SARAH ELISABETH SAWYER is a story archaeologist. She digs up shards of past lives, hopes, and truths, and pieces them together for readers today. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian honored her as a literary artist through their Artist Leadership Program for her work in preserving Choctaw Trail of Tears stories. A tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, she writes historical fiction from her hometown in Texas, partnering with her mother, Lynda Kay Sawyer, in continued research for future works. Learn more at SarahElisabethWrites.com and Facebook.com/SarahElisabethSawyer
Find Sarah’s American Indians Course here: http://americanindians.fictioncourses.com
Check out her mom’s jewelry and art plus Sarah’s books here: https://www.choctawspirit.com
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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:
Kat
Hello, Sarah. How are you doing today?
Sarah
I am doing really well, Kat. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Kat
Thank you. I’m excited to talk to you, and I’m excited about this next part. Will you introduce yourself first in Choctaw? Because that’s so cool, and then you’ll have to translate for the rest of us.
Sarah
Absolutely. Halito um Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Choctaw sia. Okay. Hi, my name is Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and I am Choctaw. And for all your listeners out there, including you, Kat, if you’ve ever said the word Oklahoma, you have actually spoken Choctaw.
Kat
Oh, that’s really cool.
Sarah
That’s a combination of two Choctaw words, meaning okla, meaning people, or tribe, and homa, meaning red. So land of the red people is how some people interpret it as
Kat
Oh, nice. That is amazing. I love America. I love that part of America where you can go and you can be speaking several different languages and not even know it.
Sarah
Absolutely. So it’s a wonderful land we live in.
Kat
Oh, that’s wonderful. So you’re a writer, out in Texas. Will you tell us a little bit about where you’re from and we’ll get into how you started being a writer.
Sarah
Sure thing. I was born and raised in Texas. My mom’s family was mostly from Oklahoma. Her dad moved down, my papa moved down to Fort Worth, Texas. Whenever he was a boy, his mother moved down there, and he moved down there to be with her. But he was born in Oklahoma, which is where our family’s original land allotments were during the Dawes Commission around 1900 when the tribal lands were being divided up. And so his land allotment was around there, and that’s where he grew up for most of his life. And then my mother was born in Fort Worth, so we make a lot of trips to Oklahoma. Like I said, I live in Texas, but we go to Oklahoma quite a bit for tribal events. We have our big annual Choctaw Labor powwow and festival that we go to in September each year. We have our annual Choctaw Trail of Tears commemorative walk, which is always a significant time for us in the spring.
Kat
So you grew up doing that, always going up for these different celebrations?
Sarah
Yeah, I did. I was always known I was Choctaw, and my mom grew up in a time when she was shown prejudice, even though she didn’t necessarily grow up in the culture, specifically with being in Texas and being a bit disconnected there. But she was darker skinned, and so the kids at school thought she was Hispanic. The white kids really didn’t want anything to do with her. The Hispanic kids, when they found out she couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so, yeah, they didn’t really have anything to do with her. And so she would tell her dad, and he would tell her to be proud, be proud to be Indian. And so he passed that on to her, and she passed it on to all of her children.
Kat
That’s wonderful, I like that. Everyone has a different experience. So whether some were told to hide things, some were told, my stepmom is Mexican, and she was never taught Spanish. Her mom was like, no, you will learn English. Knowing your heritage, I think, is important. I think that’s wonderful. I honestly I’m one of those white Americans that has no idea, where I’m from.
Sarah
Pretty much all we know is what we grew up with, watching the old movies and TV shows. And that’s just such an inaccurate portrayal, often, not always, but for the most part, that’s where our stereotypes are born, and we don’t know these things. And that’s a lot of feedback I get on my books, is people are like, why didn’t I learn this in school? Why isn’t this taught?
Kat
Yeah, well, we can go down that trail, right? I mean, you started writing. You have quite a few books out there. And do all of your books include Choctaw people, or is it a mixture of different people or how do you write your book?
Sarah
Yeah, that’s a great question. It is mixed races. There’s all different races. In my Choctaw Tribune series, I have a Jewish family, even from Russia, and I have just a diverse cast of characters. Most of my I call them my Choctaw Heritage Book. So those are specifically the main characters of Choctaw. And then my Dockback Western series features Omaha Indian woman doctor who was inspired by the first American Indian woman doctor in the 1890s, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte. And this book is not in any way to portray her life. But it was really inspiring, her story that she was an American Indian woman doctor in that time period, to even be a woman doctor in that time period, and then to have grown up on the Omaha Indian Reservation in Nebraska, and to go on half of those experiences. So I’m branching out to some other first American characters like that. But my first books were all Choctaw main characters, and I will always continue to write those.
