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BY THEIR VERY PRESENCE: RETHINKING RESEARCH AND PARTNERING FOR CHANGE WITH ARTISTS AND EDUCATORS FROM LONG ISLAND’S SHINNECOCK NATION

by

Diane M. Caracciolo

Dissertation Committee: Professor Graeme Sullivan, Sponsor Professor Judith Burton

Approved by the Committee on the Degree o f Doctor o f Education Date

m " i~ m

Submitted in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the Degree of Doctor o f Education in Teachers College, Columbia University 2006


UMI Number: 3205328

Copyright 2006 by Caracciolo, Diane M.

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ii



by

Diane M. Caracciolo

Dissertation Committee: Professor Graeme Sullivan, Sponsor Professor Judith Burton

Approved by the Committee on the Degree o f Doctor o f Education Date

FEB

6 2006

Submitted in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the Degree o f Doctor o f Education in Teachers College, Columbia University 2006


ABSTRACT


Diane M. Caracciolo

Unknown to most Long Islanders, their region, which extends over 100 miles eastward from Manhattan, contains two state recognized Native American Indian reservations— Shinnecock and Poospatuck. Long Island is home to contemporary indigenous educators, artists, lawyers, journalists, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and elders striving to maintain, strengthen, and pass on their cultural heritage within an educational, economic, and political context that more often than not excludes their perspectives and concerns. This narrative research takes as its primary focus the educational stories told by members o f the Shinnecock Nation. In addition to these indigenous voices, the stories o f non-Native high school and elementary school teachers from two Long Island school districts (Levittown and Mattituck) are included in the creation o f a multi-voiced forum around the question o f how local Native histories, cultures, and contemporary lives are represented, if at all, within the K-12 public school setting on Long Island. This study also explores emerging research methodologies arising from indigenous scholarship and documents the author’s ongoing journey toward rethinking research paradigms and educational practices in partnership with the underrepresented indigenous peoples o f our communities. Such collaborations, grounded as they are on respect for diverse


perspectives, offer a replicable model for necessary curricular reform, one that not only impacts the ways in which Long Island teachers and children leam about the history, culture, and contemporary lives o f the first peoples o f their island community, but also the ways in which teacher preparation programs across the nation critically address issues o f hidden curricular bias— through honoring the first voices o f the land on which they live.


Dedicated to the strong people o f Shinnecock— past, present, and yet to come.

iii


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many contributions woven into the fabric o f this dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile for her wisdom, support, and friendship from the very start o f this journey. Without our partnership, this project would not have been possible. I look forward to our future work together. Many thanks also to her colleagues on the Executive Board o f the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum— Winonah Warren, Edwin Garret, and Lucille Bosley— who kindly presented the idea o f this dissertation before the full Museum Board and gained the permission o f the Shinnecock Nation Tribal Trustees to move forward. I would also like to acknowledge Josephine Smith and David Bunn Martine for sharing their ideas with me in the early stages o f this work. Additional thanks go to Diane Fraher, founder o f American Indian Artists, Inc. (AMERINDA) for her support and insights. And to the members o f the Shinnecock Nation who took time out o f their busy and engaged lives to speak with me and share their educational stories— your words comprise the heart of this narrative: Tonya Bess Hodges, Sherry Blakey-Smith, Lucille Bosley, David Bunn Martine, Lynette Cook Weeks, Denise Dennis, Angela Hughes Johnson, Roberta Hunter, Dennis King, Nature Richard, Marguerite Smith, Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile, Darlene Troge, and Robin Weeks. Additional thanks go to Bob Davis, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction of Levittown School District, and Anne Smith, Principal o f Cutchogue East Elementary School, for graciously arranging focus groups with their teachers, and to those participant teachers for their willingness to contribute their stories and grapple with our shared educational histories. To the allied professionals and scholars who shared generously o f their time and expertise, many thanks: Matthew Bessell, Angela Lalor, Gaynell Stone, John Strong, Robert Vetter, and Bob Zellner. Thanks also to Karola Ritter for her expert filming o f our professional development workshop and to Bruce Kafer for sharing his experiences as the American Indian/Latino Outreach iv


Coordinator for the Department o f Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Brecksville, Ohio. From Teachers College, I would like to acknowledge Graeme Sullivan, the sponsor and “godfather” o f this dissertation, whose own work building bridges of understanding between Western and indigenous artists was the primal inspiration for this project; Judith Burton, advisor, reader, and constant inspiration in the world o f art education; Joy Moser, who encouraged her doctoral students to speak with their own voices; Ruth Vinz, who was my first advisor at Teachers College, and always made me feel welcome; Steven Dubin for serving on my doctoral defense committee; Kryssi Staikidis, who never ceased to provide support and rich insights into this work; Robert Schwarz for his incredible transcriptions and formatting; and Ami Kantawala for her kindness and never-ending support. Thank you also to the Teachers College Committee for Community and Diversity (CCD) for awarding this project the President’s Grant for Student Research in Diversity, which enabled the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum to create and present a professional development workshop for non-Native teachers as a culminating experience o f this shared inquiry. These acknowledgements would not be complete without mentioning the support I have received from friends and colleagues at Adelphi University: Leigh Benin, Christine Bentz, Lucia Buttaro, Alan Cohen, Mary Cortina, Esther Kogan, Diana Feige, Rob Linne, Anne Mungai, Florence and Russ Myers, Michael O ’Loughlin, Elaine Sands, Dale Snauwaert, Della Tomlin-Hudson, Mary Ellen Williamson, and the stalwart women o f Room 130. And a special thanks to Eva Roca. I will always remember our lunchtime “epiphany,” when your insight and motivation helped fuel this work. Thanks also to Kathryn McLaughlin, Adelphi alumnus, for invaluable assistance with the school district and university surveys; Richard Edwards for his creative editorial work on the professional development DVD; and Beverly Titus and Mohit Bijlani for their help with transcriptions. And much gratitude goes out to Janet Murphy,

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whose constant humor, kindness and support through good times and bad keep me going. And finally, thank you to my friends Suzanne and George Aiosa, who provide a truly supportive “home away from home”; to my brother and sister-in-law, Rich and Cathy Caracciolo, for help with photography and technical advice; to my mother Violet for always being there to read a first draft, offer insightful editorial suggestions, and cook a hot meal; and to my father Robert, who, from the very beginning, served as unofficial research assistant, discovered pertinent articles and out-of-print texts, and always asked challenging questions. And lastly to my grandmother, Esther Carlson, who lived one hundred years, but not quite long enough to see the completion o f this project— your generous spirit continues to guide and inspire this work and will live on within it. D. M. C.

VI


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

Page

I.

INTRODUCTION.............................................................................

1

II.

RESEARCH STORIES....................................................................

13

Problem A reas..........................................................................

19

The Problem o f Cultural Identity...................................

19

The Problem o f Written Versus Non-Written Sources.........................................................................

21

The Problem o f Notions o f the “Authentic” and “Traditional” ...............................................................

23

The Problem of Objectification......................................

26

The Problem o f Benefit...................................................

27

The Problem o f Perspective: Insider versus Outsider........................................................................

29

The Problem o f Theoretical Fram ew orks.....................

32

Ways o f Knowing: The Hidden R esearch.............................

34

Mechanistic K now ing......................................................

35

Organic Knowing.............................................................

37

Bridge Between Two Traditions....................................

40

Indigenous M ethodologies..............................................

42

Examples o f Indigenous Research Methods and Projects.........................................................................

44

Closing the D istance........................................................

47

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Chapter III.

IV.

Page CLOSING THE DISTANCE..........................................................

49

Conversations about Methodology: What I Chose and W hy....................................................................................

49

Who Defined the Research Problem?............................

50

Research as a Forum for Multiple Voices and Shared Stories...................................................................

53

Description o f Contributors.....................................................

54

Conversations with Artists and Educators from the Shinnecock N ation......................................................

54

Conversations and Focus Groups with Non-Native Public School Educators............................................

55

Limitations.................................................................................

59

Summary....................................................................................

60

CONVERSATIONS: PART O N E.................................................

62

The Problem o f Editing...........................................................

62

Beginnings.................................................................................

65

Powwow 2002...................................................................

65

Conversation with Elizabeth Thunder Bird (Chee Chee) Haile and Tonya Bess Hodges, August 12, 2004..........................................................

67

Conversation with David Bunn Martine, August 12, 2004..........................................................

75

Conversation with Ms. Lucille Bosley, August 20, 2004..........................................................

77

Conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth (Chee Chee) Thunder Bird Haile, November 1, 2004...................

80

viii


Chapter

V.

Page Conversation with Sherry Blakey Smith, November 17, 2004.....................................................

85

Conversation with Roberta Hunter, November 17, 2004.....................................................

89

Conversation with Marguerite Smith, November 17, 2004.....................................................

92

Conversation with Robin Weeks, December 9,2004..

94

Conversation with Dennis King, January 15,2005.......

100

CONVERSATIONS: PART TW O ................................................

104

Spring 2003: Surveys...............................................................

108

Levittown...................................................................................

110

Conversation with Social Studies Chairs of Levittown, NY School District, April 16, 2004.......

Ill

Cutchogue East Elementary School.......................................

117

Conversation with Teachers at Cutchogue East Elementary School, November 15, 2 0 0 4 ................

119

Conversation with Lynette Cook Weeks, November 23, 2004..........................................................

125

Conversation with Denise Dennis, December 5, 2004........

126

Conversation with Darlene Troge, December 9, 2 0 0 4 ........

127

Conversation with Angela Hughes Johnson, December 12, 2 0 0 4 ..........................................................

128

Conversation with Nature Richard, February 5, 2005.........

130

Emerging Challenges...............................................................

131

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Chapter VI.

Page CHALLENGES.................................................................................

134

Reading Between the L ines.....................................................

134

The Challenge o f Stereotyping...............................................

137

Native Peoples and the Persistence o f Stereotypes

137

The Challenge o f History: Whose Story IsI t?

146

The Challenge o f Curriculum: What Are We Really “Covering”? .....................................................

153

SHARED VISIONS..........................................................................

170

Desegregating Hearts and M inds............................................

170

Honoring First Voices: Implications for Educational Practice...............................................................................

172

Walking a Tightrope: Implications forResearch...................

174

An Ending and Beginning Story.............................................

178

R EFEREN CES.................................................................................

182

A.

Survey Materials and IRB Approval...............................................

190

B.

Summary o f Field Note Sites...........................................................

202

C.

Professional Development Workshop Announcement and Results o f Pre-and Post-Test..........................................................

203

Photographs o f His Work by Dennis K in g ....................................

211

VII.

Appendix

D.

x


1

Chapter I INTRODUCTION

How do you live in a time when most people believe you are dead— from a people o f the past— and you feel you have been made allergic to your true roots? You do, you just do. —Unci (Grandmother) in Geobe (2003, p. 55) “You’re very interested in learning about Australian Aboriginal art, but do you know anything about your own indigenous peoples?” Sitting in a circle during a small breakout session, these words spoken by one o f the conference presenters stayed with me long after that midwinter weekend at Teachers College, with its numerous talks, panel discussions and exhibitions, was over. That one disquieting question, spoken gently but with power by a contemporary indigenous artist, worked its way through my system demanding to be answered. It eventually grew beyond a question, becoming both a challenge and admonition as I confronted the simple answer—that after every possible advantage offered by my suburban public school education and three degrees (and counting) o f higher education, I knew relatively nothing about the indigenous peoples on whose land I had been raised and for most o f my life had received my livelihood. I grew up in a town called Hauppauge, surrounded by similar suburban, racially segregated communities bearing the place names o f an invisible history. Massapequa, Setauket, Nissequogue, Montauk—these names appear before the typical public school-


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educated Long Islander’s eyes without context, without history, the disembodied signifiers for collections o f strip malls, parking lots, and the rapidly constructed housing developments o f post-World War II America. Yet what o f that other island, whose natural presence can be felt more strongly the farther east one travels? Placed between mild inland waters to the north and the rougher Atlantic Ocean to the south, Long Island begins at the mouth o f the Hudson River and eventually narrows into two remote and wild points, like the tail o f a fish, extending over 100 miles in both physical and psychic distance from Manhattan. Geologically ancient, Long Island was left here by one o f the last glaciers on its journey southward down the coast over 12 millennia ago. And when the ice receded, the Island’s first peoples began a way o f life that lasted for over 10,000 years until the arrival o f Henry Hudson in 1609. During several hundred years o f contact with Europeans, indigenous Long Islanders, much like those in other Native communities, have struggled against an overwhelmingly more powerful adversary to defend their claims to ancestral lands as well as to their Native identities. Battle lines have been drawn not only along the Island’s shores and woodlands and within its colonial and modem courtrooms, but more elusively upon the fields o f Western epistemology, with its control over definitions o f “culture” and “civilization.” Even after several hundred years o f sometimes brutal colonization, however, Long Island’s indigenous peoples have not only survived but are engaged in an energetic and creative renewal o f their cultural identity and practices as well as a quest for economic self-sufficiency. Although divided into four counties, Long Island is most typically associated with its two easternmost—Nassau and Suffolk, as Kings County (Brooklyn) and Queens County are within the jurisdiction o f the City o f New York. Despite its proximity to New York and the growing ethnic diversity of its populace, there remains


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an insular quality about community life the farther east one travels. Long Island is one o f the most racially segregated suburbs in the United States, and this extends to its school districts as well. Educationally, the experiences o f Native peoples have been rendered relatively invisible to the dominant non-Native culture through their absence or inaccurate representation in school textbooks, print and film media, and general racial stereotyping. Many Long Islanders are unaware that Suffolk County is home to two state-recognized Indian reservations— Poospatuck and Shinnecock— as well as to non-reservation Native peoples living contemporary lives throughout Long Island’s communities. The lack o f understanding about Native peoples among the dominant Long Island population, the majority o f whom are white, has an educational impact, for often local students enroll in our teacher preparation programs with the desire to continue living on Long Island as educators. Such a lack o f awareness is not unique to Long Island. An awakened consciousness o f contemporary Native peoples is often clouded by the Western predisposition to categorize expressions o f Native cultures into dead forms for museum display, turning living beings into artifacts. Despite political correctness, textbooks still too often imply that Native peoples are part o f an American past that no longer exists— one far away in time, place, and emotional resonance. The fact that Native peoples are still depicted as part o f the forgotten past, rather than as part o f our present and future, explains the persistence o f offensive and unexamined stereotypes, such as caricatures and team mascots. Such distortions o f identity not only create a hostile environment for Native peoples but also contribute to the cultural blindness o f non-Natives. At the other end of this spectrum o f misrepresentation are “new age” idealizations of the indigenous lifestyle. The difficulty with unflattering stereotypes and romantic imagery is that they camouflage the human reality o f contemporary Native peoples’ lived experience.

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4

I believe that a key way o f addressing this problem is through the creation o f an approach to teacher education that is grounded on collaborative work with Native peoples themselves, who are best positioned to represent their cultural identities and histories, a model that honors first voices. Through this dissertation, it is my hope to offer a rationale for such an educational model, perhaps finding along the way missing pieces o f my own shared story with those first peoples still living on Long Island. Invisibility borne o f cultural blindness, therefore, is a central theme o f this journey. By cultural blindness, I mean the ways in which our habits o f knowing and seeing, our understanding o f self and other, are shaped through the shared lens of family, community, and school— those forces that help to construct our “inner eyes,” to use Ellison’s (1989) term. These shared cultural lenses influence a conception o f the “other” that is different from the self, and in the case o f those of us reared in one of the many homogenous, white, ethnocentric cultures that dominate the American landscape, the ethnic or racialized “other” is more often than not physically as well as inwardly absent from our ken, except in marginal ways, as signifiers o f the “not us” and more often than not the “not as good as us.” Furthermore, those o f us socialized to set boundaries between the self and other are not only blinded by our objectification of difference, but we are estranged from our own racial identity— our invisible and privileged whiteness. The area o f cultural blindness is folded within an even broader problem area o f the dominant positivist way o f knowing that considers truth as existing somewhere “out there,” discoverable only through objectivity, distancing, and control— the creation o f I-It rather than I-Thou relationships, to use Buber’s (1960) terms. Discourses arising from the post-colonial, postmodern, and indigenous perspectives, however, recognize the ethnocentrism at the heart of the dominant paradigms that drive


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most research. They seek to bring ways o f knowing that honor local knowledge and embrace multiple perspectives to the center o f the research act. Therefore, the limitations o f the underlying ways o f knowing that dominate Euro-American schooling, thinking, and engaging in research embody the broader, overarching problem area of this dissertation. The shaping power o f the inner eyes and the hurtful power o f one-dimensional vision on both the seeing and the seen is a theme in Toni Morrison’s (1970) novel The Bluest Eye. Here she describes a white shopkeeper’s limited perspective o f a young black girl, Pecola: At some fixed point in time and space he senses that he need not waste the effort o f a glance. He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant storekeeper with the taste o f potatoes and beer in his mouth, his mind honed on the doe-eyed Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness o f loss, see a little black girl? (p. 48) As researcher, my thinking is confined by the limitations o f my own inner eyes, shaped so powerfully through the forces o f home, community, and schooling— sociocultural forces that left unnamed the “structured invisibility” o f my own white privilege (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 63). What are the habits o f thought, the relationships, and activities that can reshape the inner eyes? Through the research act itself, can I locate a broader way o f seeing and listening? Furthermore, can such reshaping forces enter into today’s schools in order to respect and give welcome to the excluded Native voices of our communities? Finally, given that the research act itself is typically dominated by the often unexamined, ethnocentric practices of objectification and control, can I engage in this project without furthering a colonizing and othering discourse? Borne of these central issues are educational questions such as:


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(1) How are the history, culture and contemporary lives o f Long Island’s Native peoples addressed in the public school curriculum? (2) What texts are used to teach about local Native cultures? (3) Are non-text resources used in teaching about Native cultures? (4) Are local Native views and expertise solicited in the teaching o f Native cultures? (5) What would Shinnecock educators, artists, and elders say about the resources currently in use to teach about their culture to Long Island’s children? These individual questions may be summarized by the following guiding question: Given the absence o f Native voices in the historical canon, the dominance o f cultural stereotypes, and the invisibility o f Native peoples ’ lived experiences within the Euro-American perspective, can an encounter with living Native educators and artists broaden the vision o f non-Native teachers and learners and open a door to new understandings o f our past stories and shared futures together on Long Island? In other words, by their very presence, can Shinnecock artists and educators reshape our inner eyes? The five guiding assumptions o f the theory and methodology underpinning this inquiry were: (1) The standard research act is often the site o f unacknowledged colonization, objectification, and control. (2) Collaboration and partnerships can begin to open a space for dialogues between non-Native and Native peoples, and as such offer an alternative to the standard, scientific research paradigm.


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(3) Providing a benefit to the Native community is an integral part o f an ethically acceptable approach to research involving Native peoples. (4) Many non-Native Long Islanders, including teachers, are unaware o f the history, culture, and contemporary lives o f the Native peoples living among them, and this absence is reflected in the contemporary curriculum. (5) The voices o f local Native peoples should become an integral element in curricular reform. This dissertation looks at how these assumptions have played out in our educational system and proposes a partnership model as one way to reform practice. There is no one preferred politically correct term to be used when referring to contemporary Native peoples in the generic, as North America’s indigenous peoples represent over 500-700 distinct cultures, 511 o f which are federally recognized (Mihesuah, 1996). Therefore, I have chosen whenever possible to refer to Native peoples by their specific cultural affiliation, such as a Shinnecock artist or Laguna Pueblo man. When speaking o f indigenous peoples as a whole, I will use the term Native peoples or indigenous peoples. The word “indigenous” has several meanings. In the context of this project, it is meant to represent those diverse peoples throughout the world who have been colonized and oppressed by modem nation states, and who often embody a more organic and local knowledge base than that o f Western empiricism. When used as a modifier for “research,” it is meant to represent this different knowledge base as an underlying paradigm for one form of non-positivist, contemporary research methodology (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999). Pluralizing “peoples” respects the diversity o f cultures, which is not conveyed by the term Native American. I capitalize the word “N ” to distinguish this word usage from the generic “native.” It should also be noted that Native peoples do not all use the


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same term when referring to themselves, and many are comfortable with the term Indian. One Lakota activist and educator explained this term as being misinterpreted to mean Columbus’s error upon arriving in the American hemisphere. In fact, he believes that Columbus meant in dio— o f God, referring to the beauty o f the First Peoples o f the Americas (McNeil, personal communication, 2001). Both “American Indian Studies” and “Native American Studies” are terms used to denote academic fields o f expertise and departments housed in universities. Both Native and non-Native scholars teach and write under these headings. When referring to scholars who identify themselves as members o f an Indigenous or Native people, I use the term “Native scholar.” There is some detailed scholarly literature on Long Island’s Native past, most notably the works o f archeologist Gaynell Stone, who has edited a comprehensive eight volume series, Readings in Long Island Archeology and Ethnohistory (1975, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1985a, 1985b, 1993), and historian John Strong (1997, 1998, 2001), who, building on Stone’s research and his own painstaking examination o f primary documents, has traced both the Shinnecock and Montaukett peoples’ histories through pre- and post-European contact. There are few resources concerning contemporary Native culture on Long Island, however, Strong’s (1998) slim volume, We Are Still Here, being one. Not surprisingly, much of our educational attention focuses on Native peoples as historic entities, long since passed away— with an emphasis on objective facts easily memorized for standardized tests. Such a misperception ignores the living traditions reaffirming themselves today through art forms such as singing, dancing, filmmaking, storytelling, and educational projects such as language recovery, participation in Native American Indian Education programs, and the creation o f the Island’s first Native owned and operated museum. Presenting Native culture as only


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part o f our past prevents us from grappling with important contemporary issues such as land rights, sovereignty, stereotyping, curricular bias, and institutional racism. Most importantly, a focus on the past ignores the vital existence o f a generation o f Native professionals working within education, law, civil rights, and allied fields to strengthen their peoples’ journey into the future. I believe the significance of this dissertation resides in the attempt to work with indigenous peoples using research methodologies that respect local, personal, and shared meaning making. The goal of the study is to provide a rationale for the forging of educational alliances among Long Island public school educators, teacher preparation programs, and the local Native community with their wealth o f untapped cultural historians, educators, artists, elders, and allied professionals. My ideas in these areas have been formed in part by a growing number o f indigenous scholars and others who work to decolonize the act o f research. Most influential have been the writings of Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), African-American sociologist John Stanfield II (1993, 1998), and Native scholars Vine Deloria, Jr. (1991), Devon A. Mihesuah (1998), and Fyre Jean Graveline (2000), among others. James Clifford’s (1998) provocative descriptions o f the Wampanoag Mashpee Tribal Council’s 1976 land-claim suit offered insights into the problematic area of Western notions o f culture and identity. The collaborative ethnographic work o f Native American Studies scholar Luke Eric Lassiter (1998, 2001) has been a source o f inspiration in the modeling o f a non-Native’s approach to partnering with a Native community. Multicultural education theorists James Banks (1996) and Geneva Gay (2000) have also provided frames for rethinking educational practice in the area o f K-12 Native Studies. Tracing the problematic story o f the research act itself is the main focus of Chapter II. In this chapter, I identify and review some o f the key problem areas, such as


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benefit, objectification, and perspective, inherent in the act o f research in indigenous communities. I also explore research models and specific studies that attempt to remedy these problems. While rewriting this chapter, I frequently heard echoes o f early morning conversations with Mrs. Elizabeth Haile, a recognized elder o f the Shinnecock Nation and one o f the primary consultants for this project. Her question asked of academics in general, “Why do you always quote someone else?” admonished me to avoid this habit and to speak with my own voice. I have tried to write this dissertation with these wise words in mind and, when I felt the urge to quote other words, to choose more often than not the voices o f indigenous scholars, so that their ideas become central in the ongoing conversation o f educational research. Most importantly, this project has grown and continues to grow from conversations and encounters with Native educators themselves, who are best positioned to teach about their culture and history, rather than from reading. As decolonizing research is one o f the central premises o f this study, the ethical implications and problem areas o f methodology are key concerns that are discussed in Chapter III. Educational philosopher Nel Noddings (1984), who taught one o f my doctoral seminars, was a strong influence in my soul-searching about how to conduct this project, as she urged her students to look well beyond the rules o f institutional review boards to ask hard questions regarding risk and benefit in conducting research. Such questions become even more urgent when working with Native communities, one o f the most over-researched populations in the world. Wax (1991) and others (Barden & Boyer, 1993; Crazy Bull, 1997; Deloria, 1991; Graveline, 2000; Lassiter, 2001; Mihesuah, 1998; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Young Man, 1997) urge a different kind of research relationship, one that respects and incorporates Native peoples’ worldviews and ways o f knowing in its methodology. New methodologies would not stress written


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records over oral traditions, for instance. They would also embody some form of collaboration with the community. In a comprehensive survey o f modem ethnographic traditions, Lassiter (2001) offers a description of collaborative ethnography as one that goes beyond the individual, text-driven discourse o f interpretive anthropology, but is itself shaped by human relationship, involves an equal discourse, and is created “for and with local communities rather than solely for the academy” (p. 610). As such, decolonizing research challenges the dominant paradigm by asking, “What is more important— the people with whom we work or the discipline in which we work?” (p. 610). The methods o f inquiry I employed for this project, therefore, strive to support a tangible, local goal, one that will provide a benefit to both the Native and non-Native educational community. Put simply, the indigenous people with whom I worked are clearly of central importance, and I believe that the success o f this dissertation should be judged by the degree to which I was able to center their voices and concerns and move forward with some positive commitment toward benefiting their community beyond the concluding chapter o f this dissertation and the privileges it bestows. In Chapter III, I tell the story o f my own struggle to find an approach that embodies these goals. As a central theme o f this dissertation is to explore new ways to engage in research by listening and learning rather than by acquiring and controlling the voices of the excluded members o f our communities, personal narrative became an appropriate method o f making sense out o f what I learned through conversations and participation in community events. My thinking has been influenced primarily through conversations over the past three years with Native and non-Native educators, artists, social workers, museum educators, civil rights activists, and historians living and working on Long


12

Island. These interactions, which took the form o f in-depth conversations as well as informal participation at community events sponsored by the Shinnecock Nation and other local Native organizations, are presented in narrative form in Chapters IV and V. In Chapter VI, I discuss the themes and challenges that emerged from these stories, within the framework o f multicultural education, and include four final conversations with allied professionals, whose comments help summarize these themes. Chapter VII describes the educational implications o f this study and tells the story o f a joint venture taken with the Shinnecock Museum in an effort to explore applications o f this study and tie its themes and challenges together while looking forward to future collaborative work. The title o f this study, “By Their Very Presence,” owes its origin to a conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Haile, dancer, filmmaker, educator, and a recognized elder o f the Shinnecock people. We were talking about the rich resources living within the current Shinnecock Nation and the desire o f her people to open doors whereby Long Island children can grow to understand and respect Native culture. At one point, Mrs. Haile said, “By their very presence” the Shimiecocks could affect the lives and understanding o f school children, who had most likely never met a contemporary Native Long Islander. These words resonated so strongly with the ultimate educational aim of this project that they have become its guiding lights— like stars by which to navigate through new waters.


