crossposted from Womanist Musings
[Editor's note: In honor of her blog's first birthday, Renee at Womanist Musings has been sharing favorite posts from the site's history. I thought this one was a gem that illustrates the vigilance needed in anti-racist parenting--a vigilance that extends to watching even educators who should know better. Also note, the label "Indian," while largely unacceptable in Canada, is used by some Native peoples in the United States.]
My little guy Destruction started grade two this year. Each night his father and I sit at the kitchen table with him and supervise his homework. We consider this family time and are both equally invested in making sure that our child is learning.
Tonight little Destruction brought home a page to colour of an Indian. It described her as living in the forest behind his school. There are no Native children in his grade, and I cannot help but wonder if there were, would the teacher still have found this “image” acceptable?
No matter what the teachers intent was, colour an Indian, is unacceptable. I quickly informed Destruction that he is to say either Native Canadian, or Aboriginal person. I also reminded him of a Native family that we have been friendly with for years, and asked him if they looked like this horrendous picture.
He said, “no they look like you and me.” I told him certain clothing is worn to celebrate traditional Native holidays, but it is certainly not representative of the ways in which Natives dress today. Then he brought it up…the Disney movie that is on my list of top 10 hated movies…Pocahontas. We then spent the next 15 minutes explaining to him everything that is wrong with that movie, and why it is not representative of Native peoples.
Each day we must struggle to impart positive messages about race to our child, and to find out that the school is subverting our work in this way is infuriating. With thanksgiving a few weeks away, I suppose I should not be surprised that the education system sees this as an opportunity to spread falsehoods about Native Canadians.
I intend to inform my children of the history that the government would like us to forget. I will remind them that the land on which our home is built is not ours; it is Native land. I will remind them that the comforts that they take for granted were paid for by Aboriginal blood.
Being an anti-racist parent means a commitment to telling our children the truth. Much of Canadian history when it comes to race is actually quite ugly though we collectively would like to believe that we are not “that bad”. You see, discursively many Canadians develop an identity by seeking to assert difference between us, and Americans; rather than admitting to a true and distinctive identity that has its own issues.
Tomorrow I will send this little homework assignment back to his school, informing his teacher that my child does not, “colour Indians“. My child is being raised in a household where all bodies matter and we will not tolerate the reduction of anyone based in ignorance.
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My grandmother is Maliseet and grew up in NB so I know all too well how things are up there these days. I would have been similarly astonished at that assignment. I hate that my only recourse where I live is to ignore the offensive things around me like the school mascot (Braves) and the geographical moniker (Indian Valley) and the local daycare that names it’s rooms by tribe –think three year olds are the “Apaches.” Though as your post can attest, the best education for my kids is to have the honest discussions at home when they are old enough.
I am surprised at the colour-the-Indian-homework. The vast majority of the even most uninformed white teachers “knows better,” even if for self-preservation in a very P-C school system. It’s hardly an exaggeration to compare the likeliness/outrageousness of this case to a colour-the-negro assignment in the US. I’m thinking of emailing the blogger and suggesting she contact the Ontario College of Teachers if she hasn’t received a satisfactory response from the teacher and/or school or school board. This is a clear violation of the Standards of Practice.
I’m not being self-congratulatory (I’m a white Canadian) in that surprise. The surprise is at the political incorrectness, not the underlying racism. The social conditions for native peoples in Canada should be a national disgrace. I say “should be” rather than “is” because, IMHO, most of the non-native population (including other POC) are woeful uninformed of “native issues.” In many cases, it is willful ignorance. I can’t even call it a dirty little secret because that suggests we all know of it and know it’s wrong, too. There is not nearly enough public discourse on the _substance_ of the issues. There is some public will to acknowledge (blatant) historical injustices but little will to address the ongoing consequences and policy implications. Only occasionally does national attention get appropriately focussed, e.g., Davis Inlet, residential school apologies/reparations, and even then the attention is usually short-lived.
I’d like to see the international community take Canada to task for the injustices faced by its aboriginal peoples. Of course, I’d love to see the injustices addressed because of internal motivation rather than external pressure but that’s dreaming. All anyone would need to do is say, “You’re no better than the Americans … ” Canada does have many anti-racist successes but there’s a ridiculously long way to go. Unfortunately, the positive attention we get for diversity and inclusiveness, e.g., Bowling for Columbine, have bred complacency.
Sorry for the rant.
Native Canadian? Native American?
What the fuck?
Do we think that before we created those lines after killing 90% of them, that they divided themselves that way? Along the 42nd parallel? Srsly? o rly?
Wouldn’t indigenous aboriginal properly encompass all the people who were here before the great european clusterfuck?
Great post.
