“The study of Native American people and their cultures is a challenge because of the stereotypes that exist, not only in the literature, but in our own minds and in those of the children we teach. Not long ago I was working with children in a school on the east coast and told them I had just come from working with Indian children in North Dakota. They were sure I was telling another story since, they said, "There aren't any more Indians. We killed them all." Hard to believe such things in today's world of television and world wide communication, but I'm sure these children were not unique in their ignorance. Many studies of Indians leave students convinced that all Indians lived in tepees then and still do or that they were all wiped out, not that our ancestors didn't try.” (Hurst)
In the introduction from her website about approaching Native American texts, Carol Hurst, an author of young adult literature and columnist for Teaching K8 Magazine, does a wonderful job of highlighting just a few of the issues that stem from not teaching Native American literature and history in our schools.
Where do these ideas come from? Why are Native American literary texts, especially Young Adult Literature, not being taught in most schools, like my own? What are students missing culturally and historically from this gap in the curriculum? What are the implications of not teaching Native American texts and the history surrounding them? These are just some of the questions and issues surrounding Native Americans that should be discussed but they seem to always be pushed under the rug in one way or another.
In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, writes a history of the land from the perspective of its first inhabitants. She works to answer questions like those proposed above and some of her own.
“Writing US history from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective requires rethinking the consensual national narrative. That narrative is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence. Inherent in the myth we’ve been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide. The myth persists, not for a lack of free speech or poverty of information but rather from an absence of motivation to ask questions that challenge the core of the scripted narrative of the origin story. How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society?” (2) Dunbar-Ortiz asks a very important question in the introduction to her book. She is not working to discredit the history and stories that many of us heard in our history classes and communities as we were growing up, but rather, she is working to bring awareness to the idea that there are two sides to every story and not everything that is written in a textbook or talked about in a region is the whole truth.
The example of Native American Boarding Schools comes to mind. The Native American Boarding Schools are a widely unknown element of our state and national history and yet they are important to understanding Native American cultures and their societies of today. Boarding schools are a dark part of our state and national history but we must learn about them to also learn from the mistakes of our past. The trauma of being taken from your home as a child and thrown into a school where you are not allowed to speak our own language or dress in your own clothing and are punished, sometimes severely, if you do so, is a trauma that will continue throughout your life. Just because boarding school trauma exists, does not mean that it is being recognized and that the history of it is being taught to students. That is where the problem lies. Students are not being educated enough about Native Americans and that is very concerning. This lack of education leads to the ignorance that Carol Hurst discovered among the school age children that she visited on the east coast.
As mentioned previously, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz briefly mentions settler colonization and genocide in the introduction of her book: “Inherent in the myth we’ve been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide” (2). She expands on the idea of settler colonialism by later writing:
“Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals. People do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to accomplish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that violence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonialism, as aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency.” (8)
The term “genocide” is also important. Many people think of this word strictly co-existing with the Holocaust, but the term is not exclusive to that event in history. Put simply, genocide is any act that is “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (8). This term can be applied to the instances between Indigenous people and white settlers that occurred during the the settling of the western part of the country and the instances of Indigenous children being taken from their families and being sent to boarding schools, but these ideas are not being presented to students through their textbooks and state standards. For students to fully understand the present lives and struggles of Indigenous people, they must first learn about the past struggles between Indigenous people and European settlers through these ideas of settler colonialism and genocide. Unfortunately, this is not present in most state history standards throughout the United States.
