Introduction/rationale
The history of Chinese immigration and today's immigration issues are barely covered in schools. It is not surprising; our Navajo Nation students only know what is shared on social media or on television. Today’s current events involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spark conversations and provide an opportunity for students to learn the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its importance in shaping our immigration bureaucracy today. Also, our students are not fully aware of our Navajo ancestors’ Long Walk to Fort Sumner, New Mexico in the 1860s. The awareness of Asian immigrant and Navajo histories will broaden our Navajo Students’ understanding of displacement and its effects. I will focus on two different historic time periods: the Asian Exclusion Era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the Hmong refugee migration in the late twentieth century. Although more than a century apart, the Hmong refugees can be compared to our own Navajo ancestors who traveled 400 miles to the Bosque Redondo reservation in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The students can look at how human treatment of people in captivity or held at immigration facilities was similar and begin to build empathy for today's immigrants in the United States.
Using memoirs to introduce students to the experiences of Asian migrants from two different time periods makes clear that ill treatment was not just experienced by one group of immigrants. The stories of immigrants and their families also show the human will to live and persevere. By reading and discussing memoirs, students can begin to understand what immigrants might be going through today as a result of ICE operations and the deportation of family members. Featuring timelines of Asian American history and a collection of U.S. immigration laws will assist students in thinking about how some discrimination and unjust practices continue to exist today.
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