Talking Stereotypes with Young Children on Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Second grade students at Germantown Friends School (GFS) spend a semester studying the history and culture of the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware Indians, the first people to inhabit the mid-Atlantic region of North America known today as Delaware, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania. Our study focuses mainly on the “long ago” Lenape and how they lived before the arrival of European colonists. We launch our study in late September with a field trip to Churchville Nature Center where educators present a Lenape recreation village that offers children a hands-on glimpse at Lenape life as it was in the 1500s.
Our study is built around essential questions that drive the curriculum. These questions include, but are not limited to:
Who were the first people in North America and where did they come from?
How can we learn about people who lived long ago?
What does it mean to survive?
What does it mean to thrive?
What did the long ago Lenape need to learn in order to thrive?
As October rolls around, the calendar begets an important conversation that brings our study into 2018. Columbus Day is a national holiday with a legacy of celebrating violence and promoting stereotypes of Native American people. The choice to reframe the holiday as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, led by Native American activists, is one that gains more national attention and traction every year.
As educators, we question whether it’s our place to tell students, “This holiday is called Indigenous Peoples’ Day, not Columbus Day.”
In fact, this past week, a GFS second grader asked, “Is it still okay for me to call it both names?”
Today, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we non-native educators reflect on our roles teaching young children about Native American stereotypes:
When I was ten years old, during a fifth grade social studies class, my teacher handed out a new batch of Weekly Readers. I was excited. I loved Weekly Readers! These publications were a little window on a wider world that seemed full of possibilities and, in my mind, really cool things! On this particular day I was stunned to see an article about migrant children somewhere in the Southwest — who happened to live in a house without a door. The fact that they didn’t have a door was inconceivable to me at the time. I was truly shaken. I felt sad and confused. How was it possible that people could live in a house, without a door? The dusty kids playing with hubcaps looked happy enough. But they didn’t have a door on their house! My worldview suddenly got more complicated. I didn’t know it at the time, but my white privileged upbringing and socioeconomic background had limited my life experience to such an extent that I had lived my entire life sheltered from knowing much of anything about poverty.
Fast-forward eight years. I was a junior in high school during the American Indian Movement Wounded Knee trial in Minneapolis Minnesota, 1974. By this time, I was fully awake to the injustices of the native peoples of North America. I had studied the realities of life on the reservation — deeply rooted poverty, hopelessness, and pervasive alcoholism — the perfect storm for a life expectancy of 47 years. I knew my history about broken treaties and genocide. Dennis Banks and Russell Means (the Lakota defendants in U.S. Federal Court) spoke to my heart because they, among others, resisted the same oppression that precipitated the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. I wasn’t in favor of violence in the fighting back, but I also wasn’t in favor of accepting the political and structural violence of dehumanization.
I am a teacher now. I work with young children — helping them learn and grow in a healthy community of loving people. I also teach about the indigenous people of the mid-Atlantic, particularly about the Lenni Lenape, otherwise known as the Delaware Indians. I enjoy helping the children gain a beginning understanding of the ancient ways of the Lenape — particularly how they met their basic human needs — prior to colonization. The children are fascinated with how creative and successful the Lenape people were as they sought to feed themselves and keep warm. We study the ways of surviving in the bountiful forests of the Eastern Woodlands. We cut leather with stone, grind corn in a wooden mortar, and lash saplings to make a small wigwam. We also learn how the Lenape people thrived in a fullness of life — complete with architecture, oral history, mythology, art, and spirituality. It is important the children don’t “play Indian,” but gain respect for the awesome nature of their culture. We make a point of talking about the stereotypes that people have held and shared about native peoples. We talk about feathers, big noses, and the mascots of sports teams. We talk about the hurtful and insulting images that are still perpetrated upon the first peoples of America. We also study colonization, disease, and enslavement. With reading texts like Encounter, by Jane Yolen which tell the story of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in San Salvador — from the native perspective, we dive deep into this unsettling history.
Fortunately, we also look at today, and are blessed to have a pen-pal relationship with the Sapa Un Academy on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. We owe this connection to GFS alumnus, Charles Stehle (class of ’52), whose family is historically linked the Rosebud Reservation. Our second grade students at GFS are privileged to gain some perspective on the diversity of native cultures and know that native people are among us and always have been. Recently the students at Sapa Un sent us research they did about the tatanka — the American Bison. Our children learned about the vital role of the bison within Lakota culture. We did some research about the white-tailed deer and shared what we learned about this animal’s prominence in Lenape culture. We see our relationship with the children and teachers at Sapa Un as partners in learning.
It is an honor to be a teacher at GFS. I see myself in partnership with my colleagues and students as we learn together. The connection I make with my students about the injustices of the past and present are rooted in one fact alone — commitment to fundamental human fairness. We talk about Jim Crow and civil rights. We talk about marriage equality. When I was ten I knew that it simply wasn’t fair to not have a door on your house. Fifty years later I still know that to be true. My hope for the future is that my students learn enough to see unfairness and to help others see it as well.
-Daniel Rouse
“I hope kids learn the truth about our people.”
That quote comes from Unlearning ‘Indian’ Stereotypes, an educational film narrated by Native American children and produced by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. I screened the film a few times before showing it to my students, and on my last viewing, that quote landed hard in my gut. As a Lower School, GFS teachers have recently been examining and evaluating the scope and sequence of our social studies curriculum. Learning the truth about the first people to inhabit the land our school is built upon, land stolen from the Lenni-Lenape, is a non-negotiable for me.
I am humbled to serve in the role of “teacher” of this content. As a child, I gleefully built a Niña, Pinta, and Santa Marîa with my elementary school classmates and my life since has not often demanded that I confront my own ignorance and misconceptions about the treatment of Native Americans in North America. Fortunately, many educators are leading the way for those of us who are newer arrivals to this work.
Unlearning ‘Indian’ Stereotypes comes packaged with a series of articles that make recommendations for teachers (and parents) to use in discussing Native American stereotypes with young children. Here is some advice that helps me plan and guide classroom discussion, drawing from the work of Bob Peterson:
-Explain the word stereotype as a mistaken idea, or untrue story, about how a whole group of people think, behave, dress, etc. Start with easily accessible examples, like girls love pink and boys don’t like pink.
-Describe stereotypes of Native American people in concrete terms. Tell children that while some native nations used feathers for ceremonial purposes, many others did not. Ask children how their families dress for weddings and other special occasions. Do they dress like that all the time? In the same way, it’s a stereotype to say that Native Americans dress with feathers all the time, if at all.
-Explain how stereotypes make Native Americans seem less than human. Discuss sports team mascots and Halloween costumes.
-As children consume books and media, ask them, “Did you notice any stereotypes in that story?” Invite them regularly to apply a critical lens to media.
-Take action. Brainstorm ways to support the effort to rename the Washington Redskins, and other teams. Discuss other contemporary issues like treaty rights, protecting land and water, and ending all forms of discrimination.
-Jeewon Wright-Kim
Want to join us in celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Attend the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Philadelphia celebration on October, 13th from 12–4pm in Hunting Park. Admission is free and will feature a mini Pow Pow/Festival with traditional and contemporary Indigenous dances, music, arts, and craft from the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Mexica, Taino and other relatives. RSVP HERE
by Katie Aument, Daniel Rouse, and Jeewon Wright-Kim, second grade teachers at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, PA.
