learntoquestion ltq discussions

Readings (choose at least 3 to read from the following list):

Claudio Vaunt, “The invasion of America,” Aeon, January 2015.

https://aeon.co/essays/how-were-1-5-billion-acres-of-land-so-rapidly-stolen

Philip de Loria, “The Invention of Thanksgiving,” The New Yorker, November 18, 2019.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wNaZ2XKrLBgkyEoC9c9Y36pxUwiw4Ttd/view?usp=sharing

Dennis Zotigh “Do American Indians Celebrate Thanksgiving?” Smithsonian Magazine, November 26, 2016.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2016/11/27/do-american-indians-celebrate-thanksgiving/

Erin Blackmore, “The Little-Known History of the Forced Sterilization of Native American Women,” JStor Daily, August 25, 2016.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-little-known-history-of-the-forced-sterilization-of-native-american-women/

Tristan Ahtone, “Native Americans are recasting views of indigenous life,” National Geographic, December 2018.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15R0jTDZ77LwmArBrySmvlC1vsiVe6pMr/view?usp=sharing

Slide show to go with this article:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/12/native-americans-recasting-views-indigenous-life/#/native-americans-reclaiming-stories-14.jpg

Carolyn Smith-Morris, “Addressing the Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,” Cultural Survival, March 6, 2020.

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/addressing-epidemic-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls

Ezra Rosser, “Trump and the Native American vote,” The Hill, October 14, 2020.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/520899-trump-...

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, "Native Americans are Afraid, Hard-Hit as Coronavirus Spikes in the Great Plains," Huffington Post, November 19, 2020. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/native-americans-coronavirus-spike-dakotas-great-plains_n_5fb703f9c5b67f34cb39976d

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Many people believe that Native Americans have been erased from the story we tell about the history of the United States. America was discovered….by Columbus. Let’s be generous: let’s call it an “encounter.” Its first settlers? The British and the Dutch, let alone the Spanish and French. Before 1492, this land was wilderness, waiting to be “discovered.” Were there people here? Were they people or savages? How did we depict them, describe them, study them, remember them?

If you believe in ghosts, then Native American ghosts are all around us. And yet their descendants survived. They are here but how often do we hear their voices? Are we paying attention to them? We have much to learn from the Native peoples of this country, if we are willing to take the time to do so.

It is argued that what happened to the Native Americans in this country was genocide. The definition of genocide is the deliberate killing of a group of people because of who they are, what their identities are, often with the goal of eliminating them entirely. Yet on Beacon Hill, where a bill (S.327) mandating the teaching of genocide was being discussed by the Massachusetts Legislature in October 2019 (for a text of the bill, see https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/SD1441, and for coverage of the motives and the legislator behind it, see https://mirrorspectator.com/2019/10/03/bill-seeks-to-mandate-teaching-of-genocide-holocaust-in-ma-middle-high-schools/) , take a guess: which group was conspicuously not mentioned?

In the past few years, we’ve seen untold numbers of Native women missing, sexually assaulted, and murdered across the nation. This is continuing. And the Trump administration’s position on everything from the Dakota Access Pipeline cutting across Native lands in the Dakotas to the ginormous numbers of indigenous people sick with and dying from COVID has complicated the situation and worsened the fragile situation faced by Native peoples in this country enormously.

Consider what we’ve looked at in class and the content of the readings listed above as you respond to the following questions.

• What do we need to do, moving forward, to better understand the experience of Native Americans in this nation? How do we fully confront the history of the Native American experience in this nation?
• How do we address the stereotypes, misperceptions, the “twistory” that has been passed down among non-Native Americans about this population?
• What apologies and amends do we need to make, if any?
• How do we address the fact that Native peoples were murdered for who they are?
• How can all Americans become allies so that Native Americans become fully integrated members of this society? What concrete actions can we take to move forward and build a nation with Native peoples?

Be very specific in your response, citing examples both from class, including our screening of Dawnland, and from the readings.

If we want to move forward as a country we need to educate everyone on the history of Native Americans and what we did to them. We need to first acknowledge the horrors that were committed against them and then work with them to improve their lives here in this country and attempt to fix what we did. If we want everyone to be educated on this topic we need to stop sugarcoating the truth. If we start teaching the next generation of kids the truth then maybe we will see the stereotypes and misperceptions decrease over time. But being educated on the topic doesn’t help if we do nothing about it. I think the best thing to do is to just listen to what Native Americans want and to fulfill their needs so that their lives here in America improves. Many times in history, they do not get to decide what happens to them and I believe that needs to change. They definitely deserve a long overdue apology but I don’t think we should apologize unless we are certain we can build upon it. Words mean nothing if there is no action.

