The Anti-Racist Indian in the Cupboard

Unlocking the Real Story

If I had a dime for each time the terms “racist,” “stereotypes” and “negative images”  have been applied to this staggeringly anti-racist tale, I’d be rich. The book is not a model of accuracy. But inaccuracy is not automatically racist, and the so-called inaccuracies are less glaring than many assert. Did we really expect the British author, Lynn Reid Banks, to know, in pre-Internet 1980, the preferred term for the ethnicity of the book’s tiny hero? It’s not “Iroquois;” it’s “Haudenosaunee.” (But when I look at bookstores in native American museums, I find many titles with “Iroquois”) She gets a lot of other stuff right. The child Omri, whose relationship with the Indian develops from misunderstanding to deep friendship, is schooled by the Indian to understand that Iroquois lived in longhouses, not teepees. Banks invents language for an American cowboy, a British Tommy and an American Indian. All three have been pigeonholed as stereotypes, but true stereotypes bore readers. The absence of individual characteristics, charms, foibles—what constitutes personality—make any reader worth her salt close a book. Fortunately, all characters in this winning tale are bursting with personality.

I’ve just slogged through yet another pious mom blogger demonizing The Indian in the Cupboard. “If I do hand it to my son when he’s older,” says the mom, “it will be with lots of discussion about the attitudes and inaccuracies found therein.” No having fun, now, kid! Perplexity AI adds fat to the fire: “The book's premise of a boy bringing a plastic Native American toy to life has not aged well and contains cultural stereotypes and offensive language towards Native Americans.” Always the contemptuous “hasn’t aged well.” Oh, but this book has aged well—it’s like fine wine. It’s essential reading in a world of identity politics, because it focuses entirely on the worth of individual human beings, in fact, on recognizing humanity. The book’s message chimes entirely with the values of Dr. Martin Luther King.

When Omri, a young British boy, gets a plastic Indian from his best friend for a birthday present, he’s far from thrilled—he’s already got a bunch of plastic soldiers, cowboys and knights. He also gets an old cupboard for which his mother provides a working key, although it’s known to have come from her grandmother’s jewel box. Omri stows his Indian in the cupboard, locks the door, and the following morning wakes to noisy banging from within. Opening it, he finds an irate three-inch tall Iroquois Indian, so outraged by his dark night in a strange place that he stabs Omri with his tiny dagger.

And here is where Omri’s golden character first reveals itself. He doesn’t swat the Indian aside, scream for his mother, or squash him under his foot, as a real child that age—approximately nine—might do. He marvels at the bravery of this minuscule figure risking all to attack the large person who naturally seems an enemy. After Omri gets stabbed and a tiny drop of blood oozes from his fingertip, he “stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked it and thought how gigantic he must look to the tiny Indian and how fantastically brave he had been to stab him.”  (11) Longing to pick up the Indian, he agrees not to do so. The Indian’s threat, “You touch—I kill” naturally doesn’t frighten Omri, instead increasing his admiration for the small man’s bravery.

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But even Chat GPT types Omri as “colonialist” because he’s so much bigger. Oh, please. That moment when he sticks his finger in his mouth conjures up his childlike—almost babylike—soul. Want another stereotype? There is, at the beginning, a touch of the stock dopey giant figure in Omri—the kind populating the Narnia books or enhancing J.K. Rowling’s portrayal of the oafish troll in Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone. You know: that scene where Ron, Harry and Hermione encounter a gigantic troll in the bathroom, and use magic to bop him over the head with his own club.

Chapt GPT maunders on: “The character of Little bear, the Iroquois Warrior, is often seen as embodying stereotypical traits such as being warlike and primitive. Perceived by whom? By somebody who isn’t doing a close reading. Omri doesn’t see the Indian as warlike and primitive; he sees him as brave and marvelous. If there’s any stock figure, maybe it’s that of the underdog. The odds are against the Indian, but he’ll triumph—this is a children’s book. No tragedies allowed.  

Many a blogger’s complaint starts with the “Indian’s pidgen English,” as more than one puts it. Was anyone expecting a seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee man to speak in fully-formed English language sentences? Or to be fluent in any European language? This would be about as typical as Europeans of that era being fluent in Native American languages. A few hardy Jesuits were: see the 1991 film classic, Black Robe, in which French Jesuits try to negotiate Algonquin, English and French; the actors playing the Indians were actually speaking Cree and Mohawk. Yes, there are inaccuracies, but the film does highlight the difficulties encountered by Indians and Europeans striving to understand each other’s cultures; unsurprisingly, neither found the other immediately relatable.

