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In Bears Make Rock Soup, Lise Erdrich and Lisa Fifield draw from Native American traditions to offer new stories and paintings. Each two-page spread features one of Fifield's stunning watercolor paintings and an original story by Erdrich based on the images in the painting. In one, women tell stories to lull cranky bears to sleep. In another, crows warn a tribe as soldiers near. Each pair of paintings and stories works to tell fables of the Plains and Woodlands animals and tribespeople. Together, they depict a world from the Native American past, when animals and people helped each other. Lisa Fifield's innovative use of color and design honors the traditional images of Native America, while Lise Erdrich's words carry the simple rhythms of a story told out loud. Artist and author alike use familiar Native American symbols in new ways. Words and images in this book vividly illustrate the interdependence of humans and animals, and they honor the cultural heritage from which they are drawn.
Bears Make Rock Soup is an invaluable classroom resource that can be used across the curriculum in thematic units that encompass Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. As students explore the book, they will appreciate the vision it presents of a world in which animals and humans live in harmony, depending on their natural environment for survival. The stories provide excellent models for genre studies; the human characters invite discussions of Native American culture and societies; and the animal characters bring the natural world to the classroom. The book is satisfying in its own right, and it will also leave students full of questions and wishing to learn more.
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Native American
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Native American Cultures and Traditions:
History of the Plains and Woodlands tribes; Native American worldviews; tribes, clans, and leadership
Relationships between People and Nature:
Human-animal interdependence; seasonal change; lifecycles; habitats
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Lisa Fifield is a renowned artist of Native American and German descent. Lisa grew up in Washington state and in San Jose, California before moving to Minnesota as a teenager, where she received her art education from the Atelier LeSuer School of Art. Her paintings in watercolor and other mediums are represented in national and international galleries around the world. For Bears Make Rock Soup, Lisa Fifield drew from her collection of paintings entitled "Totem Clanswomen," which explores the tradition of Indian women as clan mothers and balancers of life. Her interest in Native Americans' beliefs and unique relationship to animals and the earth is the catalyst for her work. She writes: that their "way of life has been one of a natural relationship. It was an intimate one that associated the Indian as a partner with the animals, the season, and the earth. Therefore, since they have always lived as one with nature, they came to act as nature did." Lisa Fifield now resides in Minnetonka, Minnesota and is enrolled as a member of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, in the Black Bear Clan.
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Lise Erdrich is a writer, counselor and health educator of Native American and German descent and is enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Plains Ojibway. She earned her BA in English from the University of North Dakota and an MS in Health Sciences from Minnesota State University. Her award-winning fiction and non-fiction has appeared in many literary anthologies and magazines. Her first inspiration for the stories in Bears Make Rock Soup was Lisa Fifield's paintings. In writing the stories, she drew on "everything I knew from my own experiences and reading about birds and animals, family stories . . . legends and creation stories I had heard." She hopes that the book helps children "to get an idea of the relatedness of everything, people and creatures and all that is happening in the world, and to grow up to respect the earth and all living things." In addition to being a writer, Lise Erdrich is a certified health education and prevention specialist. She lives and works in Wahpeton, North Dakota, at the Indian boarding school where her parents also worked and where she grew up with her six siblings.
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