Conversations must be had about what happened and we must address our wrongs by educating our youth about it. We must not let history repeat itself. It is difficult to bring back the Native American population to what it was so we must not let it happen again.

Americans must also not turn a blind eye to present day Native American issues. In Carolyn Smith-Morris’ article “Addressing the Epidemic of mIssing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls”, she brings attention to crimes committed against the Indigenous people population. Like the Black Lives Matter movement we must also make sure we bring attention to issues of all races and help give everyone a platform.

In Dawnland, becoming an ally of the Indigenous population must be taken seriously. I think the educational program they have is a great leap forward. The only thing missing now are people willing to take time to understand and become an ally. As an American people we must change our attitudes towards Native Americans.

Taking this class has really made me open my eyes on how little we actually know about Native Americans and their treatment in this nation, and I think the fact that we have to take a special class in order to learn about their full story is just wrong. We always learn about this glorified version of Thanksgiving, and how it was a beautiful feast where the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Wampanoags bonded over their survival of the harsh winter in New England. What we don’t learn, however, is the full story behind Thanksgiving, which is told in Philip de Loria’s article titled “The Invention of Thanksgiving”, and the fact that this whole idea that it was a mutual feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags is simply not true--they weren’t even invited. In fact, at the second “feast”, the Plymouth colonists had the head of the Ousamequin’s son mounted on a pike in their town. Yet this is the holiday that Americans celebrate every year without ever acknowledging that this was the real history behind this holiday where the whole point is about kindness and being thankful.

Not only are we taught in school this eurocentric perspective of Native Americans being savages, and painting the picture that white people are always the heroes in history, but it is also shown to us through films and stereotypical caricatures of Native Americans. Most notably are Disney’s films, Pocahontas and Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, they have a whole musical scene of racist portrayals of Native Americans singing the song “What Made the Red Man Red?”. I always knew that it was offensive and racist towards Native Americans to call them “red”, but I never knew about how the term came about until we learned about it in class. The fact that it was a term used for people who were killing Native Americans and selling or buying their scalps, and is then turned into a song in a Disney movie for children is just sickening. It is horrific and I am uncomfortable to picture and learn about this history, but I feel like it is something that everybody should know and learn about at some point in their lives. There should be a widespread effort to either acknowledge or ban these films where it has an inaccurate portrayal of Native Americans in order to not allow these stereotypes and misperceptions to spread. However, I also understand that the damage has already been done, and as such, more films, such as Dawnland, should be made to spread awareness and show the true stories of Native Americans. I never knew about how Native American children were up to 20 times more likely to be in foster care than other children in America, and I certainly did not know about their mistreatment in these homes where they were essentially forced to get rid of their Native American cultural identity. Watching and hearing these people talk about their personal stories facing discrimination has really opened a whole new perspective for me, and I think more films like this should definitely be shown to people.

So this brings me to the question about what more we can do, moving forward, about the fact that Native Americans were murdered and silenced for hundreds of years, and their voices are still not heard even in this day and age. Like most children in America, I learned about Native Americans in our history textbooks, but only the part about how they lived before the colonists came. We learned nothing about what happened when they did come and what happened afterwards. It wasn’t until 8th grade when I got a glimpse of the full picture of what the colonists did to the people already here. First of all, we, as a nation, should make some sort of statement acknowledging the fact that this is part of our bloody history, and that we understand that we are living on their lands, not the other way around. But apologies and acknowledgements, at the end of the day, are just words, and do not hold much significance until there’s actually action. I think there should be some sort of change to the history curriculum to teach kids about the real history behind Thanksgiving, even if it is gruesome and disgusting. What is more disgusting: the fact that such terrible things happened, and yet, it has been glorified into this image that these “savages” were “conquered” and “tamed” by the heroic white people of America, or the fact that the population of Native Americans went from millions to a couple hundred thousand because of these so-called heroes?

