Stephen L. Bayne

More than 30 years ago, Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier recommended that American Indian culture, history, languages and arts be included in the curriculum of schools for Indian children. With the single exception of the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts, Collier’s ideas were ignored by federal and public schools until the initiation of the Rough Rock experiment in 1965.

Now, thanks to Rough Rock and to current demands for "Third World" curricula in colleges and universities, Collier’s original recommendations are being implemented in schools for Indian children and in programs of higher education. As Indian arts, oral literature, languages, and culture history become materials for curricula in more and more schools, it becomes increasingly important to understand what these materials can and cannot accomplish.

Much of the rhetoric (including Collier’s own) in favor of including Indian culture material in the curriculum has been characterized by a belief that this will somehow preserve the native cultures and their values, or will enable Indian children to integrate into their lives the "best of both worlds." Unfortunately for those who see in the native American cultures possible alternatives to the competitive values of urban America, it is not felt by the author that this belief is justified. There are two major reasons for this pessimism.

1. The form of an education system as well as the content is a vehicle for perpetuating the values of the culture operating the system. Mere inclusion of Indian culture materials in the content of curricula for American Indian children without radical alteration of the form of the education process seriously perverts the meaning of the materials from their meaning within the native culture. Specifically, education in our schools is compartmentalized and formal, whereas the form of education in the native American cultures was neither.

One of the most important reasons for this difference, one which additionally points out a tremendous difference in the nature of human experience between urban American and American Indian cultures, involves the "job," which is of utmost importance in the life of modern Americans, but was nonexistent in the cultures of native America.

We may define the "job" as a well-separated compartment of life experience in which a person performs tasks in return for which he receives money to buy the necessities and comforts of life. In modern America it is also one of the primary components of personal identity and social rank. In the native American cultures, however, life maintenance tasks (which we might ordinarily think of as jobs) were so intermeshed with social life, sexual identity, religious experiences and family relationships that the "job" as a separate life compartment simply did not exist. An Indian would find it ridiculous to identify himself by job (such as farmer, hunter, or hide tanner) for this would be as self-evident as his identification as a man or woman and would be an inseparable component of that identification.

Thus education for the Indian child meant learning to be a good man or woman rather than learning to be a worker at any specific trade or profession. This was accomplished through everyday interactions with adults, and through religion and oral tradition. Life maintenance skills associated with manhood and womanhood were taught at a pace initiated by the child. There was no need for hurry. The child was considered and treated as an independent human being, and was given the latitude to become an adult through his own efforts and volition.

In modern America, however, the form of education is radically different. The learning process must be accelerated in order to inculcate the complex skills and attitudes required by the job life, skills and attitudes which are quite separate from the child’s learning to become a good man or woman. There is little time available to respect or even acknowledge the child’s unique interests, preferred learning rate, or personal autonomy. He is treated, rather, as an object to be manipulated by adults until he acquiesces to treatment as an object—his lot for the duration of his job life.

This is not an overly cynical evaluation. The job, by definition, is task-oriented rather than human-oriented. The worker, whether a manual laborer or a college professor, must be disciplined to accept the order and rhythms of the job, because the job is not going to change significantly merely to suit his preferences and personal style. The human being is of secondary importance, and that is what our education transmits through formal, compartmentalized structures, discipline, and the breaking of individual preferred rhythms of learning and creativity.

Considering this tremendous difference in the two forms of education, I see no chance whatever that American schools can or will preserve the holistic values of American Indian cultures simply by including myths, arts and languages in the curriculum. Our school education, by its very structure, systematically inculcates job values, not those of American Indian cultures.

2. Myths, legends, arts and crafts, and language are only a small part of a people’s culture. Unfortunately, most Americans hold the romantic notion that these aspects of American Indian culture are synonymous with the totality of Indian culture. These are the parts of culture referred to when educators speak of "the best of Indian life." Thus the most colorful and easily identifiable aspects of the native American cultures are taught in the schools, rather than any deeper foundations.

Specifically, the schools cannot and will not transmit the interaction patterns of the kinship community which forms the basis of Indian life on the reservations and in the cities. Since the schools cannot do this, it is the writer’s opinion that their cultural curricula will be irrelevant in the preservation of Indian culture or in providing a real cultural identity for Indian children.