Kat
Yeah, I think that’s important to understand, things like that. I was just talking to another, a Canadian Native woman, and she was talking about how when the different Europeans came over to do hunting, all that different thing that would happen in Canada, they, of course, don’t have lemon trees, and so they once again started getting scarvy and how hard tribe didn’t know what their problem was. Why are they sick? Because they eat a ton of blueberries. It’s just like it was ingrained in their culture and how they ate to be a healthy society. And so they realized, oh, the blueberries help them. And it’s amazing to realize how intuitive and smart our ancestors were. I think modern day people tend to, like, chalk up our ancient ancestors as not that smart when you’re like, oh, well, they survived a lot of a lot of things though. It doesn’t really surprise me that it would be a Native woman that would be a doctor, and yet we don’t learn about that. So I think that story is really cool.
Sarah
Yeah. And she incorporated her traditional tribal medicines and herbs, and she was all about whole health and not just medicine, modern medicine and her traditional, and she did both, and she was a tremendous healer for her people. But, yeah, the blueberries we know today are superfood, and we’re like, our ancestors are like, great. You’re figuring it out.
Kat
Yes, exactly. And then, funny, if we could just sort of mesh together the old knowledge with the new knowledge, and we’re all trying to get back into whole health.
Sarah
Right? Not a bad path.
Kat
You’re bringing her story to light. So how did you start writing? Like, for a lot of people that I know who are Native, storytelling is a big part of their culture. Is that the same in Choctaw?
Sarah
Oh, absolutely. We have tons of storytellers, and my papa was a storyteller. He wasn’t a professional storyteller or anything like that, but he knew how to tell a story and pass that on to my mom. And so I feel like I’m carrying down that tradition. But even going back to the ancestors that I didn’t know, storytelling and writing, even literature, was a big part of Choctaw culture. The missionaries, we invited them in the 1818 is when they established the first mission school. And our people wanted both. They wanted the Christian beliefs brought in and they wanted education. And so all of our people, not all of them, but a lot of the children began learning English, learning to read and write English. So that within a few decades, there were many fluent English speakers and writers in the Choctaw nation. And that’s a tradition that’s carried on.
Kat
Oh, that’s wonderful. So storytelling to you comes pretty naturally.
Sarah
No, yes and no. Storytelling does, I started whenever I was five. I wrote my first story because I knew I would be too shy to tell it. I had a story on my heart about kindness that I wanted to share, and I was like, I know I would be too shy to do this. So I wrote it on five little sticky notes and my mom saved it, my brother illustrated it, and then she saved kind of that final product that we produced at five and seven. Yeah, so I started then and I really got into oral storytelling. And I actually don’t do a ton of oral storytelling. I did really I thought I was going to go that direction, but writing is my jam, so I’m going to stay with writing. But I went to a conference, a storytelling conference for about five years, Native Storytelling Conference. And they just blew me away with their talent and their ability to hold an audience captive for 20-30 minutes, or an hour telling stories, because I think we think of telling oral stories as something we do at the library for kids and that kind of thing. But this was for an adult audience and just really impactful. That really got me on the trail with being inspired by the native storytellers there.
Kat
Yeah, that’s a whole different talent right there is oral storytelling. I used to think that if I’m a writer, I should be able to make up stories for my kids at bedtime. And I quickly learned that my mind didn’t work that quickly. To be able to interact with the audience and know, kind of like you have to think two sentences ahead than what you’re saying and know the intent. It’s not easy.
Sarah
It is incredible. Yeah, it is another skill set.
Kat
Yes. And we don’t do it enough. So you decided to do more writing. When did you start writing and when did you kind of know? Are you a full-time writer or do you do other things as well? How is that journey?
Sarah
Yeah, I am a full-time writer now. It took a little bit to get there. But I am a full-time writer. Like I said, I started whenever I was five, but I didn’t take. And I wrote through my teen years and early 20s, but didn’t really grasp onto it until I was about 23. Some people are like, that’s the baby. It took a long time to figure it out and to figure out, this is the gift that God has given me, and this is the direction I’m going to go in. So I began taking it seriously, taking the crash seriously, and really honing my skill as a writer because I quickly learned it’s not all about talent. It is really about developing that skill and writing a lot, getting critique, getting feedback. I had some really wonderful writers that were willing to give me feedback every week on this writing challenge that I was entering, and that began really honing my skills. In 2012, I was accepted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian Artisan Leadership Fellowship. So that’s what took me to Washington, DC. So when you said, you’re living in DC now, I was like, oh, that was my first trip out there. And we spent two weeks my mom went with me and just a tremendous time of doing research. We got to see the original Choctaw treaties. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean, only three people have a key or access to this fault at the National Archives, and it was a tremendous honor to get to do that. So I brought that back to my community in Durant, Oklahoma, which that’s kind of my adopted community. Again, I’m in Texas, but we do a lot of stuff in Oklahoma, especially Durant, so we had a workshop there. And out of that I had several Choctaw authors submit stories. And that became my first book, Touch My Tears: Tales from the Trail of Tears to preserve Choctaw removal stories.