I believe first and foremost in reparations. This entails returning control of American land to its original inhabitants and financial recompensation (e.g. government subsidy and scholarships). It is inhumane that, as the original occupants of North America, natives are confined to (small, often impoverished and resource-lacking) reservations today. While Columbus day has been renamed to Indigenous Peoples Day and there recently (2019) was a national Native American Heritage month established (November), it hardly makes up for the genocide and enduring marginalization of native people. In my opinion, it’s much more important to include native history in education curriculum than to continue making national holidays for native people, as acceptance only comes with understanding.

As with other identity-based subjects, Native American history/heritage/culture/language classes should be taught by native people. An example of this done wonderfully would be the Ojibwe classes taught at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, led by a Native American professor. These classes, however, are a rare example, with Native American culture being taught by merely a handful of higher education institutions, and those few existing are focused on history and genocide instead of the joy of native groups’ culture and language. While acknowledging and recompensing history (“twistory”) is important, it is also important to celebrate and remove the negative connotations and stereotypes associated with natives’ lifestyles and cultures.

I believe that Claudio Vaunt’s article “The Invasion of America” addresses another important nuance in the history of Native Americans. He touches on the toxicity of white American imperialism, and explains that “The most jingoistic of Americans strive to put a positive spin on the nation’s century-long investment in slavery and equally long commitment to white supremacy…” which in turn spread to treatment of Native Americans through the lens of “‘We’re the ones who took all of your land but introduced you to Christianity.’ Many Americans share a deeply held conviction that the US embarked in 1776 on an as-yet unfinished journey to attain the universal ideals of freedom and equality.” The idea of Native Americans as uncultured, unintelligent, and uncivilized despite the fact that many groups were skilled agriculturalists and saved the first European settlers from death by starvation, is deeply rooted in Manifest Destiny. It’s also presumptuous to assume that every group wants “freedom” as defined by the white American, as we are all aware now that freedom is perceived differently depending on your racial/ethnic/national background. Plus, before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans were free and unrestricted by the colonial system established in the 1500s that continues today.

It’s with that sentiment that I believe there is absolutely no need to integrate Native Americans into American society. There is room to coexist; reparations and returning land will give natives space to thrive without subjecting them to American (capitalist) “success” at the cost of assimilation. Rather, they should be able to succeed on their own terms, whatever those may be. Integration simply echoes assimilation. As Impostor so concisely stated, integration reeks of white saviorism.

I think as a start, we need to start recognizing the complicated history of America’s relationship with the indigenous peoples who were on this land before us. In reality, the history is not that complicated. When Columbus first arrived in 1492, he decimated populations of people that came before us and erased this history. To better understand the Native Americans’ experiences, we need to listen to the voices of Native American peoples. For far too long, their voices have been erased and suppressed from America’s history. We cannot confront the history of Native Americans without including Native Americans’ narrative in the telling of America’s history. As Sam Hasselby puts it in his article “The Invasion of America,” “ A history that glosses over the conquest of the continent is partial, in both senses of the word. It misleads people about the past and misinforms their debates about the present.” When schools teach United States history, they need to include Native American voices. They need to include the genocide that allowed us to exist on this land as we do today. People cannot stand in solidarity with or try to make amends for the genocide of Native Americans without being taught our history. Our history has been skewed to make White men seem holy, but it leaves out large parts of the narrative. We cannot understand the experience of Native Americans without amplifying their voices and telling the full history of our nation. To fully confront the Native American history in this nation, we need to listen and change our actions now. We cannot continue to displace Native Americans. We must respect Native Americans and their land.

We cannot address the “twistory” surrounding the Native American story without actively trying to combat the misinformation that has previously been spread about Native American history. We need to acknowledge and spread the true history of this country, no matter how uncomfortable it may make people. Americans cannot deny our history simply because it makes people uncomfortable. We need to start acknowledging this history on a national scale, which the Trump Administration has failed to do. Unsurprisingly, “the Trump Administration would like to deny this history, wrongly categorize Indians as a racial group, and disavow ongoing treaty relationships.” Despite efforts from Native American tribal governments, Trump has failed to recognize America’s past, and he only perpetuates these negative stereotypes. We need strong leadership that acknowledges and combats these stereotypes, which begins with endorsing the spread of accurate information about our nation’s history. Our leadership also needs to prioritize the lives of these people. The fact that a law was in place until 2005 banning Native Americans from entering Boston, whether enforced or not, is unacceptable. The rights of Native Americans cannot slip through the cracks. Schools also cannot keep teaching from history books that continue to neglect this part of our history. We need recent and accurate history that respects Native American people.

