• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

How is native american displacement and reservations taught in the US?

Status
Not open for further replies.
GameGuru59 said:
Bought, thanks.
Click to expand...

Yay! I'm interested in your thoughts when you get a chance to read it.

teruterubozu said:
Great, great book. I like how he even takes the time to debunk Nazca Lines/aliens crap too, lol. I didn't like his follow-up 1493 too much though. Too much talk about maize variety and production and stuff.

I also highly recommend A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz for more casual/humor reading (kind of in the Bill Bryson style) about all the events between 1492-1620.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion!

And yes, I also thought that 1493 was somewhat less interesting. How cultures around the world changed as a result of the Columbian Exchange is somehow less interesting to me than learning about the lost civilizations of the Americas. He really hits home with the scale of the loss in 1491.
 
We had a pretty decent relatively speaking, but not that great really, education about native peoples in CT. In like 3rd grade we learned about local tribes, how they lived, longhouses, farming, etc. Went to a local recreation village for a field trip. Towards middle school we learned about the more unfortunate and brutal aspects of things like the decimation of local populations through disease and subjugation, mostly in the Caribbean though, and a bit about the conflicts with New England/Virginia settlers.

The most in depth information was by far on the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs. Any North American studies were focused on post-European colonization and mostly on the latter parts of Manifest Destiny and the Indian Wars during the mid to late 1800s. I don't think we ever actually learned about the rather remarkable and sizable nations and cultures that NA Natives had before Europeans came on the scene.

Everything we learned revolved around their interactions with white men. Even the South American cultures really revolved around their final demise at the hands of the Spanish, everything else was just filler to that main narrative.

I actually just started watching the rather old, 20 years in fact, documentary 500 Nations. Which I'm sure has a lot of inaccuracies in it by now but it still has taught me a lot of things I never knew of at all or knew very little of in the first place. I think I'll pick up 1491.
 
No time spent on it in my school. I even wrote a paper about it in high school and received an F for it because the teacher thought I was over exaggerating the information I read to make a stronger paper.

I did attend a small town high school with a distinct split of Mexican/White students, but they never focused on Native American/Mexican society in the US in the 1800's. Just enough to say we were here and then enough to say that we died/left. Always left a sour taste in my mouth because both sides of that make up my culture and heritage yet we never read or learned anything about it. Really pushed me to do my own reading and research.
 
Razgriz-Specter said:
Where in the world did you guys go to school? That was almost some middle school level stuff here
and im talking Alabama schools of all places.(though it wasn't that deep until highschool.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I went to school in Texas (graduated High School in '09), and we definitely covered it in a way that painted the Native Americans as the good guys. Pretty much established that Andrew Jackson was a jackass fairly early on.
 
Who says its taught?
I went to public school in Florida just a couple miles away from Miccosuke tribe and never a mention of it.
I think we even had a field trip to a reservation, but we never learned why these people were separate.
 
Like others have said: taught from an early age, more in depth as I was older and took more advanced history courses. Never shied away from, but it wasn't super in depth or anything. They talked about the Trail of Tears and French & Indian War and so on, but there really wasn't enough time to get into the details of reservations or anything like that.

But yeah, Manifest Destiny has been painted as a bad thing where we took the lands of people already living there. Maybe not as "evil" or "diabolical" as the Conquisatadors were painted, but still not a great thing.
 
It was definitely taught in the courses I took. Public school, Minnesota. Up here we have a number of different indian tribes, so it's really no wonder we get history lessons on the subject. Like someone else has said, it likely differs depending on the school/curriculum.
 
Native Americans were only whimsically mentioned, but we were pretty directly told it was evil what Europeans did to them when they were. However, the word genocide was never used.
 
genjiZERO said:
Native Americans were only whimsically mentioned, but we were pretty directly told it was evil what Europeans did to them when they were. However, the word genocide was never used.
Click to expand...

There! That was part of the reason the teaching of native americans in US history felt so sterile. They couldn't even bring themselves to use that word!
 
I think classes in my school district started covering atrocities in some detail beginning in either the 6th or 7th grade. (And this was in rural Missouri.)
 