Kat
Yeah, we’re moving further and further into the future, and that is, unfortunately, in America, history sort of becomes this thing that happened, and we lose the stories. We need to not lose them, right?
Sarah
Yeah, absolutely. That’s our heritage. I look at it as my ancestors walked the trail for us. So we’re honoring them with telling their stories.
Kat
Yeah. And how can we avoid doing that in the future if it’s not close to us, if we don’t really see and let it touch us, even if it makes us uncomfortable, which history usually does make us uncomfortable.
Sarah
Yes. But it’s so important to remember those stories and tell them.
Kat
So you put that together as kind of an anthology?
Sarah
Yeah, it was a short story collection, an anthology, and I indie published that. That was the route that I ended up going. I kind of hoped the NMAI, the National Museum of the American Indian, would be able to publish it through their house and then I found out they only do non-fiction, and we were doing historical fiction, short stories. And they’re like, you know, we trust you. Go for it. So we ended up doing that collection ourselves and launched it. And when I say ourselves, me, my mom, graphic designer, and we got it done. And then I’ve decided to stay with indie publishing because I just deal with so much culturally and spiritually sensitive material. I just want to always maintain that control over it.
Kat
All right, so what do you think? So because you’re doing things that people might have different opinions on, because I’ve noticed that you’ve used several different words to describe your heritage, so American, Indian, Native. So we were kind of talking about this beforehand. Do you think that would sort of be tried to bring, like, the East Coast publishing ideals to it? Are you afraid of that? Or do you just kind of not even want to go there? Have you heard stories that people are sort of made to change it, or is it just more of a I don’t even want to deal.
Sarah
It’s a little bit of both. When I started out, it wasn’t as polarizing as it is now, but there was that sense that it was coming. And now I’ve heard a lot of traditional publishers won’t even accept a manuscript that has a Native main character if you’re not Native, if you’re not a tribal member of a tribe, and even specifically that tribe. So they’re really clamping down on a lot of things. There’s a lot of words that they don’t want you to use even in a historical sense, like Indian, which is a very controversial word to even speak out loud in today’s climate. And even when I say it as a Choctaw tribal member, people just their eyes pop open and they’re like, did you actually say Indian? And I’ve had people come back on social media or by email and be like, oh, please don’t use that word. You can’t use that word. It’s so derogatory. And it is and I go over this in my course quite a bit because it is a controversial topic, a controversial word, and really it is more of an insider term. You need to know how and ways to use it. And so in a historical sense, though, they even want to eliminate things like that, that’s history. And so, yeah, I spoke to someone from I guess I won’t say the state, but on the East Coast, they were at a museum, and I was getting some historical information from them, and I put in my email that my story takes place in Indian territory. And so whenever I was talking to him on the phone, he said, well, I understand you have a series set in Native territory, and dadadadada. And I was like, Native territory? Oh, Indian territor!. You can say Indian territory. It’s okay, that’s like legally, that was the name of it before the state of Oklahoma. It was Indian Territory. It’s really getting that more and more. So, that’s where we’re at now.
Kat
So wouldn’t you feel, though, that’s almost whitewashing history, like, that we’re not describing people in their discomfort, and they’re like making up an ‘other’ of people. If you give them the proper terms of 2022, doesn’t that make them look better than they actually were?
Sarah
Well, and you just you lose the context of that time period. It was a different time. And as a historical fiction author, you know, there’s some things that we may kind of skirt around or I don’t want to soft soap, so but we just want to give a, I don’t even want to say a gentler view, but sometimes we are a wall between our readers and the history. And I did that with, I had a great discussion with a fellow military author. We both did a World War I book, and I was like, what was that experience like, actually feeling like you’re on the battlefield? And it was just so gruesome and, you know, do we put all of that in our books? Do we put that in there for the readers? And that was really the description she had, is we’re kind of this barrier from the real history and the reader. They can find that real history, but we just put it in a different way that they still get the full experience that this was a gruesome time in our history. So we don’t want to whitewash it, like you said, because war is awful, and we don’t want to glorify it in any way. But at the same time, how harsh are we being for our readers in that? And I think it’s a case-by-case basis in a sense, but I’m not for whitewashing. And just give the whole context, though. Don’t get in one ditch or the other of I’m going to show how bad people were in the past, or I’m going to show how good they were. Just study the history from an unbiased perspective and bring it out the best of your ability, right?
Kat
Absolutely. So you have a course to help people sort of navigate this whole thing if they want to. Is it pretty much for any Native tribe? Well, tell us about your course, why you made it, and what people can learn from it.
