Q&A
Sitting Bull's World
An Interview with Albert Marrin
Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2000
Albert Marrin's latest children's book is called Sitting Bull and His World (Dutton, 2000). Marrin, at one time a junior-high social studies teacher, is now chairman of the history department at Yeshiva University in New York. He spoke to us from his home in New York City.
What can a 19th-century Plains Indian teach us today? Sitting Bull is one of the great American heroes. I know he wasn't thought of that way at the time by white people, but he was one of the great American heroes. And if we value personal qualities like honesty, compassion, strength of character, patriotism, Sitting Bull exemplifies all of those things. In summary, I would call him a good man.
Have the PC--politically correct--proponents had an effect on historians like yourself, who write for children? If you're going to do an honest job, you have to be able to see it from the other guy's point of view. I think what the PC people do is, they're a warningâ?¦ that you should reexamine what you're saying, reexamine what you're thinking. If you're a historian, the idea is to get it rightâ?¦. Some of their attitudes, I think, are quite silly, but other aspects of it, I think, are really quite sensible, and I think they caution us and enable us to become better historians.
