I just returned from several days of working with my state's educational agency on state standard updates. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings, but I want to start with the word "groups" and the heavy focus on physical culture.
Imagine if your textbooks and learning standards in school said things like:
"European groups"
"The southern European groups ate fish and lived in dwellings made of rocks."
"The France Europeans grew grains and ate cheese"
"The Atlantic island European groups lived in dwellings made of sticks and tough grasses"
"A central European group known as Jermens made sausage and lived in farming communities."
This is what it sounds like when people write about Native nations and civilizations.
Native nations are nations, not "groups." The word "groups" makes no more sense than calling England and France and Germany "groups" instead of countries. Or even calling the United States a "group."
Lumping all Native nations in a region into a monolith and describing a basic aspect of physical culture for all of them is just as ridiculous as saying what I said above.
Not learning about social, religious, and political life of specific Native nations and only learning simplistic physical culture (houses, food, clothing) is just as ridiculous.
Misspelling or misnaming Native nations is as absurd as me spelling German as "Jermen." I didn't even get anywhere close to some of the ridiculous names and spellings I see people write of Native nations.
Not having actual subject matter experts write your standards and textbooks is an educational failure. And no, social studies teachers and non-Native historians are not subject matter experts on Natives. Natives are.
When state standards are written by non-Natives and say things like "Plains Indians..." and "Native American groups," only look at physical cultures, and lump everyone into a monolith....the above is what it sounds like to a Native person.
This blog is along the same line of thought:
What if people told European history like they told Native American history? | An Indigenous History of North America (wordpress.com)