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Chapter II RESEARCH STORIES

Even though “story” is usually associated with people telling about themselves and/or events in which they have been involved, the explanations o f educational ideas, paradigms, and proposals constitute “story” as well. —Geneva Gay (2000, p. 3) What do graduate students studying in the Western academic tradition associate with the word “research”? Synonyms such as inquiry, evidence, data collection, questioning, even search fo r truth come to mind. On a more visceral level, the word may invoke feelings of anxiety, stress, challenge, and doubt as to their capacity to walk the rigorous path toward acknowledgement by disciplinary peers. But unless they are members o f a colonized people, it is likely that associations remain at heart positive. The pursuit of research questions, although difficult and at times seemingly impossible, remains ultimately noble, filled with cultural value and significance. It was with such unexamined associations that my research began one autumn afternoon three years ago at the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum. The following was written shortly after my first visit there: Outwardly modest, the Shinnecock Museum can be easy to miss speeding east along the main road that runs the length o f the South Fork bisecting the upscale villages o f the Hamptons. On the inside, however, the M useum’s very structure felt alive. Built o f white pine by the Oneida Construction Company, a Native American business from upstate New York, the building was designed to awaken the senses and remind us o f its


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natural origins. The mild scent o f pine was circulated through the space by slowly moving ceiling fans, and I was immediately struck by the contrast with other museum experiences I have had, where the lack o f fresh air was often suffocating and claustrophobic. I found myself running my hands along the smooth pine logs. Noticing my interest in the walls, one o f the museum’s directors told me that there were no nails used in the joining of the beams. She also proudly related that the construction o f the banister leading to the lower level was made all from one tree. At that point I felt that I had found more than a museum, but a place that in its very construction reaffirmed Native respect for the unity of the human and natural worlds. The above description is excerpted from an early doctoral seminar paper. But on re-reading it. I realized I was already editing, selecting only one aspect o f this initial encounter—the theme o f open-minded researcher encountering the living expressions of a Native people. What is missing from this description is the way in which I entered that space at first, with pen and pad in hand, eager to record experiences useful for my research task. Introducing myself as a doctoral student in art education, I was left to explore the Museum on my own. Taking notes at each exhibit, I was approached several times by a museum educator, who encouraged me to ask questions. At one point she came to me and asked whether I had “gotten all I needed.” At another stage, while she was describing to me the life stories o f some o f the individuals whose portraits appeared on the walls, I stumbled across an important cultural boundary by asking whether I could come back with a tape recorder to document some o f these wonderful histories. Such a task was never my intention, but looking back, I realize it came out o f both the enthusiasm o f the moment and an unexamined sense that claiming this activity would, o f course, be welcomed. Her response was my first lesson in examining the research act, as she made it clear that the Museum was created for the Shinnecock people to tell their own stories, and not to have outsiders come and “take” them away. Although the entire exchange was mild and friendly, I was taken aback by my own insensitivity toward Shinnecock cultural knowledge. As I reflect on this


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encounter, I realize it was one o f those moments o f awakening that helped reshape my understanding o f cross-cultural study, forcing me to step back and examine the act of research itself. The following spring, I enrolled in a graduate research class on ethnographic inquiry. In my notes for February 18, 2 0 0 2 ,1 have quoted the professor, “Being a ‘professional stranger’ is the beauty o f ethnography.” Perhaps one way to begin the story o f ethnography is to look at this phrase. The word “professional” implies the detachment and scientific training o f the expert, who enters the “field” to encounter “informants” for the purpose o f recording as faithfully as possible quantities o f notes for later analyses. In the course o f this research, the ethnographer may befriend the “objects” o f his or her study and, being human, struggle to remain “objective.” But at the end o f the day, he or she is ultimately a “stranger” to the community—not an ordinary stranger, but a trained, “professional stranger” on a mission. When the fieldwork is done, the ethnographer leaves to prepare the research report, or ethnography, a descriptive text o f behaviors and artifacts observed and words transcribed and then analyzed according to the original “problem statement” and theoretical frame. The report may be institutionally funded and provide the researcher with financial support; it is also likely an essential requirement for career advancement within the academy. The answers to the original question, if validly and reliably obtained, will be built upon, admired, and critiqued by peers and future researchers. Additionally, the research design should have met the minimum ethical standards developed by the professional stranger’s sponsoring institution. Such ethical standards most often include risk management and obtaining the informed consent o f all participants. The hope is also there, to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the researcher, to provide a benefit to society in some form or other, even if only in the


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advancement o f our understanding o f social behavior. According to Bernard (2002), in the text used extensively for this class: Participant observation is about stalking culture in the wild—establishing rapport and learning to act so that people go about their business as usual when you show up. If you are a successful participant observer, you will know when to laugh at what people think is funny; and when people laugh at what you say, it will be because you meant it to be a joke. Participant observation involves immersing yourself in a culture and learning to remove yourself every day from that immersion so you can intellectualize what you’ve seen and heard, put it into perspective, and write about it convincingly. When i t ’s done right, participant observation turns fie ld workers into instruments o f data collection and data analysis, (emphasis added)(p. 324) Bernard’s revealing metaphor o f the anthropologist as “stalking culture in the wild” reflects the early history o f cultural anthropology and its connection to colonialism. For as Europe encountered new lands and peoples, it needed a new kind of scientific professional, a sort o f intellectual hunter— the anthropologist— to explain and to categorize the “exotic” objects, including human remains, being collected for display in newly created natural history museums. According to Creek scholar K. Tsianina Lomawaima (2000), Salvage ethnography, the systematic collection o f material culture, and the looting o f gravesites and goods (either illegally by pothunters or legally by archaeologists) were the most common forms o f research in Native communities for most o f 150 years, (p. 6) Writing in the 21st century, Bernard’s notion o f cultural researchers turned to “instruments o f data collection and data analysis” points to the tenacity o f the mechanistic paradigm as theoretical foundation for the social sciences over a hundred years after their emergence. Ethnographic inquiry, however, has undergone a series of soul-searching shifts in perspective throughout its short history and a self-reflexive turn that is perhaps masked in introductory texts such as Bernard’s.


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Before the emergence o f field-based inquiry, early 20th century explanations of difference emerged from the safe confines o f the academy. There, biological Darwinism was translated to the social sphere, where it supported the model of a single, hierarchical evolutionary development based on white Eurocentrism (Lassiter, 2001). This view labeled people o f color as “primitive” and classified them as cognitively inferior. As the early 20th century progressed, however, the field-based research o f Boas and Malinowski challenged this Darwinian interpretation of non-Western cultures, concluding that non-Western peoples had ways o f knowing that were as complex and multidimensional as those in the West. Although the shift from social Darwinism to field-based inquiry in the 1930s and 1940s replaced biological assumptions about human behavior with cultural assumptions based on participant observation, such new assumptions were still grounded in the authority o f the researcher’s voice. As such, they often reified cultures based on authoritative single-voiced descriptions o f difference given the status of universal truth via the authority o f scientific investigation. The professional stranger trained as objective instrument o f data collection and analysis still wielded the final word on the status, identity, and very existence o f indigenous peoples through structural theories about the universality and fixed nature of culture (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). With the 1960s, however, as indigenous peoples began to organize politically and forge alliances, and grand narratives were questioned throughout the West, some cultural anthropologists began to soul-search their scientific heritage. Such “new ethnographers” began to experiment with their texts, analyzing the characteristics of discourse itself and the limitations of the single, authoritarian voice (Clifford, 1988; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Geertz, 1983; Rosaldo, 1989). Joining forces with literary


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critics and discourse analysts, anthropologists affirmed that their ethnographies could really only account for “partial truths,” as opposed to the unitary vision o f the positivists: “Cultures do not hold still for their portraits” (Clifford & Marcus, 1986, p. 10). Despite the shift in focus from grand theories to representation and discourse, ethnography remained a text-driven, predominantly single-voiced pursuit o f white, male academics. The social sciences, including the new ethnography, have been critiqued for their reliance on a single theoretical perspective, that o f Western science. This monolithic stance has also been described as masking a Eurocentric and racially biased interpretation o f difference (Asad, 1986; hooks, 1992; Said, 1978; Scheurich & Young, 1997; Stanfield, 1993; Tillman, 2002; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). This issue is brought home in Women Writing Culture (Behar & Gordon, 1995), which criticizes the new ethnography for excluding women's voices. For Behar and Gordon, women’s ethnographic writing has often been about “illegally” crossing the border between anthropology and literature. When a woman writes in the first person, her words are viewed by the traditional academy as merely personal or literary, lacking scholarly rigor; whereas self-consciousness rendered in a man’s voice is appropriately “experimental and reflexive” (p. 4). According to Behar and Gordon, the incorporation o f a diversity of expressions, such as biography, history, literary essay, fiction, theater, and poetry, among others, challenges the “distancing and alienating forms o f selfexpression that academic elitism encouraged” (p. 7). In their introduction, Behar and Gordon also critique white, middle-class feminist ethnography itself for its own exclusion of the voices o f women o f color. They cite This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women o f Color edited by Maraga and Anzaldua (1981), as instrumental in bringing this exclusion to consciousness.


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Although she acknowledges the contribution o f feminist and critical theory to setting conditions in motion that allow for a more “culturally sensitive” approach to research, Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 163) also cites the inadequacy o f such academically housed approaches in addressing an indigenous epistemology and worldview that is radically different from that o f the West. Tuhiwai Smith and others (Crazy Bull, 1997; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Lomawaima, 2000; Semali & Kincheloe, 1999; Stanfield, 1998; Swisher, 1998) see the need for methodologies that place indigenous voices, worldviews, and values in the foreground. But what would methodologies arising from an indigenous worldview look like? Would they differ from accepted qualitative approaches? Is it possible for a Western-trained researcher to engage in such new methodologies? Are there examples o f such indigenized research methods? In the next section, I will look more specifically at some o f the problem areas associated with research in indigenous communities as another step toward answering these questions.

Problem Areas The Problem o f Cultural Identity LeCompte and Preissle (1993) identify the predominant assumption underlying “symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology” (p. 128) as the social construction of meaning and reality. Accordingly, this perspective looks to both the transparent and hidden meanings that we ascribe to the behaviors, events, and objects within the web of our social worlds as the central source o f information involved in investigating a human phenomenon rather than to some fixed, essential, and stable reality “out there” to be discovered. Certainly, the contrast between functionalism’s reliance on fixed structures versus constructivism’s more fluid and relative approach has been a central


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and contentious issue within the history o f the last century’s ethnographic, historical, and legal incursions into Native communities. In The Predicament o f Culture, Clifford (1988) describes the “more than theoretical urgency” he experienced while observing the Wampanoag Mashpee Tribal Council’s efforts to prove their Native identity to an all-white Boston jury. The jury was implored by the court to make their judgment based solely on the epistemologically shaky but more easily accessible ground o f finding a literal, unbroken narrative of unchanging tribal identity from 1790 to 1976. Their very existence was to be based upon written documentation and records, despite the fact that past Native communities were non-literate. Experts for the Mashpee side, who represented postcolonial anthropology, came over as too ambiguous for the jury. They were left with the outwardly clear, although questionable renderings o f one Eurocentric linear historical account that ultimately denied the Mashpees a contemporary cultural identity as narrowly defined by the court. Clifford, however, looks to ethnography as a means to view cultural identity not as “archaic survival” that can be historically traced, but as an “ongoing process” that involves “reviving and inventing ways to live as Indians” (p. 9). Such a view recognizes the right o f indigenous peoples to construct their own identities and life ways— to reaffirm their cultures through their own perspectives and interpretations. As an observer taking notes in the back o f the courtroom during the trial, Clifford had no doubt as to the M ashpees’ Native existence. In Boston Federal Court, Cape Cod Indians could not be seen for what they were and are. Modem Indian lives— lived within and against the dominant culture and state— are not captured by categories like tribe or identity, (p. 336) Like Clifford, ethnographer Fred Myers affirms all lives as authentic, whether expressive o f cultural continuity or discontinuity. According to Myers, who has worked


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as a participant observer among the Pitubi Desert peoples of Australia, cultural identity is not a product fixed in time, but rather a process o f intervention in one’s own history (Myers, Teachers College, February 2001, personal notes). Such ideas certainly hold true for Long Island’s Shinnecock people, who are currently engaged in a public debate with local politicians and homeowners regarding the fostering o f economic self-sufficiency by building a casino on their own staterecognized land. Regular articles run in local newspapers regarding the controversy as it touches upon issues of federal recognition, sovereignty, cultural identity, and social justice. Many Long Islanders are ill-equipped to understand these issues with any depth, as our public school curriculum often romanticizes indigenous peoples while at the same time encouraging us to believe them extinct, leaving unaddressed the complex social, political, and economic forces that impact contemporary Native peoples living in our communities.

The Problem o f Written Versus Non-Written Sources One o f the insights that came to Clifford (1988) as he sat in the back o f the Boston courtroom was the irony o f a legal system embedded within a largely oral and gestural communications context, and yet dependent for its final judgments on carefully transcribed and controlled records and documentation: The [legal] process is preserved in an enclave o f orality within the vast writing machine o f the law ... in this sense the law reflects the logic of literacy, o f historical archive rather than o f changing collective memory. To be successful the trial’s results must endure the way a written text endures, (p. 329) Clifford’s observation o f courtroom dynamics points to the inadequacy o f written documents as our only acknowledged sources o f evidence when discussing human culture, particularly indigenous cultures with largely non-written histories. Talal Asad


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(1986) also speaks o f the limits o f “verbal representation” (p. 160) within social anthropology and questions the lack o f such sources as drama, dance, and music. In her review o f the “New Indian History” that emerged in the 1970s, Choctaw scholar Devon Mihesuah (1998) notes that non-Native scholars still disparage oral history as “reconstructed” while missing the “great and rich store o f information still locked in the hearts and minds o f Indians all over the nation” (p. 2). Donald Fixico (1998) (Shawnee, Sac & Fox, Seminole, and Muscogee Creek) discusses the limitations and ethnocentrism o f excluding non-written sources o f evidence about Native cultures: A dependence on documents eliminates other evidence and precludes other methods and disciplines from interpreting Indian history. This singular, focused approach has produced an interpretation that hinges on the white point o f view. (p. 88) In her discussion o f visual ethnography, Pink (2001) suggests that peoples’ realities can be obscured through a single, conventional mode o f representation such as the written text and that knowledge may be “experienced and represented in a range o f different textual, visual and other sensory ways” (p. 5). In his collaborative ethnographies o f Kiowa song, Lassiter (1998; Lassiter, Ellis, & Kotay, 2002) found that the experience of the songs themselves was the closest means to attaining an understanding o f their power and meaning in the community. Such perspectives reveal a need to focus on broader sources o f meaning than those contained in written documentation alone. Therefore, artistic modes o f expression such as the visual arts, music, dance, storytelling, and filmmaking can become central to an appreciation o f Native culture and identity.


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The Problem o f Notions o f the “Authentic” and “Traditional” Where are the Indians? Where are the Indians? (Cameron, 1981) “Cultures do not hold still for their portraits,” state Clifford and Marcus (1986) in the introduction to Writing Culture. It is this denial to Native peoples o f the same fluid cultural identity that we allow to white ethnic groups that infuriates indigenous scholars. This, o f course, is the critique o f salvage ethnography, which views indigenous cultures from the point o f view o f loss and extinction rather than as living, dynamic entities that incorporate change as part o f an ongoing cultural process. Alfred Buster Young Man (1997), a Cree artist and scholar states, Cultures have a right to change themselves.... The acculturation models designed by anthropologists have presented interesting theories o f cultural contact and cultural change, but they have not examined and understood the continuity o f changing traditions, which is the essential characteristic o f all Native groups, (pp. 5, 6) Along these lines, Mihesuah (1998) discusses the often misrepresented notion of the “traditional” in relation to Native peoples: The term traditional changes over time. An Indian who speaks her tribal language and participates in tribal religious ceremonies is often considered traditional, but that term is applicable only within the context o f this decade, because chances are that she wears jeans, drives a car, and watches television— very “untraditional” Indian things to do. Plains Indians who rode horses in the 1860’s are considered traditional today, but they were not the same as their traditional ancestors o f the early 1500’s who had never seen a horse, (p. 50) Upon returning to his rural Iowa hometown to document the Mesquaki people who lived there, anthropologist Douglas Foley (1995) found himself confounded by his notion o f what constitutes a “traditional Indian” : On one hand, there was Claude the traditionalist and clan elder chastising Ryan in white anthropologese. On the other hand there was Ryan the Christian responding with a Mesquaki animal story parable. So who was the real traditional Indian here? The one who goes to tribal ceremonies and speaks like a white, or the one who goes to a white church and speaks like


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an Indian? So much for simple, essentialist cultural traits or practices that firmly locate the Mesquakis in either the Indian or the white world. (PP- 6-7) Lakota writer Barbara Cameron (1981) poignantly relates the pervasive influence of false and fixed notions o f cultural authenticity when she describes her first powwow at the age o f three: I kept asking my grandmother, “Where are the Indians? Where are the Indians? Are they going to have bows and arrows?” I was very curious and strangely excited about the prospect o f seeing real live Indians even though I myself was one. (pp. 46-47) Clifford (1988) presents the problem o f “lost authenticities” as a false view of culture, which to him embodies notions o f discontinuities and embraces change. “It is easier,” he states, “to register the loss o f traditional orders o f difference than to perceive the emergence o f new ones” (p. 15). Instead o f searching for some elusive unbroken, linear narrative, Clifford sees the history o f Native communities as “punctuated by revival movements” that alternate with periods o f relative quiet and invisibility during harsh political times, such as the early 20th century, when the government was enforcing assimilation (p. 309). Researchers should take into account the fluid nature o f such terms as “authentic” and “traditional” and investigate the multiple ways in which these terms are understood and represented by contemporary Native peoples themselves. Through visual art, storytelling, music, and dance, Native voices continually reaffirm their cultural identities. Jolene Rickard (in Berio & Phillips, 1998), an Iroquois photographer and installation artist, believes contemporary indigenous artists “migrate traditional knowledge ... into the present” (p. 229). This migration takes many forms. For instance, artists such as Charlene Teeters and James Luna have incorporated themselves into political works, becoming human displays behind glass, the living


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critiques o f the objectification o f their cultures. Some Native artists transmute traditional history, identity, and spirituality into contemporary landscapes, such as Jaune Quick-To-See Smith’s collages that blend word and symbol, and Kay WalkingStick’s reimagined sacred imagery. Musicians such as the Shinnecock Nation’s Thunderbird Sisters blend traditional chants and rhythms with contemporary vocals. David Bunn Martine, Shinnecock artist and museum educator, uses vibrantly painted murals as a way to painstakingly recreate his peoples’ history from ancient times to the present, animating archeological scholarship through art (D ’Alieva, 1993; Elm, 2001; Teeters, Teachers College, November 2001, personal notes). In addition to such contemporary transformations, some Native artists work to foster the cultural continuity o f traditional materials and styles. Talking Stick, a Native American arts newsletter, highlighted Penny Hudson, a Tuscarora bead worker. Her exceptional work has continued the cultural evolution o f this traditional Iroquois art form. About her art the author states, Each piece she creates has a significant role for her Iroquois people. They maintain cultural, social, economic, religious, spiritual and historical significance.... Hudson’s role within the Nation is that o f cultural consultant, for she records their very existence as a people. (Wilson, 2001, p. 3) Although scholars and collectors worry over issues of artistic categorization and definitions o f authenticity, this inscribing o f the “very existence” o f Native life through acts o f artistry along a generous continuum o f both traditional and contemporary forms is a source o f vitality and renewal for indigenous peoples across North America. Through art we can perhaps resist unreal and objectified portraits o f culture and identity.


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The Problem o f Objectification Any search for a fluid portrait o f Native American communities is complicated by the Western tendency to classify living expressions o f different cultures into dead forms for museum display, turning living peoples to relics. According to cultural historians, the Euro-American conception o f indigenous Americans entered the 20th century laden with the influences of the Victorian age, which used the romantic fantasy o f the “vanishing Indian” as a means to escape from the realities o f urbanization. In natural history museums, Native culture and art works were depicted as the preserved artifacts o f a lost people, with the death o f the “last Indian” being recorded each generation (Berio & Phillips, 1998; D ’Alleva, 1993; Kirshenblatt-Gimlett, 1998; Strong, 1996). Ironically, a world-weary white culture looked to the romance o f the exotic to supply the magic lost in an emerging industrial age, where mechanistic explanations and relationships were rapidly replacing organic ones. Another example o f the objectification o f Native peoples is the widespread existence within popular culture o f offensive and unexamined stereotypes, such as caricatures, mascots, and cartoons. At the other end o f this spectrum o f misrepresentation are contemporary idealizations o f the indigenous lifestyle, often taken on by Westerners who “go native,” such as the Kevin Costner character depicted in the popular film Dances with Wolves or the non-Native hobbyist organizations throughout the world that gather to practice Native crafts, songs, and ceremonies, professing and marketing “New Age” indigenous spirituality, often with little knowledge o f or interest in real Native peoples’ lives and concerns (Huhndorf, 2001; Lassiter, 1998). In addition to popular culture, such objectionable practices can be found within the realm o f ethnography itself. In her critique o f Elsie Clews Parson’s ethnography o f Pueblo culture, Paula Gunn Allen (1998), a Laguna Sioux scholar states,


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In accordance with her academic training, she objectified, explained, detailed, and analyzed their lives as though they were simply curios, artifacts, and fetishes, and discussed the supematurals as though they were objects o f interest and patronization. (p. 61) W ith the problem o f objectification, we have returned to Bernard’s (2002) lauding o f the ethnographer as a “professional stranger.” For embedded within these two words are the qualities that a Western trained social scientist lauds, yet many an indigenous person abhors. Maori author Tuhiwai Smith (1999) eloquently states such abhorrence in the introduction to Decolonizing Methodologies: From the vantage point o f the colonized, a position from which I write, and choose to privilege, the term “research” is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, “research,” is probably one o f the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary. When mentioned in many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it conjures up bad memories, it raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful. It is so powerful that indigenous people even write poetry about research. (P- 1)

For a non-Native researcher seeking to open a dialogue with Native individuals rather than to stir up silence, the tendency toward objectification, so easily engendered by the research process, must be vigilantly avoided. Perhaps one way to avoid objectification is to centralize authentic listening and caring toward those with whom we communicate. Instead o f becoming an “instrument o f data collection,” we must become more deeply human, more capable o f listening and responding with respect and humility toward the process o f engaging with the other. Part o f a respectful approach is grappling with the question o f who benefits from the research.

The Problem o f Benefit Mihesuah (1998) identifies cognizance o f who benefits from the research as one o f the most sensitive issues surrounding research in indigenous communities. Such issues are reinforced within emerging Tribal College guidelines regarding ethnographic


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research in Native communities, where a clear benefit to the community must be identified as part o f the research goal (Ambler, 1997; Lomawaima, 2000). Such frank statements o f benefit are not the typical course o f science, where, as Wax (1991) points out, theoretical justification most often outweighs any specific benefit to the researched community. Clear statements o f benefit may actually weigh against the research, as trying to help a community is associated with subjectivity, thus breaking one o f the cardinal rules o f social science. In commenting on a chapter in his book, Custer Died fo r Your Sins, Vine Deloria (1991) states, My original complaint against researchers was that they seem to derive all the benefits and bear no responsibility for the ways in which their findings are used. In making this accusation I said that scholars should be required to put something back into the Indian community, preferably some form of financial support so the community can do a few things it wants to do. (p. 457) Tuhiwai Smith (1999) suggests the following key questions be addressed when approaching research in indigenous communities: Who defined the research problem? For whom is this study worthy and relevant? Who says so? What knowledge will the community gain from this study? What knowledge will the researcher gain from this study? What are some likely positive outcomes from this study? What are some possible negative outcomes? How can the negatives be eliminated? To whom is the researcher accountable? What processes are in place to support the research, the researched and the researcher? (p. 173)


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One way to remedy the problem o f benefit is to include the researched community in the development o f the research question and to ask their counsel regarding potential benefits to them. The question o f who benefits from the research is closely related to the question o f who writes about indigenous peoples.

