Strategies
As counterpoint to European actions and words, students will develop the tools for "reading" native cultures through primary verbal and nonverbal sources: things involved with creating housing, clothing, domestic artifacts, environmental alterations and story telling. We will create a rubric for scoring likely levels of authenticity, or as my maternal forbearer often said, "Consider the source."
The basic textbook for the 11th grade English core curriculum is Holts' Elements of Literature, Fifth Course, Essentials of American Literature. As an opening exercise, students will pursue their own definitions of what is "American" through brainstorming and cooperative learning group consensus. They will be invited to reflect on their learnings from the American history course they took in the 10th grade. We will then survey our textbook to see what is included vis a vis Native American and other non-European communities and individuals. As an example, the opening page offers on the left-hand side a photograph of Ute petroglyphs and on the right J. Winthrop's metaphor for the God-blessed "City upon a hill." To its credit, Holt highlights the more current conception of the explorer's "finds": "Columbus did not discover a new world; he established contact between two worlds, both already old." J.H. Perry (Holt, 8).
Out text gives approximately equal space to descriptions of Native American oral traditions and accounts of captivity by an English settler. The publisher does offer a helpful checklist of Native American beliefs culled from their own expressions that include their focus on practical information, high regard for the natural world without man as the center, devotion to metaphor, a cyclical rather than linear view of time, traditional celebration of life events and respect for the essence of an observance over, say, the mode of transport (walking, riding horseback, driving) to that observance.
Students will have an opportunity to match or differ from these conclusions by reading and interpreting on their own the literature of Native Americans in the manner of Walam Olum, the Delaware Indian (however suspect its origin) creation myth (Velie, 1991, 92-133). Youngsters can then compare these and other texts with those provided in our Holt anthology.
Our emphasis and search will have a local focus. Student will research the names, customs, beliefs and community history of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania tribes (two being the Lenni Lenape and the Delaware), creating a map to show pre and post William Penn settlements. We will visit the Museum of Natural History and the University of Pennsylvania Museum to view artifacts and representations of natural environments. Close by our school are woods surrounding the Wissahickon Creek, a much-visited statue of a Native American "generic" Indian chief and geological features that can amplify student findings on pre-Columbian environments. Students will combine note taking from their research and expeditions with entries in an artifact "diary" where things created and developed by Native Americans will speak for themselves. A classroom timeline that combines Native American and European community histories will be initiated this fall, maintained and added to as the year progresses.
We will make use of "A Checklist for Evaluating Native American Children's Books" developed and distributed through the American Indian Library Association website — both for a collection selected from the nearby public library and for our own anthology. Students will then evaluate the evaluation and determine whether a similar rubric could be developed for texts depicting African Americans, women, differently abled, the elderly and other groups (http://www.nativeculturelinks.com/AILALitAward.doc).
An important aspect of our investigations and research will be the attention paid to reading strategies. In 2004, David C. Garnes, Graduate Research Associate and Chester P. Wichowski, Project Director at Temple University's Center for Professional Development in Career and Technical Education developed a reading program that drew on well-established approaches to reading comprehension. In its adaptation of the Reciprocal Teaching Strategy, Temple emphasized the establishment of routines easily codified with a checklist. Together we predict what we think a given text will say, establish a purpose for the reading, check and connect our prior knowledge, survey the text for titles, subtitles, visuals and real-world applications. In the midst of the reading, we clarify by focusing on difficult vocabulary, re-reading unclear sentences or passages, scanning ahead, making notes via graphic organizers or outlines, and asking for help from peers or the teacher. Also during the reading, students (and the teacher) form questions about the text, check our ability to identify the who, what, where, when, why and how of the text, guessing what information will come next, and forming a question that again makes a link with real-world issues. Finally, the summary process after reading can include paraphrasing or retelling material to peers, creating test questions, identifying and recording main points, producing an outline, web or map and confirming one's conclusions with a partner or group. The items presented here can all be recorded briefly in journal form as the process unfolds. Though the routine might seem dull at first, the habits formed can lead to an accurate and thorough comprehension of both narrative and expository texts. An exit pass (The Last Word) where a student jots down one concept or detail understood and one still found puzzling can provide the teacher with valuable feedback and a focus for the next day's beginning of class.
