A Warning and a Solution from Indian Country
Four Arrows
Some pilots from NASA were practicing moonwalking maneuvers on the similarly contoured landscape of the Navajo reservation. A Navajo elder told a bilingual boy to ask what they were up to. “We are training for a trip to the moon,” one astronaut replied. The elder nodded at the boy’s translation, and then told him to ask if he could send a message up with them to the moon. The astronauts, seeing a PR opportunity in such a collaboration, agreed to do so. The old man wrote a note in Navajo and gave it to them, but neither the elder nor any other Navajos would tell the pilots what the note said. Anxious to know, the astronauts paid someone to interpret the message. It read: “Be careful. These guys have come to take away your land, your freedom and your children.”
On May 29–30, 2001, I presented at the International Conference on Militarism in Education in Israel. Educators from a number of countries described schools that infuse a military presence into educational programs. They documented ways that hegemony, serving the interests of an elite few, colors curriculum and marches to military drums that enforce it. A few examples offered included:
• Teaching children how to make dog tags and paint camouflage on their faces;
• Hiring retired military personnel to serve as authoritarian teachers and administrators;
• Hanging posters that boast about service to country and warn against conscientious objectors;
• Using textbooks that encourage military service upon graduation from high school.
Such things might be expected from the Middle Eastern countries represented at the conference, but what of Western societies like the United States? As an exmarine officer of the Vietnam era, I know about corporate influence on government and military policies. As an educator, I am concerned when I hear the U.S. Secretary of Education saying that teachers are tools in the war against terrorism, or when I see oil company-sponsored textbooks that teach third graders that there is no global warming problem. My gravest awareness, however, of the U.S. government’s increasing use of some form of “forceful hegemony” relates to its policies in Indian country, especially on American Indian reservations. What is happening there should be a warning to all of us, while the continuing resistance to it by some groups can exemplify possible solutions.
Before addressing educational issues of forceful hegemony in indigenous cultures, let’s briefly consider how governments from around the world use military might against the sovereignty of indigenous populations to enhance state and corporate interests. For example, the culture of the U’wa people of Colombia is currently being threatened by oil drilling. A military patch depicting a man with a rifle standing next to an oil rig is worn on the right shoulder of every soldier that protects oil installations in Colombia. The same thing is happening to the indigenous democracy in Cauca. In both cases U.S. support of right-wing Colombian military is involved in crushing social structures that are unwilling to buy into the market economy’s distorted values.
The Raramuri Simarone people of central Mexico are another example closer to home. They have chosen to live in remote caves deep in Copper Canyon rather than adopt Western cultural values. Yet, efforts to protect their land from development and lumbering are thwarted by military intervention. Moreover, with the illicit support of corrupt government military troops, indirectly supported by the United States, drug mobsters violently are forcing the Natives into extinction.
Even in the heart of the United States, force is used against indigenous sovereignty. One example relates to what happened to the White Plume family on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The White Plume family’s efforts to support itself with a hemp farm was halted in an early morning raid by dozens of FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency troopers armed with AK47s.1 Without any warning or involvement of the sovereign Lakota nation, whose laws support the growing of industrial-grade hemp, the intruders destroyed the entire crop, ending their hope for ecological economic development in this impoverished region.
Pine Ridge has been no stranger to contemporary U.S. militarism. In the 1970s, the FBI and DEA joined with corrupt tribal leaders to crush antigovernment protests in the reservation town of Wounded Knee. Leonard Peltier, a scapegoat of this conflict and a man considered by Amnesty International to be a political prisoner, remains in prison in spite of overwhelming evidence for his innocence. Consider also the peaceful protest marches on the reservation every Saturday. In an effort to close down a border-town liquor store built on land that mysteriously is no longer in reservation boundaries and that is responsible for contributing to the plague of alcoholism on the reservation (and somehow related to the unresolved murder of several Lakota men), a dozen or so people, mostly elders, women, and children, walk from Pine Ridge to the White Clay liquor store, stopping four times along the way to pray. Each time more than a dozen heavily armed police officers line the streets and position themselves on rooftops as if prepared to ambush a company of soldiers!