The Problem o f Perspective: Insider versus Outsider To Elders only those who have Experienced an Event are Empowered to Speak about it. Embrace First Voice as Methodology. Only those who Are Aboriginal can speak about Being Aboriginal. (Graveline, 2000, p. 362) Overall, scholarly literature regarding Native culture falls bluntly into two categories— works by non-Native scholars and works by Native scholars. As a non-Native writer entering this realm o f research, it would be foolhardy for me to deny the growing debate within Native American Studies involving perspective. According to Fixico (1998), More than 30,000 manuscripts have been published about American Indians, and more than 90 percent o f that literature has been written by non-Indians. To illustrate this point further, a similar percentage o f these non-Indian historians have written about writing or studying American Indian history, (p. 86) The problem here is particularly difficult for a non-Native researcher. Within the field o f American Indian Studies, there is debate about the value o f non-Native scholarship entirely. In “Why Indian People Should be the Ones to Write About Indian Education” Sioux author Karen Gayton Swisher (1998) states, “If non-Indian educators have been involved in Indian education because they believe in Indian people and want them to be empowered, they must now demonstrate that belief by stepping aside” (p. 192). Although praising the efforts o f many prominent non-Native scholars who have written about American Indian Education, Swisher believes that the lack o f an insider view,


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what Graveline (2000) calls “First Voice,” has greatly limited the questions that are asked and has often misrepresented Native educational issues by focusing on deficit and victimization rather than the successes o f many tribal schools and colleges. For although the trend in qualitative educational research is to focus on the importance of voice and perspective, such non-Native studies still lack the insider’s view and experience. She states, “What is missing is the passion from within and the authority to ask new and different questions based on histories and experiences as indigenous peoples” (p. 193). In citing a 1989 study conducted by the American Indian Studies Center in UCLA, Swisher provides an example o f “authentic” educational research carried out entirely by Native staff and graduate students. In this study, which focused on the question o f what American Indians seek in educational change for American Indian youth, Swisher finds an example o f a research project that clearly voiced the concerns o f Native people in a way she feels would not have been possible were non-Natives running the project: “From the conception o f the dialogue format to the formulation o f data and publication, Indian people were in charge o f and guided the project; and the voices and concerns o f the people were clearly evident” (p. 172). Swisher believes that such Native-run research projects that privilege the insider’s experience and voice are an integral part o f supporting self-determination among Native peoples. She concedes that non-Natives will continue writing about Native cultures and, therefore, strongly encourages Native academics to publish more in order to define from the inside the scholarly agenda in American Indian Studies. She also encourages non-Native researchers to support Native research in secondary mentorship roles rather than as primary authorities. In speaking o f the role o f non-indigenous researchers in indigenous communities, Tuhawai Smith (1999) delineates four approaches: avoidance o f indigenous issues


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altogether; personal development through gaining knowledge o f the culture and its concerns; consultation with the culture; and “making space”— for indigenous researchers within research organizations (pp. 176-177). Unlike Swisher, Tuhiwai Smith does not counsel avoidance, but rather seeks to draw ethical boundaries around non-indigenous research pursuits in order to avoid re-colonization and the continuation o f ethical abuses. Chippewa scholar Duane Champagne (1998) does not believe that American Indian Studies would benefit from the exclusion o f non-Native perspectives, although he acknowledges that non-Native scholars tend to miss the holistic picture o f a culture due to disciplinary and theoretical blinders: To say that only Indians can study Indians goes too far toward excluding American Indian culture and history from the rest of human history and culture.... One does not have to be a member o f a culture to understand what culture means or to interpret culture in a meaningful way. (p. 182) Rather than focusing on who is writing about indigenous cultures, Lassiter (2001) examines the question o f how (method) and fo r whom (audience) we write. For a scholar of any ethnicity can write an authoritative, single-voiced text serving an exclusively academic community. To be sure, a much deeper issue is at hand: that is, the inherent authority of texts themselves— regardless o f who is writing them— particularly concerning the rhetorical distance they create between academia and Native American communities, (p. 603) Lassiter sees collaborative ethnography as a tool through which both Native and non-Native scholars can address the gap between the researcher and the researched and make central the research relationship itself. In this way, collaborative research may avoid the problem o f objectification and open a space for true dialogue, which is sought at every point in the development of the ethnographic text. In his own research


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with Kiowa consultants, Lassiter found that collaborative ethnography includes not only textual verification, but genuine cross-cultural conversations that transform the text into a “forum” where the world o f the researcher and the world o f the community meet to converse about culture (p. 606). Perhaps it is through such cross-cultural collaboration that the non-Native researcher who does not elect to step aside, as Swisher (1998) suggests, may approach the issue o f perspective with an awareness of the need to open the space for dialogue. Collaborative cross-cultural methodologies, according to Stanfield (1993), address the hidden power inequities o f the traditional ethnographic relationship. He states, The more researchers ... view cross-cultural and cross-class research as a shared human experience rooted in mutual respect and empowerment, the more knowledge for the good o f all will advance beyond the usual rhetoric regarding the enlightened virtues o f science, (p. 15) Although Tuhiwai Smith (1999) addresses the role of the non-indigenous researcher, her stated priority is the development o f researchers o f indigenous origin. She believes that indigenous researchers are positioned to decolonize research by creating projects that reclaim cultural knowledge from the inside. As such, she sees the potential for indigenous researchers to become powerful agents o f renewal and healing, especially in the development o f new research paradigms that arise out o f indigenous worldviews. The problem o f the underlying, often taken-for-granted worldviews that drive research methodologies is the final and perhaps most complex problem area examined in this chapter.

The Problem o f Theoretical Frameworks The problem inherent in the theoretical underpinnings o f research brings my discussion full circle to the paradigms of knowing that generate Western research methodologies. For even though alternatives to the traditional positivist approach of


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early ethnography exist, more fluid views such as constructivism, which on the surface seem to support the insider’s view o f culture, are still problematic. Stanfield (1998) delineates the limitations o f our Western paradigms when applied to people o f color. He believes, for instance, that constructivism ignores the “cultural limitations o f the conception of voluntary action (i.e., reality construction) when applied to oppressed populations” (p. 348) and ignores the notion that powerful stereotypes influence the cultural constructions o f both dominant and non-dominant populations. Additionally, constructivism’s tendency toward extreme relativism may lose sight o f Native conceptions o f cultural continuity. About his ethnography o f the Mashpee trial, Clifford (1988) states, “My account may be objectionable to Native Americans for whom culture and tradition are continuities, not inventions, who feel stronger, less compromised ties to aboriginal sources than my analysis allows” (p. 290). Clifford concedes that this predominantly Euro-American paradigm may be “more about the rootlessness o f its authors than about native peoples” (p. 290). Constructivism is not the only theoretical problem, however. According to Tuhiwai Smith (1999), research paradigms arising out o f critical theory and white feminist studies often fail to actually help indigenous peoples. To her, Western theories, whether positivist supporters o f imperialist regimes or “emancipatory” critiques, most often serve the researcher not the researched— making “careers for people who already had jobs” (p. 3). Indigenous values that privilege the community over the individual and the spiritual over the material, for instance, “are denied even with the emancipation program o f ‘post positivism’” (p. 167). Sociologist John Stanfield (1998) confirms the limitation o f critical theory, cultural studies, and constructivist notions in his analysis o f qualitative research methodologies.


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The tendency for Western researchers to impose even their most enlightened cultural constructs on others rather than creating indigenized theories and methods to grasp the ontological essences o f people o f color is, o f course, legendary, (p. 336) Like Tuhiwai Smith, Stanfield speaks o f the need to create “indigenous paradigms rooted in the experiences o f people o f color” (p. 336). Both Tuhiwai Smith and Stanfield see the need to reach beyond merely sensitizing qualitative methods to the paradigms that underlie methodology. According to Stanfield (1998), At most we have a developing literature for dominant researchers on how to be more sensitive in doing qualitative research in settings involving people o f color. That is not, o f course, the same thing as creating novel indigenous paradigms grounded distinctly in the expression o f people of color, (p. 350) Both see the need for methodologies that privilege indigenous voices, worldviews, and values. What would such indigenous models of research look like? Before turning to this question, it may help to ask a broader one: Given the post-Cartesian tradition of separating subject from object and mind from matter, are there indigenous ways of knowing, particularly regarding the relationship o f humankind to the earth, that offer an alternative to scientific materialism and Euro-American habits o f thought about the nature of reality? To paraphrase poet William Blake, can the West awaken from “single vision and Newton’s sleep”?

Wavs o f Knowing: The Hidden Research

Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; Tis fourfold in my supreme delight, And threefold in soft Beulah’s night, And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision and Newton’s sleep! —William Blake, from letter to Thomas Butts, November 22, 1802


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It is not that the Indian has an older, simpler view o f the world, to which we as Newtonian thinkers have added another dimension, but that he has a comprehensive, double view of the world, while we have lost sight o f one whole dimension. —Dennis & Barbara Tedlock, Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy (1975, p. xx) Before launching into the traditional methodology chapter, which lays out the who, what, when, where, and how of this dissertation, I must first tell the stories o f the two underlying ways o f knowing that were at work during my thinking about research and my struggle to select an appropriate methodology for my educational project with and for the indigenous peoples o f Long Island.

Mechanistic Knowing Mechanism is a general description o f a form o f scientific consciousness that views logical rationalism— cause and effect reasoning— as the primary source o f an accurate representation o f the world and its inhabitants. For the results o f such reasoning to be valid and reliable, i.e., universally true, they must arise from a separation o f the personal from the objective. Conditions must be isolated and controlled. Phenomena must be broken apart, weighed, measured and accounted for. The practitioner must be highly trained to avoid his or her own subjectivity from interfering with the universality o f the final analysis. The style is cool, not warm; controlled rather than spontaneous. The results o f such thinking are supremely utilitarian— with such reasoning one can split the atom, send a rocket to the moon, or email a friend in Guatemala. As a worldview, mechanism sees the biosphere and its inhabitants not as a mystery to wonder at or a family member with whom to commune, but as external parts to take apart, rearrange, and control. The mechanistic paradigm first set its sights on the natural world. The messy ambiguities o f human relations came under its scrutiny more recently with the advent o f social science.


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Theologian John Cobb (1988) sees the triumph o f mechanism as the result o f a battle between three arenas o f thought— the ancient, magical thinking that experienced the cosmos and all o f its inhabitants as living beings connected by a web o f meaningful relationships, the Church that sought supremacy over the realms o f the human soul and its imagination, and the new scientists who were beginning to discover their potential for mastery over the material world without reference to non-material dimensions of being. Dualism, according to Cobb, was the peace created between the Church and an emerging secularization o f thought. Such dualism gave the material dimension o f the world and its inhabitants over to science while institutional religion retained its dominance over matters of the human soul and the afterlife. Thus, body and soul, matter and mind were split apart, conceptually flattened and separated into realms that could be manipulated intellectually without reference to each other. Eventually, mechanistic thought won out as the Church, divorced from the life o f the senses, lost its credibility in the realm o f scientific materialism, and Kant posited that knowledge o f an infinite realm was unapproachable through the avenues of reason. Freed from an obligation to understand interrelationships that were o f a more personal, qualitative, and fluid nature, the power o f such a single-minded mechanistic vision fueled the 19th century industrial and 20th century medical and information revolutions as well as the colonization o f the lands of indigenous peoples throughout the world. The unfolding o f the mechanistic paradigm is an inherently Euro-American story. But it did not evolve without resistance. Artists and poets such as William Blake warned us o f “Newton’s sleep” and the loss o f the multi-dimensional experience o f the world. The 19th century was filled with such voices, both in Europe and America. Although ambivalent, often attracted to the energy and the iconoclastic power of materialism, many imaginative thinkers o f that time warned us o f the imminent and


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dangerous loss o f whole realms o f experience layered within the sense-world, yet inaccessible by rational thought alone. In 1854, Thoreau (1991) was swept away by the power and energy o f the Fitchburg Railroad that ran by Walden Pond, yet he saw in this emblem o f the industrial age “a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside” (p. 96). Compared to the timeless, contemplative mood that permeates much o f Walden, there is a sense that far from relieving our quiet desperation, this brave new technology will eventually enslave us to the clock and single-mindedness. Such warnings often appear on the threshold of the Industrial Age. From Ahab’s monomaniacal pursuit to the Ancient M ariner’s murder o f the white albatross, we are reminded that single-minded disregard o f the powers and mysteries immanent in the natural world comes at a price. In the 20th century, such admonitions turn to despair and a sense o f meaninglessness as the optimism o f materialism wears thin and life in a one-dimensional world begins to feel like an endless waiting for Godot— a transcendence that will never arrive because it is impossible to fathom when the rational mind is forever cut off from other ways o f knowing. Along with artists, many philosophers, scientists, and educators have called into question the mechanistic paradigm and pointed to a contrasting more organic worldview, one closely associated with indigenous peoples.

Organic Knowing The word organic describes a way o f knowing and a worldview that contrasts in every way with mechanism. Whereas a mechanistic consciousness seeks to take apart and analyze the objects o f perception, categorizing them into conceptual hierarchies, an organic consciousness experiences perception as a whole that awakens intuitive and imaginative dimensions o f thought. Mechanism keeps the objects o f perception at a cognitive distance; organic thinking brings the percept close. Mechanistic thought


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places a high value on the universality and repeatability of experience, whereas organic thought honors the personal and unique quality o f an encounter. Mechanism relies on cause and effect, the organic on relationships and patterns o f growth. Mechanistic thought hammers through flat surfaces, while organic thinking weaves within multiple layers. Mechanism is about commodification and control, the organic about cycles of expansion and contraction, growth and decay, and— ultimately— birth, death, and rebirth. Mechanism sets science and spirituality at odds with each other, while organic thought experiences the sacred as dwelling within the everyday. There are many ways to characterize an indigenous worldview and epistemology. In What is Indigenous Knowledge, Semali and Kincheloe (1999) attempt to puzzle out certain common threads for their definition, while trying to avoid essentializing a way of knowing that is grounded on the local and particular. They point to three commonalties shared by most indigenous peoples: harmonious relationship to a specific location; oppression through the colonization o f modem nation states; and a different knowledge base than that o f Western empiricism (p. 24). To summarize the central aspect o f this different knowledge, Deloria and Wildcat (2001) use two words: power and place. By power, they mean, “the living energy that inhabits the universe”; by place, “the relationship of things to each other” (p. 23). Embedded within this compact definition is the comprehension, so often associated with indigenous knowing, that the universe is animate, inhabited by beings rather than things, and that all beings are related to each other in a web o f life within a multidimensional universe. Writing in 1911 about Native American religion, Lakota author Charles Eastman says about a Native person’s way o f knowing, “Every act o f his life is, in a very real sense, a religious act. He recognizes the spirit in all creation, and believes that he draws from it spiritual power” (p. 47). United with this idea of the sacred, animate quality of creation


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is the responsibility for humankind to protect and honor the natural world and the people with whom one shares life in a particular place. Chief Oren Lyons (in Grim, 1994) o f the Onondaga Nation speaks of this connection as existing not only in the present, but extending into the future as well: In all our decision-making we consider: will this decision be to the benefit and welfare o f the seventh generation: Now, it is time for the indigenous peoples to speak about that which we have observed— exploitation o f not only the people but also o f the earth’s resources without any regard for the seventh generation. Caring for the earth, then, calls for sovereign responsibility not simply to yourselves, but to your people, your earth, your seventh generation, (p. 51) Along the same lines, Deloria (2001) says, The best description o f American Indian metaphysics was the realization that the world, and all its possible experiences, constituted as social reality, a fabric o f life in which everything had the possibility o f intimate knowing relationships, because, ultimately, everything was related, (p. 2) In discussing his Native upbringing, Tewa writer Greg Cajete (1996) refers to the sense of “participation in the greater community o f life” (p. 175) as that which fostered his lifelong interest in science, art, and education, and initiated him into a way o f knowing that “honors the continual enchantment of human relationships with each other and the natural world” (p. 170). Such respect for relationships among all beings within nature speaks to a view of the world that grasps wholes rather than fragments, a consciousness that is awake to multiple levels o f meaning and being across time as well as space. This is the “double view” referred to by Tedlock and Tedlock (1975) as the ability to live harmoniously in both the manifested world o f physical beings and the “unripe, unmanifested” world of coming into being (p. xiv). In its emphasis on multi-dimensionality, the experiential basis o f knowing, and the importance of relationships that cross dimensions o f space


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and time, the indigenous worldview is inherently organic and, perhaps, inherently human. But must such a view be found only outside Western knowledge?

Bridge Between Two Traditions Semali and Kincheloe (1999) assert that a dialogue between indigenous and academic knowledge holds “dynamic possibilities.” The irony o f the story is that Western science is not an essentialized European achievement, as knowledge interchanges between Europe and various non-W estem cultures had taken place for hundreds o f years preceding the Western enlightenment, (p. 28) Although mechanism has become the strongest voice to arise out o f the European 17th century, there have been other voices, those o f artists, philosophers, scientists, and educators, creating and thinking out o f a deeper, more comprehensive consciousness. C.S. Lewis (1964) referred to this pre-Enlightenment worldview as The Discarded Image, while Huston Smith (1979) called it the “Forgotten Truth.” The ancient idea that the cosmos is animate and all life interconnected, Hamlet’s admonition that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than can be dreamt o f in philosophy, has remained an underground stream throughout the advent of scientific materialism. Because such concepts are harder to understand via the scientific method, they have been excluded by mainstream Western thought. Smith cites philosopher-sociologist Ernest Gellner’s analysis that modem explanations o f reality rely on both mechanism— the “impersonal explanation”— and empiricism— the “ordinary [materialist] notion of ‘experience’” (p. 433)— in order to be judged legitimate. All other explanations are rendered “powerless.” He also makes clear, however, that such a cognitive tendency is an historical choice— a compulsion— rather than a universal condition o f human knowing.


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In the modem compulsion to limit knowledge to the materially knowable, the integral connection between mind and matter, the salience o f personal, multi dimensional experience, the sacred aspects o f relationship, and the concept o f holism are excluded from a comprehensive image o f knowledge. Along these lines Stanfield (1998) states, In general, spirituality is central rather than marginal or absent in the way Africans explain human development, as opposed to the West, where up until recently social scientists have tended to shy away from studying spirituality as an integral part o f social and emotional well-being and as an explanation for human fortunes and misfortunes, (p. 352) This tendency to deny the spiritual results perhaps from the mainstream Western association of non-sensory sources o f knowledge with institutional religion and the irrational; whereas many indigenous peoples see the non-material dimensions o f being as integrated into daily life. According to Leilani Holmes (2002), Hawaiian peoples have a “grounded epistemology” that is not limited to the physical senses, but “may include prayer, prescience, dreams and messages from the dead” (p. 37). She asserts that most scholars approach Hawaiian knowledge making “with theoretical frameworks that lie outside the lives o f the peoples whose voices are being used as data” (p. 36). Tuhiwai Smith (1999) reinforces the need for indigenizing paradigms that honor local knowledge by centering her text on Kaupapa Maori— the name given to indigenous research being conducted by and for her people. Kaupapa means project or plan. Projects such as the ones she describes in her text are intended to heal and provide “systematic ways of understanding our own predicaments, o f answering our own questions, and o f helping us as communities to solve our problems and develop ourselves” (p. 193). They arise out of an indigenous metaphor, quite different from the mechanistic paradigm that underlies much of Western academic research methodologies.


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What forms do indigenizing research methods take? Is it possible for a Western trained researcher to engage in methods borne out o f a wholly different paradigm? In the following section, I will attempt to answer these questions by first looking more closely at Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) metaphor and examples o f indigenous projects as well as other models that may be considered as approaching indigenous methodologies. I will then describe in Chapter III how I arrived at my own methodological choices as well as their limitations.

Indigenous Methodologies In Decolonizing Methodologies, Tuhiwai Smith (1999) retells the story o f the word “research” from an indigenous person’s perspective. The first part o f her book is a testimony to the abuses carried out in the name o f research— how it has served as the handmaiden for imperial governments that robbed Native peoples o f their lands, languages, and cultural identities. The second part o f her work takes us on a journey into the ways in which “research” can be decolonized and reclaimed by indigenous peoples who have their own stories to recover and tell. Tuhiwai Smith’s research agenda arises from an indigenous paradigm and worldview. Her central image is organic: From a Pacific peoples’ perspective the sea is a giver o f life, it sets time and conveys movement. Within the greater ebb and flow o f the ocean are smaller localized environments which have enabled Pacific peoples to develop enduring relationships to the sea. (p. 116) Tuhiwai Smith creates a non-mechanistic research agenda, one that takes into account dynamic processes, relationships, and states o f being rather than fixed concepts easy to manipulate. The sea, her central research image, consists o f four tides that represent “conditions and states o f being through which indigenous communities are moving” (p. 116). They are the tides o f survival, recovery, development, and self


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determination. With these tides are the four directions so important in an indigenous worldview. These directions— decolonization, healing, transformation, and mobilization— are processes rather than fixed goals. They “connect, inform and clarify the tensions between the local, the regional and the global” (p. 116). As such, they inform indigenous methodologies. In using the metaphor of the ocean, Tuhiwai Smith embeds her research paradigm in an organic image, one that offers an alternative to traditional social science models that arise o f out the mechanistic paradigm. In her metaphor, “research” becomes a vehicle for supporting and helping rather than controlling and measuring. Central to Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) indigenous research agenda are the concepts of self-determination and respect, two conditions that have been denied to indigenous peoples throughout their subjugation by Western colonizers. Research processes are “expected to be respectful, to enable people, to heal and to educate. They are expected to lead one small step further towards self-determination” (p. 118). Self-determination is key for Tuhiwai Smith’s agenda, for it implies the ability to imagine indigenous peoples as “active participants” in the world (p. 124) rather than the passive objects of Western research. Toward the end o f her book, Tuhiwai Smith (1999) fashions her metaphor of the living ocean and her key concepts o f self-determination and respect into 25 “indigenous projects” (p. 142), such as story telling, celebrating survival, remembering, reframing, and protecting, that are currently underway in indigenous communities. In her list, she has consciously excluded social science and critical ethnography projects in order to send a message to indigenous communities that “they have issues that matter and processes and methodologies which can work for them” (p. 161). Tuhiwai Smith’s organic notion o f research as Tangaroa, the Polynesian


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ocean spirit and giver o f life (p. 116) has moved us far from Bernard’s (2002) mechanistic image o f researchers turned to “instruments of data collection and data analysis,” laughing and joking on cue. Along with Tuhiwai Smith (1999), there are others striving to indigenize research methods.

Examples o f Indigenous Research Methods and Projects Andersen (1993), a white researcher exploring race relations in an African American community on the Eastern Shore o f Maryland, interviewed both black and white poor elderly women, whose lives she felt had never been the subject o f previous social science inquiry, “even though their lives provide a rich portrait o f the fabric of social life” (p. 46). Her interviews took the form o f open-ended oral histories, which she felt were neither standardized nor objectified in the tradition o f typical social scientific studies. Additionally, she created relationships with the participants, volunteering at their local senior center, not to collect data, but to partake o f their lives and give back to their community. She cites her awareness o f the limitations o f her study due to her own position as an outsider; however, she asserts, “My interviews with these women reveal that the scientific framework o f social science research actually obstructs the formation o f relationships essential to achieving an understanding o f these women’s lives” (p. 46). This work exemplifies some o f the qualities sought for in indigenized research methods: privileging o f the insider voice; befriending and giving back to the community; emphasizing relationship; centering o f cultural knowledge. W ane’s (2002) encounters with elder Kenyan women provide another example o f the importance o f respecting insider cultural knowledge. As a Western-educated Kenyan woman, Wane speaks o f growing up learning that knowledge comes only from books. After engaging in in-depth interviews and oral histories with Kenyan women elders, she concludes that women’s local, indigenous knowledge makes a great


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contribution to the survival o f the community, even though it is undervalued. Like Andersen (1993), Wane enters the community with respect and partakes o f the households in which she is welcomed, conducting interviews while helping with daily activities such as weaving baskets. Wane concludes about the women she befriended: Their accumulated knowledge and experience can be incorporated in designing food-processing technologies, alternative healing practices, and new ways o f disciplining and educating youth. The questions to ask ourselves are these: How will this be done when traditional knowledge and modem knowledge seem to diverge instead o f converge? (p. 67) Abdullah and Stringer (1999) describe a convergence o f traditional and modem knowledge and a model through which the academy itself can transform higher education by informing its programs with other ways o f knowing. In describing the philosophy, curricula, and goals o f the post-graduate programs in the Centre of Aboriginal Studies at Cortin University o f Technology in Western Australia, they show how academic research programs situated within institutions can respond to the critique o f Western research. Program goals include engendering healing, deep thought, ethical practice, and responsiveness to practical work based on local history and culture. According to Abdullah and Stringer, research conducted by the program’s students is meant to provide solutions to real problems rather than to extract universal truths. According to them, research that focuses on “in-depth understandings that lead to actions and activities” represents a new epistemology that can engage “previously silenced” communities and their wealth o f cultural knowledge (p. 149). The privileging of insider knowledge— previously silenced cultural knowledge— has been the goal o f other researchers exploring indigenizing paradigms. However, many studies seeking to reclaim and center indigenous knowledge make use of typical qualitative research methods such as interviews, case studies, and participant


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observation. Their written reports are often single-voiced. What, then, are the qualities that might distinguish a methodology grounded in an indigenous epistemology? In her poetic narrative, “Circle as Methodology: Enacting an Aboriginal Paradigm,” Graveline (2000) addresses her struggle with the problems inherent in qualitative methods, such as taped and transcribed interviews within indigenous communities. She combines the teachings o f Cree elders in her search for an indigenous approach to qualitative research. Like Tuhiwai-Smith (1999), she seeks for and finds a metaphor that grounds her research in cultural knowledge. For Graveline (2000), the metaphor that emerges is the medicine wheel. In embracing the circle as methodology, she is able to both critique Western mechanism’s dependence on linearity, editing, and categorization while honoring a respected cultural practice. She does this by creating ten “talking circles” comprised o f diverse students and community members, as well as elders and indigenous peoples. To choose words with care and thoughtfulness is to speak in a Sacred manner. We can each have our own Voice Speak our own Truth. Tell our own Story. In Circle all participants are encouraged to Be Self-reflective Culturally located. To Listen Respectfully to Others provides another lens to view our own Reality, (p. 364) Although Graveline found she still had to struggle with issues resulting from the analysis o f her transcribed Circle conversations, she concludes that the Medicine Wheel can become a fruitful, ethical, and healing organizational frame for qualitative data collection. She warns, however, against falling into the trap o f editing and analyzing others’ words, concluding, “Preserve the content Intact.... If They want to know/ ‘What does it all mean?7Tell Them/ Read between the Lines” (p. 369).


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Closing the Distance But what o f a non-Native researcher, lacking “First Voice,” yet seeking an alternative to standard social scientific methodology? In Lassiter’s (1998, 2002) two studies o f Kiowa song (1998; Lassiter et al., 2002), I found an ethical model for the non-Native researcher interested in exploring collaborative partnerships with Native consultants. In developing his collaborative ethnographies, Lassiter has successfully addressed many o f the problems inherent in such studies. For instance, the first section o f his book, The Power o f Kiowa Song (1998), which grew out o f his dissertation research, is a narrative that speaks to his own growth in understanding Kiowa people through his friendships with them. With a straightforward simplicity, he relates how his early stereotypes and objectifications o f Native culture were challenged and transformed by lived experience with Kiowa friends. Throughout, his story is motivated by their shared love o f song. His narrative has been read and edited by his Kiowa consultants throughout the writing process. Commentary about the writing by his consultants is incorporated into the narrative, providing a doorway into the relationships that inform and inspire his work, which seeks not only to illuminate the special role o f song in Kiowa society, but also to transform the ethnographic act itself. Avoiding the “patterned, distanced and normalized” stories o f many ethnographies (p. 7), Lassiter shares his experience o f the power o f Kiowa song by interweaving his own story with the stories and commentaries o f his Kiowa consultants and friends. For Lassiter the research act has been transformed from a distancing, objectifying work to one that brings us close to his experiences. Although he is a non-Native anthropologist and Native American Studies scholar, the sense of his commitment to his friends and to the act of singing itself is clearly primary. Here we have an example o f an “outsider” who is brought inside through the power of relationship, respect, and artistic experience. In terms o f the problem o f who benefits


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from the research, I note that all royalties for both o f Lassiter’s books on Kiowa song are donated to funds that help the Kiowa people. Perhaps the quality o f the research relationships from project development to final dissemination is a key element in indigenizing methods and embodying the difference between a mechanistic and organic approach to inquiry. In the following chapter, I will discuss my methodological choices and their limitations as I attempt to navigate a path toward a different form o f research relationship, one that attempts to close the distance between Western and indigenous methods.