The Chronology
As we move through the year, students will consider what is in the text, how it is presented, and more tellingly, what is missing.
Initiation
Page two of our Holt anthology begins with a timeline titled "Encounters and Foundations to 1800." Of 21 Literary Events, only one relates to Native Americans: "1682 — Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative is published" (Holt, 2). Of 37 items under Political and Social Events, four make mention of Native Americans. No information regarding displacement or decimation of indigenous tribes appears in the timeline. There is, however, clear reference to Indian deaths to disease including the lack of immunity, a graphic description of the effects of small pox by William Bradford, and a cogent summary of the outcome for Native and Newcomer: "The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, a reoccupation of land made waste by the diseases and demoralization introduced by the newcomers" (Holt, 8). Considerable space is devoted to the misadventures of Cabeza de Vaca with the apparent purpose of sharing his descriptions of the diet of starving Gulf Coast indigenous peoples.
Required Reading
The first citywide required reading is Arthur Miller's, The Crucible. Ironically, the one character in the historical record who is an American Indian is transformed by Miller into an African servant. Did Miller consider two victimized groups interchangeable or was he noting the potential erasure of a people?
The Gift Not Taken
Iroquois Constitution, with a focus on peace among five American Indian nations, does not provide as complete a picture as Charles C. Mann succeeded in doing in his July 4, 2005, op-ed piece, "The Founding Sachems" in the New York Times. Noting that the Indians of the Northeast, hence those closest to the minor and major birthplaces of liberty, Boston and Philadelphia respectively, provided role models of individual liberty, diffusion of power, and legal protections for women, Mann points out that our Constitution passed on fully implementing all three (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10811FF355E0C778CDDAE0894DD404482).
The Real Thanksgiving Story
Holt provides an oil painting visual of the first thanksgiving. No corrective of the mythical tale is offered. In his fascinating volume, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen deconstructs the distortions, particularly the reality of who fed whom, when the concept was made a holiday (1863) and the even later attachment of Pilgrims to the celebration (1890's) (93-97).
The Great Popularizer
Although the Holt anthology does not include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wildly popular poem, "Hiawatha", J.D. McClatchy uses the setting name, Gitche Gumee as his title in an essay on Longfellow's pre-eminence with the people if not with the critics (175). The traditional view of this tale of Native American bravery, remembered widely by lines from its section IX: "On the shores of Gitche Gumee/Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,/Stood Nokomis, the old woman,/Pointing with her finger westward,/O'er the water pointing westward,/To the purple clouds of sunset." Robert Spiller identifies the source of the story that Longfellow used as Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Spiller acknowledges that this collector of folklore both invented some of his material and "mixed the traditions of various tribes" (694). Spiller describes Longfellow's acquisition of the tale as "favorable," and states his sincere belief that ". . .it is through Hiawatha that most Americans even now learn what little they know about the American Indian story" (Spiller et al, 694).
Helen Carr finds this "knowledge" less than propitious: "Myth is a Janus-faced concept; the word is used of the deepest insights and the most deluding lies"(Carr, 102). Hiawatha, the noble Indian warrior leader (actually conflated from several other individuals) stoically accepts the future for his defeated nation. Carr argues that the poet helped facilitate ". . .the acceptance of the displacement and destruction of the Indian. . .". It is a virtual certainty that this result was farthest from Longfellow's intention. The effect, however, holds sway. As students read Hiawatha in its entirety and investigate the artistic license Longfellow took, they can decide whether this well-intentioned effort had the impact that Carr suggests (106-107).