Sarah
Absolutely. My course is called Fiction Writing: American Indians. And I’ve wanted to create it for years because I always have authors contact me, asking specific questions or asking, as a non-Native, can I write about Native people? What do you think about this? And I’ve had writers almost in tears and just so scared of, one, the climate that we’re in. Two, they genuinely want to accurately portray American Indian people, and they’re afraid they get it wrong and they’re like, I’m just scared of being disrespectful. You know, they genuinely, they have that heart. They don’t want to be disrespectful. And I found most writers are that way. You always have the outliers that are, I’m going to write whatever I want, I don’t care what anybody thinks, but the course isn’t for them. But this is for the people that are working hard, the writers that are willing to put in the work to accurately portray Native people. And so, yeah, I created it. I wanted to do it for years. I’ve taught at It, live at workshops and at conferences, and finally got it put together in an online course. I have students now in the UK. So it’s really an international appeal and it’s for Native and non-Native authors.
Kat
Of course. Because sometimes, depending on where you grow up, you might not know. I mean, I’m sure I’m part English and I feel whenever I write my historical fiction, I got to go and look it up because we can’t know everything, right? So I think this is pretty amazing. There was a sort of a blank space, I guess, in this area because I haven’t seen anything that’s specifically about writing American Indians in fiction and how you go about that, how you go about researching, because Google can be a big black hole. I don’t know. It usually comes up with a lot of Harvard written papers, I feel like, every time you go down that hole. So what is it that people can find in here? Because I looked over your blog and you answered tons of questions on that blog, which I think is really awesome. If people want to check out Sarah’s blog, we’re going to have it in the show notes below so people can get started there. But how long is the course? I guess what’s? A little bit of the topics that you cover in there?
Sarah
Yeah, so it’s broken down into three parts. I wanted to because it is such a heavy topic and people I want them to be able to take their time and absorb it and really process it. So I broke it into three parts of getting to know the people that you’re writing about, learning how to research the people you’re writing about, and then we go into kind of the post, how to become a trusted author and the publishing options. So it’s about a total of 4 hours video content. I’m adding transcripts of the video as well so that people can follow along that way if they want to. But I broke it into modules, so each part is broken into modules and then each of those modules is broken into lessons. So we have a stereotypes module that actually has twelve lessons in it. When people go to americanindians.fictioncourses.com, they can see a breakdown of those parts in the modules, so they know exactly what topics are being covered and it is a comprehensive course. I will add some workbooks and things like that. Have that available for people. But at this point, I’m not planning to create another course. This is everything that I can offer in a comprehensive course that will get writers on the road to writing about Native Americans.
Kat
That’s wonderful. And you have a ton of feedback, which is really great. I think this is instead of Americans avoiding putting people, different characters, different people into our historical fiction or even contemporary fiction, what we need to do is learn. And you’re offering this way for people to learn a different culture, a different ethnic group, different and like you said, the stereotypes, sometimes we don’t even know what is a stereotype, because it’s just been absorbed by us. Or if you grew up in, I don’t know, Pennsylvania, or I’m trying to think of a place.
Sarah
Pretty much anywhere in the world, even Oklahoma, where there’s many tribes. Yeah. Stereotypes are still prominent.
Kat
Right, I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they get mistaken for Hispanic people.
Sarah
My brother, we’re full siblings. Same mom, same dad. We don’t look anything alike. But if you check out my books, Touch My Tears and Anumpa Warrior, which is the Code Talker book, he’s on the cover of both of those. He has a lot darker skin. I picked him because he was cheap, Choctaw, and handsome. He’s my model. But he’ll go, he’s been to Nicaragua and Mexico, different places, and he always people just immediately start speaking to him in Spanish. Even he landed in Florida, coming back, and the agent was like, welcoming and greeting him in Spanish. And he was like, I’m in America, right? I was like, oh, I’m sorry, sir. Yes, yes. Welcome. Come on.
Kat
You should just talk to them in Choctaw. And they’ll be like, I don’t understand.
Sarah
He does that, too, sometimes. That’s funny. We’re not fluent speakers, but we know we know a few phrases.
Kat
Yeah, that’s wonderful. It is funny how we just sort of make a lot of assumptions. So that’s cool. There’s twelve different modules, you said on that.
Sarah
Yeah, twelve different lessons. And also, when we’re talking about genres, I talk a lot about historical fiction because that’s my primary genre. But this topic touches all genres. Contemporary, romance, thriller, fantasy, I have a lot of fantasy authors that send me questions because they have these fictional people groups that they want to create in their stories, but they still want to, and they’re basing them on Native people, Native Americans, but they still don’t want to be stereotypical. They still want to do that research. And so I answer a lot of questions from fantasy authors.
Kat
That’s wonderful. I’m glad that this generation or a couple generations that we’re sort of learning to ask the questions. Like, it’s much better to learn about it than to assume that the Westerns you watched on PBS when you were a kid, rightly portrayed all different people, right? We don’t want to go there. I do want to. So we will have more information about the Fiction Writing: American Indians course in the show notes below. If you guys are part of my newsletter, Sarah and I are going to get together and collaborate soon. We will also have Sarah’s links in the show notes below as well. But I don’t want to let you go too quickly, because I want to talk about your, let me see if I can say this. Anumpa Warrior? Did I say that right?
