Meet Lillian Ackerman... and Kaya
How a Liberal Arts professor helped bring a doll's life to life

BY GARY LINDSEY

Lillian Ackerman is a graceful and elegant woman—to picture her
traipsing around plateau Native American reservations stretches the imagination.

But her appearance defies her experience and expertise. It is her years of research on the reservations, collecting data and talking stories with members of the tribes, which resulted in a contract with the Pleasant Company and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Pleasant Company is the Middleton, Wisconsin, firm that owns the wildly popular, and pricy, American Girl collection. Mattel owns the kit and caboodle. News releases from the company read like this: “Introduced in 1986, The American Girls Collection is designed to foster pride in the traditions of growing up a girl in America and provide a ‘girlsized’ view of significant historical events that helped shape our country.” The company’s mission is “to educate and entertain girls with highquality products and experiences that build self-esteem and reinforce positive social and moral values.” This fall the company introduced “an adventurous nine-year-old Nez Perce girl named Kaya (KY-yaah)”—and the expertise of Professor Ackerman played a strategic role.

“They wanted the stories to be accurate,” Professor Ackerman says of the books she helped mold. “I contributed authenticity.” Ackerman worked along with the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, an eight-member advisory board which granted permission for the stories to be created, and contributed expertise on the appearance of Kaya and her accessories.

There are six books about Kaya: Meet Kaya, Kaya’s Escape, Kaya’s Hero, Kaya and Lone Dog, Kaya Shows the Way, and Changes for Kaya. Each story is set in the original homeland of the Nez Perce Tribe which we now call Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. “It’s a great thing,” says Ackerman, “because it’s an opportunity for children to learn about other time periods.”

“We hope Kaya’s stories will expand girls’ cultural awareness and show them that our country’s history did not begin with the American Revolution,” says Julia Prohaska, brand director for American Girl. “We proudly put Kaya first in our lineup of American Girls and believe that girls across the country will delight in learning about the Nez Perce people—a culture that values family, the environment, and the community. In today’s turbulent times, these important qualities have special meaning for all of us.”

Prohaska’s description of tribal values is something Professor Ackerman witnessed firsthand. When she talks about her years on the reservations and the people she has worked with, her eyes and her voice communicate a deep sense of respect.

Professor Ackerman’s path to tribal research was non-traditional. She and her husband, Anthropology Professor Robert Ackerman, moved to the Palouse in 1961 after she completed her B.A. and M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She raised three children in Pullman, squeezing in research when and where possible, but postponed her Ph.D. until 1982.

“I was always motivated to finish my education,” she says. “I came from a hyphenated family, Armenian-American, and I grew up with many, many questions about cultural happenings around me. Pullman,” she says, “was the first American town I had been in.”

It was a job as an assistant to a researcher on the Nez Perce Reservation in the mid 1960s that got her hooked on tribal theories. Through the years and hundreds of conversations, she documented ground-breaking cultural phenomena among the plateau tribes. Professor Ackerman’s research is likely the first to prove evidence of gender equality in an industrial society.

“Until then,” she says, “it was commonly believed it would only work in a hunting and gathering society.”

And there were personal revelations. “I learned how to be a grandmother by watching these families. I learned plateau tribes in general are kind. They take time for human activities. They support each other emotionally and economically.”

Ackerman is proud of the likely impact this project might have for the plateau tribes. “This doll and these books reflect the greatness and pride of the tribes and the merchandise is authentic. I think it could be great validation for them and their culture.”

The ways of the plateau tribes will now, thanks to the new Kaya books and Lillian Ackerman’s input, be much better known. “As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these children didn’t grow up wanting to do research on the Nez Perce reservation,” she says.