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Chapter III CLOSING THE DISTANCE

In the ruins o f previous anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy, in the interstices o f these tom and wounded epistemes where the rules of disciplinary genres are blurred and betrayed, the object disappears to be replaced by encounters that are irreducible to a unique point o f view. As authority slips from my hands into the hands o f others, they, too, become the authors, the subjects, not simply the effects or objects o f my ethnography. (Chambers & Curti, 1996, p. 51)

Conversations about Methodology: What I Chose and Why Focusing on process was a constant challenge as I struggled with allowing myself to listen and be led— to gradually loosen the need for the strict control and premeditation expected of academic research. Allowing conversations and encounters to shape and reshape the final form o f this “research” was a source o f anxiety, but more importantly an important doorway into understanding Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) metaphor o f research as an ocean o f constantly moving tides— a living “project” rather than a fixed “study.” In describing my methodological choices, I will first address a key question she asks us to consider in Decolonizing Methodologies: “Who defined the research problem?” (p. 173).


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Who Defined the Research Problem? As described in the Introduction, my choice to focus on the Native peoples of Long Island arose from a challenging statement made by Fiona Foley, a contemporary Aboriginal artist who questioned North American graduate art students regarding our knowledge o f the indigenous peoples o f our homeland. As I knew I had no suitable answer to this question, I decided her challenge was a compelling topic for my dissertation, a project I anticipated living with night and day for several years to come. Being a good student of Western schooling, I looked first for answers in books and began to shape the following research question, which was written for an ethnographic paper a year later: Given the history of unequal struggle and misrepresentation, how do Long Island’s contemporary native peoples living on its two reservations (Shinnecock and Poospatuck) construct and pass on their cultural awareness? How do their efforts to maintain cultural differences manifest within the reservation community? Does life on the reservation support or impede cultural awareness? Given the interest in cultural renewal on both reservations as evidenced in the presence o f a native owned and operated cultural center at Shinnecock and the intention o f creating such a cultural center on Poospatuck, this study sets out to examine, through participant observation at these settings, the role o f non-written materials such as visual art and artifacts, music, dance, seasonal festivals and storytelling in sustaining and strengthening cultural awareness. After one semester in a traditional ethnography graduate course, I was already adept at objectifying, distancing, and narrowing a culture into a few handy research questions. None o f these questions arose from conversations with Native peoples themselves, but instead from conversations with the professor and his teaching assistant. Does this question respond to Fiona’s challenge about “knowing” your Native peoples or instead to the professor’s requirement that a research question be narrowly, specifically, and objectively defined, the well honed work o f the “professional stranger”? On re-reading this passage, I understand why many people at


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Shinnecock still view any researcher, no matter how well intentioned, as interested in them only as objects o f study. This passage certainly answers Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) telling query of researchers: Who defined the problem? Trying to package my desire to know more about the Native peoples on whose land I was bom and live into an acceptable ethnographic problem statement bypasses an important quality of indigenous research methodology— namely, asking Native peoples themselves for their ideas and what they see as problem areas worthy o f address. Shortly after completing the ethnography class, I began to initiate encounters with Native artists and educators for advice regarding my research question about the role o f the arts in local Native culture. The responses I received shifted my focus away from Native cultural practices and toward my own. One Shinnecock artist shared his hesitancy to participate in research as the result o f lack o f payment for time spent, as well as broken promises regarding sharing o f the final project. He described how his mother had given many stories to non-Native researchers and received neither payment nor a promised copy o f the final manuscript. He suggested I speak to Diane Fraher, who directs AMERIND A, a New York-based organization created to serve Native artists and give them a voice. Ms. Fraher spoke to me about the important need to respect self-determination among Native peoples. Native peoples’ relationship with government and missionaries as well as the social justice community has been characterized by their lack of “sovereign relationships.” Such relationships need to be redefined as partnerships. When I asked her what she would counsel a non-Native seeking to learn more about Native peoples, she said that research about Native peoples should “come from us.” My project, she suggested, could support the Native community by addressing the fact that solutions to peoples’ renewal and revitalization must be within themselves.


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A phone conversation with a Laguna Pueblo man, who is a tribal council member and retired social worker, reinforced the need to seek insider information. This gentleman related the many misrepresentations o f Laguna Pueblo culture in written form. He said that focusing on respect was a good idea. “You want the truth.” In several early conversations with Mrs. Elizabeth Haile, the Shinnecock elder and dance educator whose words inspired the title o f this dissertation, we discussed the need to focus on respectful ways to do research in Native communities as she believes this is a central idea closely related to a study o f the role o f the arts in a community. Little by little I began to realize that I was not hearing from Native peoples themselves a need for more non-Native people to “study” their lifeways and artistic practices, but rather a need for non-Natives to begin to listen to their concerns about the ways in which their culture is misrepresented and to acknowledge that cultural authority and knowledge resides with them, not with the academy. As a result o f these and other conversations, I reshaped my question to the following, which closed Chapter I: Given the absence o f Native voices in the historical canon, the dominance of cultural stereotypes, and the invisibility o f Native peoples’ lived experiences within the Euro-American perspective, can an encounter with living Native educators and artists broaden the vision o f non-Native teachers and learners and open a door to new understandings o f our past stories and shared futures together on Long Island? In other words, by their very presence, can Shinnecock artists and educators reshape our inner eyes? My attention shifted from the objectification o f Native culture to an ongoing attempt to close the distance created by my own education— to begin to listen and learn from voices that were silent during all the years of my schooling. Memories o f my own schooling on Long Island emerged, and I began to wonder whether other non-Native educators working on Long Island shared my experience. Therefore, as a result of


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conversations with Native peoples, particularly Mrs. Haile, my primary consultant and collaborator, a methodology began to emerge that would help me focus on my question but, more importantly, would lead to committed work in this area beyond the dissertation’s concluding chapter.

Research as a Forum for Multiple Voices and Shared Stories As a result o f my initial and ongoing conversations with Native peoples regarding an appropriate focus for a collaborative project that would address their concerns, ideas, and expertise, I have organized the methodology for this project into three main forums for enhancing understanding o f the issues surrounding the problem of how to broaden our educational practice to include the voices and perspectives of our Native peoples: 1.

Conversations with Shinnecock educators

2.

Conversations and focus groups with non-Native public school educators

3.

Conversations with non-Native Long Islanders in various professions, whose work demonstrates a strong professional commitment to educating other non-Natives regarding the history, culture, and contemporary lives of indigenous Long Islanders.

I believe the choice o f these three groups provides a rich tapestry o f voices and perspectives representing the multiple stakeholders involved in the issue of educational reform. Keeping with an indigenous theoretical framework, it is my hope to engage in this project in a way that provides a tangible, local goal, one that will provide benefits to both the Native and non-Native educational community. Therefore, it is also my intention to use this project to forge partnerships among these groups so that we may


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all work together to better prepare teachers to address the representation o f Native culture and history in our schools.

Description o f Contributors Conversations with Artists and Educators from the Shinnecock Nation The modem day Shinnecock reservation consists o f approximately 1,200 acres of land in Shinnecock Neck and West Woods, located on the south shore o f eastern Long Island, near the village o f Southampton. Approximately 600 residents live on the reservation, which is governed by the Shinnecock Nation Board o f Trustees, who handle all membership claims. The Shinnecock people are recognized by the state of New York, and they are currently engaged in efforts to gain federal recognition. Such a dry statement o f facts, however, does not do justice to the cultural richness, natural beauty, and social engagement o f the reservation, which is home to the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum, the first Native owned and operated museum on Long Island. The Museum opened its doors in June 2001, dedicated to their Ancestors and with a strong educational mission to preserve and teach the living culture o f the Shinnecock people, who have been part o f life on the east end o f Long Island for over 10,000 years. My primary partner from the Shinnecock reservation is Mrs. Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile, who is a recognized elder o f the Nation and serves as Vice President of the Executive Board o f the Museum. Mrs. Haile is a dance educator, filmmaker, storyteller, and the eldest daughter o f Chief Thunder Bird, who helped to reinstate the annual Labor Day Powwow, which celebrated its 59th year in 2005. Throughout the past three years, Mrs. Haile has been my primary guide, giving generously o f her time and


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expertise. Prior to commencing interviews with other Shinnecock people, she has welcomed me to numerous community events, which have provided me with experiences o f the Shinnecock peoples’ active engagement in their own cultural life and the life of the Long Island community. It was also through Mrs. Haile that I was able to meet with and interview artists and educators and receive Tribal Trustee permission to engage freely in conversation with members o f the Nation for the purpose o f listening to accounts o f their own schooling and, as professional educators, their visions and hopes for educational reform. Between August 2004 and February 2 0 0 5 ,1 spoke with 14 educators, artists, and allied professionals, such as lawyers. Each conversation was unstructured and openended, focusing generally on two themes: memories o f schooling and ideas on education today. Nine o f these conversations appear in Chapter IV in narrative form. They took place on the Shinnecock Reservation, lasted between one and two hours, and were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. An additional five conversations emerged as the result o f recommendations I received from the first set. These were shorter in length, approximately 30 minutes each, and occurred via telephone. All but four o f these conversations were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. I sent copies o f each tape-recorded interview to all Shinnecock participants as well as the transcribed text of the interview with a request for further elaboration and any desired editing so that their stories, as related in Chapters IV and V, would truly express their own voices and perspectives. Conversations and Focus Groups with Non-Native Public School Educators The perspectives o f Shinnecock people are the central voices o f this study. They are joined, however, by the voices o f non-Native educators and others concerned with educational reform. As my focus shifted away from a “study” o f Native practices to


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those o f my own culture, the voices and perspectives o f such educators and prospective educators emerged as necessary to the creation of a more complete picture. I approached the public school arena using a variety o f traditional qualitative methods: survey, interview, and focus groups. There were three categories o f participants: curriculum supervisors, teachers, and pre-service teacher candidates. District Survey. Prior to setting up interviews and focus groups with public school educators, I created a short curricular survey in order to better understand the educational practices in use in Long Island schools regarding teaching about local Native culture and history. In spring 2 0 0 3 ,1 sent the survey to 124 Assistant Superintendents o f Curriculum in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, as published in County Directories, regarding their educational practices in this content area (53 in Nassau County; 71 in Suffolk County). Private schools were not surveyed. A cover letter explaining the purpose, content, and goals o f the project accompanied each survey. (Copies of this survey and cover letter appear in Appendix A.) Preservice Teacher Education Candidates. Collaborating with a colleague who specializes in social studies education, in spring 2 0 0 3 ,1 surveyed 35 pre-service teacher education candidates enrolled in two elementary level social studies methods classes in the independent Long Island school o f education where I work. I conducted this survey in order to establish a baseline understanding o f the attitudes, knowledge, and educational approach toward the Native peoples o f Long Island held by preservice teacher candidates who intend to stay and work in the Long Island school community. (A copy o f this survey appears in Appendix A.) Focus Groups. In order to deepen my understanding o f how non-Native teachers deal with this area o f the curriculum, I made numerous follow-up telephone calls to curriculum supervisors who had indicated interest in this project via the school district


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survey. As a result o f these conversations, I was able to establish two focus groups in which educators were asked to discuss their own memories o f schooling and their approaches to teaching and learning in this area o f the New York State curriculum, including perceived limitations and resources they believed would assist them. I selected one focus group from Nassau County and one from Suffolk County. The Nassau County group consisted o f four chairs o f middle and high school social studies departments and their Assistant Superintendent o f Curriculum for the Levittown School District. After interviewing their lead professional development consultant, I engaged six teachers in a focus group from the Cutchogue East Elementary School, Suffolk County. Each focus group lasted approximately two hours and was taperecorded and transcribed verbatim. All participants received written copies o f the transcriptions and were asked to amend or expand upon their comments. Edited narratives from these two focus groups appear in Chapter V. Conversations with Non-Native Professionals in Academic and Allied Fields. The individuals I interviewed in this category are non-Native professionals living on Long Island, whose work demonstrates advocacy for Native peoples and/or an academic specialty in local Native history and culture. I encountered some o f these individuals during events at the Shinnecock Reservation. Others are academics whose work focuses on providing scholarly resources about the Shinnecock people. I interviewed six individuals in this category. Each interview lasted approximately 1Vz hours and was tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Individuals interviewed were: • Angela Lalor, former social studies teacher and lead professional development consultant for Cutchogue East Elementary School.


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• Matthew Bessell, EEO Native American Indian Special Emphasis Program Manager for the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Northport, Long Island • John Strong, retired professor o f history, author of several books and numerous articles regarding the Shinnecock and other Native peoples of Long Island • Gaynell Stone, a member or the Suffolk County Archeological Association (SCAA), who has written an eight-volume series on Long Island ethnohistory and conducts educational programs in Hoyt Farm, Commack, Long Island for teachers and students • Robert Vetter, anthropologist and educational consultant; creator o f “Journeys into American Indian Territory,” an in-school field trip program used by several school districts in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties • Robert Zellner, civil rights activist and educator and co-creator o f the Freedom Curriculum. Mr. Zellner now lives in eastern Long Island and has been engaged in advocacy for the Shinnecock people. Edited narratives from four o f the six interviews appear in boxed texts in Chapter VI. Field Notes. Over the course o f three powwow seasons (2002, 2003, 2004), I attended numerous events hosted by the Shinnecock Nation and related events recommended by them. I have interwoven field notes from these experiences into the text throughout the dissertation as a means o f shaping and contextualizing this narrative. Details o f these events appear in Appendix B.


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Limitations The primary partners in this research were educators, artists, and allied professionals affiliated with the Shinnecock Nation and public school educators and curriculum supervisors from two school districts. Along with the principal participants, I dialogued with several key individuals to gain additional insights and to include a tapestry o f voices and perspectives. My own journal notes taken over the course of several years o f participating in local Native events are also woven throughout this narrative. Conversation through dialogue and small group forums leading to shared understandings is the predominant method o f this dissertation. I use the phrase “shared understandings” rather than “analysis” to underscore my hope to engage in the act of research in a way that honors more organic metaphors o f knowing. Being schooled within a Western mechanistic frame, believing that I may somehow sidestep my own upbringing may be a bit nai've. Ironically, my own education, therefore, can be seen in this light, as the primary limitation o f a project seeking to find alternative, indigenous methodologies. That being said, I have attempted to keep open the possibilities for understanding connections in a fluid manner, one that accommodates processes and relationships, the living tides through which we are all moving—Native and nonNative alike (see Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). As one o f the foundational paradigms underlying this study was drawn from indigenous research, my focus was on local knowledge and meaning making; therefore, I located this study in my own birthplace— Long Island, New York, home o f my educational and cultural roots as well as Long Island’s two New York State-recognized Native communities. My choice to partner with Native Long Island communities excludes members of other marginalized peoples, such as African Americans, Latinos,


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and Asian Americans. As my research frame is guided by indigenous methodologies that respect the silenced view from the inside, however, the partnership model we seek to create is one that may be replicated with any group and offers a model for educational engagement with many of the marginalized voices within the Long Island community. As this is a qualitative study that draws upon personal narrative and an indigenous frame, the limits are those o f the author’s and participants’ own histories, biases, and voices, although it should be stated that these are the very same limits, albeit more hidden, o f traditional positivist studies, where the individual researcher’s voice and biases are masked behind a theoretical frame that seeks to objectify the personal. Objectification obscures, but does not eliminate the personal.

Summary Through the process o f uncovering shared understandings and mutual goals among Native and non-Native educators, it is my hope to offer a means to support and help rather than control and measure our mutual experiences o f meeting and engaging, seeing and listening to each other within the context o f education. In the end, I hope that this project represents research o f the heart, as well as o f the mind, and helps to close the distance, not only between “researcher” and “participants,” but also between non-Native and Native educators. Above all, my goal is to provide a benefit to the Long Island educational community by establishing fruitful partnerships among its various stakeholders. Therefore, in using a network approach in the selection of interviewees and focus groups, I am also forging a network o f advocates for change and reform in this curricular area and, hopefully, developing a rich tapestry o f alliances that


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may move forward together. In the following chapter, I will allow the voices o f my partners to begin weaving this tapestry.


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Chapter IV CONVERSATIONS: PART ONE

To Listen Respectfully to Others Provides another lens to view our own Reality. (Graveline, 2000, p. 364)

The Problem o f Editing With each pause in typing, the cursor on my computer screen flashes like a warning signal, reminding me o f my responsibility as writer. Here I sit with hundreds of pages o f transcribed conversations and journals filled with three years’ life experience. But how can I translate what was ultimately a relational experience— the give and take, the listening and responding, the search for the right word, the many layers, contexts and seasons o f the year— to the printed page? After a chapter of justifications regarding the importance o f giving voice to the Native perspective, I am left with the task o f editing and translating a rich oral experience to print, left to weave together a tapestry o f voices and perspectives with the thread o f my own singular, non-Native voice. Each editorial choice carries with it the potential for misrepresentation or exclusion.


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The nine conversations reproduced in this chapter were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Due to the length o f each conversation, which averaged over 30 pages each, I have edited the text as follows: • I have organized most conversations around two particular themes— memories o f schooling and thoughts on education today— which at times necessitated rearranging passages from their original position in the verbatim narrative. Under each o f these two main themes, I have added individual topics unique to each speaker. • Except in the first and last conversations, I have eliminated my own interjections and questions from the original conversation in order to give more space for Shinnecock voices, thus eliminating the dialogic nature of the conversations. When as writer I later interject comments within the narratives, I italicize my voice in order to foreground the participants’ voices as the primary generators of their narratives. • When necessary, I have put clarifying content in brackets within the text or in footnotes. Brackets have also been used to indicate syntactic changes necessary for meaning. • I have eliminated for the most part the repetitive wording, exclamations, colloquialisms, and digressions, so common in the cadences o f spoken language, so as not to divert from what I perceived as the central message of the communication. The greatest difficulty has been in the loss o f meaning that can only be conveyed through the spoken word— the pauses and necessary repetitions that occur when someone is searching for the right word, the interesting digressions and shared laughter. These aspects of conversation do not translate well to the printed page, where


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the richness o f oral communication is sacrificed to clarity and the need to hold the reader’s attention. I am reminded here o f Graveline’s (2000) warning that editing oral speech can result in a false conveyance of “more authority on a topic” than the speaker originally intended (p. 368). I have found, however, that the speakers represented in this chapter needed little editing, and I have striven to maintain their individual eloquence and sensibilities. Because of this necessary translation from spoken to printed word, I have asked the participants to read what I have written and comment on the text, hopefully opening a door to a continuation o f the conversation within the very act o f writing about it. They have also received a copy o f the original verbatim transcriptions o f our conversations, in order to make transparent my editorial choices. I have included excerpts from my own journal notes where appropriate in an attempt to breathe life back into what continues to be a very lively, organic process difficult to fix in time or print. I begin with my first notes on the Shinnecock powwow as a means of introducing my primary partner, Mrs. Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile.1

*Mrs. Haile’s father, Henry F. Bess, Chief Thunder Bird, ceremonial chief of the Shinnecock, founded the modem Labor Day powwow in 1946. According to Mrs. Haile, prior to this time, the Shinnecock powwows were private gatherings. The first public powwow was held in her backyard, and she and her sisters sold hotdogs from the casement window. The annual event now takes place on the Shinnecock Reservation powwow grounds and hosts thousands of visitors each year.


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Beginnings Powwow 2002 Coming as it does on that special threshold that separates the freedom o f summer from the start o f the new school year, the annual Shinnecock Labor Day weekend powwow has formed a natural marker for each phase o f my educational journey. Although having grown up on Long Island, my first powwow experience was the Shinnecocks’ 56th, an event almost completely rained out that particular weekend in late August 2002. Most years when the weather holds, the powwow, which is open to the public, attracts thousands o f visitors to Shinnecock territory. Rainouts are economically devastating for the Shinnecock Nation, which prepares the entire year for this event, its primary means to generate income for the community and its many projects, such as the Senior Nutrition and Indian Education programs. To have such an important source of economic development be dependent on the weather is one reason the Shinnecock trustees are seeking additional means o f self-support, such as gaming. Wandering around the wet grounds prior to the official grand entry, a formal processional that opens each major segment o f the long weekend event, I felt somewhat disoriented. Impressions such as the smell o f burning sage and fry bread, the taste of samp—the traditional mix o f white beans, salt pork, and com— combined with the sound o f many voices, both Native and non-Native, on the damp sea air. Everything was punctuated by the powerful powwow dmms, which, after a short time, felt as though they kept time with my own heart. Here are some lines I jotted down in my notebook that morning: “How about a bow and arrow, Jack? Lookit, a bow and arrow!” “Five minutes to drum roll call.”


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“Do you need a map for a school project? They’re two dollars.” “Daddy, look at that one. That’s a big one (indicating dream catcher hanging in stall).” “Are you Native American?” “Singers, dancers, come this way, w e’re almost ready for Grand Entry.” “All singers report to your drums. Singers, report to your drums.” Still somewhat stuck in my “researcher” role, I was searching for some means of interpreting this disarming cross-cultural mix o f the modem and traditional, the white Long Islander having an outing with the kids overlapping with the economic, cultural, and spiritual importance o f this event for a Shinnecock person. It wasn’t until the grand entry that the powwow began to speak to me on a different level. As a non-Native, I will always be an outsider, but that rainy weekend gathering o f Native peoples from Long Island and around the country revealed to me something o f the experience o f continuity amidst change and the powerful intergenerational role o f song, drum, and dance celebrated each year by many o f Long Island’s indigenous peoples. Watching the participants line up for the drum roll call—-elders, young women and men with their infants, some who possibly first heard the drum call while still in the womb, I was struck for the first time by an aspect that had eluded me. This powwow, which had at first appeared a mix o f open-air market and performing arts festival, was also a great and wonderful family reunion, one that lasts far into the night, long after the public has left the grounds. Most importantly for me, however, was the introduction o f Mrs. Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile, who, with rain clouds threatening overhead, performed her original interpretive dance to an indigenous version of the “Lord’s Prayer” accompanied by the music o f Malotte. I later learned that Mrs. Haile has been opening the Shinnecock powwow with this dance since its inception over 50


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years ago, and she has taught the dance to her granddaughters, who now perform it with her, as they did on this day. Continuity amidst change. In October 2 0 0 2 ,1 called Mrs. Haile to share ideas about exploring an educational partnership. Since that time, she has become the primary partner, guide, and friend o f this journey. I have already cited her in several places and attributed the title o f this dissertation to her. Our first recorded conversation took place on a hot August day in 2004 at the Shinnecock Museum and included her niece Tonya Bess Hodges, a high school English teacher. As this conversation included three speakers, I present it here in dialogue format.

Conversation with Elizabeth Thunder Bird (Chee Chee) Haile and Tonya Bess Hodges. August 12. 2004 We began our conversation in the rooms that comprise the exhibit, “A Walk with the People,” which includes painter David Bunn M artine’s murals representing the different cultural epochs o f the Shinnecock. I asked Ms. Bess Hodges to relate her memories o f her own schooling and her experiences as a teacher today. As we walked and talked, Mrs. Haile discussed various aspects o f the exhibition as it related to the education o f children, Native and non-Native, who visit the Museum. Ms. Bess Hodges attended undergraduate school at Stony Brook University and graduate school at the University of Massachusetts. In her words, she “came back” to Shinnecock to serve as role model for Shinnecock youth. Tonya:

They need to see teachers o f their own culture in the school. So that’s why I came back.

We approach David M artine's first mural depicting the earliest period o f Shinnecock cultural history. Mrs. Haile:

The thing that I like to say is that the relics and the artifacts— the things that were found in the Shinnecock Hills and found throughout Long


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Island— are carbon dated back at least 3,000 years. So we just know that our people were here several thousand years before that. And that’s why David did this first picture from studies that he has made and the beauty o f the land as he pictured it, looking very much like northern Alaska in those days when the glacier was receding, (She talks in further detail about the figures o f people and animals in the mural, and how they are based on archeological evidence.) So I just make sure that this society knows that we’ve been here in these hills for 3,000 years, and we feel very much at home here, and nobody can tell us it’s not our land. Diane:

Do you bring students here?

Tonya:

Teachers at the school bring students here quite frequently, usually younger students. I teach high school, so we don’t get here as much as we should.

Diane:

How do the non-Shinnecock children respond?

Mrs. Haile:

Because they’ve been [taught] that the Indians are long ago, they don’t get it— that Shinnecock is current and these students sitting right next to them are Shinnecock children, and this is their history. So that’s the biggest lesson, I think.

We move to a depiction o f a Shinnecock burial scene. Mrs. Haile:

This picture depicts the burial customs in the Shinnecock Hills, where our people are still buried, whether people regard them or not. We have to remind them o f that all the time. Here’s a scene from up there [in Shinnecock Hills]. There’s a certain spot. You can still go up that road and go up to the top o f that hill and look out. And here’s the surf over the dunes. Probably you can see this scene from Southampton College if you look out the window when the surf is up. And these are David’s studies showing the various aspects o f burial in one composition. I point out the faces to the children. You can see the people are singing and some of them are sad and some of them are smiling, because this is their occasion when they gather together. And it’s typical o f the kind of funerals that we have here. We have sadness and joy, because we see people again, and then we see some people for the last time.

A s we m ove through the exhibit, I ask Tonya w hether she rem em bers learning about

her cultural heritage at school. (She attended Southampton High School, as do the majority o f Shinnecock youth who live on the reservation). Tonya:

When I went through school, nothing. Besides what my family taught me, I didn’t learn anything in school about my culture. At home on


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Shinnecock I did learn a great deal of information, history, love o f this land and spirit o f my people. We pass this on to our children, knowing this is the only place they will learn this concept. But in school, no. W asn’t presented to me. Native Americans, who are they? They don’t even exist. At home I learned about the Circassian tragedy, names o f our ancestors, customs, sacred places. I pass these things on. Diane:

So there was an absence. Were there also misrepresentations? Did you ever feel that what was taught in the curriculum was harmful?

Tonya:

Oh, yes, it was definitely harmful. First o f all— Columbus. There was never any mention o f the story o f what he did. We were taught the old version that he discovered America and never did anything [harmful] to the Arawaks before he even got here. But it was definitely negative, definitely harmful. Because I didn’t learn anything until I went to college, and my eyes were really opened.

Diane:

Are the children going to school now from Shinnecock having the same kinds o f experiences or do you think it has it changed?