Sarah Shear, an associate professor of social studies education at Pennsylvania State University in Altoona, has conducted extensive research on the U.S. history standards throughout the United States and she has written about the gaps that she has found in the standards in many different papers and academic articles. In the introduction to one of her many papers, Manifesting Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K-12 U.S. History Standards published in Theory & Research in Social Education she writes:
“The purpose of this article is to investigate the frequency of and kinds of Indigenous Peoples-related content in K–12 U.S. history standards. We argue, based on the findings of this study, that students are denied opportunities to unpack re/presentations of Indigenous histories, cultures, and current issues within the current standardized curriculum. By understanding the ways in which state-level standards include—or exclude—Indigenous histories, cultures, and current issues in U.S. history, we hope to begin a critical dialogue about the implications of standardized curriculum for social studies.” (70)
Shear states it rather plainly. Students are not given the opportunities to further their understanding of Indigenous culture. If students are not being taught about Indigenous peoples in their school, they will trust the outside information that they find. Books and television programs that depict Native Americans in negative and prejudice ways and parents that have received the same limited education about Native Americans that their children are receiving are just two examples of where school age children may be getting misleading information on Native Americans. From the information that Shear found while researching, students are not getting an adequate amount of information from their state standards. Her findings are summarized by Alysa Landry:
“Across all the states, 87 percent of references to Natives portray them prior to 1900, with no clear vision of what happened after that.
In half of the states, no individual Natives or specific tribes are named.
Of the Natives named in standards, the most common are Sacagawea, Squanto, Sequoyah and Sitting Bill.
Only 62 Native nations are named in standards; most are mentioned by only one state. One nation, the Iroquois, is mentioned in six states.
Only four states—Arizona, Washington, Oklahoma and Kansas—include content about Indian boarding schools.
New Mexico is the only state to mention, by name, a member of the American Indian Movement.
Washington is the only state to use the word “genocide” in relation to Natives. That word is used in the standards for fifth grade U.S. history.
Nebraska textbooks portray Natives as lazy, drunk or criminal.
Ninety-percent of all manuscripts written about Native people are authored by non-Native writers.” (Landry)
These findings are shocking. Students are not being taught enough about Native Americans to make a fair judgement so they are relying on other, less academic ways of getting their information, like inaccurate books and television.
There is a simple solution to this issue in education. The state standards for history need to be changed to include a more thorough understanding of Indigenous history. This can also be done within English and literature classes. As Landry pointed out from Shear’s research, a great majority of works written about Native people are not written by Native people. Who is more qualified to tell the stories of a group of people than those people themselves? Including more Native written texts would give students a more accurate look into the lives and struggles of Indigenous people in their country and local region.
Although his writing might be a bit wild for some teachers and students, Sherman Alexie is a great addition to curriculums. His novel Flight would make for an interesting addition to a middle or high school level class. In this young adult novel, the reader follows an orphaned Native American boy called Zits. As Zits is about to make a life-changing decision, he is suddenly transported through time and space to the body of another human being. This process continues, and as Zits goes through different bodies and times, he learns life lessons along the way. When he finally finds himself back in his own body, he is still about to make his life-changing decision, but now, after the time that he has spent in other lives, he must rethink his ways. This is a great story that young students will find fun and engaging. Some of the content is dark but Alexie does a great job of incorporating humor throughout the novel also. More importantly, the story is written about an Indigenous character by an Indigenous writer and the influences are notable throughout the novel. This is an important element for the student readers. They get an inside look into the lives and experiences of Native people. This novel is especially unique because the story transcends time. There are present-day characters and characters from the Battle of Little Bighorn and everywhere in between. This range of time allows the student readers to experience Indigenous life at different times in history and notice the differences and similarities.
It is obvious that state standards and curriculums are not perfect in their inclusion of the history of Indigenous peoples in the United States. For anyone that is educated on the history of Native Americans and white settlers, it is apparent that those stories are missing from the educational system and these are not things that we can allow to be lost. History is meant to be learned from and how can future generations learn from past mistakes if they are not being taught about those mistakes? History is not something to be covered up. Students have the right to know the complete and true history of their nation and their people. History classes are meant to teach us about the past while English and literature classes teach us from the perspective of someone else. Literature can be very powerful and including texts like Sherman Alexie’s Flight into curriculums gives students a chance to learn about the lives and struggles of Indigenous people from their point of view.
Works Cited
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Boston, Beacon
Press, 2014.
Hurst, Carol. "Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site." n.d. Native Americans. 28 October 2017.
Landry, Alysa. "'All Indians Are Dead?' At Least That's What Most Schools Teach Children." 17
November 2014. Indian Country Today. 28 October 2017.
