School systems have become the domain of learning about our own cultures; it prescribes what we know and how we engage within the global sphere. By students attending School it is a way to intersect knowledge to the new generations to come. We use textbooks in schools to help facilitate the information that has been passed down through the years of progression. In order to understand ones heritage one needs to understand what occurred and how one came to be. Education has become a fundamental process in which all youths must obtain too in order to develop into a valued functioning member of society. Educators strive to educate youth in the history of their culture but the reality of the truth is that history is a false perception derived from years and year of colonization, white hierarchy. “Textbooks are very influential message senders in the formal kindergarten through 12th grade school systems in the United States. The realities of students reading these textbooks are shaped by the information printed, especially of things that are unfamiliar and unavailable to them” (Clark & Moore, 2004). Textbooks have in turn brought upon a false history and claims to what the truth really is, but whose truth is it, whose truth is dominant, colonial truth is dominant and textbooks within the school system provide false truths of history to back up colonial ways. Colonization is a continuing process within the school system by means of history textbooks; it is this book that claims to speak the truth but only one truth. Valued educators have become enforcers of colonial ways; some don’t even know that they portray that function, the content within textbooks have become common knowledge as the truth and the truth in turn must be spoken o... ... middle of paper ... ...t by rearranging its content to instigate a higher dominance. Colonization is a continuing process but with the help of critical thinking it could mean a change in understanding cultural differences and history that is expressed in history textbooks. Works Cited Vine Deloria. 2003. Cluster Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press: Oklahoma. Clark, Barbara & Moore James, Tami. 2004. The Impact of “Message Senders” on What is Ture: Native Americans in Nebraska History Books. University of Nebraska: Kearney, NE. Sanchez, Tony. 2007. The Depiction of Native Americans in Recent (1991-2004) Secondary American History Textbooks: How Far Have We Come?. University of Toledo: Toledo, OH. Sewall, Gilbert. 1988. American History Textbooks: Where Do We Go from Here?. The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 69, No. 8 (Apr., 1988), pp. 552-558.
Professor and poet Deborah A. Miranda, pieces together the past and uncovers and presents us with a story--a Californian story--in her memoir, “Bad Indians.” Her use of the Christian Novena, “Novena to Bad Indians,” illustrates the irony of using the form of her oppressors as a call out for help, not to God, but to her past ancestors. We tend to think of religion as a form of salvation and redemption of our lives here on Earth, in which we bare down and ask for forgiveness. But by challenging this common discourse using theological allegories and satirical terminology, Miranda turns her attention away from a Deity to call the reader out for help. It is crucial to recognize the struggles that the Native community currently face. Californian Indians are often not given recognition for their identity and their heritage, and are also repeatedly stereotyped as abusive, alcoholic, uncivilized, and “freeloaders” of the United States government. Such generalizations root back from European colonization, nevertheless still linger in our contemporary society. Miranda has taken the first step forward in characterizing few of these stereotypes in her Novena, but she’s given her story. Now what are we going to do with ours? It’s up to us to create our
Tindall, George, and David Shi. America: A Narrative History. Ed. 9, Vol. 1. New York: WW. Norton & Company, 2013. 185,193. Print.
The reform of history textbook has always been a growing concern. In her “America Revised: A History of Schoolbooks in the twentieth century,” Frances Fitzgerald reveals that history books are updated but modified substantially to comply with the national interest at the time. Fitzgerald’s argument is slightly biased and some pieces of evidence are not sufficient or might even be far-fetched. However, she successfully conveys her argument through comprehensively contrasting the current history books for children with histories of the fifties using various rhetorical devices and plentiful examples.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.
It appears the caricature of Native Americans remains the same as first seen from the first settler’s eyes: savage-like people. Their culture and identity has become marginalized by popular culture. This is most evident in mainstream media. There exists a dearth of Native American presence in the mainstream media. There is a lack of Native American characters in different media mediums.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 2007.
The colony is not only a possibility in the geographical; it is a mental dominance that can imperialize the entire self. Entire continents have be domineered, resources completely dried, and at colonialism’s usual worst, the mental devastation of the indigenous culture has left a people hollow. Indigenous culture is no longer that. In the globalized world, no culture is autonomous; culture cannot breathe without new ideas and new perspectives, perspectives that have traditionally come from the people who have lived within the culture. But, the imposition of dominant cultures has certainly benefited from culture’s own vulnerability, as global similarities now exist throughout most different, yet not separate cultures. Postcolonialism is imperialism with a mask on, nothing less. As Franz Fanon puts it “that imperialism which today is fighting against a s true liberation of mankind leaves in its wake here and there tinctures of decay which we must search out and mercilessly expel from our land and our spirits.”
Newman, John. UNITED STATES HISTORYPreparing for the Advanced Placement Examination. Second Edition. New York: AMSCO SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS, INC, 2010. eBook. .
Johansen, Bruce E. (1998). Debating Democracy: Native American Legacy of Freedom. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.
George Browm Tindall, David Emory Shi. American History: 5th Brief edition, W. W. Norton & Company; November 1999
In the initiation of American Indian Studies, the problem of bias on the subject and the people became apparent. Although this is not a new trend in the art of studying history but history is written by the victories, thus creating a chasm for information to fall into obscurity. There is an abundant amount evidence of the way bias can be observed in Indian Studies from minuscule to massive. In writing and researching Native Americans, the Indian and non-Indian should be careful with the use of language. The saying is true that one word can change the meaning and impact of an entire text. When the American West was opened up to the white settler and the American Indians were placed on reservations, historians, archeologists, and others entered the area and put together the history that they constructed. The oral reports of what had occurred were taken from ...
McNickle, D'Arcy. "A Different World." Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Vizenor, Gerald. United States of America: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1995, 111-119.
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were