcibly removed Native children from their families and aimed to erase their identities.

Tempe-based author Violet Duncan, who is currently the Indigenous Cultural Advisor at the Tempe Center for the Arts, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss her new book, “Buffalo Dreamer.”

The book, published on August 27, 2024, highlights the history of these residential schools through a new middle-grade novel that converges the past and the present.

“My children are 15, 13, 12 and 8 years old. I have to talk to them about this conversation and what it looks like. That is why I wrote the book because when we start to have these conversations at these different age levels, and we talk about what happened there, how do we make it a kid-friendly version without sugar coating it? Because the kids that it happened to didn’t get the sugar-coated experience, and they need to know the truth, and this book does not sugarcoat it. It tells the truth in a way that a kid will understand and empathize with it,” Duncan said.

You can buy Duncan’s book here.