This opinion is maintained because it appears that the experience of growing up in an Indian kinship community is the single factor which makes Indians significantly different from other people in the United States today, and thus the factor which must be preserved if Indian culture is to survive. Growing up and living with a community of people who share a distinctive interaction style, and who are treated essentially as non-Indians treat close relatives, results in the formation of an adult personality which is uniquely Indian. This was true in the pre-reservation kinship bands, and is still true both on the reservations and in urban relocation areas today.

This is not to say, however, that Indian culture materials have no place in federal and public schools for Indian children. Even though their inclusion in the curriculum is inadequate to perpetuate native cultural values, and even though they are incapable of inculcating "the best of both worlds," the materials can accomplish very important goals, of which I would select the following as especially important:

1. The school, in Indian communities, represent the status and official power of the white world, as well as the purveyor of important knowledge necessary to succeed in that world. By including Indian culture materials in its curriculum, the school lends its dignity and official sanction to Indian culture, which it persistently denigrated or refused to recognize in the past. This may be extremely important in combatting the feelings of self-deprecation, worthlessness and shame many children of minority cultures hold when they internalize the majority culture’s prejudices. Hopefully a generation of children who have had their culture respected by the schools will develop the self respect which will enable them to successfully cope with modern America.

2. The inclusion of Indian culture materials in the curriculum provides excellent in-service training for teachers, who must become knowledgeable about their pupils’ native culture in order to teach its history and traditions. Hopefully, the teacher will come to respect the Indian culture as a viable alternative to his own. Though the teacher will not be able to teach his pupils their own culture (they are actually living it), he will, through enhanced awareness of his pupils’ cultural background, become a more effective and sensitive teacher of his own modern American culture, and refrain from denigrating those aspects of his pupils’ native culture he would ordinarily not understand.

3. Educators of Indian children are now realizing that the complete separation of the school from the Indian community is the source of many of their problems. The school, to the Indian community, has always been "their" school, the whiteman’s school, a place where Indian parents feel confused, uncomfortable, and often unwelcome. Having had, in most cases, only a few years of formal education themselves, they fail to understand the nature and purpose of modern curriculum, and are not prepared to reinforce classroom experiences in the home. Thus a wide gap develops between home and school worlds, exacerbated by misunderstanding and suspicion on both sides.

When the school introduces Indian culture materials, a number of things may happen to bring the school and community together. Teachers, as mentioned before, may become more understanding and tolerant of the values and life style of the Indian community. Parents may become less suspicious of a school which respects their tribal background, and thus may feel more comfortable about participating in school affairs. Parents, in fact, may be drawn directly into the classrooms as teacher aides and guest experts in native culture. Eventually, as teachers seek out sources in the Indian community for first-hand cultural information, and as parents participate more actively in school life, a real dialogue may be established which could lead to the kind of mutual understanding that would enable parents to reinforce the schools’ efforts in the home, and enable teachers to be more effective in the classroom through a deeper understanding of their Indian pupils.

Thus the inclusion of indigenous culture materials in the curriculum, while it fails to perpetuate the "best of Indian culture," can be an important tool in facilitating the inculcation of mainstream American job culture to children not prepared for this inculcation in the home. It is a step toward a more perceptive, humane pedagogy—a step away from denigrating Indian children as deprived, cultureless savages who must have American culture forcefully shoved down their throats.

We must, however, be realistic in accepting ethnic pedagogy as a replacement of the old curriculum in technique, rather than in purpose It is still the purpose of the school to teach and perpetuate the culture of modern, technological America, and it is the grave responsibility of the school to do it well. Anything less is a crime against the next generation, a crime for which schools for Indians have long borne guilt.

The chances are good that the inclusion of native cultural materials will help the schools orient Indian children toward self-confident, fulfilling lives. Possibly these children will then be able to change, perhaps to humanize modern America. Their ability to accomplish this, however, must come from a foundation of knowledge and experience in successfully coping with modern America. It is this foundation which the schools must provide.

Those of us who hope to see the perpetuation of American Indian cultures as beautiful, viable lifeways in the midst of modern technological conformity must trust the ability of the Indian communities themselves to remain different and Indian. This will not, and should not be a goal of the schools.