Very often, if Native Americans spoke a European language, it was French, because of the fur traders and Jesuits. Or Spanish (more missionary Jesuits) English, and Portuguese (colonization). In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, an Osage Indian comes to the house to speak with Pa, trying out French, since he’s well aware Pa won’t speak any Native American language. Pa replies simply—“no speak.” That’s how people talk when they don’t know a language. You use the few words you have to get across the most possible meaning. For an hilarious demonstration of this, try several essays in the second half of David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his experiences learning French. Omri’s Indian, Laura’s Pa, and David Sedaris all speak this kind of “pidgen” in order to communicate. I see no sign of racism. An Indian speaking complete sentences in English would be unusual indeed in the seventeenth century—from which Omri’s Indian springs—and not much more likely in the nineteenth—when Pa can’t communicate with his Indian visitor. Equally unlikely would be a European settler fluent in any native tongue. There were some, yes, but not enough to make it likely that Little Bear or Pa would be easily able to understand a language other than their own.

Then there’s the clothing. In Little House on the Prairie, woke commentary complains about portraying Osage Indians as animalistic, since they’re wearing stinky skunk skins. But many tribes wore skunk skins; it is possible to eliminate the smell, but was not always considered desirable to do so. A pest control site notes that some tribes, like the Ojibwe, used skunk musk as a medicinal treatment for respiratory illnesses like pneumonia; the Cherokee hung them over doors to fight disease. Skunk pelts also masked human odors, which was useful for hunting, and warded off predators. The warmth and durability of skunk pelts rendered them useful for clothing and blankets in cold climates.

My edition of The Indian in the Cupboard shows Little Bear emerging from the cupboard wearing exactly what the Haudenosaunee clothing site says men in his tribe wore in the seventeenth century, namely moccasins, leggings and kilts or breechcloths made of buckskin.

Far more important than all this—the presumed, but not actual, misrepresentation of Indians—is the book’s moral message. Omri’s pal Patrick, enchanted by the idea of bringing plastic figures to life, makes for the magic cupboard with handfuls of cowboys, Indians and assorted knights and soldiers. He can’t wait to watch them fight each other.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s bring loads of things to life! Whole armies—”

It’s Omri who remonstrates: Little Bear, he tells Patrick, is “a real man,” not a toy. He explains how wrong it is to throw real men with real lives of their own speaking their own languages into a closet just to turn them into live beings who fight each other. Trying to explain the consequences, the human suffering, he begins to make a dent in Patrick’s childish narcissism. Not enough to prevent Patrick from throwing a plastic cowboy and his horse into the cupboard. Over and over, Omri explains to Patrick that it’s wrong to play with people. Patrick’s urge for playthings nearly always trumps his respect for human life and individual freedom; Omri remonstrates: “They’re not safe with you. You use them. You can’t use people.”(160) It’s Patrick who gets a big kick out of getting the cowboy, Boone, to fight Little Bear. It’s Omri who reconciles the two, insisting they become blood brothers.

How well I remember this childhood custom—in the days before AIDs, before anyone knew much about hemophilia or talked of hepatitis, children would prick their fingers or make tiny cuts on their wrists, hold the fingers or wrists together, and become blood brothers or sisters. We made sure the grownups didn’t know. Treasured secrets! And this is Omri’s plan: Little Bear and Boone will make “little cuts on your wrist and tie them together so the blood mingles, and after that you can’t be enemies every again.” It’s as good a trick as any for forging friendship among children, and it works. Boone and Little Bear reconcile after the ceremony.

So the whole book is about forging alliances and friendships between peoples from widely different cultures. About finding common ground and respect. And stereotypes? The cowboy sounds like Clint Eastwood, although he’s prone to sentimental weeping. The British Tommy sounds exactly like this real British Tommy. And Little Bear is a reasonable approximation of an Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Indian.

The point is not to vie for ultra-accuracy, although ultra-accuracy is always nice. It’s to highlight what is important in life: mutual respect, conversations illuminating different customs and ways of life leading to more respect, and honor among companions. Common ground and common sense win over when Omri understands how much he’s disrupted the lives of the Indian, the cowboy and the British Tommy by pulling them out of their lives and times and into the present. He relinquishes his desire to play with toys that move because he understand their own individual rights and wishes must come first; he couldn’t live with himself if he thought the way Patrick did.

Read this lovely book to your kids.