Native people around the world not only have resources that corporations want for one form of profit or the other but they also have a worldview that challenges the fundamental ideas about capitalism that have been drummed into Western minds. Military action against indigenous people is thus a form of hegemony designed to keep growing Indian populations, with their different views about materialism, spirituality and ecology, in check. Such colonizing is also a part of formal schooling, and here is where American Indian education offers both a clear example of a tragedy unfolding in all American schools, but also possibilities for a solution.
Up until the past two decades, Indian children were taken away from their parents and forced into Western culture’s school systems. Their hair was cut off and their mouths were washed out with soap if they spoke their native language. They were beaten if they misbehaved. They were forced to wear uniforms. Under threat of punishment, they were not allowed to participate in their spiritual ceremonies and were forced to learn Christian orthodoxy.
Today the enforcing effects of the corporate/government powers in schools are more subtle but equally powerful. They are found in
• The curriculum;
• High-stakes standardized testing mandates;
• Neoconservative character education movement;
• Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs mentality;
• Non-Indian teachers;
• Blood quantum policies;
• Authoritarian pedagogy;
• Encouragement of military service as a “way out”;
• Military teachers and administrators;
• Decreasing boundaries and exodus of students;
• Religious conversion;
• State exemptions;
• Western medical and psychological approaches.
In each of these arenas briefly described below, consider how “education as enforcement” in Indian education might correlate with similar problems in public education throughout American schools.
State standardized curriculum supports an agenda that continues to ignore oppressive historical and contemporary interpretations of reality. For example, in a course on “The First Americans” taught in a social studies class for sixth graders at a reservation school, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone were presented as “the first Americans”!
Of course, one of the more egregious examples is how Christopher Columbus is still regarded in elementary textbooks.2 Consider the words of Jeffrey Hart, the Distinguished Professor of English at Dartmouth University and senior editor of The National Review, a magazine influential in current U.S. government policy-making decisions. He says, “Columbus was a genuine hero of history and of the human spirit. To denigrate him is to denigrate what is worthy in human history and in us all.”3
How else does curriculum in Indian schools continue forceful hegemony? Are complete understandings about the cause of wars encouraged? Are issues relating to social justice and American violations of civil rights really covered? How seriously do schools teach about ecological sustainability and the urgency the crises currently faces? What about authentic multicultural perspectives?
There is much we can learn from understanding both the curriculum in Indian schools that American Indians are forced to learn, and how some people resist it. A letter written by an anonymous American in 1744 to the educators at William and Mary College offers a perspective that may be equally pertinent today:
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must not take it amiss if our ideas of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your subjects; but when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living, neither fit for hunters nor counselors, they were totally good for nothing.
We are however, not the less oblig’d by your kind offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.4
Notice how respectful this letter is of those whose values seemed misplaced by the writer(s). As necessary as it is for us to pull our collective heads out of the sand to observe the problems brought to us by a worldview that is overly materialistic, authoritarian, corporatized, and militarized, it is also vital to engage with those who have bought into these things respectfully and with understanding. (The following should be considered with this in mind.)
According to President George W. Bush’s education program, “No Child Left Behind,” any school that does not achieve significant improvement in standardized test scores will be punished by the removal of federal and state dollars from that school. American Indians score the lowest on such tests than any other population. Notwithstanding the fact that the tests illustrate an approach to teaching and learning that stifles creative and critical thinking, the tests themselves are biased toward non-Indian students. The requirements for schools to play this game add to the continuing colonization of the Indian children while testing companies head for the bank, and the problem goes way beyond Indian reservation boundaries.
President Bush has proposed $25 million for character education programs throughout the United States and the push for such programs on high-crime Indian reservations is significant. Unfortunately, these programs tend to be extensions of conservative ideology and are more about compliance to authority than good character. Reflection on character as it relates to ecological issues, social justice, wealth equity problems, democratic ideals and authentic virtues such as generosity (considered to be the highest form of courage by American Indians) is minimal in many of the popular character education programs. Character education in American schools, which for thousands of years emphasized such authentic virtues, now implements an agenda designed to replace them with learned obedience to the values of the state.5 And of course this is happening in many American schools as well.
