Volume 1 Number 3
May 1962

Edward H. Spicer

Professor of Anthropology, University of Arizona

An address given at Pacific Arts Association Conference at Arizona State University Tempe. Arizona April, 1960. This is the second half of Dr. Spicer's address.

I have tried to sketch the general framework of Indian life as it relates most significantly to creative developments. I want now to look at current trends, especially in education, within this framework. Certainly one of the most, if not the most, significant areas of contact between Indians and Americans generally is the schools, and this has been true for several generations.

We are in the midst of the third great phase in Indian education. There was a first phase when Indians resisted white schools. Most tribes have a history of what has usually been called resistance. But it was more often than not resistance to a particular uninformed superintendent or teachers very badly equipped for the job of teaching. There was ignorance on both sides. Often it was resistance to highhanded methods of getting children to go to school, methods which ignored the parents and which in fact were based on the belief that children must be separated as fully as possible from parents. It was a period of non-cooperation. Whites with good intentions were not cooperating with Indian parents, and Indian parents with little or no knowledge of the possibilities which schools held out for them were not cooperating with Indian Bureau employees. The results were satisfactory to no one; relatively few Indians went to school, and distrust and bad feelings were built up on both sides. This phase lasted into the 1920s.

But as white society closed in around the reservations, Indian attitudes steadily changed. It is true that many Indians became embittered at the rough treatment or at being rejected for places in white society which schools were designed to prepare them for. But probably a greater number, whether they had been to boarding school or not, began to take the view that at least reading and writing and arithmetic were necessary tools for getting along in a white-dominated world. The feeling of need for schooling among Indian parents intensified during the 1920s and 1930s. But this feeling was not matched in Congress. The schools provided did not meet the Indian demand. Indian communities had become generally impoverished for a variety of reasons which we will not go into here, but chiefly as a result of the reservations having been set up on marginal lands. Indians were not able to provide schools for themselves, the states regarded the problem as a national one, and the nation was occupied with what were thought to be bigger problems. Even though increasing numbers of Indians were finding their way into ,public schools, the level of Indian formal education was steadily failing farther and farther behind that of the general population. This situation prevailed through World War II. Even as late as 1950 the majority of Navahos and Papagos, the largest tribes in Arizona, were without schools even though resistance had disappeared.

During the last ten years entirely new conditions have arisen. Practically all Indian children of school age, even in the Southwest, are now in schools. Moreover, the trend toward getting Indian children into public schools rather than into the separate Bureau of Indian Affairs schools is steadily increasing. The rapidity with which Indian children have been provided with schooling as a result of Indian Bureau policy is almost unbelievable. Indian demand for school and the means for it have at last met. Bureau policy holds that the most desirable objective is to bring Indian children into public schools as soon as possible and is working to this end. The association of Indian children with other Americans in the schools is intensifying every month. There is no solid reason to doubt that the next decade will see the disappearance of separately managed Indian schools and that the integration of Indians into the American public school system will be complete. Many of the schools, however, will be in Indian country and will be attended by an overwhelming majority of Indians. Such public schools in reservation areas, such as the Navaho will be managed by local school boards in the usual American fashion.

This absorption of Indians into the public school system seems to me not only to be the trend, but also it appears to me desirable. But I believe this is desirable not as in end in itself. If the objective is merely "getting all Indian children into the schools," an important opportunity will have been lost. I believe in the possibility of a contribution to our civilization arising out of the fact of Indian cultural differences. This is not automatically assured by the growing dominance of the public school in Indian life. It is certainly not true that our public school system has encouraged regional or ethnic group art forms. I believe that, if Indian art is to be in any way encouraged by this new development, individuals and groups have to work consciously towards certain goals and with certain well-selected means. If this does not take place, I am sure that we can expect the public school to serve merely as a leveler of cultural differences, and that once the school system is dominant there will be an end to the possibility of something growing out of the Indian traditions—either the ancient or the minority traditions which I have tried to outline.

In the 1930s a change in administration of the Bureau put men in power who believed in the creative force of cultural differences. A determined effort was made to relate the Bureau schools to this idea. They believed that day schools on the reservations would result in keeping Indian children in touch with the parents' ways of life as well as in contact with the surrounding society. And so the trend toward boarding school education in isolation was somewhat checked. But further, the idea was taken seriously that the Indian cultural traditions must be a part of the school curriculum. Primers dealing with the economic life on the Navaho reservation were prepared and briefly used in the Navaho day schools. The primer that was prepared did not deal with the limbo of Navaho life before the white men came; it was based on the economic and social surveys which had been prepared by the Soil Conservation Service. It dealt with the realities of sheepherding and farming and off-reservation work as they existed in the 1930s. But even more indicative of the seriousness with which the new Bureau administrators took the idea was the effort they made to bring the surviving Indian languages into the schools along with English. A distinct cultural tradition can hardly be said to exist in a modern nation unless there is a distinctive language as its vehicle. This was recognized. Accordingly, alphabets for writing the Indian languages were made, and it was thought that the process of learning to read might be eased if Indian children were given an opportunity to learn to read in their mother tongues as well as English. Readers were prepared in Sioux, in Hopi, in Tewa, and in Navaho. Many problems developed. What teachers could be found to teach the Indian languages? There was no existing body of literature in any Indian language published in the alphabets used; what then could persons who learned to read in the Indian languages go on to read?