I live in New Jersey. Indians were mentioned but never at the forefront of what they taught in history, except for the brief parts of world history where they talked about Native American cultures in South America and in US History I where they talked about the Trail of Tears. After that, nothing.

Actually we read more about them in English than History, which is absurd.
 
I think the followup to this question is how much discussion existed of the indigenous population outside the context of interacting with Europeans. I can say that much of my schooling, while certainly covering the atrocities committed by the European invaders, still often fell back on rather one dimensional representations of the natives, be it with the "noble savage" nonsense, a "noble but not savage" one, or simply as props in talking about what Europeans did.

I struggle to think of many examples in my schooling of treating Native Americans as complete and complicated people belonging to many varied groups with all their different virtues and vices. Any education that leaves this out isn't really teaching the history.
 
Mr.Swag said:
I dont even know what the trail of tears is...

Damn.
Any good books on native history?
Sub 550 pages?
Click to expand...

It occurred when Andrew Jackson forcibly removed various Indian tribes from their homes in order to relocate them to present day Oklahoma with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He did so even thought the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional. And the forced march that stemmed from it was absolutely horrific. This is the man USA has honored in the 20 dollars bill!
 
In NJ we were taught about the displacement of native Americans and like small pox blankets...

So I can't speak for the rest of my US compatriots, but we definitely learned about our own atrocities.
 
ibyea said:
It occurred when Andrew Jackson forcibly removed various Indian tribes from their homes in order to relocate them to present day Oklahoma with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He did so even thought the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional. And the forced march that stemmed from it was absolutely horrific. This is the man USA has trolled in the 20 dollars bill!
Click to expand...
FTFY
 
Didn't learn that until High School. During grade school our history teacher brought his own books to add some context when talking about native americans and how the white man was the bad guy. But it wasn't part of the regular teaching or in the books.
 
We were taught that it had to happen, basically. It was a shame, but it had to happen because of American expansion.

Calling it a genocide? Unthinkable. Completely. No way they'd admit that, even though it pretty plainly was. Millions died, via direct slaughter, extended starvation strategy, biological warfare, unintended infections, and through the process of being conquered, i.e. being enslaved and chased from their homes and having their ways of life completely ended. But no, it's not a genocide, just a series of unfortunate events.

How bout them Redskins?
 
Bo Knows GAF said:
It really isn't taught at all. Not a joke post.

Edit: Until you begin taking college level education courses, or University, you won't see much that would elaborate on the terribke treatment of Native Americans. You'll learn basics about the West and it'll mostly stay around the California gold rush, or Mexican American War, but won't go any further.
Click to expand...

Eh, I learned about it in high school. Granted, I went to a private catholic high school, but even our older text books talked about the trail of tears and the general mistreatment of all minorities as the western expansion thrived. We learned quite a bit about mexican history and how it related to the acquisition of Texas, most of which I've forgotten.

It gets taught, but only if your history department is worth a damn I guess.
 
Mesoian said:
Eh, I learned about it in high school. Granted, I went to a private catholic high school, but even our older text books talked about the trail of tears and the general mistreatment of all minorities as the western expansion thrived. We learned quite a bit about mexican history and how it related to the acquisition of Texas, most of which I've forgotten.

It gets taught, but only if your history department is worth a damn I guess.
Click to expand...

was yours? I got taught about plenty of facts and dates and events starting with the Spanish colonization and the French and Indian wars, and moving on into the 18th and 19th centuriesm but there was no morality implied or anything actually stating the reality of what took place. It's like they were describing an America on a different planet, not this country. We were never invited to process what happened except to say that it was sad and wrong and now lets move on.

jmdajr said:
I learned about it in school. People act like this is some holocaust denial shit. Not true at all.
Click to expand...

holocaust minimalization? Like the Turks and the Armenians? But x250
 
I went to a very religious school in elementary. They used books by Abeka. The books would downplay the white man's role in destroying Native Americans. Rarely did they acknowledge what happened.
 
I think most students learn about the Trail of Tears because it has a name and can be described in one paragraph.
 