Shear, Sarah & Knowles, Ryan & J. Soden, Gregory & Castro, Antonio. (2015). Manifesting
Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K–12 U.S. History Standards.
Theory & Research in Social Education. 43. 68-101.
In the introduction from her website about approaching Native American texts, Carol Hurst, an author of young adult literature and columnist for Teaching K8 Magazine, does a wonderful job of highlighting just a few of the issues that stem from not teaching Native American literature and history in our schools.
Where do these ideas come from? Why are Native American literary texts, especially Young Adult Literature, not being taught in most schools, like my own? What are students missing culturally and historically from this gap in the curriculum? What are the implications of not teaching Native American texts and the history surrounding them? These are just some of the questions and issues surrounding Native Americans that should be discussed but they seem to always be pushed under the rug in one way or another.
In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, writes a history of the land from the perspective of its first inhabitants. She works to answer questions like those proposed above and some of her own.
“Writing US history from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective requires rethinking the consensual national narrative. That narrative is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence. Inherent in the myth we’ve been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide. The myth persists, not for a lack of free speech or poverty of information but rather from an absence of motivation to ask questions that challenge the core of the scripted narrative of the origin story. How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society?” (2) Dunbar-Ortiz asks a very important question in the introduction to her book. She is not working to discredit the history and stories that many of us heard in our history classes and communities as we were growing up, but rather, she is working to bring awareness to the idea that there are two sides to every story and not everything that is written in a textbook or talked about in a region is the whole truth.
The example of Native American Boarding Schools comes to mind. The Native American Boarding Schools are a widely unknown element of our state and national history and yet they are important to understanding Native American cultures and their societies of today. Boarding schools are a dark part of our state and national history but we must learn about them to also learn from the mistakes of our past. The trauma of being taken from your home as a child and thrown into a school where you are not allowed to speak our own language or dress in your own clothing and are punished, sometimes severely, if you do so, is a trauma that will continue throughout your life. Just because boarding school trauma exists, does not mean that it is being recognized and that the history of it is being taught to students. That is where the problem lies. Students are not being educated enough about Native Americans and that is very concerning. This lack of education leads to the ignorance that Carol Hurst discovered among the school age children that she visited on the east coast.
As mentioned previously, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz briefly mentions settler colonization and genocide in the introduction of her book: “Inherent in the myth we’ve been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide” (2). She expands on the idea of settler colonialism by later writing:
“Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals. People do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to accomplish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that violence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonialism, as aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency.” (8)
The term “genocide” is also important. Many people think of this word strictly co-existing with the Holocaust, but the term is not exclusive to that event in history. Put simply, genocide is any act that is “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (8). This term can be applied to the instances between Indigenous people and white settlers that occurred during the the settling of the western part of the country and the instances of Indigenous children being taken from their families and being sent to boarding schools, but these ideas are not being presented to students through their textbooks and state standards. For students to fully understand the present lives and struggles of Indigenous people, they must first learn about the past struggles between Indigenous people and European settlers through these ideas of settler colonialism and genocide. Unfortunately, this is not present in most state history standards throughout the United States.
Sarah Shear, an associate professor of social studies education at Pennsylvania State University in Altoona, has conducted extensive research on the U.S. history standards throughout the United States and she has written about the gaps that she has found in the standards in many different papers and academic articles. In the introduction to one of her many papers, Manifesting Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K-12 U.S. History Standards published in Theory & Research in Social Education she writes:
“The purpose of this article is to investigate the frequency of and kinds of Indigenous Peoples-related content in K–12 U.S. history standards. We argue, based on the findings of this study, that students are denied opportunities to unpack re/presentations of Indigenous histories, cultures, and current issues within the current standardized curriculum. By understanding the ways in which state-level standards include—or exclude—Indigenous histories, cultures, and current issues in U.S. history, we hope to begin a critical dialogue about the implications of standardized curriculum for social studies.” (70)
Shear states it rather plainly. Students are not given the opportunities to further their understanding of Indigenous culture. If students are not being taught about Indigenous peoples in their school, they will trust the outside information that they find. Books and television programs that depict Native Americans in negative and prejudice ways and parents that have received the same limited education about Native Americans that their children are receiving are just two examples of where school age children may be getting misleading information on Native Americans. From the information that Shear found while researching, students are not getting an adequate amount of information from their state standards. Her findings are summarized by Alysa Landry:
“Across all the states, 87 percent of references to Natives portray them prior to 1900, with no clear vision of what happened after that.