Tonya:

I think it’s better. I think it’s changed. I don’t think w e’re there yet, but I think it’s definitely better.

Mrs. Haile:

I think so. [The new elementary school principal] got to know a lot o f us and realized that the Native population was not being addressed. And here we are right in the midst of it. And she was an outsider, so she came in and said, “Oh, this needs to change.” Which is a good thing.

Tonya:

And the school district has hired a lot o f Native American educators into the school system. There are maybe six o f us in the school system now.

Mrs. Haile:

In high school, is there any reference to the Iroquois Confederacy?

Tonya:

Yes, in the history classes.

Mrs. Haile:

That’s a major part o f American history, and yet when I went to school, it was not.

Tonya:

I didn’t learn that [in high school]. I had no idea. Democracy— where did that come from? The Iroquois Nation.

Diane:

Could I ask what year you graduated high school?

Tonya:

1990.

Diane:

And you had nothing.


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Mrs. Haile:

Nothing up to that point.

Tonya:

I told you, everything I learned, I learned in college as far as formal education is concerned.

Diane:

I know I certainly learned nothing about any o f that. I went to school out on Long Island.

Tonya:

Oh, you did, okay.

Diane:

And graduated in ’75. Nothing.

Tonya:

Did you know about Shinnecock?

Diane:

No. Didn’t know it existed.

Tonya:

Wow.

Diane:

Well, vaguely, you know—the powwow.

Mrs. //aile:

You heard o f the powwow?

Diane:

I remember growing up, that it would be in the newspaper.

Tonya:

That was it. Okay.

At this point we are looking at the portraits o f Shinnecock elders that cover the walls in the central room o f the fir st flo o r leading into the next exhibition space. Tonya:

(Indicating portrait o f Jake Kellis) He was my great uncle. My great grandmother’s brother.

Mrs. Haile:

And his grandchildren, great-grandchildren and niece and all that go to Southampton High School— nobody talks about—

Diane:

their history.

Mrs. Haile:

(Indicating another portrait) Lois M. Hunter. She was a schoolteacher who taught in the Shinnecock Indian School from 1937 on. They closed the school in 1950.

We cross to the next room and stand before another o f D avid’s murals. Mrs. Haile:

This is one o f the best exhibits because [off the research that went into [it], so that the smallest child could see it and try to understand the various things about housing, about the religious activities, everyday


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preparation of food and tools. Down at the bottom are all the herbs strung up there. (Indicating two figures) They call them the “logo” couple. They’re wearing everything that our people wore. And David’s [depiction of] seafront life, how we dealt with the water, the marshes where we got food. And when the ocean brought us a couple whales, we made sure they got beached so that we could eat for the rest o f the winter. So a whale was a community commodity, and we still think like that. It was very hard to think—I will go out and I will get a whale, and I will sell it, and / will do this and / —no we didn’t think like that at all. We now stand before a photographic collage o f Shinnecock ancestors, at the end o f the “Walk with the People ” exhibition. Mrs. Haile:

This is our ancestor. This is her [Tonya’s] father’s grandmother’s grandmother. She was Charity Bunn Kellis. That’s our common ancestor. (Indicating each photograph, she names each ancestor up to the present day.) And that’s what people do when they come in here. They say, “Oh, I’m descended from him, and him.” And our kids need to say that.

Tonya:

Yes. And you realize how related we are.

Mrs. Haile:

That’s right. And when I have Shinnecock kids in the group, sometimes I ask, “W ho’s been the powwow?” Some o f the white kids have been to the powwow. But some o f the Shinnecock kids have danced in the powwow. Then they begin to talk. And I include them in explanation of things.

Diane:

The focus is on them [the Shinnecock children] when they come here.

Mrs. Haile:

That’s right, for a change. Because they have gone to the museums [in other areas], and the people who are teaching there just talk about the Indians in the past tense, and here they’ve got a bunch o f Shinnecocks sitting right in front o f them, and they don’t know it and they don’t seem to care ... much.

After discussing potential educational partnerships with other members o f the museum sta ff our conversation moves outdoors, as Mrs. Haile and Tonya drive me down the main road, past the powwow grounds to one o f the most sacred places on the reservation—the cem etery. M eticulously m aintained by the Shinnecock, their burial

ground is the resting place o f beloved ancestors from hundreds o f years ago up to the present day. Perhaps the most emotionally charged site is the first one we visit— the memorial to the ten Shinnecock whalers who lost their lives during a midwinter salvage mission o f the


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foundering steamship “Circassian. ” When I speak to a Shinnecock person about this event, there is a real and present pain. Most Shinnecock people can trace their ancestry back to one o f the men lost that day. This conversation picks up as we are standing before the memorial to the ten whalers, in a sunny patch o f grass fille d with the sound o f singing birds and the buzz o f late summer insects on the warm air, a mood in stark contrast to the tragic scene o f disaster and loss that is still very much alive in the hearts o f many Shinnecock people. As Mrs. Haile says regarding her niece Tonya, “ See, i t ’s all fresh in her mind. ” The Thunder Bird Sisters singing group has composed music and recorded the lyrics o f the anonymous poem referred to by Mrs. Haile, “Circassian 1876. ”2 Their bodies fo u n d encased in ice seem too mournful to describe From Mecox to Amagansett lay the flow er o f the tribe They were laid to rest in Native soil where the sunset meets the shore The brave mariners o f Shinnecock will sail the seas no more — From “Circassian 1876’’ Mrs. Haile:

Lost their lives on the ill-fated ship Circassian, December 30th, 1876. So their names are familiar names— Bunn, Cuffee, Kellis, Lee, Walker. Ten graves. W e’ve never gotten over it. They went out to Mecox Bay to salvage a ship [that had foundered in a storm]. They needed the seamen o f Shinnecock, because they all knew the water— they were all superior. And the Coast Guard Station—there was a Coast Guard at that time, a lighthouse and a Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard warned the captain that they had to get off that ship because there was a hurricane— and the people in those days didn’t realize that the hurricane comes back. And the Indians said, “We have to get off this ship now.” And he [the captain] said, “I’m not going to pay you.” He wouldn’t abandon the ship. And one— Eleazor—-jumped into the water and swam. Other people thought about it. Then the storm started returning, and they didn’t get off. And then they realized ....

Tonya:

It was too late.

Mrs. Haile:

It was too late.

Diane:

This was right off the shore?

2“Circassian 1876” was recorded in 2001 by the Thunder Bird Sisters on their CD Rise Above My Enemies Upon the Smoke. On the CD jacket, they credit Mr. Arthur P. Davis and Mrs. Grace Valdez Smith with the preservation of this poem. Mrs. Haile discusses the Thunder Bird Sisters later in this chapter.


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Mrs. Haile:

Yes. It was in the bay. It was in the Mecox Bay, which is just off the ocean. The bay swells up every time there’s a storm. These are just backwaters of the ocean.

Diane:

And when was ... this was

Tonya:

Yes.

Diane:

December.

Tonya:

30th.

Diane:

30th.

Mrs. Haile:

And their bodies washed up on the shore encased in ice in the spring. So that was a great loss to our people. And we tell it like it happened a couple of years ago.

Tonya:

Right, yes.

in 1876?

Quiet moment, except fo r the sea breeze and singing birds Mrs. Haile:

See, it’s all fresh in her mind. Happened in the 1870s. (Ia sk about the song on her daughters ’ CD.) Somebody made a poem at that time, was very moved by it. We believe it was an old man who went down to Mecox Bay and just wrote that song. It was out o f sadness, and we don’t even know who it was. We just knew about that poem, and we told the girls. And Holly [Mrs. Haile’s daughter] listened to a lot o f sea chantey type o f music, and she’s just got that style. And she made that song. They were all those men and their uncles and cousins, and people who had descendants, and people who were young men, who didn’t even have a family yet. Terrible loss. (Wind starts blowing harder) But there is a place that we come for comfort and we walk around in the evening or get the morning coffee and come down and look at the water, so when you go by there, you’ll see how the water looks.

We move down the road to a b lu ff overlooking the broad, round sweep o f Shinnecock Bay. Clearly a favorite spot, Tonya points out her house, which can be seen through the trees from this vantage point. With Mrs. H aile’s encouragement, her niece talks about the importance o f this particular location fo r the Shinnecock people. I will not relate here the details o f her description o f Shinnecock funerals, fo r these are private matters fo r her people. But I am moved and grateful that they have chosen to share this spot with me.


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Diane:

This is a beautiful spot. I can see why it would be a peaceful place to come spend time.

Mrs. Haile:

Because if I’m standing here and Tonya comes up in her car and she’s standing there.

Tonya:

And we look at the water.

Mrs. Haile:

People come up with the baby carriages, look at the sunset, go on back home.

Tonya:

Life and death.

Mrs. Haile:

How many people know where their great grand, and great-great grandfather was buried or what they did or where they lived?

Tonya:

There’s five generations living right now on my mother’s side o f the family. My children have a great-great grandmother.

Mrs. Haile:

Living down on the water.

Tonya:

Yes. Right down that way.

Diane:

And you all live close?

Tonya:

We can connect. Paths lead to her house.

Diane:

Have you come here your whole life?

Tonya:

My whole life.

Diane:

So it’s an old friend.

Tonya:

Yes. My father is buried over there (pointing). My stepfather’s buried over there (pointing). He just passed away a year and a half ago, and we can see the grave from our house when it’s winter. So he’s watching over us still.

We stand fo r a moment watching the sea birds and listening to the sound o f the su rf along Shinnecock’s ancient shores before returning to the Museum, where I will meet D a v id Bunn M artin e, Shinnecock, an a r tist a n d the M u seu m 's cu rren t D ire c to r a n d

Curator.


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Conversation with David Bunn Martine. August 12. 2004 Mr. M artine’s murals are a central feature o f the museum’s first floor exhibit, “A Walk with the People.” He grew up on the Shinnecock Reservation and attended public school in Southampton. David Martine holds a master’s degree in Art Education and has written about his experiences as a Native artist and museum educator in Genocide o f the M ind (Moore, 2003). He is the great grandson o f Charles Sumner Bunn, a renowned carver o f shorebird decoys.3 Memories o f Schooling. The only time I studied Long Island Indians was in the 7th grade, I think, in the intermediate school. It was just a very cursory kind o f description of the so-called thirteen tribes o f Long Island, and it was the basic simplified academic approach. I thought it was too simplified. There w asn’t much information in there, you know. But I wasn’t that activist. I wasn’t gung ho to try to correct the system or anything; I just went along with it minding my business. That was the only time that it was addressed— Long Island Indians in particular. When we got into high school, they started studying various cultures o f the world— Japan and the Middle East and so forth. They never really did get back to this area. I think they might have covered something briefly about Western Indians, I can’t recall. It didn’t bother me one way or the other. I liked the teacher, so I didn’t care too much. I thought it was too bad that they didn’t go into any more detail. But yet in those days, a lot of the documentation was not as readily available as it is now. I think that was one o f the problems. I think it was much easier to generalize, to sort o f have a generic idea o f Indian culture. Thoughts on Education Today. The Scientific Community and Indian History "In Isolation. ” I don’t see any reason why any institution or museum would want to bypass us [Shinnecock Museum]. W e’ve preserved more, and we have more to share. But over the years w e’ve run into situations where people are reticent to be in touch with us. They almost want to continue the old stereotyped view of Indian history in isolation. And so they continue the

3For further information regarding Charles Sumner Bunn, see J. Reason in Jan./Feb. 2004 and Nov./Dec. 2003 issues of Decoy Magazine and J.C. Mead, “Lure for Collectors Gets a Second Look,” New York Times, February 13, 2005, p. 9.


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old anthropological views about what’s appropriate— trying to substantiate what they’re doing because o f scientific reason. (At this point in the conversation, David discusses the Native American Graves Repatriation Act—NAGPRA— and the difficulty members o f the scientific community have with returning cultural remains to Native communities from which they originate.) W e’ve run into that here locally, right to this very day— the insensitivity. I depicted a scene o f the Sugar Loaf Hill burial, for example.4 Most o f the burial goods are residing in museums right now. They probably should be repatriated. The only problem with [NAGPRA] is it’s hard to enforce. It has to do with the idea o f Indian religious freedom— Indians are entitled the same respect for their religious beliefs as any other group. Then museums are supposed to return things to the Indian people. The scientific community was all up in arms, because that was completely contrary to what they’ve been doing since the beginning o f anthropology. The idea of returning something to where it came from was absurd; it violates their whole ethic o f conducting their business. They continued to cling to their old ideas about doing things themselves within isolation and not wanting to work with us. It seems to me it’s only common sense if you are in the business of presenting a culture that’s not your culture, you want to get some information from the ones that still have part o f that culture. I think a lot of that goes to the power o f the media and the preconceptions people have about Indian people— that are so profound in this culture— they either think Indians are noble savages or some exotic being that’s not even human or not a real person like they are. And that can only be corrected by interacting and talking with people. On Education about Native Peoples. They should have classes where they can incorporate aspects o f Indian culture into the various disciplines, whether it be science, social studies, art, history— as well as having people come in and talk to the class. And, of course, we would be involved in helping the teachers to incorporate [indigenous knowledge] into their curriculum, which is what w e’re trying to do now. [There are] creative activities which you can do with kids that demonstrate profound principles that Indians had about certain things, whether it be stories about the animals, stories about the stars, how nature works, scientific principles that the Indians knew about, nutrition. I would

4The excavation of Sugar Loaf Hill is discussed in J. Strong (1997), The Algonquian Peoples o f Long Island from Earliest Times to 1700, pp. 48-53.


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like to have seen that, but that takes a great deal o f study, and I really don’t know if our schools are interested in much intercultural teaching o f that sort. They’re most interested in the American homogenized culture. Conversation with Ms. Lucille Bosley. August 20, 2004 Later that week I met with Ms. Lucille Bosley, a junior high school English teacher and member o f the Executive Board o f the Shinnecock Museum. We sat downstairs at the museum and talked about her memories o f growing up on the Shinnecock Reservation, attending public school and becoming a teacher herself. Memories o f Schooling. The Bus to Southampton. My sister went to the little one-room schoolhouse here on the reservation, but by the time my brother was supposed to go to that school, they started busing the Shinnecock children to the Southampton Public School. The state, I think, came to the school and decided that it was not up to the standards that it should have been.5 I found out later that they couldn’t find a bus driver who was willing to come up on the reservation to pick up the students. And a man that’s at the foot o f the hill— he’s not Shinnecock— became so incensed about it he bought a little bus large enough to pick up the students. He wrote “Shinnecock Indian Reservation” on the bus, and he was the one that came and picked up the students and took everyone to school. Early Classroom Memories. I didn’t mind being on the bus, because I was with my friends and relatives, but I remember getting off the bus and hating to go into my first grade classroom. After first being placed by alphabetical order in the front o f the room, my seat was moved toward the back. The teacher and I did not hit it off from day one, so after a while she moved me as far away from her as possible. This is because on the first day o f school I asked my

5Busing to Southampton public school began in 1950. Until that time a one-room schoolhouse dating from the 1800s was in use on the reservation (Shinnecock Indian Nation website). According to Ms. Bosley, the Shinnecock School extended to the 8th grade. After eighth grade parents were charged a tuition fee for their children to attend Southampton public school. Few parents could afford this fee, so as a result, few Shinnecock children living on the reservation in those days were able to complete formal education beyond the eighth grade.


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mother to say goodbye to me. My mother promised me that she would say goodbye, and the teacher wouldn’t allow it. And I remember that I was at the window and I saw my mother go by, and I started screaming my mother’s name, and my mother couldn’t come. The teacher wouldn’t let her come back in to say goodbye to me. I didn’t find out until later years that every student that came from the reservation was automatically retained one year. They didn’t test to see how bright they were and how easily they could catch up. It was an automatic thing. We were all separated into individual classes. Southampton is not that big, but all o f the other Shinnecock students that were on the same grade level as I was, we were all in separate classes. I think it was their way o f trying to assimilate us. I felt very much alone. All of us, we felt very much alone. The only time we saw each other was out on the playground. And even then, the teachers more or less tried to keep us separated, and they wouldn’t allow the elementary school students to socialize with the junior high school students, and as a result, I was not allowed to see my sister and brother. It was a very subtle racism. You didn’t talk about where you were from. The teacher didn’t ask you where you were from, and so, therefore, you didn’t tell them. I remember in my first grade class how they’d talk about nutrition. The teacher was asking everyone what they had for the previous night’s dinner, and everyone was talking about either hotdogs or hamburger or chicken and things like that. And I remember being very embarrassed about what I had had for dinner the night before, because I knew that my family was too poor to have those things. The only time that we had hotdogs and hamburgers was on Friday night or over the weekend. On the rest o f the nights, we had other things. I remember that my brother had gone out hunting to supplement the dinner, and he brought back pheasant. So we had pheasant for dinner that night. And I was embarrassed to say anything because on the reservation anything that you had to go out and shoot or clam for, that was a poor man’s dinner. And so I was embarrassed to say it, so I lied and said that we had hamburger for dinner, not realizing that if I had said “pheasant,” that to other people this would have been a fabulous meal. But it never occurred to me, and it was beyond me even through high school that people actually went to fabulous restaurants and paid to have pheasant and wild duck and clams and crabs and things like that. And so because of this cultural difference, through most o f my elementary school experience I felt very isolated. Teaching American History. Around Thanksgiving time in elementary school we were taught about Indians. We were shown pictures of what Indians look like. And o f course,


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I looked at the pictures and thought, “I don’t look like that,” so I kept my mouth shut. I never said anything. The teachers knew where I was from, but they never asked me any o f my experiences on the reservation. It was understood that once we got off the bus and walked into the school, we were no longer Indians because we didn’t look like the Indians that the teacher was teaching about. And that’s the way it was all through school. In high school I remember the social studies teacher had us open up our book to the different races, and he called on students to read about their own race to the class. And mine was a paragraph describing what the Indians looked like, and o f course, I didn’t look like that. His comment was, “This is the way Indians are supposed to look.” “Their Parents Forgot to Raise them Racist. ” The kids in the class that I went to high school with—we accepted each other as people. We didn’t talk about who was Irish, we didn’t talk about who was Polish, we didn’t talk about who was Indian, we didn’t talk about who was, at that time, “Negro.” We were just people. They accepted me for the person that I was. And I was happy with that. I didn’t have to dress in regalia all the time; I didn’t have to constantly tell them that I was Indian. They knew that I was Indian; they accepted me. They didn’t try to make me into something that I was not. They didn’t say, well, you look “Negro,” so therefore why aren’t you acting “Negro?” As far as they were concerned, I was from the reservation and that was it. It was the teachers that tried to separate us, and the more they tried to separate those o f us that were in the class, the more we banded together. As a matter o f fact, after almost forty years, we are still in contact with each other and maintain our friendships. Thoughts on Education Today. Walking the Tightrope. [In college] I was a member o f the Black student union, but I had to drop out because they told me that I had to choose between being African American and Native American. And I told them that if you can’t accept me as walking the tightrope that I’ve always had to walk, then I have to drop out. And I dropped out. Even at work, I walk a fine line. [Sometimes other teachers] ask to borrow my regalia; they call it a “costume,” for costume parties, for Halloween. They ask my friends if it’s true that I’m an Indian.


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Educational Potential o f the Shinnecock Museum. Last year I asked someone who had known me for a number o f years, a social studies teacher, “How come you’re not making arrangements to come to the Shinnecock Museum?” And he said, “You mean there’s an Indian reservation on Long Island? A Shinnecock museum?” And he was teaching 7th grade, the very grade in which they are learning about Indians and their form o f government. However, little or no connection is made between this study and the unit on the origin o f the U. S. Constitution, which often is the very next unit studied. Another problem is that when teachers see in their curriculum that they are supposed to teach about the Iroquois and the Algonquin, I think they forget that they are two separate entities. And since there is not very much on the Algonquin Indians, they more or less lean toward the Iroquois because they are more documented. And they don’t even go online to find out where the Algonquin tribes are. If they went online, they would find the Shinnecock Indians right here. W e’re sending out flyers to the school superintendents. W e’re using the “trickle-down” method— if we reach the superintendents o f schools, they will trickle the information down to the principals, and the principals will get that information out to their teachers, and they in turn will contact us. We incorporate the New York State Standards in our curriculum, so we make it very attractive to the schools. The instructor that we have goes through all o f the things about the prejudices and the misconceptions o f what Indians look like; she goes through all o f that with them. We give handouts to the teachers, and their students are encouraged to take notes. They’re encouraged to write compositions or essays about what they have learned, and they are also encouraged to research information. W e’ve gotten [positive] letters and feedback from other teachers. They are amazed. W e’re in the process of trying to partner with Southampton Public School, and the superintendent o f schools is very much in favor of that. And one o f our components is to train our students to be peer educators— to go into the classes to act as an aide to that teacher [regarding lessons about Native culture.] Conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth (Chee Chee) Thunder Bird Haile, November 1. 2004 After two years and dozens of conversations by phone and at community events, Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile and I sat down together for a more formal tape-recorded conversation. Our talk took place on November 1, 2004 toward evening, over cups of herb tea in her kitchen on the Shinnecock Reservation.


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Memories o f Schooling. All right, well, I’ll speak to that. And almost everyday we bring this whole subject up again. Last night we were sitting around after Halloween. The children had left, and I was at my sister’s, and my nieces were all there. We had a few thoughts on this subject. One was that we remember my mother and Princess Nowadonah, my cousin, who was a schoolteacher and taught on the Shinnecock Reservation for a while. In those days my mother and my cousin would travel to the local schools— schools that we children attended and other schools where their reputation had gone. And they [spoke to the children] in an auditorium because that was usually a larger site, where you would get the most children educated at the same time. And it was really a lecture-demonstration. So between them they showed baskets o f things that could be found in the home. And that’s really where I learned to make my basket presentation for schools, because I saw that the children needed to know what related to the home scene. And in my basket I had a scrub and the carved spoon and things that would be found in a Native home then and now, and [I spoke about] how this related to children. The basket related to collecting berries. The clamshells represented a lot o f things— one of them was going out and digging clams so that the family would have something to eat for dinner. That would be an afternoon chore for the children in the fall, winter and spring months, not in the summer. And there were things like that the children had to know. They had to know during which tide to collect clams. And they had to go out to get the various berries, crops, leaves, greens, roots when they were told to do so because that would be the correct season to harvest those. And they would bring them in knowing that they had to share everything. So if they wanted some berries, they’d better eat them before they got into the basket, because once they got in the basket, they belonged to the whole family. So they had a lot to do. And children had those knowledges, and our family taught them to us, and we passed them along. So that reminded me that back in the old days my mom and my cousin Nowadonah went out and told the schoolchildren all these things because they felt it was important for them to do that. So then we realized that when we went to schools, the teachers called upon us, my sisters and my brother and I, to tell the history of Shinnecock because the teacher herself did not know that information. It was one o f my goals to become a schoolteacher, I guess, because w e’d seen it around us all our lives, and I loved reading and I loved all those things that related to teaching. I went right off to school and succeeded in teaching, created a style o f teaching that has served me very well.


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One o f the things I included in my teaching was Native music and dance because I had a background in classical piano. So then I could incorporate everything that I knew into what was needed in the classroom. The college I attended had modem dance and rhythms for children, which became my field. I had studied modem dance, so all these things went together to make a contribution to this curriculum with which I was working. And the more I knew about it, the more I could enrich it. And it became something that schools were latching onto. I just accumulated these things from my cultural background, which seemed to fit very well into what was needed in the classrooms in the progressive education period. It was anything from the ‘40s on. I went to college in 1948.6 I was there [in teacher education] when it was going through its growing pains. So how to be a teacher was under debate. There was quite a discussion going on at that time— how you teach reading. And new math was bom while I was trying to teach school. Everybody was changing the rules. So w e’ve had some wonderful experiences in education, and all the time the interest in cultures and the evolution o f race relations [was beginning]. And in the ‘60s there was even more going on, and the things I had to say were more pertinent at that time. But I was not limited to a classroom because I was doing Native American Studies as a lecturer, as guest speaker. Origin o f the Thunder Bird Sisters Singing Group. The whole sphere o f competition, which is downplayed in the reservation community, is the whole quality o f life in the outside world— which we call the “rest of society.” And that’s what [our children] are up against. And so they learn to compete, but they’re late. It’s not their style; they’re not very good at it. So other people who wish to develop group spirit say, “Let’s build community and let’s cooperate and share.” Well, our Native children would be very good at that if they have an opportunity to run into that climate. And they did— they made good hippies! My kids all learned to play guitar and make up spirited protest songs, which they became very good at, and created the Thunder Bird Sisters singing group. Now, I call this “Indian education,” because this is how they found something worthy in the society that was just outside the door o f the reservation. And so the reservations came up to date at that point. They knew that they had to participate in the national scene and that they were a part o f the other

6Mrs. Haile attended Oneonta State Teachers College (SUNY Oneonta) as an undergraduate in Elementary Education. She went on to receive her Masters Degree from New York University in Recreation Education. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Long Island University.


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Indian tribes that were facing the same debilitating circumstances that we found here.7 Thoughts on Education Today. “It ju s t doesn’t have to be a place— it can be a thriving com munity’’ We are very interested in education for our children. It must be a successful experience, because it’s the only chance they have to get up and out. They’ve been tracked in [public] school all these years, for nonRegents— no college— “ Do the best you can; if you quit, we won’t worry about that.” At the age o f 16 you finish school and become a truck driver or whatever you feel equipped to do, whatever opportunities open for you. But education, we know, is the real way to get out into the outside world. During the Carter administration, there were many scholarships that were started. That was really an educational opportunity back in those years. People don’t give the Carter administration enough credit for getting a lot o f things started. And then, o f course, Kennedy had the Peace Corps, and that meant that a lot o f our young people could get jobs on a cultural basis going elsewhere, and going into Indian communities, too. So our young people have found ways when they had education. And now we have gotten our health center. We were entitled to it, but nobody ever organized it in such a way that we could get the New York State Health Program on our reservation. That came about when one o f our educated women knew what to do, and we backed her.8 We had people who could serve on community advisory committees. We learned how to do all these things because people were bringing back the skills. And we said something can happen on Shinnecock— it just doesn’t have to be a place, it can be a thriving community. And it began to be that because we decided it could be. And I give credit to people who stayed here and kept the home fires burning. But there had to be a lot o f people who went out and brought back some o f the culture that’s going on all around us, so we could make use o f it. Now we have the Family

7The Thunder Bird Sisters are an activist vocal group of Mrs. Haile’s children. They were founded over 25 years ago, inspired by the events at Wounded Knee in 1973. The Thunder Bird Sisters have produced several CDs of original music. In 2000, their CD Still Singin ’ won a NAMMY for Best Folk/Country artist by NAMA (Native American Music Awards). sThe Shinnecock Indian Health Services opened a clinic in 1993 to provide healthcare for the first time to tribal members on their own land. (Shinnecock Indian Nation website)


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Preservation Center, which houses the tutoring program. We have a homeschool coordinator between Southampton and the home base here, where the parents can go to somebody who knows them, who has an office in the school.9 “By Their Very Presence

About the Title o f this Dissertation.