Reservation schools are largely under the influence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Infamous for its anti-Indian history, even today money for education is wasted, innovative practices are either ignored or suppressed, and children become cogs in the bureaucratic machinery of an agency that has historically been more dangerous to sovereignty and health than helpful. In their book on Indian education, Vine Deloria and Daniel Wildcat point out that the BIA system encourages a continuing line of recycled “Indian” educators who have been indoctrinated by dominant assimilation policies.6 (What bureaucracies such as school boards that are similar to the BIA influence the public schools in general?)
Nearly 70 percent of the teachers on Native American reservations are non-Indian teachers. Although many are wonderful, caring people, more than a few actually are prejudiced against Indian people and their ways. When this happens, the “hidden curriculum” of assimilation is not so hidden. Certification standards require that teachers must be graduates from teacher training programs that serve the state and do little to honor Native values and learning styles. (In most public schools teachers do not reflect the diverse cultural values of the students in the classroom. How wonderful it would be if each student’s culture could at least be honored if not learned throughout the school year. Instead, U.S. schools are moving toward “America first” and “English only” prescriptions.)
Government monies for educational institutions relate to tribal membership and tribal membership relates to blood quantum. The federal BIA controls federal dollars that are based on blood quantum. The genocidal potential of such policies is devastating because the only way to ensure sufficient blood quantum is to marry from within the tribe. This is getting harder to do without marrying close relatives. But for people in abject poverty, marrying a first cousin is preferable to losing funding, and many of our students go to school as a way to earn money. (How “white” does one have to be to receive certain “benefits” in most American schools?)
Indigenous people see authority in terms of personal experience and reflection in light of the spiritual awareness that all things are related.7 Authoritarian pedagogy goes against the very nature of Native learning styles. Based on this factor alone, it should not surprise anyone that Indian students’ drop-out rates on the reservation are higher than any other population group. (And what is happening outside of Indian schooling that reflects a problem with overly authoritarian structures? Is critical, creative thinking encouraged or stifled?)
American Indians are proud of their veterans because of the traditional values of bravery and fortitude, so children are likely candidates for U.S. armed forces recruitment campaigns. Recruiters tell young people the military is a way out of reservation poverty. They promise that young men may return home for special spiritual ceremonies like the sun dance. When this promise cannot be kept, young men go AWOL and wind up either court-marshaled for desertion or become fugitives. (The war on terrorism is now bringing such “recruitment” policies into all schools.) Consider President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation. Buried deep within it is Section 9528, which grants the Pentagon access to directories with student names, addresses, and phone numbers so that they may be more easily contacted and recruited for military service.
As is happening in other countries, the United States has passed initiatives to encourage retired military personal to move into administrative and teaching positions throughout the nation’s schools in order to meet the increasing demand for teachers and administrators. This is especially focused onto Indian schools but may be a concern nationwide. Militaristic discipline in schools can continue an oppressive, authoritarian perspective that can stifle critical challenges to hegemony.
Most American Indian reservations are rampant with poverty. The federal government, in violation of treaty rights, is continually confiscating land through one legal maneuver or another. The land usually goes to corporations who rape valuable resources. Non-Indian ranchers often move boundary lines to encroach on Indian lands. For example, even as I write this Navajo people are being forced off their lands with threat of imprisonment if they do not relocate so Peabody Coal can continue to mine in selected areas.
In direct contradiction of the First Amendment establishment clause about separation of church and state, the U.S. government contracted with churches to help destroy Indian identity. Missionaries were provided with federal funds to educate Indian children. Today, religious conversion continues to be a force in private Indian schools that smothers cultural values and a spirituality that has existed for thousands of years. (Current Supreme Court decisions about vouchers show how this approach to hegemony has already moved off reservations and into the mainstream educational system.)
States have been given permission by the federal government to regulate Indian education, but states have withheld public services to Native Americans because of their special relation with the federal government. States utilize the Native population census to increase their share of federal funds for public services. The Secretary of the Interior assesses fees for various services that benefit Indian people, even though the monies given relate to federal bonds or other legal obligations. (This kind of fraudulent connection between corporations and government has been common in Indian country for many years; however, corporate influence in public schools across the nation that influence everything from curriculum to the kinds of soft drinks children consume is increasing.)
