Where Courage Is Like a Wild Horse

by Skolnick, Sharon

• ISBN13: 9780803292888
• ISBN10: 0803292880
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

The dreams of a courageous Apache girl illuminate the hidden world of an Indian orphanage in this unforgettable story. Over forty years ago, Sharon Skolnick (Okee-Chee) and her sisters were removed from their Apache parents and became wards of the state of Oklahoma. She and her nearest sister made their way together through the Oklahoma Indian child welfare system. Shuttled back and forth between foster homes and orphanages, they finally ended up at the Murrow Indian Orphanage in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Here, Skolnick tells the gripping and ultimately triumphal account of the year the sisters spent there. Murrow was a place of wonder and terror, friendship and loneliness, where resilient children forged shifting alliances and conspired together yet yearned in solitude for a home and family to call their own. Skolnick paints an absorbing portrait of the world of an Indian orphanage, a world both bright and dark, vividly rendered through a child's eyes but tempered by the perspective of the woman who survived the Indian child welfare system and became an Apache artist.

Author Biography

Sharon Skolnick, a member of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, is a gallery owner and artist in Chicago. Where Courage Is Like a Wild Horse is her first book. Manny Skolnick, a freelance writer, is the coauthor of Keeper of the Delaware Dolls, also available from the University of Nebraska Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Photo Album	1	(2)
The Bacone Clothes Line	3	(4)
Our Very Little ``Big Planet''	7	(6)
In a Field of Horses	13	(5)
Sitting the Straight and Narrow	18	(6)
A Dialogue in Tears and Laughter	24	(5)
Willing Co-Conspirators	29	(5)
In the Dead Zone	34	(7)
Soreface Lakoe	41	(5)
A Dilemma in Black and White	46	(6)
Through a Veil of Tears	52	(4)
The ``Family'' Portrait	56	(7)
The Wolf Pack Closes In	63	(5)
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream	68	(7)
The Horns of a Dilemma	75	(5)
Guardian Angel with Candelabra	80	(3)
We Talk of Sundry Things	83	(7)
The Hounds of Bacone	90	(5)
I Meet the Master	95	(4)
When Only an Apache Will Do	99	(5)
It's Blowing in the Wind	104	(7)
A Lecture Overhead	111	(5)
They Don't Even Leave Us Our Hair	116	(6)
Ice Cream Out of Season	122	(6)
I Even the Score	128	(5)
Presents at Parting	133	(6)
A Problem Solved, a New Life Begun	139	(5)
Afterword	144