74 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret Pokiak-FentonFatty Legs: A True Story
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Opening Note-PrefaceChapter Summaries & Analyses
Opening Note Summary: “A Note on the Right to Silence”
In this brief note, Christy Jordan-Fenton reminds her readers that because some residential school experiences were so painful, the people who experienced them might reasonably want to keep their recollections private. She says everyone needs to respect that desire and that this right to silence “extends to all experiences of Indigenous trauma” (vi). Revelations about hidden history might encourage readers to learn more, and the author reminds readers to seek “knowledge [that] has been shared freely” (vi).
Foreword Summary
Debbie Reese (Nambé Pueblo), Founder of American Indians in Children’s Literature, provides a brief Foreword in the form of a letter to the reader. The letter is an exposition of the myths surrounding Indigenous literary characters and the living historical actors on which they are based. Reese says:
Most of the children’s books, television shows, movies, and lessons in your schoolbooks do not tell the truth about what happened to Indigenous Peoples when Europeans came onto their homelands several hundred years ago (viii-ix).
This type of popular culture is common and glorifies settlers and “pioneers” while ignoring or justifying the harm that colonialism did to Indigenous communities. Reese stresses, “White people did terrible things to Indigenous people” (ix), like steal land, force Indigenous people to live on reserves, and take children by force to 