Taking AP US History in NYC right now, we're bombarded with how shitty America was back then. We learn everything about the mistreatment of Native Americans and other minority groups. Same for the historical units in my AP English class, it's ultimately made me more cynical.

Bit of a side note, is that I never realized how big of a missed opportunity Reconstruction was, Christ. :(
 
Mostly glossed over unless you have a good history teacher that really cares about the subject. This is high school, at least. I imagine in college, history classes cover it more extensively, but I never took those classes.

edit: Too clarify, it is mentioned that we did bad stuff, took their land, and killed a ton of Native Americans. But we probably spend as much time talking about that as we do learning about Benjamin Harrison: The President Everyone Forgot.
 
jmdajr said:
I learned about it in school. People act like this is some holocaust denial shit. Not true at all.
Click to expand...

It's not too far off, at least based off of my schooling. It's sort of like "manifest destiny was bound to happen. We had to do these bad things." Granted my US History teacher in high school was a cheer leading coach...

Playing Europa Universalis 4 probably did more to open my eyes than anything taught in school. That and growing older.

Borgnine said:
I think most students learn about the Trail of Tears because it has a name and can be described in one paragraph.
Click to expand...

Pretty much.
 
theusedversion said:
I can say that while I learned a lot about that time while I was in middle school, I don't remember ever hearing about the widespread disease that Indians were battling at the time. I only became aware of it because of this Cracked article. It kind of blew my mind when I read it.

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America

http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.
 
I ended up with a 100% Native American professor in my US History college course. Our textbook was People's History and he also recommended American Holocaust. (which I read).

Yeah he was still pretty mad about the whole thing.
 
akira28 said:
was yours? I got taught about plenty of facts and dates and events starting with the Spanish colonization and the French and Indian wars, and moving on into the 18th and 19th centuriesm but there was no morality implied or anything actually stating the reality of what took place. It's like they were describing an America on a different planet, not this country. We were never invited to process what happened except to say that it was sad and wrong and now lets move on.
Click to expand...

It was alright. It was certainly...unique.

And I think that's what teaching history is, a top down understanding of events that took place. Bringing morality into the situation of explaining the overarching facts of a historical event can often complicate a general understanding of an event. For example, I know people who treat the Alamo with the same moral outrage of the holocaust because they were taught that it was a terrible assault on america, but these same people don't know WHY the assault on the Alamo took place.

I think until you're ready and willing to understand more about the motivations and intentions behind the people responsible for an event, keeping the idea of moral implications out of the lesson is probably fine. So much of that stuff is up to interpretation, it can make things really difficult, especially when it's part of a curriculum being taught to people who ultimately don't really care.

theusedversion said:
I can say that while I learned a lot about that time while I was in middle school, I don't remember ever hearing about the widespread disease that Indians were battling at the time. I only became aware of it because of this Cracked article. It kind of blew my mind when I read it.

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America

http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html
Click to expand...

This is actually a really good read.
 
In Northern Virginia, It gets talked about, but mostly in the historical context; the modern reservation system really isn't relevant to America as a whole so after the Dawes Act and a bit of the Howard-Wheeler Act (Indians in the New Deal) it disappears. Things like pushing the Indians to reservations, et al is covered fairly extensively, although aside from a few points it becomes pretty tangential to the broader narrative (which makes sense.)
 
Fairly extensively where I grew up, though it'll vary regionally. They don't shy away from calling a spade a spade, IIRC the Trail of Tears was called an "atrocity."
 
Borgnine said:
I think most students learn about the Trail of Tears because it has a name and can be described in one paragraph.
Click to expand...

Yup.

Native history is *incredibly* complex though, I can see how digging into much of the details would be difficult to do in a middle school classroom. High school could definitely be improved.
 
Varied wildly by state. In Cali we covered a lot of the Southwest tribes like the Hopi and we got some real talk about the Spanish missions and the shit they pulled "converting" the locals. I dunno maybe my school was just good but we never got any whitewashing Manifest-Destiny-was-cool history.
 
It's taught but like american slavery its doesn't cast blame or become emotional. It's very dry. The same is true for subjects like the civil war. There is usually no "bad guy" and kept somewhat short and to the point. Not damning. Depending on where you live depends on how far you may go into details or whether it's mostly lumped into one or two events.
 