Surrender
Chief Joseph's eloquent speech (Holt, 454) is on a par in quality with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Missing, however, are expressions by Native Americans that show resistance and defiance rather than abject, though understandable surrender. Chief Seattle's speech might be an instructive comparison despite its questionable authenticity: "Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished" (http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/chiefsea.html. Students may wish to look into figures, stories and poems of resistance and rebellion.
Modern Writer Present
The only remaining Native American writer in Holt is M. Scott Momaday, represented by his story, "The Way to Rainy Mountain" (999). The narrator returns to the land of his youth to say farewell to his grandmother who ". . .belonged to the last culture to evolve in America." Her Kiowa tribe had once ruled the plain but succumbed eventually to the "unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry." Momaday paints a vivid picture of the landscape and the lost years. He has no choice but to move on. Students can research the Kiowas and other Plains tribes. A bitterly ironic surprise awaits the student researcher on the Google image page for the Kiowas (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=kiowa&sa=N&tab=wi).
Modern Writers Presented
To prepare class for individual investigations, I will provide four mini lessons:
I. James Welch, Winter in the Blood'; II. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony; III. Susan Power, Stone Women; IV. Poetry samplings from From Totems to Hip-Hop, A Gathering of Spirit, Sister Nations, Spider Woman's Granddaughters; The Bridge Called My Back.
I will consider theme, genre, characterization, and voice.
Modern Writer(s) Proposed
Research: Individual Choices. Students may choose from any of the writers listed above or pursue a writer found on the IPL website, then create biographical sketches and in-depth analysis of a minimum of 10 poems, and/or 5 short stories, and or 1 novel (http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/).
A class PowerPoint supplement to the textbook will offer correctives to erroneous juxtapositions (an l830 painting of Black Cloud with the Puritan writings) and expansions chronologically to connect artifacts, their "stories," and American Indian literary milestones. Images for this portion of the unit are available through Yale, the New York Public Library, the Internet Public Library, the National Indian Museum at the Smithsonian, National Geographic and the Mashantucket Pequot/ Native Lifeways Museum and Research Center.
In this way, students will gain a solid historical perspective and the power to resist the shifting winds in fashionable views of Native Americans — not as obstacles to God's plan for Europeans to conquer the Americas, nor as uncivilized savages, nor as romantic manifestations of the ideal human — but as a variety of societies who left a wealth of evidence on how they survived, organized and persisted long before the adventurers from abroad arrived to alter their universe. They may, perhaps, be able to offer more felicitous expressions to the Pennsylvania State Legislature website which describes Native Americans as "Mongoloid," "unaware of European culture," characterized by "Stone Age living," and explains their move from Pennsylvania environs being due to "pressure of white settlement" and suggests that they "drifted West" (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/wvol/vc/visitor_info/pa_history/pa_history.htm). A slightly different slant is offered at an Oklahoma town's website: "1831 - Delaware Indians, originally from the Lenape People from the Delaware Region, complete their move to Kansas from Missouri. 1854 - Kansas becomes a Territory. The Delaware Nation lands were surveyed and each tribe member received compensation for all but a small portion of their land by the United States, which was dispersed in the 'Delaware Trust Land' sale" (http://www.ozawkie.org/history.htm). If one seeks information from the tribe itself, the picture becomes clearer still: "The ever growing influence and takeover of the European colonists, forced the tribes to relocate either from conflict, or less than favorable land exchange. The relocation of the Delaware, or Lenape was very difficult, as they had to renounce their beliefs and customs in order to integrate into Western tribes" (http://www.lenapeindian.com/FAQ/lenape_FAQ_ans_009.htm).
As a final aspect of this unit, students will have the opportunity to compare European treatment of Amerindian culture with that of African Americans. A common lack of understanding ruled European approaches to both groups. Again, from Spiller's work:
American literature has ever been ". . .aware of its responsibility in the making of a nation from a complex of peoples in voluntary union" (xxi). Through study, my students will help free both the peoples involuntarily made part of that union, and their history as well.
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