Take a Native person and allow them to teach regardless o f what background they have, regardless o f the degree o f English they speak, let them be there. Because you will learn a lot from their very presence— the way they handle themselves, the way they relate. If you want to know more about this culture, you cannot get it from a book or film. You have to get it from a person who has lived it. [The Shinnecock Museum] is a tribal entity. It has responsibilities in many directions, but one thing we feel— we must help our volunteers and our staff people to grow. And o f course that’s through education. So we love the children to come in so they can learn from us, and then we get the opportunity to teach. That’s why I want the teachers o f Long Island institutions to have this opportunity to learn from Shinnecock people who may have an education [or] who may only know what they’ve been taught by their elders. And I ask kids, is that education? And they realize, yes, it is. It hasn’t got four walls around it, but it has your grandmother’s knowledge. The sun had set on the above words, so we end the conversation here and allow her husband Dick to come back into the kitchen to prepare dinner. With Mrs. Haile’s help, I was able to meet with several other educators throughout the autumn o f 2004 to continue learning about Native perspectives on education. The following three conversations all took place on the same day in November.

9The Indian Education Program provides after-school tutoring services for Shinnecock children on the reservation. Later in this chapter, Sherry Blakey Smith, who directs the program, discusses this vital educational service.


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Conversation with Sherry Blakev Smith. November 17. 2004 Sherry Blakey Smith, Ojibwa Cree, is an educator married to Charles Smith, of Shinnecock. She serves as cultural liaison for the Southampton School District. She also directs the Shinnecock Nation Indian Education program. Our conversation took place at the Family Preservation Center on the Shinnecock Reservation, which houses the after school Indian Education program. After giving me a tour o f the building, with its several classrooms featuring vibrant Shinnecock self-portraits and other artwork by Shinnecock youth, we sat down to discuss her memories of schooling, her educational work on Shinnecock, and her hopes for the future. Memories o f Schooling. I was bom in Gordon’s Reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada, but we were there before the border existed, so I have relatives on both sides o f the border— in Montana and Saskatchewan. And I lived a great time o f life in Minnesota. I went to public school for most o f my elementary years, and actually I did very well in public school, and I really liked it. But as I got older, I found it more difficult staying in school and going to a normal public school, because through adolescence I began to question my identity and I wanted to feel a part o f something bigger than myself. I grew up in a Native American traditional family, and I began to really want and need that validation in my education. So I found myself being more and more disenfranchised from the system and struggling to stay in school. And eventually I was close to dropping out o f school, because I didn’t feel like I belonged in my school, and I wanted more understanding o f Native culture. I rebelled like most high school kids do, I guess. I was very fortunate that at that time I was living in Minneapolis, and they had established Native American alternative schools— the Red Schoolhouse in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Heart o f the Earth in Minneapolis. They were sister schools, alternative programs specifically designed for Native American students. What was unique about that is that we had all Native American educators. We learned history from a Native perspective. They began to work with us in understanding our disenfranchisement. They were able to really teach us why we didn’t feel a part of the system, why the curriculum wasn’t relevant to our lifestyles. When it came to history and to identifying yourself in history— our places were so misinterpreted. All the holidays that you deal with in school— Thanksgiving, Columbus Day— all these just seemed so fake for me as a


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high school student. They glamorized Columbus’s discovery o f America and made him a hero, and the reality was he came here and conquered. So I was really fortunate that at a time when I was close to quitting school, there was a director o f education there that said, “You know what? You can’t quit. We need you. We need you to be an educated Native American adult. We need you to go to school and get your education. You are our future.” This was thirty years ago. So I was really blessed and fortunate that I had Native American role models all around me at that stage o f my life when I was most vulnerable and ready to give up, that pulled me back into school and made it valuable to me. On Indian Boarding Schools and Cultural Genocide. All over Indian Country now, there are huge class action suits against the Federal government for what they did to Native children. It’s not something that you’ll see on television, the boarding school experience. It’s not something you’ll see, where cultural genocide has taken place. Where the idea was to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream— to take the “savage” out o f them. That’s the language. I’m a product o f it. My son is a product through me. I had a mother that was unable to parent because she was raised by institutional parents that stole her and her sisters from my grandparents. They said to them, “You’re incapable o f providing for these kids. Let us take them, w e’ll give them education, w e’ll give them food, w e’ll give them clothing, because you can’t provide that.” So they stole my grandparents’ children and put them into boarding schools. As a result, I had a mother who was incapable of parenting. She never was parented. Her parents were matrons in a boarding school. The people that taught her were the older girls in boarding school. The humiliation and degradation was so bad that my mother was scarred for the rest of her life. She gave me to my grandma and grandpa. So what my mom missed, I was able to get. There’s a whole generation o f Native people who have been culturally deprived, culturally disenfranchised from both systems. The system that destroyed them is the enemy, and then the system that would nurture them is missing, a void. So that is a very painful experience for many Native people in this country, throughout the United States and Canada So while my story is a powerful story to me and my tribe, the same type of stories exist for many of the five hundred tribes throughout Indian country. How relevant is that to public school teachers? They may not feel that that’s as important as it is to me, to my children, to my son, to my family, to my generations yet to come. But it’s powerful because we sacrificed a lot as Indian people. You’ll hear people say, “This tribe lost their


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language,” or “that tribe lost their culture.” They didn’t lose anything. Lost puts the onus on the nation [as though] you put it down someplace and forgot it. It was systematically, deliberately taken away, and that’s the truth. That’s what needs to be said. When my mother tried to speak her language, they beat her. They cut her hair. They totally dehumanized these little children. Now if that were to happen to an American child, it would be appalling, you know what I mean? The whole country would be totally appalled. Thoughts on Education Today. On the Persistence o f Stereotypes in Education Today. Education has always been a painful historical notion for Indian people. Turning that around is extremely difficult, even for me as a Native educator. It’s extremely difficult for me to advocate for schools and for kids to continue in school when the system that messed them up is the system that we expect to fix them up. It’s amazing today that you go into public schools and you see teachers reinforcing paper feathers and headbands— this kind o f generic approach to what Native Americans are, and all this looked at as in the past, not the present. It’s absolutely appalling to have Native children’s identity projected like that in school. There are over 500 tribes o f Native Americans in this country, and there are 250 reservations, each with their own culture, their own kinship to the land. Each culture is developed around the land that nurtures them and provides for them. When I moved here and married my husband, as an Ojibwa Cree from the Midwest I had no clue about the ocean and the connection that the Shinnecock people have with their land here. So as a Native American, I m yself was clueless about this culture and how important and valuable their connection to the water was. I didn’t eat a lobster or a crab. But on the same token, people here had no clue about what wild rice is. Wild rice is our sacred food. Going to a Native American school helped me to understand that the world is much bigger than just my tribe, my clan and the group that I lived with. But many teachers don’t know the differences in the dress, in the food, in the lodgings. The look of what Native Americans are that is reinforced by Hollywood and reinforced by television, is always the Plains Indians— the big headdresses and feathers. Hollywood has reinforced that stereotype. Books have constantly reinforced the stereotype. People see me and if I told them I’m a Native American, they believe me, because I look like the stereotype. They see my son— they believe him, because he looks like it. They meet my husband, and they don’t believe necessarily that he’s a Native American. And that’s a horrible experience. It’s a horrible


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experience for our young people here. These kids have been bom and raised on this reservation. Their parents were bom and raised, their greatgrandparents. Shinnecocks have never been moved from their land. This is their original land base. My people, the Ojibwas, migrated from the East into the West. A lot o f the tribes migrated west. This is their [the Shinnecocks’] original land base. So it’s difficult for our kids to be validated all the time, and it makes me furious when someone questions their identity. First you wanted to assimilate Native Americans and make them like everybody else. Then you wanted Native Americans to move off o f their lands. Now you want to say, well, you’re not a Native American any more. It makes me furious. “Collaboration ” versus “Inclusion. ” I think that oftentimes “inclusion” has a way o f excluding, because in the process o f including somebody you’re making a place for them instead of collaborating, which acknowledges that everyone who sits down at a table has something to offer, and with that more value is brought. With inclusion there often is the assumption that the group already exists. [With] the process o f collaboration, the group does not exist unless we collaborate together. Nobody preexists. It’s a different language, a new language, but to me it sounds a lot warmer than “diversity.” I’m scared of “diversity— “diversity task force.” That means they need me because I’m an Indian. And if I don’t go, then the diversity piece o f it is gone. I think we have to value the many cultures that make up our world. I truly believe that the Creator never made any mistakes— that all o f us were put here, and we have to learn to live and take care o f this land that we live on. And we’ll grow from each o f our cultures. And it’s not just about education. It’s about nurturing our world and providing for the generations that are coming— your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren. And that’s also a part o f Native culture that’s a good piece to share— to think seven generations down the road, and to think deeply about the effects our decisions have on our children and our great grandchildren. And I think education is an ideal vehicle to raise healthy children in our world o f many different cultures, It’s powerful. For me, it’s my life’s work. I will never stop doing this. On the Success o f the Shinnecock Indian Education Program. At one point we had a [high] dropout rate and we had kids that were not succeeding in school. Having worked here [Shinnecock Indian Education Program] now for about twelve years, w e’ve eliminated the dropout rate. We have eliminated the hugely failing test scores. All kids are pretty much passing. We know for a fact that providing programs like this moves the


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kids [forward] and helps them to have self-identity. A lot o f it is in the affective domain. You see the change in behaviors in school. You see that they’re more attentive because they value who they are. So by reinforcing cultural things, by providing education and knowledge about areas that could be devastating to them, you are actually making them stronger. But that’s also [true] for all kids. This model could work in any community in helping kids to do better for their community. Because w e’re reinforcing identity all the time. W e’re looking at the individual child and individual needs. But it’s difficult because there’s inherent bureaucracy that takes place in getting a curriculum to kids. And ultimately it’s standard-driven— everything is standards-driven. And the question will always be how best do you get the kids to be able to pass the test? Is it necessary to teach about other cultures? Is it necessary to develop collaboratives? Or is it more necessary that as a teacher my kids all pass the Regents exams? I believe that you can do both. It does take work, and teachers work extremely hard. They work very hard trying to get their kids from point A to point B. But it takes a lot more work to really look at the curriculum and have the experience o f learning be o f value to the kids as well as passing the Regents. We can really bring out some very powerful young people o f all cultures into the world ... so that we can raise a generation o f people that will not repeat the atrocities that have happened, that will be aware when they’re looking at our world, how to look at things from a different perspective. As the children were about to arrive from Southampton to attend the after school program, we ended our conversation, and I moved next door to the wing o f the Family Preservation Center that houses the Senior Nutrition Program, which provides hot lunches for Shinnecock senior citizens. I met here with Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock, a lawyer and an elected member o f the Southampton School District. As the lunch for the day was finished being served, we sat down in the now empty, sun filled dining area to talk about her memories of schooling and thoughts on education today.

Conversation with Roberta Hunter, November 17. 2004 Memories o f Schooling. I did not go to the schools out here in Southampton. I lived both in Queens and here, so I went to P.S. 52, Junior High School 231, and Springfield


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Gardens High School. So, in that sense, I had an urban experience. And the reality is that most Native Americans live in urban areas and not on reservations. It’s particularly interesting for me because growing up, I certainly was the only Native person— Shinnecock person— I knew that was in P.S. 52, and this was in the ‘50’s. You didn’t even have a category called “Indian.” It was “White,” “Negro,” and “Other.” And I remember always having to articulate that I was an “Other” to my teacher in my grade schools— that I was not the “White” and I was not the “Negro,” that I was the “Other.” [When] I had to give an oral history o f who I was, where Shinnecock was, to a room full o f mostly white people, they would look at me— this brown girl with thick braids— and listen to my explanation. And they were all very intrigued by my story and then would say, “But you’re still a Negro, aren’t you?” And certainly in those days anything that started with an American history lesson started with the arrival o f the pilgrims, and maybe one line about the helpful Indians towards the first Thanksgiving, and that was the end o f it. There was no sense o f any contemporary, alive presence o f an indigenous person. And I think [this] cultivated my own resourcefulness. The school, the class, the teachers weren’t getting the information about what I knew to be the truth—that I did exist and my family did exist, this territory existed, this is where I came, this is where I spent all my significant time, this is where my holidays were, this is my identification. I knew all of this to be true, and they were not forthcoming about validating that to be true. So for me, it really just developed into a resourcefulness that required that I had to take the extra time to do my own reading and research and put together my own narrative. It was always a challenge. I’m 53 years old and I still feel that [I’m] always in that daily challenge. Things are very different now. In 1956 the country was still talking about legalized segregated schools in the United States. What was going on politically and historically with Native Americans in all o f that? A lot of things have really changed considerably. There are images that are available for younger people now that were not when I was a child. So it was lonely in that regard. It was a very lonely and isolating experience. But again, I want to use the word resourcefulness because it w asn’t as though the loneliness and isolation were negative. I think I was able to turn all that into my own self-empowerment. Being able to stand and tell one’s story is an important thing to be able to do. So that’s what I learned in that type o f environment, which I found to be hostile, non-supporting, not validating. It did not move me to retreat, to withdraw. It motivated me to excel. I have a B.A. in anthropology, I have a master’s in public administration, and I have a Doctor o f Laws. I’ve never had a Native American teacher in any o f those experiences. [I learned] not to expect that


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there was going to be validation o f who I was from the outside— that had to be my internal thing that I had to grow with and develop, but it wasn’t going to be coming from the outside. Thoughts on Education Today. “I t ’s Still a White M a n ’s Lockdown. ” I think it’s changed considerably. First o f all, you have more Native American people who are professional people. You have more Native American teachers. We have a group o f Native American teachers in this community. They’re dealing with diverse classroom populations. They come from their own experience o f having to get their credentials, of learning, going through that process, and then bringing all o f that experience in front o f their classroom. And they’re faced with the 4th grade curriculum every year. You still have a paradigm that is basically a white, male oriented narrative [of] the history o f the United States. It’s “HIS story”— it’s the white man’s story. That paradigm hasn’t changed yet. We haven’t made that profound shift in this society and in this culture, and I think that’s very unfortunate. And as long as that’s in place, there’s always going to be this tension to fit that other story in, to get the other perspective. Even with the dramatic kinds o f social changes that occurred over the last fifty years, in my lifetime, really dramatic social transformations that have occurred in this country—but still, gosh, it’s still a white m an’s lockdown. W ho’s the master of the tools? Native people weren’t doing the writing. They were the people who were being studied. And so other people were doing the writing. Those that have access are the ones who control the information. I think that there have certainly been very big changes in how that story is being told. Are there improvements to be made? Absolutely. But I think that it’s not starting out the way it was [when I was in school] as a total negative— nothing being said. Because there’s just too much information that’s out there now, and people have access to the information. Movies have changed. TV has changed. So it’s not starting in the same place, and that’s a good thing. But is there still a long road that we need to be on in terms o f what I’m calling “equity narrative?” I think there still is a long way to go. I used to think that I was going to be able to see this in my lifetime, that paradigm shift, but I’m not thinking any longer that I’m going to see it in my lifetime. So until we really get to some of those issues about getting that access— to be able to write your own narratives— that’s when you’re going to have the profound change. Until then you work with the contradictions to still be


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successful, to still remain positive with the young people in your community— and that really is the ultimate goal. My last conversation this day was with Marguerite Smith, Shinnecock, a lawyer I had met earlier that autumn at the annual conference o f the Native American Indian Education Association o f New York (NAEA/NY). This conference was held on Long Island for the first time and hosted by the Shinnecock and Unkechaug Nations and the school districts, Southampton and Center Moriches, in which Long Island’s two reservations are located. Marguerite and I met again for a conversation in early evening, sitting in the front pew o f the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church, which is the “oldest continuous reformed Indian Church in the United States” (Shinnecock Nation website).

Conversation with Marguerite Smith, November 17, 2004 Memories o f Schooling. I’m 55 years of age. I was bom here [at Shinnecock]. My own Native American education comes from my mom and my mom ’s family. My dad had some Indian blood in him but was not really reared to be an Indian, if you will. I went to public schools in New York City, but I was here all summer, most every summer, and long weekends and the big holidays of the American calendar [and] o f the Shinnecock calendar. We were not always here for Indian Thanksgiving, but we knew that my grandmother was making it. My maternal grandmother was here. My mom still lives in that house and will tell the stories of being seven years old and nailing the nails in the shingles. One thing I knew was that being a Shinnecock Indian meant being interested in the world. Having a deep sense o f heritage, a deep sense of self, and one’s place in heritage, but also a deep sense o f curiosity about the world. That’s the way I was reared. So why do I say all that? The paths to learning in the Shinnecock household were both experiential, oral and through the written word. Books, bibles, and newspapers were very much a part of the households of Shinnecock people with limited formal education. Academic learning as well as learning about our natural world and learning through the oral traditions were all part o f my culture and felt to me like they were part o f the Shinnecock culture, as I understood it.


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The summer learning, the Easter time learning— you came [to Shinnecock] in the spring break, and this is before the trees [were] too full. Mom would take us to the woods, into the brush, and she’d say, “This is this kind o f plant you can eat, and you can’t eat that, and this is going to grow in the summertime.” And so we walked all around here in the fields. And then you went to every house and visited all o f your elders. And you learned from them. Learning was good. Academic inferiority never crossed my mind, and I never thought that I was inferior to others. I never thought that my learning ability was less than the learning ability o f non-Indian people or that my achievement goals should be less than theirs. My whole public school education was in New York City. School in New York City started immediately after Labor Day. Well, Labor Day was our powwow time. We were on Shinnecock for the powwow and then we returned to the City for school. So my show-and-tell was always the powwow. And they always thought it was fascinating. The teachers would say, “Well, how was the powwow?” I was the Native teacher. And I think that’s something that still burdens many. W e’re always the Native teacher. I probably was “smart-alecky” enough to enjoy it, to use the experience to develop my speaking skills. You got tired o f it at various times, but this [was] long before the age o f political correctness and diversity training and everybody having to be “aware.” I’m sure I was one o f the only Natives in my classes or at least I was generally the only one to speak up about my Native heritage. Thoughts on Education Today. Ask a teacher to invite somebody to speak on Indians in April, please. October through November, you get all the speaking engagements in the world, and then you’re gone from the map again. In terms o f messages: One: we should be across the curriculum. Two: education sometimes seems to lack a clear sense o f time and place. Thanksgiving— you would have had a Thanksgiving at whatever was your harvest time, which may have been October and November or may have been, depending on your crop, another time. Understand, too, that Native people give thanks all the time. So our June meeting is as much o f a Thanksgiving as our fall harvest time. This association with one fall thanksgiving is somewhat artificial. The other thing for me about Indian education is we’ve got to be frozen in time. W e’re fixed in time, and we are not Indian if we can’t fit someone’s construct— if we don’t fit the image that’s been placed in a book. And so to me the curriculum designers have to bear much o f the responsibility. Why should it fall onto the parents of a particular [group] that they’ve always got to catch the stereotyping? Don’t you know that Indians were achieving? Don’t you know that Indians were contributing?


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And for the most part, you sense that the answer is: “I don’t care.” This is when w e’re doing Indians. They’re not people; they are subject matter. As a follow up to our conversation, Marguerite emailed me the follow ing message: I think my major themes are—Native Americans, and what we were doing at any point in time— were basically omitted from the curriculum as I recall it. I didn’t even mention to you how much I absolutely hated my junior and senior high school classes in American history because they just didn’t seem to be “about me and my kin”— that we were living breathing, and yes— adapting— people throughout the course o f American history.... I’m confident that improved teaching about Native Americans will enhance the achievement levels and aspirations o f young Native Americans, will result in better educated non-Natives, and will lead to improved understanding and working relations in schools, workplaces and the regional, social and economic life. Conversation with Robin Weeks, December 9. 2004 In December I drove the short distance from Adelphi University where I work to Nassau Community College to visit with Robin Weeks, who serves as Associate Director of Admissions there. Robin is a former tribal trustee o f the Shinnecock Nation, and a frequent presenter on Indian Education and the topic o f college preparation for Native youth. Memories o f Schooling. A couple o f things really stick out in my mind with respect to being bussed from Shinnecock to Southampton. For the most part, I think I had a fairly good experience going through the Southampton public school system. But two things stand out for me. One that really stands out for me is the fact that there was such a great disparity with respect to income. I came from a very poor background. We had no money at all really to speak of. One o f the words that I use when I talk to students and give presentations is the word “penury,” and I didn’t even know that word until I started trying to understand the nature o f poverty, and penury is extreme poverty. That’s the background that I came from. My family was extremely poor. We had no running water in our household. We had no central heating. We had an outdoor pump. We had a potbelly stove that we used for heating. My mother would chop wood.


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We would get coal that would last about a week or maybe two weeks out o f the month, because my mother was on Social Services. After we ran out o f coal we would bum newspapers or old clothing. We had an outdoor pump, so we would have to go outside and pump water and bring it inside. Then in the morning, it would have frozen so that it had to be placed on the stove after the fire was made so that we could wash up before we even went to school. We had no indoor plumbing, so we had an outhouse, although my mother would keep a pot in one room in the far reaches o f the house that you could use also. I think back on this now, and it seems like it was a different world in a different country growing up, but that’s the state that we lived in. Oftentimes we would run out o f food halfway through the month. I started hunting at an early age because it was a part o f my culture. I had uncles and cousins who hunted, and they passed that down as part o f tradition. But also certainly when we were growing up, it used to help out with the food bills when there was nothing else to eat. But through all o f that, my mother was a very strong-willed person. She kept us going, and even though we grew up in extreme poverty, she tried to pass on to us the importance o f education. And through my teenage years, when I was doing things maybe that I shouldn’t have been doing, like drinking and fighting and doing really self-destructive, negative things, in the back o f my mind, I always felt that there was a way out. And I knew that education somehow was going to be helpful to me. On East End Economic Disparities. I talked about the disparity between Shinnecock and going into the Southampton school district because on the outside o f Shinnecock, across the water, down Montauk Highway, you have multi-million dollar homes. O f course, you have regular homes also, but we live in an area where there are multi-million dollar homes just across the water, just around the comer. And also there were middle-class families in the Southampton school district that I thought were rich because they had everything that you’d want in a home and clothing. That was my situation, but most o f the people on Shinnecock were going through difficult times. So to go from Shinnecock into Southampton, we would see and feel the disparity. I had one person in school ask me why I [wore] the same pair o f pants every day. And even though I don’t think this person was being malicious, it certainly sticks out in my mind. Early Inspirations. There were a couple o f individuals along the way that inspired me in addition to my mother, who was very inspirational. I had a 5th grade


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teacher who I felt really cared about everyone— every individual, every person— and she was the only teacher that I remember coming to the Shinnecock Indian Reservation to visit, and she came twice to take myself and one o f my cousins fishing. And she certainly made an impression on me, and she tried to convey the message that education is important—that every human being is important as well. I’ve always said, and I believe this, that it only takes one person who takes a strong interest in another individual to have a positive influence on that person. It only takes one individual, one educator, to make a difference in a person’s life. And sometimes you’re fortunate to have more than one, but you only need one to help a person move in the right direction. On C olum bus’s “Discovery. ” I talked about poverty as one o f the disparities that stands out for me growing up. The second thing that stands out for me is to hear that Columbus discovered America. Now you can imagine that probably for most people in the United States that was taken as a given, that Columbus discovered America. But for me I always felt uncomfortable hearing that from teachers and from other students. And I felt uncomfortable, I think, because I knew my history. I knew that we went back thousands o f years on Long Island, long before Christopher Columbus decided to make his journey to look for India and ended up coming to the Caribbean and calling the Native people Indians. So even though I couldn’t really formulate the reasons for feeling uncomfortable, I knew that we were here already. O f course, as an adult, I understand that you cannot discover people that are already there, that he may have initiated an encounter with other peoples, but he did not discover America. But as a child growing up, I always felt uncomfortable hearing that in history lessons. And now I’m better able to articulate the reasons why I felt that way and explain to people that certainly Columbus did not discover America. We were here for thousands o f years before the encounter with Europeans. Thoughts on Education Today. I think most people don’t realize that there are two nations on Long Island that are recognized by the State o f New York (the Shinnecock and Unkechaug). The Shinnecock have an annual Labor Day powwow, where we invite everyone, not just Native people. We invite all people to come and share our culture with us. And we get about 30 thousand people a year over the course o f the Labor Day weekend, which is a wonderful thing, because we do get to share our culture and our history with everyone. And I think that helps people recognize that we still exist, w e’re still here, and w e’re trying to do good things for our community and the nation as a whole.


