Are You Aware? The Consideration of the Ongoing Colonizing Project of Education
This is part V in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here.
“They steal, then they take your memory of the theft.” — Shad (2018)
I sit here, in my living room, by my window overlooking the intersection in downtown Provo, Utah (if there is such a place). On the four corners are the Provo City Center Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the county health department, an auto body shop, and the apartment building where I live — Church, state, commerce, and home. Cars buzz by. So do the clouds. The sky is blue. And today is Pioneer Day.
I am Mormon, and I do not have any pioneer heritage.
My mother’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Norway in the early 1900s, and she moved west with her parents from upstate New York in the 1950s. My father’s family is Yurok, an American Indian tribe, whose ancestral lands cover what is now the area surrounding the Klamath River in California from the mouth at the Pacific Ocean to about 40 miles upriver — just beyond where the Klamath meets the Trinity River. My father’s family is from the village of Weispus, now known as Weitchpec, at the fork of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers.
I joined the Church at 19 and don’t identify at all with the pioneer narrative. I mostly remained silent about this until pressed once by a friend at church. I suddenly blurted out, “Your ancestors killed my ancestors, so I’m not really into it.” That declaration will end a conversation. The genocide of my people was set in motion with the rapid influx of white settlers who entered California seeking their fortune in gold or looking to homestead. The early settlers desired the land and the water, which necessitated the separation of the Indigenous peoples from their homes and villages throughout California. With statehood and the support of the federal government, the removal and killing of Indigenous bodies began in earnest the 1850s.
With this background in mind, one can understand how, as a young person growing up in parts of California and Nevada, I found stories of the gold rush and pioneers discomforting. Especially since I heard these stories without accompanying stories of the Indigenous peoples who found themselves displaced (at best) and eliminated altogether (at worst).
I knew my education was amiss because my teacher would tell stories about how Indians lived in the past, how Indians used to dress, how Indian culture was lost, and so on. And I would sit there, knowing that I was a Yurok girl and that I went home each day to my Yurok dad, and that I knew my Yurok grandma, and none of what my teacher told me fit with the reality of my Yurok life. But how does one little girl articulate all of that in an elementary classroom during a brief unit on Native American history? She simply doesn’t because she doesn’t have the words.
I had no words.
I still had no words when I sat in my university history class and listened while the professor explained that the reason Latin America languished was because the colonizers (namely the Spanish and Portuguese) had allowed the peoples of Latin America to live. He continued to explain that the colonizers of North America (namely the English and the French) had not allowed the Indigenous peoples of North America to live, thus, North America thrived. I knew that what he was saying was wrong in many different ways, and I did not have the words to express my sadness and outrage.
Eventually I found words, through my education (I now have three university degrees) and my continued listening to family and other Indigenous teachers and leaders who have gifted me with their words.
I now have words.
The history of colonization in the Americas, and truly around the globe, is fraught with the histories of Indigenous peoples of all places finding themselves separated from their land, from their families, from their bodies, from their culture, from their language, from their ceremonies, and from their Creator. We know this from our studies of world histories. I know this from the history of my people. I know this from the history of my grandmother who was removed from her family to attend an Indian boarding school. She was separated from her land, her family, her culture, her language, and her way of life. Her refusal to speak of her time there is its own declaration.
I, like many of my Indigenous kin, have experienced ongoing colonization in schools through the ongoing separation from our own histories.
This is my loss.
So, I sit here on Pioneer Day. Because I am an educator of educators, I opened the Utah State Core Curriculum for Social Studies. I wanted to know about the intention of the state regarding Indigenous histories in Utah schools. I realize that schools in other areas are guided by other curricular standards put in place by their state legislatures or local governments. Consider with me a standard from Utah studies that reads “Students will explain the economic activity of a prehistoric and/or historic American Indian tribal community by using basic economic concepts, including supply, demand, trade, and scarcity. (economics)” (p. 4).
I couldn’t help but wonder how the explanation of the economic activity of American Indian tribal communities might differ depending on who told it. Indigenous peoples historically hold different conceptions or values about trade, community, survival, and thriving than non-Indigenous peoples. Likewise, as I considered the accompanying guiding questions (see the last page for examples of questions meant to guide instruction in the social studies), I could imagine how I might approach these questions as an Indigenous person, or how my aunties living on the reservation might consider them, and how those considerations might be very different than a white city dweller with a different kind of relationship with land, family, community, and so on. I wondered about the experiences of young, Indigenous kids in Utah schools today.
Finally, I wondered if — I hoped — their teachers were helping them find their words.
All this is to say that the curriculum — the curriculum that is signed and adopted by various states and districts, the curriculum that is implemented by local teachers — is not neutral. Education, in the words of Paulo Friere, is always a political act. Let us ever be mindful during our celebrations of pioneers, or any other local colonizers, that our educational system continues to colonize and that we have the power to use our words to question that.
Wok’hlew.
UTAH CORE STATE STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL STUDIES (UTAH STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, 2016)
Utah Studies
Prehistory to 1847
How do cultures meet their economic and social needs? (p. 3)
1847 to 1896
Is conflict inevitable when cultures interact? (p. 3)
How did white settlement affect Native American Indian communities? (p. 4)
1945 to 2002
How do various ethnic and religious communities in Utah maintain and celebrate their unique cultures? (p. 7).
2003 to Present
What are the best ways to ensure our growing water needs will be met? (p. 7).
United States History I
Prehistory to 1650
What were the effects of European exploration, especially on the indigenous populations encountered? (p. 11)
1565 to 1776
What role did the concepts of self-government and religious freedom play in the colonial era? (p. 11).
1754 to 1787
What is American exceptionalism, and in what ways has it shaped how Americans see themselves? (p. 13).
1783 to 1890
What is the relationship between land and power? (p. 15).
World Geography
Geography: Humans and Their Physical Environment
What are the most significant consequences of human interactions with their environment? (p. 18).
Geography: Population Distribution and Migration
Why do people live where they live? (p. 19).
Geography: Culture
How does culture manifest itself on the landscape of the earth? (p. 20).
Roni Jo Draper, PhD (Yurok, she/her), is a professor in the David O. McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, where she teaches courses in literacy, multicultural education, and women’s studies. Her research interests focus on teacher education and the challenge of preparing teachers to create inclusive classrooms. Her work has appeared in various journals for researchers and teachers including the Harvard Educational Review, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Teacher Education, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and the Mathematics Teacher. She is an editor and contributor to the books [(Re)Imagining Content Area Literacy Instruction and Arts Education and Literacies. Additionally, Roni Jo works as an advocate for social justice in her community, where she serves as the president of the board of the ACLU of Utah, on the national board of the ACLU, and on the board of PFLAG Provo/Utah County.
