View Content #708
| Contentid | 708 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | WHITE TEACHERS, INDIAN CHILDREN |
| Body | From: "Anselmo Villanueva" Check out the article at: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0310sta.htm Excerpts: TWO YEARS ago, my ignorance and I began to teach on Montana's Rocky Boy Reservation. Until then, I had never really thought of myself as white. My identity was formed by the facts that I am an Appalachian woman, the daughter of a coal miner, a hillbilly -- somehow not quite white. But at Rocky Boy Elementary, I was bride-dress white, and it mattered more than ever before.......................... TODAY, MOST Indian children are taught by white people who, like me, possess only the sanitized knowledge and understandings of Indian peopleand their history from bland white history texts. We learned about the pilgrims, but not about the Indians who saved them; about Lewis and Clark, but not about the Indians who saved them; about the great westward expansion, but not about the destruction of the Indian way of life it required; about reservations, but not about the attempted genocide. And Indians disappeared after they killed Custer. At least there was no more about them in my history books. As a result, we learned little beyond one- dimensional caricatures of history. Here in Montana, and I imagine throughout Indian country, deep wounds and resentments still fester. Many of the white teachers' great- grandparents participated in the wars that gave them the right to plant wheat and graze cows on land promised to Indians. They told their version of history to their children and their children's children. The children we teach are descendants of warriors who fought fiercely but lost the war to preserve their way of life. Like white men, they passed their version of history along to their children and grandchildren. Even as a teacher not burdened with the histories shared by many of my colleagues, I struggled to understand. But only seemingly random thoughts cluttered my brain. Then one day, I had a bolt-of-lightning realization so obvious it stunned me. As the new understanding began to sink in, everything I knew, or thought I knew, about Indians and settlers morphed into a new perspective. Our "relocation" was their death march; our rebellion was their resistance; our sport shooting of buffalo was their loss of food, clothing, and objects of great significance in their religious ceremonies. When a small Cree band killed eight white people, we called it the Frog Lake Massacre. When 200 mostly unarmed men, women, and children were killed by the Seventh Cavalry, we called it the Battle at Wounded Knee. In our school on the Rocky Boy Reservation, much is taught about life far beyond the reservation. Virtually nothing is taught about life just outside our school walls. Sadly, the marginalization of the Indian people seems never more blatant than during Native American Week, as children fashion construction-paper moccasins, color in profiles of Indians in headdresses or pulling back a bow, construct toothpick teepees and birch bark canoes. Th e focus is crafts, not meaningful understandings of their own history. But white teachers don't know history from a Chippewa-Cree perspective. And, as one teacher pointed out, you can't teach what you don't know. Teachers are indentured into inservice workshops of every form and shape...................................... Funded with No Child Left Behind monies, unsupported by research predicting positive outcomes for our children, and showing no connection to our kids, the workshops teach us approaches that will only push our students further behind. What we white teachers really need is intensive professional development to help us learn to teach children living in a culture we do not understand. We need to learn history from an Indian perspective, to learn the language and traditions that are so much a part of reservation life. But there is no funding for such things. So, with the best of intentions, we stumble on.............. |
| Source | Bobby Ann Starnes |
| Inputdate | 2003-10-23 17:22:00 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2003-10-23 17:22:00 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | Not set |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