American Indians are generally forced to consume Western medicine and psychological services to the exclusion of more traditional alternatives that honor different assumptions about disease and healing. This is not dissimilar from mandatory vaccinations and other possible iatrogenic phenomenon that are forced upon non-Indian children.
In spite of genocidal policies of forced hegemony in Indian country, some tribes have managed to maintain their cultural values. It may be that those who have succeeded have done so because of a worldview that is a necessary counter to enforced hegemony.
Until educational systems modify their essential worldview with one more in harmony with that of traditional indigenous tribes, such as those of America’s first nation peoples, schools will continue to erode, not sustain, democracy.
I am not saying that any race, culture, religion, or ideology is better than any other. All people of any race or culture are subject to living according to unhealthy assumptions. However, if we study the outcomes of their respective worldviews, I believe that traditional indigenous perspectives, such as those held by North American Indian tribes, have proven healthier for the common good than those that have driven more dominant cultures for the past two thousand years. Consider the American Indian perspectives below and contrast them with the dominant worldview that now drives educational policy.8 The traditional American Indian paradigm:
• Sees genuine democracy as being about equal rights for all members of the democratic community, not just for property owners;
• Focuses on cooperative systems, not predominantly on competition and “winning”;
• Emphasizes the common good for life’s intricate interconnections, not the accumulation of individual material gain or authoritarian power;
• Assumes that children are inherently sacred, not bad or relatively incompetent;
• Believes that women are great models for moral strength;
• Sees reflection on personal experience in the light of spiritual awareness, not religious dogma, as the source of authority, rather than external authority figures or institutions as being absolute;
• Emphasizes intrinsic motivation to meet universal principles of right, rather than external rewards and punishments for the motivation to do good;
• Reflects an awareness that all things are related, people as well as rocks, trees, rivers, and animals;
• Leads to a world of joyful relationships, not to a culture based on fear;
• Is about balance and is not inclined toward conveniences that lead to wholesale conditions of personal and ecological disease or poor health;
• Says that spirituality is guided by the great mystery, rather than by orthodoxy that claims exclusive knowledge about God or that allows one group to force conversion on another.
All cultures have similar universal principles somewhere in their memory, but too many have forgotten them, allowing power politics and propaganda to create new belief systems or apathy that allow us to tolerate schools as vehicles for enforcement. Oppression from the dominant culture continues in many forms, most notably in our education systems. Yet there is hope if enough of us reform our schools in accordance with the universal path to harmony, which our indigenous brothers and sisters from around the world still remember in their hearts.
Ohiyesa, a Dakota Indian from South Dakota who was the first American Indian to earn a medical degree from Boston University back in 1890, once asked, “Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor?”9 I believe all of us, in our hearts, know the answer to his question. It is time now to act.
1 Don Jacobs, “Dance of Deception,” Mother Jones, available at: www.motherjones.com/reality_check/pineridge_contradiction.html (last accessed July 7, 2002).
2 This view is often taught in American schools today and sometimes even on Indian reservations. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, then he “discovered” America, is how it goes. Seldom do students learn about his return voyage in 1493 with an invasion force of seventeen ships and his orchestration of an extermination of the Native population in the Caribbean islands that reduced about 8 million people down to 100,000 within seven years and down to only 200 individuals within 50 years. Of course, within the next 100 years, 100 million more of America’s first nation’s people would be killed by disease and violence. This also is not a favorite subject in American classrooms, but certainly gives pause for the adoration of Columbus.
3 Quoted in Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), 44.
4 T. C. McLuhan, Touch the Earth (New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfray, 1971), 57.
5 Don Trent Jacobs, Teaching Virtues: Building Character Across the Curriculum (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2001).
6 Vine Deloria, Jr. and Daniel Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 2001).
7 Don Trent Jacobs, Primal Awareness (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, 1998).
8 Don Trent Jacobs, “The Indigenous Worldview as a Prerequisite for Effective Civic Learning in Higher Education,” Journal of College Values 2, 3 (2002), available at http://journals.naspa.org/jcc/vol2/iss3/2/ (last accessed April 25, 2010); see also Teaching Virtues.
9 Alexander Charles Eastman, “The Ways of the Spirit,” in The Wisdom of the Native Americans, edited by Kent Nerburn (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 1999), 115; Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place.