From boarding schools to the multicultural classroom: The intercultural politics of education, assimilation, and American Indians

Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer 1999 by Sanchez, John, Stuckey, Mary E

A related issue, and one that has been the subject of a fascinating series of exchanges on H-Amindian, is the question of how to incorporate oral history into historical narratives, of how to include "Indian perspectives" within the existing corpus of academic understanding, which has long been dominated by written interpretations of historical events. It is clear that the discussion has moved past the question of whether American Indian sources could or should be consulted, and to the more difficult questions of how and with what intention are they to be consulted. One participant in the discussion wrote that, "Clearly, oral and written records are both important. To try to describe one or the other as `equal to' or `better than' the other ignores the more fundamental questions as to how they are different and what are the strengths and weaknesses of each for historical research" (H-Amindian, 1997). Deciding upon the "strengths and weaknesses of each" is no small task, and is one that the next generation(s) of historians will be addressing.

For scholars of American Indians, these questions have important ethical, as well as empirical and methodological implications, not least because scholarship has political implications, and the act of research is a political act (Allen, 1993; Blair, Brown, & Baxter, 1994; Rigsby, 1993). One Indian contributor to the HAmindian discussion wrote that she believed that, Aboriginal people can and should direct the future of historical research. People are not going to stop studying us, so why not show them how to do a better job of it? Encourage the use of oral tradition, oral history, analysis of Native languages by Native linguists, and encourage Aboriginal peoples to use and study historical documents from non-Aboriginal sources like archives. The Aboriginal perspective on non-Aboriginal written sources is unique and invaluable to communities and scholarship in general. (H-Amindian, 1997)

As this quote illustrates, the tensions in studying American Indians are important ones, as scholars from a variety of backgrounds attempt to incorporate alternative views of American and world history into the corpus of knowledge recognized as canonical. The debates over how to proceed are in themselves healthy and important, as scholars seek for ways to respectfully and accurately portray those who have been traditionally relegated to specific and ideologically determined roles. But the dangers of falling into different ideological traps are also present, and the best check on this tendency is to have increasing numbers of American Indians present in the academy, to speak for themselves and to provide critiques of others who speak about them.

Yet this puts an enormous burden on an already burdened group; poorly represented in the academy, acting as mentors for those Indian students at their institutions, serving on a disproportionate number of committees, and attempting to earn tenure and promotion, the expectation is that American Indian scholars are all experts in "things Indian," whether their particular area of study is physics, education, orjournalism; that they will serve as ambassadors for"their people," however broadly defined, and however ill-equipped they may feel for the task (Garrod & Larimore, 1997). The subject of American Indians is intimately connected, then, with the issues surrounding American Indians as participants in academia.