By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Lecture Series "Sorting Out Race" kicked off Tuesday night at the Fox Theater with Alex Red Corn, a member of the Osage Nation and an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Kansas, presenting "What Box Should I Check?"
"I was a social studies teacher at Shawnee Mission schools, and after a few years, I thought I learned social studies, and I'm Osage, but I didn't learn anything about Indigenous education or Indigenous education systems, so I went back and pursued a doctorate," Red Corn said.
Red Corn is both Osage and white and attended Shawnee Mission schools, where he later taught.
Red Corn started by trying to sort out political classifications.
"I've given a version of this talk before and called it 'Tales from a Recovering Social Studies Teacher' because it was everything I learned after my time as a social studies teacher, mostly. It wasn't like I didn't learn anything about Indians in social studies, but the depth and the breadth and the nuisance; I actually had to go outside the mainstream system of education to find those things."
There were 370 treaties signed between 1778 and 1871 with Native American Nations. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Snyder Act, which gave Native Nations members American citizenship status.
He said it concerns nationhood and citizenship, not just race and ethnicity.
Treaties enforced land dispossession and equal government promises for education, Red Corn said.
"Land taken turns into tax dollars turns into universities, public schools," Red Corn said. "At the same time, it turns into the promise that we owe you an education."
The money raised through land dispossession of Native Americans in Kansas went to establish and support land-grant universities, including Kansas State University, The University of Kansas, and other schools across the country, including those on the East Coast.
"I love the word entanglement because it kind of represents this cluster that we all inherited when we are trying to sort out race that we all have some play in it here, and we have to try to figure it out," Red Corn said. ... "And no, not everyone's ancestors did great things to each other, but we still inherited what this is."
Kaw Nation lands contributed primarily to the establishment of Kansas State University. Until a couple of years ago, Kaw Nation members living in Oklahoma had to pay out-of-state tuition at K-State, Red Corn said.
Osage and Kaw land contributed to the foundation of the University of Missouri.
"Kansas State University has the Kaw name in it. The state of Kansas, these educational institutions, the Kanza people, the Kaw people, same thing, Kansas is named after them. Their name is everywhere yet nowhere at the same time," Red Corn said.
Fort Hays State University was not a land-grant institution.
However, historic Fort Hays was operated to protect against Cheyenne and Arapaho, so it was part of the same process of removal of Native Americans from Kansas, Red Corn said.
"I'm curious about how much has anyone learned about the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples?" he asked the audience.
He asked the audience who knew where the Cheyenne and Arapaho are today. No one raised their hands.
The people did disappear. They have their own governors, elected councils, an education department and media.
Red Corn said most people know the story of "Little House on the Prairie" but don't know that it is also the story of Osage removal.
"'Little House on the Prairie' is literally the story of illegal squatters on Osage land. The federal government was supposed to be keeping them off," he said.
"When you see the Kansas State Seal and the removal of the buffalo and the Indians in the background and the plow and the white settlers foreground, that's that story," Red Corn said. "That's the celebration of that story."
The promise of education with the land exchange turned into boarding schools.
"For anyone who hasn't heard the 'kill-the-Indian-save-the-man' assimilation is the attempt of boarding schools to remove the Indian from the human and replace it with Eurocentric whiteness and Eurocentric farmers," he said.
"Even though these people lived on this land for generations and thousands of years and know how to use the land, they were forced to use someone else's ideas of land use from another continent."
Kansas had 12 federal boarding schools.
Assimilation attempts continued into the 1950s and '60s when Native people were relocated to urban centers to work in factories, Red Corn said.
As a result of Nations being scattered, 93% of Nation children are in public schools today, he said.
This has meant that these children don't have access to their Native languages in school.
Students are also not learning about Tribal sovereignty. There are 574 federally recognized Tribes in the United States, four of which are in Kansas.
These include:
• Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas
• Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation
• Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska
• Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska
"So you learn those basic nifty 50 United States, 13 original colonies, but we don't even know how many nations are there starting point," Red Corn.
Google searches of "Indian" produce stuck-in-the-past stereotypical images of Native Americans. Eighty-seven percent of social studies across the United States as of 2015 were situated in a pre-1900 context, Red Corn said.
Native Americans disappear out of history textbooks after the Trail of Tears.
"In picture books for children, talking bears outnumber Native Americans 9 to 1, so you learn more about talking bears through children's books than you do about American Indians," he said.
The American Psychological Association said Native American mascots undermine the self-esteem of Native American students and increase the likelihood that non-Native kids will stereotype other ethnic groups.
Hays High School retains its Indian mascot, and earlier this year, the school board voted to extend that mascot to Hays Middle School.
Many Native children also do not have regular contact with other Native people, which means there is no pushback against the stereotypes, Red Corn said.
"When you see this type of imagery show up in the exhibit—the fighting warrior, it's everywhere. It's all people see. I have literally met people, and the first thing they do is the tomahawk chop when they find out that I'm Osage," Red Corn said.
Joy Harjo, the first Native American U.S. Poet laureate, said there's a nuisance to the Native American story. It's an empty shell people keep interacting with, and then it's been taken, co-opted and claimed as their own.
"That 'kill-the-Indian-and-save-the man' trajectory that was put in motion is still being Xeroxed and replicated," Red Corn said.
Red Corn said the measure of Native identity has long been based on bloodline.
"I remember being in elementary school and someone would find out that I'm Osage, and they would say, 'How much are you?' It has always been a blood quantity like dogs and horses. Then they find out, and they are 'So if you like just cut our arm off, you wouldn't be Osage anymore.'"
"What box do I check and how have the boxes influenced what we think about race, citizenship and ethnicity?" he asked.
Red Corn said there's a 79% undercount of Native children in school race reporting in part because they are selecting multi-racial instead of Native American.
The states should be able to tell the Tribes how their kids are doing in their classes, but they can't, he said.
Red Corn said the idea of Native life being entangled with colonialism is like Osage ribbon work. The Osage took ribbons they obtained trading with the French in the 18th century and created a new art form of their own.
He said his life is more complicated than walking in two worlds.
He better described himself as a walking entanglement like the Osage ribbon work, shaped by lived experiences.
Despite stereotypes of downtrodden Native people, they are adaptable and thriving people, Red Corn said. The Osage people embody the idea of doing the best you can with what you have, he said.
"System change is possible," he said.
Below is a list of the rest of the lectures in the series and information on an accompanying exhibit at the Hays Public Library.
