Teaching about contemporary indigenous people:

2. Teaching about contemporary indigenous people: Problematic politics of representation in museum education programming

3. Anthropology as the daughter of colonialism In the U.S. anthropology emerged from natural history, as an extension of colonial rule and Euro-American chauvinism in a “new” country i.e., Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), ethnographer, wrote The League of the Iroquois and The American Beaver and His Works Native North American cultures have traditionally been displayed in natural history museums with dinosaur bones (not to mention human remains) and nature dioramas

4. American Anthropology • First “anthropologists” were European invaders and conquerors who observed as they conquered • Lewis and Clark sent by Thomas Jefferson in 1803/4 to explore Louisiana Purchase and get to know the indigenous people of the west, over whom Jefferson now had dominion as the Great White Father • Beginning of wholesale removal under Andrew Jackson of southeastern tribes to the west • Serial genocide from 1500s through early 1900s

5. Where and when (and how?) museums with Native American objects got their stuff • Bureau of Ethnology set up by government to understand tribal cultures before they were eradicated • Salvage ethnology – the wholesale collection of artifacts while studying tribes before their traditional “life ways” vanished (expectation of assimilation) • George Catlin (artist) and Edward Curtis (photographer) “capture” images of Native Americans in their “natural state” • Highly subjective and selective perspective in collecting images, baskets, pottery, tools, and other objects that filled the museum’s storehouses • Anthropologists and others accumulating gigantic collections of objects and information at a time when the Native American population was in massive upheaval • Collecting practices destabilized the production and practices associated with these objects and their accompanying traditions (much like the earlier northeastern beaver trade destabilized eastern woodland tribal populations

6. George Catlin (1796-1872) Catlin documented traditional Native culture, as he visited more than 140 tribes and painted in excess of 325 portraits and 200 scenes of American Indian life.

7. Edward Curtis, Photographer, 1868-1952

8. Repatriation The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is a U.S. federal law, passed on November 16, 1990, requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American cultural items and human remains to their respective peoples. Cultural items include funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony

9. Inventory and notification require federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funds to summarize their collections that may contain items subject to NAGPRA • Organizations must prepare inventories of human remains and funerary objects, associated (if buried as part of a ceremony), unassociated (artifacts where human remains were not initially collected by agency or institution) • Resulted in MASSIVE cataloguing of NA collections in order to identify living heirs, culturally affiliated Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations of remains and artifacts

11. How do schools teach the history of Native Americans in North America? Native American history is a minor part of state mandated curriculum • Currently “taught” in the 4th grade, to 9 year olds, largely contextualized by climate and adaptations to climate and geography. • Focuses on the past • Contextualized by nationalistic ideals of a growing nation, and glosses over the near extermination of indigenous people • History and social studies, especially in elementary school, are largely used for purposes of indoctrination about democracy

12. From the Massachusetts State social studies curriculum rationale • While the realities of our own society are daily evident, many students remain ignorant of other, quite different, worlds. How can they be expected to value or defend freedom unless they have a clear grasp of the alternatives against which to measure it? The systematic presentation of reality abroad must be an integral part of the curriculum. What are the political systems in competition with our own, and what is life like for the people who live under them? If students know only half the world, they will not know nearly enough.

13. For Museum Educators Native Americans appear in the state curriculum in 4th grade students, or younger when studying Thanksgiving (in MA) These young students attend anthropology museum programs based on this curriculum Museum educators must ‘unpack’ the museum for kids and adults • We must ask, where do these objects come from? Whose story do they tell? Who tells the story? • What if you had to tell a story about your life: what objects would tell a story about you? Your family? • Must ask what they know • Concepts of time are tricky with young kids: constructing concrete timelines are useful. For adults, it’s often new information (i.e., King Philip’s War) • Talking about the present and delving into the past • Helps if exhibits have contemporary element • Outreach materials from the museum – pre-and post visit • Professional Development for teachers most important