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On Testing. I think in most o f the country, certainly in New York State, there’s been an emphasis in recent years on testing. And with such a tremendous emphasis on testing, I think you have assembly line education as opposed to being able to address individual needs and concerns. And I think that’s been to the detriment o f education as a whole. And it’s really disappointing to see, because I really don’t believe that testing is what education is all about. If testing were the sole basis upon which we were evaluated, then I probably would not have had an opportunity to go to Syracuse University and get a bachelor’s degree in psychology, because I didn’t do that well on my standardized tests. There were reasons for that, most o f them self-inflicted, but certainly there are other cultural reasons for that. I wasn’t prepared for the SATs the way I should have been. But if that were the only way that I could get into college, then I wouldn’t have been there. And in fact, I even had a guidance counselor that told me that I shouldn’t go to Syracuse University. But I was accepted at Syracuse, went through a support service program, and I graduated from Syracuse with a 3.02 GPA with a bachelor’s in psychology, and I graduated from Hofstra [in Counseling] with a 3.8 GPA, when many people believed that that was not the direction that I would be going at all. And so, you know, the assembly line educational stance that’s being perpetuated maybe is to the detriment o f many individuals. Maybe 80% o f the people can handle it, but you’re always going to have a [percentage] that needs more individualized assistance and understanding. And hopefully people are beginning to recognize that. And I have to tell you in recent years, when I was coming up and before my generation (I graduated in 1974), there were not many Shinnecock children that graduated from high school, and certainly not many at all that went on to college. In recent years we have many o f our students now graduating from high school and are in fact going on to college. On American Mythology. On one level, I think as a nation w e’re intrigued with folklore— the Wild West and old war stories and so forth. But I think on another level, if you address Native Americans, especially on Long Island, as if they lived [only] in the past, then you don’t have to address the needs, the concerns, the rights that we have as people who are here in the present. So it’s a way to not really have to deal with those issues, which is unfortunate. One message that seems to be passed on through the ages by mainstream media in America is that you always hear this discussion about the last o f a


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particular nation - the last o f the Mohicans, for instance— is probably the most well-known one. But there’ve also been articles— the last Shinnecock full-blood Indian just passed away, and I think you hear these things periodically. What does that mean? What they’re trying to convey is the message that that particular nation, that particular group o f people no longer exist, when in fact those types o f statements [are] completely misleading. I think it was a way o f trying to place Native Americans in the past as opposed to dealing with the fact that they are still here. [We] still have rights and privileges. We still own land, we still have issues and concerns that have to be addressed, but o f course if [we] no longer exist, then you don’t have to deal with [us]. Native Culture and the Curriculum. I think one o f the first things is do away with the fact that Columbus discovered America. That statement alone means that there was someone who was superior— he discovered something, he’s of great importance, and what he discovered is o f less significance than the person who actually discovered it. I think somehow you have to begin including in text books and in discussions that Columbus may have initiated contact with two cultures with two peoples, and then you put them on equal footing as cultures, as individuals. I think that’s the first thing that has to be addressed. But also I think in addition to that you can discuss Native American contributions more than just around Thanksgiving time, which is when it usually takes place. You have Black History Month, but o f course African Americans have made contributions throughout the course o f history, and one month is not enough to discuss those contributions. Well, certainly Thanksgiving is not enough to discuss the contributions that Native Americans have made to this country. Everyone agrees for the most part that the Constitution probably is based upon the Iroquois Confederacy. Many o f the contributions that are at the forefront o f major political issues are based upon Native American culture. Environmental concerns [have] always been something that Native Americans have tried to address and deal with because we are a part o f nature. But I also feel that the social issue o f whether or not people are important is central to Native American culture. What I mean by this is that oftentimes in the progressive country you can be caught up in monetary gains and materialistic goods as opposed to the well-being o f each human, the well-being o f individual persons, and I think that [Native] culture is based upon the well-being o f every single person in the community. And I think that’s central to any democratic country, any democratic government—the well being o f every person and not just the well being o f a select, privileged group. And I think we have to


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keep that in mind as we move through this next ten years, next hundred years. The Future. You know, for many years, probably I would say 15 or 20 years, up until just the last few years, I really felt like there was a major change taking place in this country with respect to how Native Americans were being viewed, how they were being treated. That there was a concerted effort on the part o f school districts and on the part o f colleges to include the history o f Native Americans as it was, not as it had been taught for so many years in the United States. Unfortunately, I think, in the last couple o f years I’ve also felt like there’s been some regression with respect to how Native Americans are being viewed again. I don’t really have any concrete evidence that that’s the case, because I still see Native American courses being taught. I still see districts trying to understand the history o f Native Americans, in particular on Long Island, but in recent years it seems like there’s been some regression with respect to Native Americans and the importance o f Native Americans and the culture o f Native Americans and what they bring to the United States. It goes back to what we discussed earlier in the session— that most people don’t even realize that there are two Native American nations on Long Island that are recognized by New York State. So when most people think o f diversity they think o f African American or Latino or even Asian [peoples]. But certainly not Native Americans. So what has to happen, I think, with every respective college and university is that that college or university has to make a concerted and conscientious effort to recruit Native Americans on Long Island. And that means talking to the people, the right people, providing assistance, financial and maybe even academic. I have hope because right now we have many people from our nation attending college who are beginning to have an understanding o f education, o f politics, o f economics, of law, and we are now branching out. For instance, I’m here working at Nassau Community College. I come in contact with a great many people here and I’m hoping to act as an ambassador to Shinnecock in addition to playing my role as Associate Director o f Admissions. They go hand in hand. And there are other individuals who have gone on to law school, medical school, have become teachers. This is happening all over the United States, admittedly at a very slow pace, but it is happening nonetheless, where more and more Native Americans are becoming educated, and they’re having more contact with the dominant culture. And I think that will ultimately have a positive impact on how people perceive Native Americans and discussions [will


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take] place around how education should be implemented. So I do have hope that positive things will happen and are happening. Conversation with Dennis King. January 15. 2005 I drove out to the Shinnecock Museum on a bitter cold afternoon early in the new year to meet artist Dennis King o f Shinnecock, who brought several pieces o f his artwork to talk about before driving me around the reservation and its neighboring coastline. Dennis’ work has been shown in local galleries and won awards at competitions on Long Island and elsewhere on the East Coast. His carvings range from traditional scrub brushes made from white oak gathered in the nearby woods to shorebirds worked in the style o f Charles Sumner Bunn, one o f the world’s greatest decoy artists and great grandfather o f David Bunn Martine. In addition to woodcarvings of animals elaborated with carved antler, Dennis sculpts Native themes in alabaster, shell and soapstone. His work is memorable for its detail, graceful lines and especially, the life that seems to beat just below the surface o f the material. (See Appendix D for photographs o f Dennis King’s work.) On the museum’s lower floor he pointed out several family members’ photographs that are part o f the permanent exhibition. Samson Occum, the 18th century Mohegan preacher and founder o f Dartmouth College, is his great-great grandfather. With roots in both Long Island and Connecticut, it is clear that his heart lies with the woodlands and shores of Shinnecock Bay, the inspiration for his mostly self-taught art. I have excerpted below, in dialogue form, brief parts o f our tape-recorded conversation that relate to education. Most of our conversation was informal, unrecorded and involved viewing art, photographs and landscapes. Diane:

Earlier I had said I wanted to ask about your memories o f when you went to school, and you said you didn’t go to school down here. Where did you go to school?


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Dennis:

In New York. A lot o f people from Shinnecock, they lived in the City and they worked, because there was no work around here, and then they came home.

Diane:

During the summer and the holidays?

Dennis:

Yes.

Diane:

You were in school then in New York City. Were you the only Native person in your class? Did people ever talk to you about what it’s like to be [a Native person]?

Dennis:

No, because I never told them. There was never... no.

Diane:

In American history, did they ever talk about the Native experience?

Dennis:

No, never. Never learned [about it.] Only thing was Thanksgiving— the Pilgrims and that was about it.

Diane:

And Columbus?

Dennis:

Yes.

Diane:

Did you find that awkward?

Dennis:

No, no.

Diane:

It didn’t bother you?

Dennis:

No, no.

Diane:

Thinking about education today, would this be a good thing to try to address?

Dennis:

Oh, yes, yes. You know, [I have] a different point o f view now than when I was younger. You don’t think about it when you’re younger.

Diane:

If I were to tell teachers what Native people feel is important to know ...

Dennis:

If they want to teach? That Shinnecock is still [here]. They practice their culture here still. It’s a small place now, but it used to be a pretty big place— and how it was taken away from them, and how they were treated.


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At this point in the conversation, Dennis talked about his memories o f clamming by the inlet and how times have changed— how the Shinnecocks’ land base has grown smaller, as developers encroached on their territory. In answer to my questions about the geography o f the reservation, he offered to take me around the grounds. The remainder o f our conversation took place while driving through the reservation’s lands, which provides views o f the ever-present waters o f Shinnecock Inlet through trees now bare of summer leaves. Perhaps this drive is a fitting conclusion to this chapter, as our route took us past many o f the places where earlier conversations had taken place. Starting out at the Shinnecock Museum, which had been the site o f so many shared events and conversations over the past two years, we drove down the main road and past the powwow grounds. Turning west toward the cemetery, we drove past the oldest section, where his grandparents are buried, and up toward the bluff where earlier that summer Tonya Bess Hodges and Elizabeth Haile had shared with me the special nature of that site. As we left the cemetery, he pointed out the gravesites o f his parents and friend Norman Smith, the Shinnecock artist who had first taught him to carve. His own carved crosses now mark their graves. He speaks o f walking from the cemetery along the nearby shoreline collecting buckets o f clams along the way. These local clams— the “quahag”— are not only used for eating, but also for their vibrant violet and white shells worked in the creation o f “wampum,” part o f an ancient and sacred artistic tradition among Shinnecock artists such as Dennis. We drove down the road running east past the Old Presbyterian Church where Marguerite Smith and I had talked into the evening. He pointed out to me that the old part o f this church had at one time been moved across the ice from Hampton Bays to its present location. We passed the Family Preservation Center across the street where my


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conversations with Sherry Blakey Smith and Roberta Hunter had taken place. As we drove farther, past Mrs. Haile’s house, he pointed out the homes o f friends and relatives and the shell o f an abandoned hotel where former Secretary o f State Colin Powell used to stay. We looked at his late mother’s home, which he tenderly cares for as though she were still alive. We left the reservation grounds by a back road that leads onto old Montauk Highway farther east than the main entrance by the museum. We had to take this roundabout way to reach a piece of coastline that was once accessible by foot from the reservation. He spoke o f how in wintertime he could walk along Shinnecock Inlet collecting frost fish and scallops left by the tide along the way. But now the county has built a “permit-only” park, and the rest o f the coast is private property, so he can no longer walk this way and I could tell he misses that. We drove east and then south in order to reach the road through the dunes across the bay, now filled with multi-million dollar mansions. Like feudal castles, their front entrances face the reservation while their backyards hold somewhat fruitless sway against the relentless erosion o f the Atlantic. I wondered in passing what crosses through the minds o f the Shinnecocks’ wealthy neighbors when they look through their many gabled windows at the reservation across the bay. Do they ever wonder about the people living there? Has their education provided them with the capacity to understand these ancient people who are working so hard for their own futures against sociocultural forces far more insidious than the Atlantic? In the next chapter I will relate further conversations with a variety of Shinnecock and non-Native educators to approach this question from several more perspectives before embarking on some answers.


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Chapter V CONVERSATIONS: PART TWO

“Oh Mom, look at all these Indians!” —Overheard at American Museum o f Natural History Exhibit (January 29, 2005) Leaving the elevator on the third floor o f New York’s American Museum of Natural History, I stand before a yellow sign marked: Primates— Ahead to Eastern Woodlands Indians Plains Indians Pacific Peoples North American Birds African Mammals From the center o f that dimly lit room, I can see in the near distance a long green sign marked “Eastern Woodlands Indians.” The passage takes the visitor through an eerie sequence o f primates, some frozen in naturalistic poses hanging from trees, others just bodiless heads, all depictions o f the museum’s familiar evolutionary story. Crossing the threshold from animal to human, I enter the Hall o f the Eastern Woodlands Indians. Here depictions o f the forebears o f such peoples as the Shinnecock are on display. Life-sized mannequins and disembodied heads stare out from vacant eyes. The accompanying text shows a preoccupation with garment and headdress. As I turn a comer, elders appear—both men and women— their wrinkled, brown-tinted, and artificial bodies frozen behind glass cases, and I am reminded o f James Luna’s (1987)


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work, The Artifact Piece, in which he enclosed himself in a glass case in San Diego’s Museum o f Man to demonstrate the objectification o f Native cultures. As I move into the “Plains Indians” room, I hear a young boy shout, “Oh, Mom, look at all o f these Indians!” No wonder the boy is excited. Along with the life-sized mannequins, the museum has arranged small, toy-like figures, the familiar playthings of childhood, in a circle to depict the Sun Dance. Like the protagonist from G ulliver’s Travels, I tower over these tiny figures, trying without success to feel moved to an understanding o f this sacred cultural event, still alive today in the West. I hear a woman’s voice from around another comer, perhaps the boy’s mother, say, “That’s a cool pipe” and am awakened from my thoughts. Looking at my watch, I realize I must begin to make my way down to the museum’s first floor to attend an event at the Kaufmann Theater. I have come to the museum on this day in late January to attend a film showcase, part o f a series entitled, “Living in America: The American Indian Experience.” Several weeks earlier, Mrs. Haile had sent me information about this event, as her short film, Native American Neighbors (2003), was being shown along with the trailer to a full-length Shinnecock documentary still in production— The Last Piece. Filmmaker Karola Ritter and journalist Ali Hunter Joseph, Shinnecock, represented Mrs. Haile during the discussion period preceding and following the showcase. The two Shinnecock films screened at the museum that day tell the story of community life on the Shinnecock Reservation and contemporary political battles regarding rights and land ownership. After my visit upstairs, I was encouraged to experience the museum’s support o f living Native perspectives and the alternate depictions o f culture and history so powerfully represented via film and discussion. The audience responded enthusiastically to the films and asked thoughtful questions of the


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presenters regarding their culture, many expressing surprise to learn that Long Island was still home to Native peoples. Listening to the audience’s comments, I was reminded o f my own childhood on Long Island, where visits to the American Museum o f Natural History were much anticipated family or school events culminating in a visit to the Hall o f Reptiles, with its mammoth display o f dinosaur bones. I remember visiting the Indian rooms and viewing the glass enclosed mannequins, which appeared to my child’s mind as just other examples o f extinct and exotic species— interesting, but not as exciting as the dinosaurs. Somehow teachers in those days always felt a visit to these rooms was an important part o f our education. But my experiences are dated— I attended public school on Long Island in the 1960s and ‘70s. How do today’s teachers introduce their students to Native cultures and histories? *

*

*

Upon re-reading my impressions of the Hall o f Eastern Woodlands Indians, I am left wondering if my descriptions are biased, especially in light o f the museum’s efforts to involve contemporary Native peoples and productions in its educational outreach programs. The morning after writing the above paragraphs, I logged onto the museum’s website in search o f other perspectives to reconcile these two opposing impressions— the voyeuristic message of the glass cases versus the engaging o f complex issues through contemporary programs featuring living Native artists and educators. On their “Resources for Learning” link, I found a more multi-layered message. Several documents were easily accessible to help orient teachers before, during, and after their visit to the museum. They included a six-page guide that grapples with the complexities involved in teaching about Native peoples— from the problem with terminology to issues o f land rights, sovereignty, the spread o f disease and violence


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after European contact, and NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), among other issues. Educators are urged to discuss and critique the exhibits themselves with their students and to follow up the visit with such activities as inviting Native Americans from their community to speak with them. Another document called the “Ahkwesahsne Freedom School” describes a Mohawk community school, provides its website, discusses the complex history of Thanksgiving, and displays photographs o f Ahkwesahsne fifth and sixth graders with brief sketches o f their interests and future plans— bringing real Native children to life. After reviewing these documents, I wonder whether my first impressions, left unexamined, somewhat missed the mark of the museum’s range o f educational programs, which project a very different impression than the exhibit itself. So much, it seems, depends upon the viewer’s willingness to dig deeper. I still worry about the impressions o f glass case exhibits on the casual visitor or child unaccompanied by an educator prepared to help interpret the displays. The exhibit opened in 1966.1 must have been there in its early days. I wonder whether such guides were available back then. Do teachers today make use o f the resources available for them to address complex questions regarding Native cultures, or do the demands o f standards and standardization and “covering” the official curriculum rob them o f such opportunities?10 My visit to the museum and the above musings came just as I had completed the previous chapter. In this chapter, I will tell the story o f my efforts to learn more about how educators on Long Island currently teach and learn about the Native peoples of

10For further discussion regarding museum exhibits, see S. Blancke & C.J.P. Slow Turtle. “The Teaching of the Past of the Native Peoples of North America in US Schools” in P.G. Stone & R. MacKenzie (Eds.), The Excluded Past (1990), pp. 109-133, and M. Bal, Double Exposures (1996).


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their communities. This story involves both written and spoken communications by phone and in person with educators o f non-Native and Shinnecock origin. It began, however, quite traditionally— with surveys.

Spring 2003: Surveys My early efforts to understand how Long Island’s indigenous cultures and histories are addressed in today’s schools took the form of two brief surveys, which I created as starting points. As my own public school memories were bereft o f content knowledge regarding Long Island’s Native peoples, I wondered whether the teacher education candidates at Adelphi, many o f whom grew up on Long Island, had a similar lack o f exposure to the Native perspective. In spring 2003, with the help o f a colleague, I surveyed two sections o f his elementary level social studies methods course. The results provided a snapshot o f the issue. Over three-quarters o f the prospective elementary school teachers attending this required course reported their race as white, and that they had grown up on Long Island and were seeking teaching careers there. A similar percentage expressed little or no knowledge o f contemporary Native American life on Long Island or the existence o f two state-recognized Indian reservations. (See Appendix A for a copy o f this survey.) That same spring, despite the warnings o f colleagues regarding the difficulty of receiving responses from busy public school administrators and teachers, I mailed a questionnaire to the curriculum supervisors of 124 Nassau and Suffolk County school districts listed in their respective county directories for that year. My colleagues were right to warn me, as a majority of districts did not respond even after over 50 follow-up phone calls and re-sending o f the survey via fax.


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Despite a disappointing response rate,111 found the results o f the completed surveys informative because they showed a predominance o f “standards-based” language, particularly among the elementary level teachers. In other words, the teachers and administrators appeared to be answering my questions in a language reminiscent of official curricular rationales. Few respondents drew a connection between the study o f Native American history in the 4th grade social studies curriculum and the need for understanding multiple perspectives on history and preparing children for lives in a diverse world. Most frequently the presence o f Native culture and history in the curriculum was seen as fostering an understanding o f American pre-history, rather than contemporary life, or as a means to teach about concepts in economics and geography. My experience with the curriculum survey led me to wonder what teachers would say if given the opportunity to speak at length about these issues. I also began to question the “double standard” that was emerging from my method o f inquiry. Why was I using such an impersonal and instrumental method o f communication with non-Native teachers, while arranging in-depth conversations with Native teachers? I abandoned my attempt at compiling a “comprehensive profile” o f how Long Island’s public school educators teach and learn about indigenous cultures, and decided that my next step would be to sit down with some non-Native teachers for in-depth conversations. As Levittown was one of the school districts that had sent me multiple responses to the curriculum survey, I decided to start there. Perhaps in the back o f my mind was Levittown’s iconic stature as a prototypical suburban community.

11 Of the 124 surveys I sent, I received 41 individual responses, representing a total of 35 districts (28.2% district response rate).


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Levittown

Few communities in America are as easily recognizable by name as Levittown, New Y ork.... Levittown is the model on which scores o f post World War II suburban communities were based— a place that started out as an experiment in low-cost, mass-produced housing and became, perhaps, the most famous suburban development in the world. —From Levittown historicalsociety.org/history Established in 1947 by Abraham Levitt and his two sons William and Alfred, Levittown was built to provide modest and affordable homes for World War II soldiers and their families upon their return to Long Island during a housing shortage. By the early 1950s, Levitt and Sons, using techniques learned during the war, had massproduced over 17,000 homes, converting the former potato fields o f Hempstead Plain into a prototypical suburban housing development. In The Long Island Story (Sesso & White, 1997), a textbook cited by several of my respondent school districts, Levittown appears as an example o f the growth o f Long Island suburbs in the middle o f the last century: Large areas outside a city where many people live are called suburbs. Since World War II, suburban living has become a popular American lifestyle. By the early 1970’s, more Americans lived in suburbs than in large cities. There were many reasons for this. People wanted to get away from crowded city conditions. They felt suburban living meant better education and other opportunities for their families, (p. 141) On the next page o f this section, the authors laud shopping malls as places where there is “something for everyone” (p. 142). Difficult issues such as the racial segregation fostered by discriminatory real estate practices and the negative impact of


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shopping malls on small business owners and town centers are notable only by their absence.12 In April 2 0 0 4 ,1 met with four social studies educators— Todd and Dave, two middle school chairs, and Tonie and Steve, two high school chairs. Bob Davis, their Assistant Superintendent o f Curriculum, had graciously arranged a lunch meeting with his colleagues to help me with my dissertation research. As I approached the well-kept school building, surrounded by rows of Levitt houses, I wondered how these educators and curriculum leaders would respond to my inquiry into the absence o f the Native perspective in education today. My apprehension quickly dissolved, for in the midst o f this predominantly white suburban school district, I found educators eager to grapple honestly with the issue of curricular exclusion as well as the gaps in their own educational histories. I have excerpted portions our conversation below, following similar editorial choices described in the previous chapter.

Conversation with Social Studies Chairs of Levittown, NY School District, April 16. 2004 After describing my dissertation research, I asked the participants to discuss the ways in which they address local Native culture and history in their middle and high school classrooms. Dave:

The Native American curriculum is mostly in the 7th grade. After we do a little introduction, we get into the settlement o f North America. Over the years [there] used to be a tremendous focus on the Iroquois Indians.

12In his collaborative documentary project, Levittown: Images from a Cultural History, art historian Peter Bacon Hales quotes from a 1948 rental contract for a Levitt home as follows: “NOT TO PERMIT THE PREMISES TO BE USED OR OCCUPIED BY ANY OTHER PERSON OTHER THAN MEMBERS OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE” (tigger.uic.edu~pbhales/race.html).


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In fact for many years that was almost the whole course. But the curriculum has changed in that now it’s more a regional approach in that we had several different types o f Native Americans who settled North America— Plains Indians, Woodland Indians, Southwestern Indians. And I think it’s a very viable point that many teachers, including myself, don’t know enough about local Indian issues to even feel comfortable [teaching about such issues]. We have never even been educated much about [these issues]. I don’t know where it belongs in college education, but I think that it would be very interesting to teach teachers about it, so that they can share it with the students. I think the kids would really benefit learning about their own local people. They hear about local gambling casinos in Connecticut or the possibility o f one on Long Island— they don’t realize that there is a culture out there. But I think it has to start with the faculty, truthfully, and I don’t think the faculty knows very much about it, including myself. Tonie:

In high school— in global studies— we teach indigenous populations throughout history, and sometimes you can [use comparisons]. It’s difficult to do. The Israel/Palestine debate is where I talk about Native Americans. What if Native Americans wanted the land back? That gets them thinking. But American history— it’s basically to study the Plains Indians and the Trail o f Tears and the Indian Removal Act. It’s not really a cultural study in terms o f local Native [peoples]. It’s not in our curriculum in [the] high school level at all— in global studies. I don’t believe it has any prominent place in that curriculum at present other than how the government dealt with this— “problem” o f the people that were already here.13

Steve:

I teach global [history] as Tonie does, and I taught American [history] years ago. I think people o f my general age had very little education on the Native American. (Steve is 44 years old.) In fact this came up in my class recently. We were talking about de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, and I asked them to come up with some event from American history, which has been de-Stalinized in the general sense. And obviously I was hoping they would go to Indian genocide, which for the most part they did. W e’ve been De-Stalinized— people who are in their 30s to 50s. When we went through our educational process [genocide] didn’t exist except maybe for 20 minutes [when] the teacher told us,

13The New York State Core Curriculum in social studies consists of multiple units on United States and New York State History in 7th and 8th grades and multiple units in 9th-12th grades on global history and geography and United States history and government and grade 12 Economics.


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“Well, we treated the Indians poorly, and we broke a lot treaties and killed a bunch o f them,” and now [on to] the Reform Era or the Progressive Era. So it really is a gap for teachers, as Dave said, and a gap that is difficult to fill because so much o f what we do is driven by Albany.14 If Albany doesn’t say this is going to be a focus, then it’s hard for us to make it a focus. Todd:

I would agree. Even when I went to school, which was not as long ago as when Steven went to school, it was the same thing as now. And I don’t think that teachers really have any understanding o f local Native [peoples]. And I think the kids for the most part, at least by 11th grade, see it as a simply an “out West” kind o f a thing, even if you are surrounded by Native names. When I mention “Shinnecock Reservation,” kids have no idea what I’m talking [about] besides buying cheap cigarettes— that’s honestly the extent they know about the Shinnecock Reservation. So I think it will be very beneficial to set up workshops. But I agree with David that you really have to start with the teacher.

Dave

In the 7th and 8th grade books, the first unit, which is on Native Americans, goes into some detail [about] different cultures. But throughout American history, throughout the rest o f the book [and] in high school, they tend to have [a] “token” paragraph in each unit [about] what happened at that time period to Native Americans— which is always the fact that they were “in the way” and that the American government did terrible things and moved them off their land. But there is no real discussion o f their culture after the first chapter. It’s like they had a culture in the early days, and then it was gone— they never mention it again. It’s just isolated at that one time period, and that’s why it’s taught in the 7th grade in one place. Basically the rest o f it is tokenism in American History.

Tonie:

But to find a place for that is quite difficult. As Steve, said, the way we’re handcuffed by the State.

Steve:

And it’s an evolutionary dialectic— where [first] the genocide occurred, and then w e’re not going to, as a culture, institutionally look into the culture o f the people that we just devastated. I don’t think that it’s possible for us institutionally to look into their culture within the first century o f us wiping them out. I think it’s a progression. And then if we

14The New York State Department of Education is located in Albany, New York, the state capital.


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look down the road— I mean if we had a crystal ball, my guess is that in twenty years there will be a lot more. Tonie:

I don’t even know if that’s true because now that the legislation is before Congress that deals with social studies— that we should make the kids feel good about our country. So how much are they really going to allow us to say other than [as] an elective course, which the district can control? How much are they going to allow us to ask those kinds of questions? It’s a little scary when you think about [it] in that way.

A t this point in the conversation, I ask them where they each grew up. Steve:

Levittown— right here.

Dave:

Bellmore {another town in Nassau County, Long Island).

Tonie:

Levittown.

T odd

I’m from Huntington {a town in Western Suffolk County, Long Island).

Bob:

Bronx {a borough o f New York City).

Dave:

Oh Bronx— he’s a foreigner!

We discuss the ways in which the State curriculum could be enriched in the area o f Native Studies, and the difficulty o f the historian’s privileging o f written over oral histories and material artifacts, such as buildings, as signs o f great “civilizations. ” I ask them how they would fe e l about including Native educators and speakers as a way to address the inclusion o f Native cultures. Tonie:

My students— I think any student— would love to actually hear a Native [person] speak to them, who could answer questions that they might have. I think they would be very interested in that. I think they would be very interested in going to the Reservation, but not in a commercial way, because the powwow kind o f commercializes. If they could meet with people and could really talk to them, I think they would benefit by that because kids are very curious, as Steve says, about Native [peoples]. On Long Island they hear the Native names. When the U.S. Open was at Shinnecock there was a little smattering o f history that went along with that.15 So they’re curious. But you really have to make

15The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is the oldest golf course in the U.S. It rests on Shinnecock burial sites and until the mid-19th century, this land was part of territory “leased” for 1,000 years to the Shinnecock Nation. The tribal trustees have recently filed a land claim


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the effort to bring that to them because I don’t think they will do that on their own. Dave:

And I again want to reiterate that the teachers themselves, I think, have a very limited background and feel uncomfortable with it and need to be either exposed to more education about it or actually have people come and speak to them first before they speak to the kids. Because I think it’s just something that was lacking in college education that professionals didn’t learn, and I think that would be a great benefit.