In half of the states, no individual Natives or specific tribes are named.
Of the Natives named in standards, the most common are Sacagawea, Squanto, Sequoyah and Sitting Bill.
Only 62 Native nations are named in standards; most are mentioned by only one state. One nation, the Iroquois, is mentioned in six states.
Only four states—Arizona, Washington, Oklahoma and Kansas—include content about Indian boarding schools.
New Mexico is the only state to mention, by name, a member of the American Indian Movement.
Washington is the only state to use the word “genocide” in relation to Natives. That word is used in the standards for fifth grade U.S. history.
Nebraska textbooks portray Natives as lazy, drunk or criminal.
Ninety-percent of all manuscripts written about Native people are authored by non-Native writers.” (Landry)
These findings are shocking. Students are not being taught enough about Native Americans to make a fair judgement so they are relying on other, less academic ways of getting their information, like inaccurate books and television.
There is a simple solution to this issue in education. The state standards for history need to be changed to include a more thorough understanding of Indigenous history. This can also be done within English and literature classes. As Landry pointed out from Shear’s research, a great majority of works written about Native people are not written by Native people. Who is more qualified to tell the stories of a group of people than those people themselves? Including more Native written texts would give students a more accurate look into the lives and struggles of Indigenous people in their country and local region.
Although his writing might be a bit wild for some teachers and students, Sherman Alexie is a great addition to curriculums. His novel Flight would make for an interesting addition to a middle or high school level class. In this young adult novel, the reader follows an orphaned Native American boy called Zits. As Zits is about to make a life-changing decision, he is suddenly transported through time and space to the body of another human being. This process continues, and as Zits goes through different bodies and times, he learns life lessons along the way. When he finally finds himself back in his own body, he is still about to make his life-changing decision, but now, after the time that he has spent in other lives, he must rethink his ways. This is a great story that young students will find fun and engaging. Some of the content is dark but Alexie does a great job of incorporating humor throughout the novel also. More importantly, the story is written about an Indigenous character by an Indigenous writer and the influences are notable throughout the novel. This is an important element for the student readers. They get an inside look into the lives and experiences of Native people. This novel is especially unique because the story transcends time. There are present-day characters and characters from the Battle of Little Bighorn and everywhere in between. This range of time allows the student readers to experience Indigenous life at different times in history and notice the differences and similarities.
It is obvious that state standards and curriculums are not perfect in their inclusion of the history of Indigenous peoples in the United States. For anyone that is educated on the history of Native Americans and white settlers, it is apparent that those stories are missing from the educational system and these are not things that we can allow to be lost. History is meant to be learned from and how can future generations learn from past mistakes if they are not being taught about those mistakes? History is not something to be covered up. Students have the right to know the complete and true history of their nation and their people. History classes are meant to teach us about the past while English and literature classes teach us from the perspective of someone else. Literature can be very powerful and including texts like Sherman Alexie’s Flight into curriculums gives students a chance to learn about the lives and struggles of Indigenous people from their point of view.
Works Cited
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Boston, Beacon
Press, 2014.
Hurst, Carol. "Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site." n.d. Native Americans. 28 October 2017.
Landry, Alysa. "'All Indians Are Dead?' At Least That's What Most Schools Teach Children." 17
November 2014. Indian Country Today. 28 October 2017.
Shear, Sarah & Knowles, Ryan & J. Soden, Gregory & Castro, Antonio. (2015). Manifesting
Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K–12 U.S. History Standards.
Theory & Research in Social Education. 43. 68-101.