Sarah
Yeah, very close.
Kat
Okay. We’ve all heard about the Navajo Code Talkers, but I hadn’t heard about the Choctaw Code Talkers. So can you tell us how you knew about this story and what it was like to write the story?
Sarah
Oh, absolutely. I have always known about the Choctaw Coat Talkers of World War I, I don’t think there was a time that I didn’t, because of growing up, going to our Labor Day festival and different events, they were always honored, starting in the 1980s, which I was born in 1985. So that was always a part of my upbringing, and it really surprised me whenever I would talk to other people that they didn’t know about the Choctaw Code Talkers. So it was reversed for me, and I would go speak at libraries and museums. I knew I wanted to write the story, so I would ask that question, who’s heard of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II? And everyone would raise their hand, and then I would say, who’s heard of the Choctaw Code Talkers?
Kat
There was a movie! I saw the movie.
Sarah
Yeah, which for me, it was like, a long time later before I actually saw the movie. I think I already put my book out before I saw the movie.
Kat
That’s funny.
Sarah
But so, yeah, everyone I saw the movie, I know about the Navajoes. And then I would ask, Great, who’s heard about the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I? And I would just get these blank big eyes stares, and I was like, okay, so we need to tell our story. We’re Choctaws. We need to tell our story. And rather than doing, like, a history book, which is great, and we have a history book now that was done by Dr. Meadows of Missouri State University. Really grateful for that. But I wanted to hit the mainstream. It’s like, that’s how most people learn. How do people know about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II? Because of the movie. So I wanted to do a novel to hit that entertainment value and be able to share it through entertainment and also entertainment that just makes it more accessible for a lot of people, and they learn, and we remember stories, right? We remember when we read a story or someone tells us a story versus reading just the facts of something. So I wanted to do it as a story. And in 2016, it kind of because World War I, for the most part is forgotten anyway. So not just the Code Talkers, but World War I itself. And so I kind of woke up one day and I was like, we aren’t we in like the 100-year anniversary years of World War I. And so I checked it, and sure enough, the armistice was signed in November 11, 1918. And I was like, that’s just two years away. And the Choctaw Code Talkers really need to be a part of that commemoration and that recognition. So I got busy researching. It did take me that whole two years. And we barely got it out for the anniversary. We released October, at the end of October, which is when the Choctaws actually did their code talking. But that spring, I got to go to France, my first international trip. Walked the battlefields and went to where they actually do their code talking. Spent a couple of days in Paris, went to the Army Museum there. And one of the Code Talkers, who Otis W. Leader, he was selected he was in the first division. He was selected to represent the American Doughboy. Whenever he first landed in France, the artist was like, who better to represent than an American Indian? You know, the American Doughboy. So his portrait was painted. He went on to fight in almost all the major battles, was wounded and cast twice. So he truly became the ideal American Doughboy. And I’m currently writing his biography with Chickasaw Press. And so I’m excited for that project. But when I was in France, I went to the Army Museum and got to view that portrait that was done of him. So it was just, that was a tremendous trip. And just talking to all of the descendants. And some of them knew the Code Talkers. They were children, but they had a few stories and memories of them because I think the last one passed in the 1970s. So, of course, that was way prior to my lifetime. But there’s still people alive today that knew them. That’s why I call myself a story archeologist. I’m always digging up these things and putting them into a story.
Kat
I mean, I think this is incredibly inspiring to dig up those stories of your people, whoever your people are, any listener listening, like, that’s an amazing story. Even though you know about Code Talkers, how did you narrow down how to tell the story? Did you just sort of make one up and base him off of many? Or how did you because that would be my biggest thing. I’d spend two years like, I don’t know.
Sarah
Oh Kat, you hit it right in my heart. That was exactly my biggest problem in starting the project and why I put it off for so many years, because I wrote a flash fiction about it probably in 2011-2012. And I selected one of the Code Talkers to kind of tell the story from. And it was just this really brief 750-word story but that hung me up for years. It’s like, who do I tell this from? There were 19 or 20 that were credited as Choctaw Code Talkers, how do you pick one? Number one. Two, as writers, we know we get deep into the skin of the main character, and we’ve got their internal conflicts and all of those things going on. And I just didn’t feel comfortable with doing that with any of these guys who went through combat. And I didn’t want to put any feelings and emotions into them that I don’t know. And like I said, their descendants are still alive and they knew them. So it was really complicated. I was like, how do I tell this story? How do you even approach something like this? And I had never done anything like this. And I finally came to the decision to create a fictional character and write it in first person and just basically make him a composite, in a sense, of the Code Talkers and their experiences, but while also having all of the actual Code Talkers. So they’re all his buddies. He’s just a part of the gang of Choctaws who a lot of them went to Armstrong Academy in Oklahoma, a boarding school, and they enlisted straight out of there when America entered the war in 1917. So I just made him a part of that group, and he’s one of the Choctaws and becomes one of the Choctaw Code Talkers. So once I landed on that, I was like, okay, I can write the story. And then the real work began. And then, honestly, I think it was my subconscious, too, though, because Joseph Bruchac, who, again, fabulous oral storyteller, he had written a book about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. And that’s what he did. He did a fictional main character, wrote it in first person and had him be a part of the World War II Code Talkers. And so I didn’t specifically, like, read that book and go, oh, that’s how I’m going to do mine. But I think it was in my subconscious. And then whenever I decided to do it and I got into the research, I was like, oh, I need to go back and look at that book again. And then I saw it, and I was like, this is where that came from.