One of the most hopeful developments of which I know at present is the Indian Education program here at Arizona State University for special preparation of persons who want and plan to teach in schools in which the student body will consist of Indians. For some years there will continue to be government schools on reservations, but as I have pointed out, we can expect these to decrease in numbers. We are seeing the steady increase of Indian students in public schools off the reservations, but we may also expect the increase of public schools on reservations in which, by the accidents of geography, all or nearly all students will be Indians. In short, there will be, for an indefinite period into the future, many schools in states like Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Montana which will be composed essentially of Indian students. Arizona State University has recognized the need for some special preparation of teachers for these schools and has instituted courses to acquaint potential teachers with Indian backgrounds. This, I think, holds much promise for giving a creative turn to the minority and cultural conflicts which constitute the Indian milieu. It should be remembered that the Indian Bureau also made this effort and is still doing so. It attempted to give in special summer conference courses in Indian cultural background to the teachers and some of the other employees of the Bureau so that they would be better fitted to their jobs in dealing with Indians. Arizona State University plan is more strongly conceived in that it proposes to give this instruction as in integral part of teacher training throughout undergraduate preparation.

The plan is promising, but I believe that it requires a real effort to make it effective. If the program is conceived purely in terms of "smoother adjustment" or some such concept that teachers will be better able to understand students and so smooth things for them in the classroom, I believe that it would have little relevance to the problem I have outlined. I believe, also, that if such training results in merely developing a sympathy for the downtrodden Indian, that it could even be hurtful rather than helpful. I should think that the courses must go deeper in their content and that they must have in aim beyond enabling teachers and students to get along a little better. I do not mean by this, either, that what is taught should consist of the sort of material which anthropologists have often gathered, namely, facts about the ancient customs and folklore and prehistoric forms of art. Certainly there should be some of this, for the present is not wholly intelligible without it, but there is a great gap between such information and the life of conflicting values and customs and beliefs on modern reservations.

It would be of real importance if something of the Indian languages were taught, but I am sure that this is far too much to hope for. The Maori language is taught at the university level, as well is in lower levels, in the New Zealand reservation schools, but in the United States, even in a state in which 80,000 or more people speak a single Indian language, we simply are not able to bring ourselves to give that kind of dignity to a native language. There are individuals to teach several of our southwestern Indian languages, and materials are available for teaching. This, I am afraid, is visionary. I think that the chance of creative development out of the Indian situation is greatly lessened.

But let us be less visionary. If teachers for Indian schools could really learn the Indian histories, I think that this would be fundamental training for the job. It would not only promote what is called "adjustment" in that it would give the teachers a better understanding for Indian student attitudes, but it would also give a foundation for real contact and stimulation between Indian student and teacher. This sounds simple—teach Indian history—but it is not. It is simple compared with any teaching of Indian languages, but it is still not easy. In the first place the materials themselves, the facts, are not all collected and put up in text book form. Indian history is not the history of Indians as seen by writers of textbooks or of history generally in the United States. The kind of Indian history I am talking about is that which includes not only what white men have said and done when they were involved with Indians. It includes also what Indians have said and done. The facts are available in Indian Bureau hearings before Congress and here and there in a great variety of sources. Dr. Ruth Underhill has come close to getting into a book some of what I am talking about in her history of the Navahos, and there are some important bits in the series which is being published by the Navahos on their history gathered in the Navaho language by Bob Young. The material is not often compiled for easy use, but the fact remains that there are individuals who know Indian history and might be sought for.

I am advocating something that is not easy but also something that is not impossible. I am suggesting that "a course" is of no importance unless there lies back of it a real effort at grasping Indian experience in today's world on the part of whoever teaches it. A course in Indian history which arises merely out of the information common in histories of our states or in the anthropologists' accounts of Indian life in earlier times will have little bearing on creativity. But a course conceived and taught with direct reference to today's spiritual life of Indians, rather than their practical problems, will. I can see as a great aid to such teaching bringing students to novels such as LaFarge's "The Enemy Gods" and McNichol's "Crazy Weadler."

Good preparation of teachers, while it is, I think, of some importance to our problem, is not likely to do a great deal in itself in the way of stimulation of creative art in Indian life. I am advocating it and believe that anyone who is serious about developing Indian art ought to work hard at good teacher preparation. But this, as I see it, is as much as anything a safeguard against the leveling of cultural differences which otherwise the expansion of the public school system is sure to bring about. If teachers are well equipped to strike the sparks from youngsters among the Indians, much is gained.

But there is another way in which our educational system fits into the situation. That is at the level of the colleges of fine arts and in professional workshops. Here, there is a current development which also holds great promise which is going into action at the University of Arizona. I am sure that this will be considered in detail in the panels later. I wish to mention it now merely because of the conception which underlies it. It is an effort to bring together working artists in our society with talented Indians. They will work together in different arts in groups which will be led, as the plan states, by an Indian artist now producing and a non-Indian artist. Here is the approach which holds so much promise. It seeks to bring into working interaction the living art of the day as it is practiced and taught in our culture and the urge to artistic creation as it is felt by individuals who have grown up in the milieu of the modern Indian. It is based on the idea that Indian art is not a separate and segregated development but one which will grow only in the context of our whole society. I think that this is sound and points the way to the realization of the possibilities which the existence of differing cultural traditions holds in our country.

The cultural differences ought to be productive of creative growth in art and in ideas. It is clear that repeatedly the world over the coming together of different cultural traditions has brought about new growth. But this is nevertheless only a possibility. Up to now there has been some growth. All the living crafts of the Indians are a result of fusion of Western materials and ideas with Indian ones. This growth could easily be cut off and probably has been to a large extent. When given an opportunity Indians have responded in creative fashion, as indicated in some of the efforts of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tendency, however, recently has been toward submergence and cutting off of the stimulating contact. Bemused by values set in terms of economics and cultural assimilation, most effort has been directed toward eliminating the cultural differences rather than emphasizing their possibility for creative growth. I have tried to indicate what is involved in realizing such possibility. It is not easy at this point to take advantage of the situation, but it can be done if there is realistic conception of Indian life and if there is conviction that spiritual values are important and can be nurtured.