A stone age man, the last member of his tribe and the last living speaker of his language, walking in to modern civilization (1911) after a lifetime of living in the woods. The last wild Indian.
Posted on 07/29/2018 10:40:59 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
California 4th-graders have studied Golden State geography, people and history. Now, historians and Native American teachers are pushing to broaden that curriculum to include more on the culture and history of the state’s original inhabitants.
“For so many years, the story of California Indians has never really been part of classrooms,” said Rose Borunda, an education professor at Sacramento State University and a coordinator of the California Indian History Curriculum Coalition. “Our story has never been present. It’s often sidestepped because it’s inconvenient. But it’s the truth, and students should learn it.”
Borunda, who is Native American, and her colleagues are working to educate teachers statewide on the history of California’s indigenous people, who were among the most populous and diverse Native Americans in North America. Their curriculum would complement the state’s History-Social Science framework, which was updated two years ago.
The changes are part of a broader effort to expand Native California curriculum in K-12 schools. In October, Gov. Brown signed AB 738...to create a Native American studies class curriculum for high schools that will satisfy the elective course requirements for admission to CU and CSU. Earlier this year, Brown signed AB 2016, which creates an elective high school ethnic studies course that could also include Native American history and culture. The State Board of Education is required to adopt the ethnic studies curriculum by March 2020.
While the [California] missions marked the beginning of colonization in California, they were also the beginning of the end for most tribes, as thousands were enslaved by missionaries, killed by settlers over the next few decades or died of diseases introduced by Europeans. Within 70 years of the Spanish arrival, the native population dropped to fewer than 70,000, according to the state’s Native American Heritage Commission.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Exactly.
The fighting between tribes especially in central California could be a good lesson on how Not to live.
Corrections or Clarifications Needed...
1. “the [California] missions marked the beginning of colonization in California” —NOT. The (known) beginning of colonization in California was the invasion of the Asiatic colonists, since termed “native Americans,” to be followed several thousand years later by the invasion of the European colonists from Spain...
2. “died of diseases introduced by the (Spanish) colonists...” NOT QUITE. The diseases did kill many, yes indeed ... but the word choice in the textbook is so poor as to be slanted. The disease germs were carried, unknowingly for the most part, by the Spanish (whose population had developed immunological resistance to those particular pathogens, since same were commonplace in Europe). The germs were not intentionally bottled up and brought over and then forcibly injected into the previous-colonists... which the technical term “introduced by” could easily (deliberately?) imply in the children’s minds. This unfortunate interpretation is made even more likely by including the “introduced by” term (correct in a technical journal, yes) in the same sentence as “killed by” (referring to deliberate violent acts). There were some deliberate violent acts, yes, and these should be included in the lesson. But, most of the deaths were by the disease pathogens (carried unintentionally), and this should be made clear, too.
In short, I believe the socalled “native’ history should be taught. But, it needs to be taught clearly and correctly and using terminology that is as free of (intentional or not) misunderstanding as possible. IN short, a clean, honest history lesson (insofar as possible) not a slanted political polemic.
They probably won’t mention all the wars started by Native Americans massacring settlers and colonists.
Same here. I'm sure it still is. But these victim groups don't just want the history known, they want to revise it to make the European pioneers and missionaries all devils.
I don’t have a problem with that, as long as the whole story is taught objectively....I know...that’ll last part there, will be the fly in the ointment.
Can’t teach our founding any longer.
They can try to convince our little children how vile and corrupt our first citizens were, and of course every White person since.
Why are we putting up with this?
California history is just that, not going back in history forever. That being said, California was the worst in treatment of American Indians and others. And they look down upon southerners, so smugly.
Disclaimer: I’m a native Californian and Cherokee. I have no stake in this battle.
The Injuns lost. They have no say.
When I grew up in upstate New York, I loved all the Indian names in NY State. Onondaga, Ticonderoga, Cayuga, Seneca, Canandaigua, Adirondack, Chautauqua, Skaneateles, Taughannock, Poughkeepsie, Ashokan, and many more.
Our Social Studies classes in fifth or sixth grade had a big emphasis on the Iroquois League (later the Iroquois Confederacy and Five Nations) comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. Combined with all the Dutch names downstate, NYS has some of the best historical place names of any state in the country. Too bad it has such a lousy political environment.
It seems like California is way behind in emphasizing Indian culture.
I met a young Ohlone woman at the Coyote Hills Regional Park a couple months ago on a hike. She works in the interpretive center there. It was quite fascinating hearing her stories of her pure Ohlone grandparents. There aren’t many of them left.
LOL.
I am in favor of including the history of the local and regional American Indians in studies of local and regional history. I am also in favor of teaching that history accurately, and depicting those cultures as they were, not as some kind of “Noble Savages.” The difficulty in doing so is in the source material. Pre-literate peoples don’t have a history, as modern, literate civilizations understand the term. They have legends, myths, sagas and eddas, passed on orally. Even after the great civilizations developed writing it took a while for them to develop history; at first they just copied down their oral traditions. The next steps were/are to collect these oral traditions and try to edit them into some kind of coherent account, and to start recording reports of events as soon after they happen as possible, and based on the testimony of living persons who were there when it happened. And that is still not history, as we would understand the term.
I think the tribes on the Pacific were generally at peace with one another. It was the Plains and Rocky Mountain tribes as well as the eastern tribes that were more war-like and even there it varied widely.
Somebody should tell them there’s no such thing as Native Americans as they mean it.
Everybody is a descendant of an immigrant.
Just an argument over when they got here.
About how they’re really Asians and anyone born here is a native American?
Thanks. Excellent insights and what I believe to be true, too.
Besides, what history do they have, except what they've been told? Most didn't even have any written alphabet, so couldn't pass along any history except by word of mouth.
The problem is that there are only so many hours in a school year and school career. All of Western Civilization is being crowded out in favor of kids digging worms and compost plus ethnic studies (where ethnic does NOT include “white”). Everybody is an ethnic except whites.
Will they exclude those who owned slaves and/or practiced torture? Human sacrifice or cannibalism?
Few Native American Tribes, if any, would remain in the curriculum then.
As Mariner said in #2, the Pacific Coast Indians had it quite easy as food was abundant.
You wrote “beat corn into meal on flat rocks so they could bake tortillas?”
Indian tortillas??
A stone age man, the last member of his tribe and the last living speaker of his language, walking in to modern civilization (1911) after a lifetime of living in the woods. The last wild Indian.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.