Kat
I think it’s a brilliant idea. I mean, a lot of stories that are based off, just like you said, you have a lot of different conflicts when you base it off of a true person. So really following one person or making it like their descendants would recognize them. But then you have to have internal conflict and you have to have external conflict. And if you make that part up, that could cause a lot of issues. Yeah, or maybe people will believe it. And I’m sure you’ve been asked this, but half the time I get people being like, are the characters in your book based on you? No everything’s fine. So trying to make sure everyone knows it’s fiction is just easier if you create one character and then have them. Did you have to ask permission to use everyone’s name or how does that work historically? Were they honored to be part of it?
Sarah
Oh, yeah, they were honored to be a part of it. And I didn’t use any of the people that are alive today as far as part of the story, the actual Code Talkers, they’re historical figures. So you’re free to write about anyone in history, some family, if you’re slandering, they may come after you.
Kat
Maybe don’t do that.
Sarah
I mean if you’re going to be slandering, talking bad. Go talk to your lawyer first. Don’t take this as legal advice. Yeah, I’m not a lawyer. That’s my disclaimer. My other disclaimer with that Kat, what you were saying is we need t-shirts saying caution, I’m a novelist. Bystanders may be written into the story.
Kat
And killed off later.
Sarah
That does happen. But, yeah, as far as the historical figure, people are still writing biographies on George Washington and all of those things. So at this point, they’re historical figures. If it’s a living person, I don’t know how they get by with that, with writing about the royal family and things like that. So, again, talk to your lawyer if you’re going to go down that path.
Kat
Yeah, definitely. Let’s not go down that path, on the podcast. So what else do you have? You have a couple of series I’m trying to get over here, on your shop. Here we go, different books. So you have one World War I book, but then you have a different series with the Choctaw Tribune series. Is that it?What year is that set in?
Sarah
That’s set in the 1890s. All Choctaw nations. So prior to Oklahoma statehood, right before all of the upheaval with the Dawes Commission, that divided our tribal lands because we had communal lands, and with the Dawes Commission, it was divided up into individual land allotments, which the tribes were really split on that on whether or not they wanted to do that. So there was just a lot of controversy, a lot of political upheaval, shootouts. It was kind of that true grit time period, too. So you had a lot of outlaws that would come into Indian territory because the Indian police or the like the Choctaw Horsemen, couldn’t arrest someone who was non-Choctaw. They would have to call in the marshals, and the marshals some jurisdictions, they couldn’t arrest someone that was Indian. So there was just this. And it’s like, where do they get tried at? And all of these things.
Kat
And everyone else is in the middle. Trying to say alive, geez.
Sarah
Literally, so it was a bit of the Old West during that time period. So my main characters are Matthew and Ruth-Anne Teller, they’re fictional. So all of the events, I based it on that history, but it’s really character driven with those two, they’re brother and sister, and they’re out to report the truth in the newspaper, no matter what the threats. And they are always threatened. And there’s just like life and death kind of threat. A little spoiler, the newspaper shop gets burned down, just all these things that are happening. But they have that determination and drive and family relationships and values just comes out really strong in that series.
Kat
And is that based on a real newspaper? Was there a newspaper?
Sarah
It’s not based on an actual newspaper, but there were Choctaw run newspapers during the 1800s. And there were also newspapers like The Indian Citizen and a few others that were Indian run newspapers. And a lot of those newspapers were printed in both languages, which is in the Choctaw Tribune. It’s printed in English and in choctaw. And so that series, Anumpa Warrior that we’re talking about, the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I, is a standalone, but by the way, ‘Anumpa’ meaning language, or words in Choctaw, so Language Warriors, I would like to clarify that. But in that book, it’s kind of a second generation because it’s actually Ruth Anne’s son who is my fictional character. So to add that in there, as far as, like, how I developed this, I was going to do a fictional character. Then I was like, I’ve got his whole back story, his whole family and everything with this. And in the Anumpa Warrior, the other fictional main character is Matthew. So this is a few decades later, but he’s still a reporter, so he’s now a war reporter. And he goes through the entire war as a war reporter. So I’m doing a different perspective. I switched between those two points of view. So that’s his uncle. In Choctaw tradition, we’re a matrilineal society. And so the mother’s brother would actually take on the main role of helping raise his sister’s children. And so that’s a really strong connection. And Anumpa Warrior is Matthew being the main character’s uncle and going through the war.