In terms of addressing the fact that Native Americans were killed for who they were, it starts with this nation coming to the universal agreement that the act of Europeans coming here and colonizing these people was a genocide. We need to acknowledge that this is not up for debate. Native Americans should be included in teachings of genocide. We cannot only teach genocides for which the United States is not guilty. It is ignorant to not address this history. We can be allies to Native Americans by standing up for their rights, and advocating for the protection of their lands when they are being threatened. I also think simply acknowledging that we are living on stolen land is a powerful way to express allyship with this community. We must be informed of and celebrate Native American history and culture. We can support Native American advocacy groups and acknowledge the inequalities that still exist within indigenous communities and our nations. We need to address the inequities that exist in our country that harm Native Americans, like those in our healthcare system that were exposed and exacerbated by COVID-19: “Native people are 2.8 times more likely to be infected than whites, 5.3 times more likely to be hospitalized and 1.4 times more likely to die, according to an August report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” This startling statistic shows that our nation is not equally protecting Native Americans.

We cannot build a nation with Native peoples without respecting them, their culture, and their land. We cannot further harm their already small portions of land. I believe reparations must be made to account for the lives and land lost due to settler colonialism. One of the largest takeaways I got from Dawnland was the loss of identity the Native Americans felt when they were removed from their homes and from their culture. This is something that cannot be fully restored, regardless of what action is taken retroactively. We can, however, make sure other Native Americans do not suffer this identity loss again. We must work to respect and appreciate their culture and ensure it will be a part of the American story.

In general the US doesn’t do a good job of acknowledging the bad parts of its history, and I think that’s especially true when it comes to history regarding Native Americans. I think that establishing commission dedicated to acknowledging the US’s past, like we saw in Dawnland, is a start, but we also need to make a non-white washed version of Native American history more widely taught. As it says in the article by Claudio Saunt, it is essential that we teach the history of what the US government did to acquire Native American territory, and really think about how we have colonized their land. The best way to battle widely spread stereotypes and misconseptions is to stop teaching mythic stories to children, and actually talk about the reality of what has happened to Native American populations in the US.

I think it would be impossible for the US to make full amends to Native American for all the atrocities, but that doesn’t mean that nothing can be done. We need to give more aid to Native American communities and show that we do care about helping them. We need to address issues that effect Native American communities like missing and murdered Indigenous women or the effects of COVID 19. We can’t change past mistakes but we can try to help Native communities in the future.

I had only had little knowledge about the history of the Native Americans. When we were in class learning about it, I hadn’t known any of that information. Just by watching on video during class, I’ve learned so much about Native Americans’ past and the effects it’s had on them. Native American children were separated from their families for no reason. They were put into foster care with white families in an attempt to forcefully culturally assimilate them. Oftentimes these children were abused emotionally, physically, and sexually. Some say this was a cultural genocide, and I agree. Forcefully taking children from their homes and assimilating them to “white culture” so no culture at all, is an attempt to actively destroy cultures. If I didn’t know about this, I’m positive that millions of other students and even adults don’t know either. That’s the issue. To better understand the experience of Native Americans in this nation, we have to learn about their history. I’m not talking about what we learn in elementary school when we learn about Thanksgiving. We need to learn their real history.

In the “Do American Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?” article, you really learn about how problematic America’s version of Thanksgiving is. From early ages, children are learning stereotypes and misappropriation of Native American culture. An excerpt from the article, “When children are young, they are often exposed to antiquated images of American Indians through cartoons, books, and movies. But Thanksgiving reenactments may be their most active personal encounter with Indian America, however poorly imagined, and many American children associate Thanksgiving actions and images with Indian culture for the rest of their lives. These cultural misunderstandings and stereotypical images perpetuate historical inaccuracy.”. In order to change this, we have to teach children about actual Native American culture, not our Americanized version of it. We spend so much time in history classes relearning some of the same material year after year. I already know about the Columbian Exchange. We need to incorporate Native American history into our curriculum, in order to fully confront the history of the Native American experience in this nation. I learned so much from one class and one video, imagine how much we could learn in school if we spent time learning about other people’s history.

Americans can become allies to Native Americans by learning how to be an ally, learning about their history, and learning about our privilege. We need to make sure that Native Americans feel listened to and validated. It’s just recently where their culture is resurging, and we have to realize what we did to them. Show that you actually care and that you want to hear their stories. Recognize that it’s not easy for them to tell their stories and experiences, but be patient. If we take these steps, we can better become allies to Native