By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
‘What's the actual history here?’
A fundamental piece of American history and society is being left out of Kansas classrooms, Alex Red Corn told a group of area educators Wednesday morning in the Memorial Union Ballroom on the Fort Hays State University campus.
Around 100 people gathered to hear his opening remarks during the Creating Educational Spaces of Belonging conference.
The education system is failing to provide “baseline knowledge” of the indigenous peoples within the U.S., Red Corn said.
Red Corn, a citizen of the Osage Nation, is an assistant professor of Education Leadership at Kansas State University, coordinator of Indigenous Programs and executive director of the Kansas Association for Native American Education.
“Historically, our systems of education are actually weaponized against the American Indians,” he said after a brief introduction.
“Schools were used as weapons to assimilate and eradicate American Indian cultures,” he said. “We've all inherited some of those status quos, and some of those status quos persist, or some of those problems still persist,” he said.
He challenged the group to be “agents of change” as they face educational inequalities that persist in the education system about Native American life, especially in a context outside of historical stereotypes.
He spoke about the atrocities committed at boarding schools in Canada, tribal agreements with the U.S. government and issues of sovereignty.
And the Native American students in public schools are especially disserviced by not having their history taught in the classroom at all.
Red Corn asked if assimilation ever stopped for the 90 percent of Native American children who attend a public school.
“How many of you grew up with some of the teacher's indigenous language? Have you ever taken a tribal history class? Tribal governance class?... What do you most students learn about American Indians? And what have you learned about America?”
He challenged the group to a pop quiz to demonstrate the lack of basic working knowledge of Native American sovereignty or status within the U.S.
Red Corn pointed out that everyone in the room knew the U.S. is made up of 50 states, starting with 13 colonies.
“That's like in the basement foundational stuff, right?” he said.
But when he asked how many tribes were located in the U.S., no one knew.
“There are 574 federally recognized tribes in the U.S.,” he said, pointing out that even the “most educated people in the state of Kansas typically don’t know this.”
When he asked how many federally recognized tribes are in Kansas, again, no one knew.
There are four, Red Corn said.
“So how could we, as graduates of Kansas schools, expect these people to be able to engage with these populations in these communities if they don’t even know they exist?” he said.
“They're more than just a casino that you drive by sometimes.”
America's past is “not something where we have to apologize for our ancestors' sins,” Red Corn said.
Instead, Red Corn wanst Native American civics taught in an effort to give a more complete picture of the history of the people and land within the U.S. borders.
“It's a learning tool,” Red Corn said. “Who was here? It's just a mechanism to make that visible. Who's here? What's the history? What's the actual history here?”
He noted examples in the current Kansas education system that show how little Native American civics is taught.
“A study on civics curriculum found Kansas was one of 14 states that have no mention of tribal sovereignty in the civics curriculum,” he said. “So how will we expect you to know tribal sovereignty if it's not in the systems of learning that you grew up with?”
And most of what is taught is centered around a small time frame, envisioned as a generic Native American from the plains in a full eagle feather headdress.
“Take a moment to consider if everything you learned about white people was in the context of the Civil War soldier,” he said. “It seems a little absurd, doesn't it? Do you learn about white people outside of that context? Have you learned about African Americans outside of that context?"
"Have you learned about Native Americans much outside of that context?”
Teaching that history should continue, but the bigger message is one of inclusion.
“It's about connecting the present with the past,” he said. “Where's the modern representation within those peoples? Where are its lessons? Where is it in your life? Where is it when you flip on the TV?”
“Where are they? That's the key question.”