Kat
What a good idea, I’m not sure I would have thought of that. Yeah, if we spend a lot of time thinking about our projects, I don’t think people know how much time we spend thinking.
Sarah
All the time, it never ends. And for me, it’s good to have a couple of projects going because, like, I got a little stuck with book five of the Choctaw Tribune series. So there’s four books out, currently. I’ll get six books total. But book five, I’ve just been stuck on some plot things and some character things and the historical aspects. So I also teach historical fiction, and I have to I’m having to hold my feet to the fire of some things that I though of. Don’t fudge and really stick with the history as much as you can. And there’s exceptions to that. But I’m really having to grind my way through some issues with the plot and the character and the history and making it all mesh together. So I’ve been a little stuck on book five. So back to Doc Beck I go, back and forth.
Kat
And it’s funny how you can have several books and then you’ll get to one where it’s just like, I don’t know, you just like spend so much time. I think a lot of people think that it gets easier and easier and easier, but it’s really like book-by-book basis.
Sarah
I thought it was going to like I don’t know who promised me that.
Kat
I think it’s in our head, that little voice in our head said, if you just keep going, some people get easier. But talk to us a little bit about the Doc Beck Western because there are eight books in that. So what is the difference there and where is it?
Sarah
Yeah, the difference with that is I wouldn’t call it like a more of a cultural book. So with the Choctaw Tribune series, Anumpa Warrior, Touched my Tears, and then Tushpa’s Story, which is a continuation of the short story I did and Touched my Tears. And that’s based on a true story. So those are more my heritage and my cultural books that I’m really trying to preserve the history, one, and then to share it. Because here in America, it’s our shared history, Native history, Choctaw history, and American history. It’s shared, Choctaw fought alongside Americans in every war since the Revolutionary War. And so sharing that history, that’s what I want to capture with that. With the Doc Beck, I needed a little bit of a break because that is a lot of heavy research and emotionally draining at times and not saying that Doc Beck’s easy, Doc Beck Westerns. But I did want to return to Westerns and in writing, I grew up on Western. So we were knocking TV Westerns and old Westerns a little bit earlier because that is where a lot of our stereotypes about Native Americans comes from, is the old Westerns. So I’m going back and watching some of those with a different perspective now. But my dad was born in 1946. He grew up when Gun Smoke was still on the radio, it was still a radio show. It was the longest running TV series of any. And that actually wasn’t like, his favorite. We were Bonanza. That was our favorite. Everybody’s, like, got that in their hand. I loved all those characters, really. Matthew Teller, he’s kind of a mashup of the Cartwrights. That’s a whole other rabbit trail. But I did want to return to Westerns. I’ve always wanted to write Westerns, but I was at this crossroads of, I’ve done all of this research on Native America, and it’s just a different perspective that I wanted to bring to it. So I kept a lot of the traditional Western tropes that we have, the shootouts and the gunfights, fist fights, all the stuff that people expect in a Western and just action packed adventure. But I wanted to have a First American main character. And that’s another term. That’s actually my preferred term when we’re talking about Native Americans as a group is First Americans. So just a little aside to our terminology thing, but I wanted to have a First American main character. And because when I was thinking about doing a Western, I was like, literally, what do I do with the Indians? You know, it’s like, I can’t just go with the tropes that we have a lot of times and that we still see today in Western when dealing with that. So I wanted a main character. And I had heard about Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte several years ago, her being the first American Indian woman doctor. And so that stuck in the back of my mind. I was like, I want to write a story about her sometime. And then I was like, what if I have this intrepid Western doctor who travels the west on these medical missions, and she’s an Omaha Indian woman doctor, and that became Doc Beck or Dr. Susan. I’m getting confused. Dr. Rebecca La Roche, who is my fictional character, who again, I always emphasize it’s not a representation of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte’s story. She had her own incredible life story. People can read about that. But I did take some of her background as far as going to medical school and about the Omaha Indian Reservation, all of those things. And I put that into my character. And so Doc Beck and she’s called Dr. Rebecca La Roche goes by Doc Beck. That’s what she’s known as in the west. And she’s actually been banned from her reservation for reasons that we reveal as the book series goes on. But she has a sponsor who sends her out basically on medical missions. And so she the first one, Palo Duro Canyon. We go to New Mexico. She gets kidnapped and goes to Mexico. So all of the old Western things, she’s got a sidekick that has totally stolen the show named Jimmy. He’s a young kid, about 16 years old, but he’s really almost serving as a mentor role for her, even though she’s almost old enough to be his mother, as he works out at one point. But he’s a great character. He’ll probably get his own spin-off series because he’s just become so loved. So then it goes to Wyoming, and the four books that I’m working on now will be set in Nebraska, primarily on the Omaha reservation.