Since you mention the term “Native Canadian” I do want to mention, that as I understand it, in the United States, the term “Native American” is not *necessarily* the preferred term. I’ve been told that many native peoples in the United States actually view “Native American” with some suspicion, since they see it as a generalized term created by the federal government for classification purposes. Many I have spoken with prefer the term “American Indian.”
I would welcome any clarification anyone might wish to add!
Jeff — that is a good point. I spend a lot of time in New Mexico and use this article as a guide.
http://www.allthingscherokee.com/articles_culture_events_070101.html
Funnily enough, “Indian” is used in many governmental contexts in Canada, e.g., status Indian, Department of Indian Affairs. I suspect that “Native” had become common parlance to distinquish First Nations people from Inuit and Metis peoples, all of whom fall under the category of aboriginal or indigenous. I tend to use aborginal when possible.
As to the objection to “Native Canadian” and “American Canadian” as historically nonsensical, I see the point but I don’t agree that it should preclude their use, especially where it is a self-identification. It is particularly apt in the case of Native Canadian because Canadian is derived from an Iroquois root-word. So to a Native Canadian person, “Canada” might have nothing to do with the 49th parallel. Native-Canadian should be available as a defiant self-identification that challenges the notion of who is the foreigner in the land.
If it makes those terms more palatable to you, try thinking of them as corresponding to Vietnamese-Canadian or Chinese-American, wherein one part is a cultural and/or ethnic descriptor and the other is a nationality/citizenship descriptor. Then the 49th parallel can come back in to play.
“Native” where I live means you were born in state. For tribal peoples, we would use the tribal designation.
And if you must group me, my preference is “indigenous.” Otherwise, my name will do nicely.
The page looks like a fairly typical Thanksgiving coloring book illustration. The Pilgrims are usually equally stereotypical. It’s probably not all that authentic and one would hope the kids are getting other forms of education about the history of the continent and the various conflicts involved, but I don’t find the coloring book all that offensive.
For whatever it’s worth, I was at a high school on an Indian reservation today and the principal, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, informed me that the “Indian Club” was leaving to perform at a ceremony in the nearest big town. The boy I interviewed, who is set to attend Harvard next fall and is incredibly bright and accomplished, is half Mexican-American and half Three Affiliated Tribes. He told me his family affectionately calls him “Indian Taco.” Indian is a term that the people on the reservations here in North Dakota use for themselves, interchangeably with Native American and their tribal identities. In the article about the boy I said he was an enrolled member of his tribe and left it at that.
LOL at Indian Taco, Andrea
those are so tasty.
I’m Eastern Band Cherokee, and yeah, the cartoon looks nothing like me or any other person I’ve ever met on the Qualla Boundary. What makes the kid Indian? Nothing that I would recognize.
I am Micmac and Abenaki from Maine, USA. We either call ourselves American Indian or by our tribal name which is preferred. I say I am Abenaki. We like to identify with our specific tribe. American Indian, although acceptable, is pretty generic and we are not. We don’t all look alike, speak the same language, practice the same religious beliefs or even like the same flavor ice cream
Just teach children to treat all people with respect. You can go overboard in the other direction and have cute little white kids thinking they come from an evil race and they are bad. Teach your children by example.
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I am 1/4 Cherokee (of the Eastern Band) and 1/4 Pima (which is actually a Mexican tribe, but with some bands in the States), and my Cherokee grandmother has always taught me to use the term First Nation. I really hate telling people I’m Cherokee, because at least in the area that I’m from, everyone (blacks and whites) will tell you that their “great-great-great grandmama was a Cherkee indyun princess!” when 100% of the time that is not the case. So most often, I’ll simply say that I’m First Nation, or American Indian, or Pima.
I have some American Indian ancestry, but I’m mostly black and white.
I will admit to thinking that the picture is cute but I’m not sure that it is an appropriate homework assignment. Was this the teacher’s way of providing a lesson on Native American history?
Anihla…I know my response to your comment is two years late, but I like what you had to say. Some of my white relatives live in Maine, in Penobscot County. They identify as white but some have quite a bit of Penobscot Indian blood. Many of the Penobscot Indians live in Old Town or on the Indian Island township.
Chaya…yeah, that “Indian princess” stuff bothers me, too. My mother-in-law doesn’t say all of that, but she does claim to be part Cherokee. I’ve heard many other Americans make this claim. It seems to be “hip” to claim Native American ancestry among some people. My American Indian ancestors certainly weren’t royalty. They were ordinary people who lived on a farm in Maine. They mixed with British and French whites. My father had straight, thin dark hair and blue eyes. He looked like a lot of other white men, except that his mother was Penobscot. She practiced natural medicine, milked cows, sewed clothes, and grew the prettiest wildflowers. But she was definitely not an “Injun princess”.
When I hear people claiming the “Indian princess” nonsense, I give them the side eye because that is disrespectful to people with actual Native American or First Nation heritage.