“I heard that a Commanche medicine woman named Barrett Eagle Bear was coming to New Jersey from Texas to run sweat lodge ceremonies. Hungry for a taste of home, I drove out to the wooded area where she would conduct her ceremony and found, to my great surprise, over fifty naked white people standing in the woods, waiting. One man was holding a staff adored with a pair of deer antlers and chicken feathers. With great trepidation, I opened the car door. I was immediately approached by a naked white woman, roughly sixty years of age and around 190 pounds. She folded me into a tight embrace, saying “I am so sorry for what my people have done to your people”
-Anton Treuer (Ojibwe), writing in Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Indians But Were Afraid To Ask.
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My students and I cringed and squirmed as we read this story which details one of Treuer’s many experiences of being misunderstood by non-Indigenous people. Treuer writes, “Indians. We are so often imagined, and so infrequently understood”.
As we read this story, we had one burning question - how can we replace our collective imagination of Native Americans with authentic experiences that increase our understanding?
As students realized from the story above, good intentions are not enough. If we allow ourselves to remain ignorant, we can end up causing embarrassment at best, and trauma at worst.
We began our unit on Native American people, culture and history by taking stock of things we have seen and heard about Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It was a sobering exercise. We found that our collective knowledge was both superficial, and skewed towards an outsider’s perspective. As a class, students could hardly name a Native American actor, musician, or artist. Between us, we could name a handful of authors and politicians. Some students could name some historical figures and events, and often had an unsettling sense that the stories of our past are incomplete. We realized that the overwhelming majority of messages we have received about Native Americans were negative - from stereotypes and racist imagery, to stories of brutal oppression and genocide. While it is important to recognize the traumatizing history and current oppression of Native American people, it is also important to make sure that oppression and misery aren’t the only stories we seek out. We also want to honor the achievements, cultures, and the abundance of knowledge held by indigenous communities.
We then spent some time deliberately balancing the messages we have received so far about Native Americans. We learned about Deb Haaland’s swearing-in dress, a new Bay Area Native American restaurant, Charlene Holy Bear’s beaded Vans, and the Minneapolis Center for Indigenous Art. We read Anton Treuer’s Everything You Wanted To Know About Indians But Were Afraid To Ask, and Howard Zinn’s account of indigenous Carribbeans’ first encounters with European colonists in A Young People’s History of The United States. Seventh grade is currently reading the YA novel If I Ever Get Out Of Here, by Eric Gansworth (Onondaga), which mixes serious commentary on White-Native relationships with a healthy dose of teen drama.
Students then picked their own topics to research in depth. We invite you to read some of their work:
Teia: Haudenosaunee Monetary system Before Colonization
Gabbie: Native Americans Still Exist, And So Does The Racism They Face
Mikaela: The stories of Pocohontas
Justin: Zitkala-Ša: Life Story And Legacy
Ivana: How the Spanish influenced Aztec religion
Every month is Native American history month. Throughout this last month of focus on indigenous issues, we raised more questions than we answered. In our mission to be a globally minded, inquiring, and caring community, the work is never finished.
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Some reflections from students on this unit:
“This essay caused me to question a ton of things about Native Americans and about the tales we had been told before. As a kid I was told that when we came to America we easily became friends with the Native Americans, but after we read about Native Americans and did some research I learned that it was not actually that way! I learned that not only did people not get along really well, but also that many people were killed in the process. This project made me think differently about the things we learned about before.”
-Lucida
"I believe this unit was extremely important and needed because we often don't hear POC voices highlighted and uplifted in history and through contemporary stories. This unit gave us a way to learn more about Native Americans, uplift their voices, and bring awareness to their issues and culture. Though none of us in 8th grade are Native American, this unit was a great way to learn more about Native American culture and history, hear modern stories (since Native Americans are often portrayed as "people of the past"/don't exist anymore) and the issues that still exist and affect them today."
-Gabbie