It was covered multiple times in both middle school and high school, from what I remember. Nothing was really glossed over. Kind of wondering where/when some of you guys saying it wasn't taught went to school.

Unfortunately, the current state of affairs for native populations was completely ignored in the classroom, from what I remember.
 
I wasn't really taught much until university, for me. And I went to primary school in three different states.

What's really sad, however, is how much the current state of Native Americans is pretty much entirely out of mind for the vast majority of our population. It's really eye-opening to visit a Navajo reservation and witness third-world conditions.

Out of sight, out of mind.
 
California

We learned a lot about Native Americans. I don't know what people here are talking about. Specifically we learned about a bunch of tribes, and stuff like the Trail of Tears. Like everything else in school I don't remember much details, but we definitely learned about it.

In general, the US education isn't that defensive about its history. We learned about slavery, Native Americans, Japanese internment, etc. And nothing I've read after graduating has made me realize that we were going out of our way to sugarcoat anything. Even things like reparations are mentioned.
 
In Philadelphia public schools we were given an understanding of the culture that once lived in our area. Third grade we had a lot of books on native american folklore and we visited a lot of recreated communities. It was widely taught we pushed them out and took their lands.
 
SliceSabre said:
It isn't.

American history education pretends the genocide of Native Americans never really happened or or covers it in a way that poses it as American settlers always being harassed by roving bands of merciless Natives and the Army as heroes to stop them except in the case of Custer.
Click to expand...

Sorry but no, this is bs. Did you travel through time from 1960 or something? I'd say it largely depends on the state with regards to public education, but the schools I've been to, both as a student and visiting as an adult, cover both slavery and the genocide of Native Americans in quite some detail. Who was killed, who did the killing under the banner of manifest destiny, how ignorance and bigotry bred hate and intolerance, etc. It's taught very clearly how depressing and shameful that time in history was for the US. In college, the topics are covered much more in-depth though, of course.
 
Maybe it's because I live in a state out in the western part of the United States (Utah), but it was covered pretty well in both junior high and high school. We had to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and we watched several films about it. They were pretty clear that it was an awful time and an embarrassing era in our history.

By college it was deeply covered.

charsace said:
Like slavery it is glossed over even though it is very important part of history.
Click to expand...

We spent weeks on slavery before discussing the American Civil War in both junior high and high school.
 
Man, where did you guys go to school? We covered all the major aspects like relocations to reservations, Trail of Tears, massacres like Wounded Knee, the small pox blanket shit. All of that. Slavery wasn't glossed over at all either or somehow diminished. This was also in the most white ass school district ever in west Michigan.

Edit: we also covered the breaking of various treaties as well, laying blame squarely on Europeans then Americans
 
Korey said:
California

We learned a lot about Native Americans. I don't know what people here are talking about. Specifically we learned about a bunch of tribes, and stuff like the Trail of Tears. Like everything else in school I don't remember much details, but we definitely learned about it.

In general, the US education isn't that defensive about its history. We learned about slavery, Native Americans, Japanese internment, etc. And nothing I've read after graduating has made me realize that we were going out of our way to sugarcoat anything. Even things like reparations are mentioned.
Click to expand...

Yeah, part of me wants to say that I started learning about this stuff as early as fourth or fifth grade.
 
Man, if anything they glorify the Native Americans as heroes when they teach this stuff in school. I remember thinking that guys like Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo were the coolest dudes that ever lived.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

XIX Chopin Competition - Eric Lu from the US wins 1st prize, second American, first in 50 years
|OT| 
10
630
Unknown Soldier replied
Audible April SALE-abration 2026 (Live in the US for the next 7 days)
Event 
2
291
AJUMP23 replied
The American Revolution | Ken Burns
0
246
Men_in_Boxes replied
Lee Byunghan & Han Jimin To Star In ‘The Koreans’, Remake Of FX’s ‘The Americans’, At Disney+
6
238
Aurelius replied
Toys 'R Us
Clickbait 
41
463
Agave replied
Top Bottom