The issue of requiring Indian education has been raised on the H-Amerindian listserv for academics. One thoughtful contribution came from Marge Bruchac, one of the most intelligent and insightful of Native American academics. While others rush off in poorly informed and self-serving directions, Marge -- like her well-known brother Joseph -- sifts the issues carefully. Her concern is that the requirement will cause all sorts of ill-considered, shallow, and (again) self-serving material to be drawn into the classroom.
Indeed, the cry has gone up that people can’t find materials, esp. pre-digested curricula ready to teach. At the same time, Indians have rushed to appoint themselves experts and supply lessons for a price. One baffled academic asked “how can we get information to the people who need it?” (It helps to come out of one’s office.) And there are still people who think a video of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves will satisfy the requirement.
Right away, on this (ahem) scholarly list comes the suggestion that the professors should go out and participate in the many reenactments of battles/massacres and walk around the camps talking to the Indian participants. (WHAT??) The assumption is still strong that to study Indians is to study the 19th century clearance of the prairie as described in “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.” (Even the Indians themselves must think so or why would they be at a reenactment of genocide? The Custer Reenactment I can understand.) No one wants to sit down with tribal council minutes and records, as Paul Rosier so valuably did, and figure out what really goes on. No one white wants to look at the damaging split between half-bloods and full-bloods that has crippled so many tribes, much less suggest what might be done about it. (No whites involved in it, so why should whites study it, eh?)
Neither are many people willing or capable of tackling the heaps of material, very early, sent back to the heads of religious orders in Europe in their own languages: NOT English but French or German or Italian. Mary Eggermont-Molnaar’s “Montana 1911” -- a translation of the journal of the wife of one of the earliest students of Blackfeet language -- is more revealing than many other better-known sources. Robert Bigart (an enrolled tribal member) edited “Letters from the Rocky Mountain Indian Missions by Father Philip Rappagliosi” into a slender but portentious book far more rewarding to consider than the same well-beaten path through old boarding school stories, powerful though they have been.
Few have given thought to the implications of the Google Book scanning project which has made literal tons of old documents available online. No one even knew most of this stuff existed before now. We typed in “Blackfeet” and had to jump back from the monitor! So MUCH! Mostly paid for by the government in very early days. Who’s reading it? Or even acquiring and shelving in someplace accessible?
Bruno Nettl kindly sent to the Blackfeet Piegan Institute a big box of early tapes made of Blackfeet singing and talking in their own language. Working with Blackfeet speakers, the Institute transcribed and translated the material plus re-recording it onto DVD’s so that it can be used more conveniently and mailed out if necessary.
Indians in the classroom have been treated with the same minimizing patronizing assumptions as the infamous “Indian in the Cupboard.” The only way to break out of that seems to be through scandals like the one over Ward Churchill, a college professor, which interests academics because of tenure and freedom of speech issues. When there ARE perfectly competent and credentialed Indian professors, they go invisible. No one thinks they’re Indians anymore!
The other end of the scale is someone popular and recognized, like Vine Deloria, Jr., who is then engaged to be the speaker everywhere, to write constantly, to fly here and there and answer silly questions until he is exhausted.
The OTHER way to make Indian history valuable and important is to make it worth money. Artifacts are valued, collected, put in museums, then repatriated back to tribes (possibly never to be seen again) because they are worth money as an “investment.” Learning about artifacts seems important to people because money is involved.
If money is involved in any of this, it immediately opens the argument of who is entitled to it. Of the four sessions on Blackfeet at the October Montana History Conference NONE is Blackfeet. One is at least local. No Blackfeet will object because they think it’s just a lot of fuddy-duddies talking to each other and largely they are right. (There’s an admission but it only pays the expenses.) Blackfeet don’t even think it’s valuable enough to get down there and attend! So why should anyone have to teach it? More importantly, how do we get Blackfeet people prepared to present history at society convocations?
But that’s a point of view that comes out of exasperation. Enlightenment will come. It’s just incredibly slow.
As for technical means, School District #9, which is Browning, Montana, has been "publishing" local booklets, photocopied and stapled together, for decades while their historical photo collection is readily accessed on their website. The whole gamut.
No comments:
Post a Comment