Kat
That what a good idea. I love that. And I love how you take a woman or a story from history and sort of spin it off. And that’s really all we can do, right? Because, again, going back to Google, you could Google, how would a person, a woman go to medical school? It’s like, you’re not going to get anywhere. So you have to use someone’s real story. How was she educated? How did she get there? As your research. That’s what we have. Unless I don’t know, I go to the archives here in DC and see if somebody will give you something, but I mean, really spinning it off of somebody’s real life, I think it’s actually a tribute, too, of, like, how much that story is impactful. There are female doctors and that’s amazing. She must have been super brave, honestly.
Sarah
She was a very gentle woman. The real doctor, Picotte. She was a very gentle woman, but she was strong. Like, she would not she didn’t take any guff off of anyone, but she was very gentle, very kind, just heart as big as the state. I mean, she was just incredible. And I love what you said. It’s really a way of honoring her and the inspiring story that she had. But yeah, if we’re just starting from scratch, it is hard to put together when it’s history. Because that Google is a black hole.
Kat
Yeah. And then if it’s not based off of something, then people could claim it’s really going into fantasy. There were no female doctors back then. What are you talking about? No, there was. Right?
Sarah
Read my author notes.
Kat
Yes. I love that. I love that idea. So you have eight books of that out already and you’re working on four more.
Sarah
And that’s a novella series. So they are short books. They’re a couple hour read for most people. And that was the other reason why I went with that medium, because novels can take me years to get put together, put that together with plot and history and the culture. So I was like, I need something that I can write faster and put out to give my readers more options to read instead of having to go three years between a novel or something. I won’t say it’s easy to write. But it is easier to write than the novels. So they do bring in about a fourth of the size, and so they’re almost like TV episodes. So that’s kind of like referring to his old TV western series and people can just enjoy a short read, shorter read.
Kat
That’s wonderful. I like that. Maybe I’ll start doing novellas because I’m so stuck on mine.
Sarah
There’s actually a market for novellas, which really surprised me as well, so I really enjoy doing those.
Kat
Well, you know, there are certain topics or stories that don’t need 400 pages. And I think sometimes we get bogged down with the, like, fluff of trying to make it a full novel, you know? Yeah, we get these weird rules that we have to follow. The 80,000 words, like, well, if it doesn’t need that many words, why write that many words? I like that indie publishing as you and I are part of is sort of breaking open those walls. You know, moms, we don’t have time.
Sarah
I do, seriously, I have a mom that I’ve known for years, and she’s homeschooling her kids. And literally, this is the first series that she’s read since high school. And she’s like, I love it because it’s short. I can just catch some reading here and there and not get lost in the story. So, yes, she’s being able to actually read because it is shorter. But, yeah, as authors, we write the story the length that the story calls for a number of warriors. We should I thought it was going to be a novella. I was going to make it more of the length of Tushpa’s story, which is a novella as well. I was going to go for that length, and as I got into it, I was like, this is a novel, it just is.
Kat
Yeah, sometimes it changes like that, too, doesn’t it? Well, that’s amazing. You have all of these books and more about yourself on your website, SarahElisabethWrites.com. Sometimes it’s hard to read the URL, right? I was going to go read Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and that’s not what it is, SarahElisabethWrites.com. But we will have the link in the show notes below. And I would encourage everyone to sign up for her newsletter, go see her course, sign up for my newsletter because we are going to do something soon together, because that’s what indie authors do. We collaborate.
Sarah
I’m excited about that Kat. Thank you. And I also want to plug ChoctawSpirit.com. As far as people buying direct, they can get some of the books on my website. I’m still working on that. But my mother is a Choctaw artist as well, and we launched her fine art prints and jewelry on ChoctawSpirit.com. And she’s like, Your books are going on there so readers can get the ebook directly. I’m working on some audiobooks as well for them. So, ChoctawSpirit.com, we have that available for people to buy direct. And for the authors that are writing about Native Americans, I also have a free ebook for you guys. It’s five stereotypes to avoid when writing about Native Americans. And you can get that on AmericanIndians.FictionCourses.com.
Kat
Okay. We will have those links in the show notes as well, because I’m sure we have just scratched the surface of what different issues or questions that might come up. If people now feel like, great, I can have this character, and I’m sure they’ll write and then be like, wait a minute, I need more help, because that’s how our life goes.
Sarah
Yeah, it’s complicated. But I’m grateful to offer this resource because, like I said, it’s really not out there. There’s really not much help for authors in this niche.
Kat
Yeah, and like you said, it’s our whole history. Everyone together. The past history and yesterday history, the tomorrow history.
Sarah
Yeah, for sure, history.
Kat
Yes. All right, so are you going to say goodbye in Choctaw?
Sarah
I am. We do not have a word for goodbye in Choctaw language, we just don’t I don’t. But we say I will see you again soon. And I’ll also add, Yokoke. Thank you, Kat, for having me on your podcast.
Kat
That’s wonderful. You’re so welcome. We’ll see you again soon.
Sarah
Thank you.