Diane:

One last question about the state standards and the curriculum. Within the social studies curriculum there are also issues involving teaching diversity— “unity and diversity,” I think that’s how they phrase it.

Dave:

That’s ongoing in all grades in all curriculums in all subjects. It’s an ongoing topic that’s supposed to be taught from K to 12.

Tonie:

“One country and many people,” I think that’s the statement.

Diane:

How do you feel that works?

Dave:

Well, as I said before, the textbooks handle it [as] tokenism. They squeeze it into every chapter to be politically correct.

Tonie:

You can’t really do it! The truth is that we are burdening students with sound bites about other cultures that are not European. That’s really what w e’re doing. If you look at all o f our curricula, they all focus on how America or how the great powers were influenced by other groups. It’s not really a study o f the diverse cultures.

Steve:

I think you’re right because it’s a smattering. You talk about the ancient African kingdoms, and you do it for a very limited amount o f time just to show that cultures that existed prior to European contact did have value.

Tonie:

And that’s the question.

Steve:

That’s where it ends.

Dave:

Just to make sure that everybody realizes that everyone has values and everyone is good— it’s not just the Europeans. But it’s almost a joke because it’s so obvious that’s the point as opposed to actually teaching

suit against New York State for the return of the land represented in this lease, including Shinnecock Hills.


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about their cultures. How far are we going to go in talking about culture where it isn’t tokenism? Tonie:

We can’t do it in a year. The State put together a great curriculum about the Irish immigrants. It’s fantastic. It would take us three weeks to cover that curriculum. The best thing you can do is maybe a day on Irish history, if you can squeeze— two. There are a lot o f Irish kids in the school, so we do try to give them a little more because they bring something to it. We try to talk about Italian immigration in a little more depth because you try to go into cultures that are in your school. The kids are interested, and as Steve said, you try to make the connection when you can in the curriculum. But the reality is that you have to finish the curriculum. You have to. You can’t leave out the Cold War so that we can study Africa a little more— we can’t do it. So anything that we do that would be in any kind o f depth would have to be part o f an elective curriculum.

Dave:

It will definitely fit in, and wouldn’t be a burden. But unfortunately, we don’t right now have the resources or the knowledge to do it.

Bob:

You have this ongoing political problem whether you’re teaching “melting pot” or “diversity” because they are antithetical to one another. One is because we’ve all become Americans— w e’re all alike, but the other is we respect the differences that we come with. That’s a very touchy political subject for some places, and until 1960 unequivocally, you taught “melting pot.” And [when] you looked around you knew that a whole lot of people were not melted into the melting pot, but it didn’t matter—that’s what was taught— melting pot. And now you go back and forth with diversity or melting pot, and that’s a very difficult issue. And the Native American lobby is not a strong voice compared to some o f the other lobbies. You had some legislator pass a law that said w e’re required to teach about the potato famine in Ireland. That’s a law in this state. Why would anybody pass that law? Well, because they have a lobby, which is stronger than somebody else’s.

Tonie:

And there is a huge Irish American population.

Bob:

But that’s law. There is no law that says we have to teach about the mistreatment, the genocide or any part o f [Native American] culture. Because it’s not— it’s not woven into our system. It’s just not. It’s just an extra-added attraction, which was thrown in sometimes and sometimes [wasn’t].


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Steve:

The marginalization o f the Native people also, I think, has to do with the tools o f the historian in terms of written records, as Tonie said. In terms of what they’ve left behind.

A t this point, Steve talks about a book he has read, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1999). Steve:

His point, to some degree, is that these people have been marginalized by the tool o f the historian—by the fact [that] the historian needs to have a written record. He needs to see buildings, he needs to see technology [for a culture] to exist.

Tonie:

Yeah, all o f the elements o f civilization that we teach—

Steve:

Again, we judge cultures— they built roads, they built temples, they built pyramids. It’s not so much what they thought, or what they created artistically, but it’s what they built and left behind.

Tonie:

It’s the thought o f the human [that] is really what makes him special and unique in this world.

Steve:

Sure.

Tonie:

We need to think a little bit differently in terms o f what’s important as human beings, and not really the elements o f civilization that are in our curriculum. They [Native peoples] may not fit that paradigm. Just because they don’t fit that, it doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable. It certainly is.

The conversation ends with Todd asking me what my plans are in terms o f developing teacher workshops in this area. We also reminisce about our childhood memories o f stereotypical books and film s about Native peoples.

Cutchogue East Elementary School Later that summer I began the series o f conversations with the artists and educators from Shinnecock described in the previous chapter. The shared inquiry with Levittown social studies educators, however, had left me eager for further conversations with non-Native teachers. As I had by this point refined my topics to memories o f schooling and thoughts on education today, I decided to focus on similar


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themes with a second public school focus group. I was particularly curious to learn what elementary teachers had to say on the topic o f teaching and learning about Native peoples. That autumn I drove out to Cutchogue East Elementary School, where Principal Anne Smith, an innovative administrator concerned with supporting her colleagues’ professional development, had arranged a focus group with six o f her teachers. The drive out to Cutchogue took me through Suffolk County’s North Fork, not far from Orient Point and the ferry to Connecticut. The views couldn’t have been more different than the trip to Levittown. Whereas Levittown lies off Hempstead Turnpike, a dense industrial corridor, the journey to Cutchogue passed through picturesque farm stands and vineyards, all framed by the mild waters o f Long Island Sound, which lies between Long Island’s North Shore and Connecticut. In contrast to inland Nassau County, many o f the homes o f the rural North Fork are older and more reminiscent of New England than suburban Long Island. Perhaps this is how Hempstead Plain looked before the potato harvests failed and Levitt and Sons ushered in their new age o f mass production. Although the external appearance o f each district is very different, however, both the Mattituck-Cutchogue and Levittown Districts, like most o f the school districts on Long Island, have predominantly white student bodies and faculties.16 I pulled into the school’s parking lot, adjacent to a small field, parked my car a stone’s throw from an old tractor, and went inside.

16Based on Fall 2003 figures reported in NYS District Report Card, www.emsc.nysed.gov/repcrdfall2003, Mattituck-Cutchogue School District reports approximately 1,500 students, 95% white (non-Hispanic); Levittown School District reports approximately 8,000 students, 89.9% white (non-Hispanic).


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There were six participants in this focus group: three from the 4th grade— Donna, Clarissa, and Jeanne. They were joined by Sandra, a third grade teacher, Peg, their Science Coordinator, and Deborah, a Library Media Specialist.

Conversation with Teachers at Cutchogue East Elementary School. November 15. 2004 Beginning with my own memories, I opened the conversation by asking each teacher to recall what she was taught about Native Americans while in K-12 school, particularly Native peoples o f her local communities. Sandra:

I grew up in Port Jeff Station (Suffolk County), which is where we live now. I have no memories o f Native Americans. None. From 4th grade— none. And then thinking back to high school, it was a lot o f world history— a lot o f European history. I took a lot o f AP (advanced placement) courses and a lot of “man’s inhumanity to man,” but nothing of Native cultures— nothing that I can recall at least— no books being read, nothing.

Donna:

I grew up in Patchogue (Suffolk County). I have no recollection. I don’t even recall them being referred to [as] “Native Americans.” There [were] “Cowboys and Indians” [in] my recollection. The only memory I have is perhaps looking through a social studies textbook and seeing a picture o f the war, and seeing a Native American fighting, and that was my impression o f them. But I don’t ever recall making a connection to the Shinnecock or the tribes in Mastic. The most I had was playing “Cowboys and Indians” with my brothers in the backyard— that we did. But I don’t really recall hearing it in school, watching movies on it or anything like that.

Clarissa:

I grew up in Northern Westchester— that’s north o f New York City. Where I lived there was a lot of Native American history and a lot of names that are of Native American origin. But I also had almost no experience with it in school in a formal way, beyond the traditional. I am now 32 years old, so I was going through school in the elementary and middle school years in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I remember being aware of the movement away from the term “Indian” to the term “Native American.” But it was pretty much the traditional— “Thanksgiving” and “Squanto” and “Pocahontas” and a little bit o f a sense o f some really great injustice somewhere along the way, but certainly not exploring it deeply. And then I moved to southwestern Colorado a year after I


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graduated college, and that was an incredible awakening for me, because not only was I visiting and hiking and experiencing evidence of past Native American cultures, but they were all around me. And there was a reservation very close, the Southern Ute Reservation, and I was really mesmerized by that. I was running an after-school program out there, and I had students from the reservation who were members o f my after-school program, and it really awoke a whole part o f me that had not been educated at all to that point in time. And now I feel very strongly about a need to do things differently, to think about how social studies happens in the classroom and how that piece is woven in a very different way. Jeanne:

I grew up in Patchogue, so you would think I would have a lot of knowledge o f Native Americans. Absolutely none. I remember having teachers mention “Patchogue,” “Comsewogue,”— words like that— and those are Native American words, but not much beyond that. [In] my high school, we were the “Raiders,” so on all our helmets and everything were the Native Americans with the headdresses. So my whole vision o f Native Americans [was] the Plains Indians and teepees and that kind o f thing. I remember going in elementary school [to the] Museum o f Natural History. And the first time I saw a teepee and a long house, I thought all Native Americans lived in teepees. If I’m remembering it correctly, it was my father, who was a school principal, who realized something was missing there in my understanding of Native Americans, and he made a point o f bringing us to the Shinnecock Reservation and explaining it. But I still remember it as a kind o f a mysterious place, not quite sure what was back behind those trees and what their culture really was about, even though my parents tried. So— not much exposure, elementary or high school.

Peg:

I’ve been bom and raised in Cutchogue. My first experience with the Native Americans— we made a wigwam in third grade, and then the next year in fourth grade. But I have vivid memories o f my brother making the wigwam and then myself making a wigwam, and it was out in the woods with the twigs and the leaves and everything else. So bom and raised in Cutchogue, we at a very early age were introduced to the name and where it came from. I’ve always felt a very strong tie to my community and its heritage.

Deborah:

I grew up in Okalona, Mississippi, county o f Chickasaw. Okalona is a Choctaw word which means “bad water,” which is a kind o f a scary thought now, knowing how long I lived there. Our high school mascot [was] the “Chieftains,” and o f course it was the typical 1950s version of the Indian. My total educational experience in elementary school had to


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come from television. I watched every Western that there was. It was just the best storytelling that was on TV at the time, I guess. So that was my education o f Indians. [In] fourth grade, maybe going into fifth, we visited the Cherokee Reservation near Asheville, North Carolina. And I attended one evening an outdoor pageant called “Unto These Hills.” It’s still performed every summer there, and it is the Cherokees’ story. And I do remember going to see that and I do remember thinking, “So it’s not all about “Cowboys and Indians.” You know, I think that was maybe the first time that I had any awareness that these were really people and that they had a whole history themselves before we became “Cowboys and Indians.” But educationally up until that point, at least and probably on through my early teens, everything else was television and all the cowboy shows that were popular then. And I really didn’t even know too much about the Choctaw, the Cherokee. I’m sitting here, I can’t remember the group that lived in the area where I did grow up and go to school— I’d have to research it. I was in elementary school in the 1950s, and I finished high school in ’68, so— it’s embarrassing to say— it was strictly “Cowboys and Indians.” At this point in the conversation, most o f us having expressed a lack o f exposure to Native history and culture in our K-12 educational experiences, I ask the teachers to talk about how they prepare themselves fo r their own teaching in this area: Clarissa:

I have my student teaching experience and my graduate school experience overall to thank for that. (I went to graduate school at Bank Street College in the City.) I was in a classroom that spent an entire semester studying the Eastern Woodland Native American tribes, and in a really in-depth integrated manner. That taught me a tremendous amount. And then once you’re immersed in one area, it’s easier to follow the threads elsewhere and out. Then one piece o f my master’s thesis was to write a curriculum on the study o f the Haudenosaunee. So at that point I felt immersed, and I knew where to go for resources, and I had a mentor who had a tremendous wealth o f resources. But now I’m here, and I’m in a different community, and I’m thinking about teaching Native American history and culture. I’m really struggling right now with the enormity o f it and where to begin and where to go in the context of everything else that happens in fourth grade, but also doing it in a meaningful and integrated, significant way. And that’s one o f the reasons I’m excited to be here, because I’m not in touch with the resources here.

Peg:

I think one o f the frustrating things— even having been bom and raised in Cutchogue and Patchogue and immersed in all the nam es-is that finding the local history is difficult. You can go to the libraries and you


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can go online, and you can get everything about the Plains Indians typically, and even the Iroquois, but to find local [history is difficult]. A t this point Peg recalls in detail a Native American history course she took in graduate school. Peg:

After having a foundation [in] the fun part o f the Indians with the wigwams and such, to find a real, almost a developmental process that happened. I brought all o f that back to school, and we always started with the Bering Strait and always started with them coming down the West Coast. And to me that whole evolution o f that culture became so very intriguing aside from “Cowboys and Indians” and the Pilgrims. This one graduate course opened my eyes to a very intriguing history of the Indians, and then [I] brought that to the classroom. But I do think a real gap in Long Island is that local history piece.

Deborah:

I’m very interested in storytelling, and so over the past few years, I’ve been gathering for myself my own personal library o f Native American folklore.

Deborah discusses her admiration fo r the writings o f Native author Joseph Bruchac. Deborah:

H e’s got so many of these wonderful things that he’s worked out with activities and how to tie these Native American stories into the curriculum. And I think that’s the thing. I think the curriculum is just so overextended at this point. To work in very much is difficult, but I think his books have been just the best things that there are. I just don’t see a lot on Long Island Native Americans that appeals to the student. So I think as a librarian, I feel that the thing that’s been lacking is something that the teacher can actually use with the student and that the student will be interested in.

A t this point in the conversation I ask the teachers whether or not they have incorporated non-print resources in their teaching about Native peoples. They mention several efforts to make connections with local peoples as guest speakers, but this avenue seems to have been either in the past or too difficult to coordinate. According to Peg, a Shinnecock artist came to the school over 15 years ago. Donna relates her difficulties establishing contact with the Shinnecock Museum. Many o f them seem to recall someone known as “Teepee Ted, ” who used to visit schools. The fin a l topic I asked them to discuss was the concept o f cultural diversity in their teaching. Diane:

A majority o f Long Islanders live in segregated communities. We are considered one of the most segregated communities in the country. Is this a concern in the curriculum? How does this play out in terms of


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how you approach cultural diversity? Are Native peoples ever addressed from that lens, or is it usually historical? Donna:

I think it’s been historical, but I think as the times are changing w e’re looking at the curriculum differently. We should be paying attention to offering [Native Studies] more as a cultural diversity [concept] and having them really understand that it’s not just historical, but that it is right here in communities. Peggy’s been taking us to Fort Corchaug. And you could tell that was an awakening for kids. But I still don’t think they make a connection that they [Native peoples] are part o f a culture o f today. So it’s an interesting avenue for us to explore perhaps— that we need to look at that [cultural diversity] a little bit more and not in such isolation.

Clarissa:

I agree. It certainly was a shock for me leaving New York City schools, and coming out here— it’s definitely [a] different population— how overwhelmingly white it is here. It begs the question for me every single day o f how to address cultural diversity. Because when you don’t have it represented how [do you] bring diversity in an authentic way that doesn’t sound preachy? So I believe that trying to develop partnerships and connect with people to represent themselves— to come in and just speak— is certainly one way of doing that—to not just come out of the books. If w e’re going to study some Native American cultures, be sure that we don’t leave off [in the past]. Be sure that somewhere along the way— whatever the strand is— be sure that we don’t just leave it there. There [should be] some way that the children all develop experience and exposure to know that it’s not just “then” but also “now.”

Sandra:

My question for this year [in third grade] is “Who in the world are you?” [We talk] with the children about the past, the present, and the future and see where the children’s ancestors came from. But [we bring] that into the present—they are who they are because o f who they were. I thought I would get a lot more differences among the children, but then again, being in this community, it’s the same European countries that the children came from. So I don’t know quite where it’s going to go just yet, but we’ll see where it goes. I can definitely see Native American culture fitting in. It’s a matter o f getting it in there with the “cultures and community” (third grade themes in N YS curriculum). If we worked it in with third grade curriculum, then it would be much easier for fourth grade and fifth grade as well. And in fourth grade you have a million things going on.

Peg:

In 5th grade history, you could teach the Trail o f Tears. Then you went into the Western states and how they developed into the reservations.


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And eventually you could continue that down to the present day and the disadvantages that the Indian had and how the land was taken away and therefore they didn’t get the education and you could push it to that point. But again, curriculum is just jam-packed, and whether you get that far and are able and have the time to make those connections— it’s not always at the top o f the list. Diane:

What I’m hearing you say is the contemporary gets lost in the push toward the historical, which I guess is what Native people have been up against all along. W e’re constantly proclaiming the extinction o f a people who are very much alive. So it begs the question: Are we preparing children with a lot o f historical knowledge to enter a world filled with diverse peoples that they don’t even know exist?

Clarissa:

I believe in social studies as the core o f an integrated curriculum actually, that social studies is the cornerstone from which everything else springs. I’ve seen it happen with the study o f a certain Native American culture or geographic region as a springboard. It’s a very exciting way to teach; it’s a very exciting way for the children to learn. And the depth o f the study is really remarkable. I know it can happen in other grades and with other pieces o f curriculum. I know it can happen with Native American studies, but certainly this additional piece, the question of making sure we don’t leave off just in the historical, but come to the contemporary would be the new piece to weave in. I absolutely believe it can be done.

Clarissa talks about her hope to work during the summer months on curriculum development in this area. Deborah asks about activities in communities where there are larger groups o f Native peoples, such as Southampton. I describe some o f the resources, people and projects with which I have become familiar. Peg:

I’m just thinking out loud now that probably the easiest way to integrate the immediate need [to bring in the contemporary] is that whenever that topic o f Native American comes up, you just make sure the conversation goes as far as to say, “And we still have local Indians living on Long Island.” We talk about crammed days, and who knows how far we will get with all o f the other ideal curriculum that we want to do. But just to take it that one step further—that’s minimally how you can carry it forward. Because I know I didn’t in the past.

As we have gone over our two hours, we end the conversation here. I promise to invite them to any workshops on this issue that I can develop with the Shinnecock Museum.


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After the focus group with Cutchogue East Elementary School teachers, I continued meeting with artists and educators from Shinnecock throughout the waning weeks of 2004. At the suggestion o f Mrs. Haile and Sherry Blakey Smith, I contacted five additional teachers via telephone. I asked them to recall their memories of schooling and their thoughts about education. I will conclude this chapter with excerpts from each o f these conversations.17

Conversation with Lynette Cook Weeks. November 23. 2004 Lynette Cook Weeks has taught elementary school in Washington State and Long Island. The following text is based on my own written notes taken during our telephone conversation. I went to school in New Jersey. I remember Native Americans only being brought up around Thanksgiving. In intermediate school, I don’t remember learning about Native Americans, nor in high school. Only that they were met by pilgrims. This was the 1960’s—Native people were not a popular topic. Most people considered me to be Black. In those days you were either Black or White. I personally wanted to learn more about my culture and heritage. When I left home in New Jersey I had personal experiences with different Native Americans from all over the country, who knew about their cultures. There was not much known about Long Island Native American cultures. The Native perspective is not taught, even though it is an extremely important part o f American history and culture. I would think that more history o f Native Americans should be taught. It is important for Native people to teach their history, but not necessary. The reality is w e’re still here. People don’t even know a reservation exists. The stereotypical aspect

17These final conversations were shorter than those in the previous chapter, averaging approximately 16 pages each. All but the first of these conversations (Lynette Cook Weeks) were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. I have followed the same editorial choice described in Chapter IV and shared my original notes and transcripts along with the edited text with each speaker.


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needs to be taken out. Teachers can find out about Native history and culture. It’s a matter of wanting to do it.

Conversation with Denise Dennis. December 5. 2004 Denise Dennis is currently a Middle School Art and Special Education teacher in Southampton School District. I did go from kindergarten through high school at Southampton. I started in 1965, and o f course that was during the tumultuous Civil Rights era. And I don’t remember a lot o f discussion about Native Americans. I do remember in 4th grade w e’d done a report, and I had written about Shinnecock. But I don’t remember anything that much beyond that 4th grade until high school came along. And then it wasn’t in depth. One thing that I did notice through the years is the students that I went to school with, very few o f them had even visited the reservation as far as coming to the powwow, which is open to the public. The thing that I remember the most is [the] reactions of other children because in Southampton we do have quite a diverse population. And growing up, there was a lot blatant racism and putdowns among children. Now I don’t see that as much. Although the ugly head o f racism, you can see it every now and then. It’s probably more undercover than blatant. That’s not considered politically correct these days. And I even come across that [stereotyping] with peers o f mine, school colleagues. Every once in a while someone who’s new to our community will say something like, “Well, I’ve heard that the reservation [is] a really a dangerous place.” And I [say], “Well, the reservation is my home, and if you’ve never lived there, how can you go by what you’ve heard?” Educators in the lower levels will still use the alphabet: “I is for Indian.” One o f my friends once [said], “That is a good way to teach /.” So I went home and drew some examples o f an alphabet, and I put the “I is for Indian.” And then I did a picture o f a Black child, and put “5 is for Black.” “J is for Jewish,” and so on. And that’s the only way people could [understand why] “/ is for Indian” is offensive.


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Conversation with Darlene Troge. December 9. 2004 Darlene Troge has worked extensively providing professional development related to the Native American Unit for 4th grade teachers on Long Island. The first memory that comes to mind would be when I was in early middle school. (Darlene went to school in Southampton, where the Shinnecock Reservation is located.) I asked to be put in a certain math class, and the teacher, who was nearing retirement—he had been around forever— didn’t believe that I should be put in the math class. But I really wanted to learn how to do math, and I wanted to be in that class. So my parents went to the school and they asked if I could be put into this class, and the teacher put up such a fuss that they decided that they were going to send me to the school psychologist to be tested, which they did. And when they sent me to this testing, they found that I had a very high I.Q. and they decided that I indeed should be in that advanced math class, but the teacher refused to teach me. He would stop at the seat in front o f me when it came to individual help. He had no interest in helping me along. He completely discouraged me. So throughout my school career, I carried with me that scar. And that continued with me right through high school when I wanted to go to an Ivy League college and the guidance counselor in the school informed me that Indian kids usually don’t go to college, usually they go into domestic work and perhaps I should consider that. However, I did find there were a few teachers who were willing to recognize and help me develop in certain areas, and they actually stuck their necks out and wrote letters of recommendation for me to go to Dartmouth, and I was admitted. I came onto the scene professionally when the New York State Learning Standards were officially kicking in [during the mid-1980s-mid 1990s]. And at that time it was discovered that there was very little about the Northeastern Native American in the curriculum. There was [material on the] Iroquois, and they’re Northeastern, but very little on the Algonquian people. So I worked with about a hundred school districts on Long Island over a six-year period to develop their curriculum. I saw over 10,000 students each year. I did professional development with teachers in each district prior to presenting programs. I visited about 300 schools during this time. And we focused on learning what the contributions o f the Algonquians in this area [were] so that the kids had an understanding, on the 4th grade level, what contributions the Natives made.


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All of this was really self-taught, because I would learn the requirements of the New York State Learning Standards as my children went through the system. I have twins— so I would get a chance to work with two teachers every year. My children’s teachers would always know that I came from an Indian reservation, and my children were raised on an Indian reservation. I wanted them to understand that we weren’t really mainstream people, and I felt that they needed to understand that I was very protective o f my children. I did not want them to go through what I had gone through. And I found a lot o f interest. They were very receptive— as long as it was November. A lot of times people say that they want to do things, as I’m sure you’re well aware, but when you get down to the 4th grade— that’s a big testing year. They don’t have time. That’s what I hear from a lot o f them— they just don’t have the time. So that would be a challenge for you, to find a way to give them the incentive to want to learn. And I don’t blame them, you know. I know how difficult it is. I know that if they took the time to understand things, it would make it a lot more interesting for themselves as well as for their students. But a lot o f them are so overwhelmed with these standards and the testing, that one more thing is going to break the camel’s back. On reading the above, Darlene wrote to me, In addition, it is important to me that you make note o f the incentives that I offered to interest both teachers and students, such as discussing the fact that the first settlers came from monarchies. Natives lived in a democratic system, and the founding fathers o f the U.S. actually lived with the Natives to learn more about the system. And that com was a staple o f the Native diet, and the cultivation was shared with the settlers. To this day, com remains the largest agricultural export o f the U.S. and is therefore, an economic foundation. This information always sparks interest in the America Indian story.

Conversation with Angela Hughes Johnson, December 12, 2004 Angela Hughes Johnson is a guidance counselor at the Southampton High School. Most o f my K through 12 education was in upstate New York, so my experiences were probably very different than some o f the other Native


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American people that you’ve spoken to so far, those that had the luxury of growing up here on the reservation. They always had that home base regardless o f what they heard or did not hear in public education. I was most often the only child of color in most o f my experiences growing up. I was always in a predominantly Caucasian community where I lived, as well as the schools that I attended. Whenever they talked about Indians and the Pilgrims and things like that, they always looked to me to be the voice of Native people in general. And here I was a 5th grader, having to speak for an entire group o f people that are so heterogeneous in terms of the different nations that exist in North America. My mother as well as my grandmother made sure that I had a more global understanding o f Native American peoples and how different we all are. But then at the same point in time, when February would come around and it was Black History month, I was then looked to as the only person who could speak for African Americans or Black Americans as well. I guess for me it was a very difficult time when I was young, because I hated it; I just wanted to be Angela. I didn’t want to be the only Native American child or the only African American child. There really wasn’t anything [about Native peoples] except for the little snapshot that you received o f history for Native American culture. So it was very glossed over in my educational upbringing. But my mother made it a point to always bring us back to Shinnecock. My mother made sure that we were here and we were exposed to our own culture. So I always had that foundation as well, which was very helpful being so far away and so disconnected. I’ve been a guidance counselor now for seven years at the high school level. I just think it’s an awesome challenge because o f the emphasis on the New York State Regents Examinations and the pressure that teachers feel in terms o f preparing students for those particular tests. I think that’s the struggle and the challenge now as anyone looks to infuse Native American culture into the curriculum. The challenge is going to be trying to show teachers that it’s possible without taking away from what they need to [do]. And in most instances it could probably enhance what they do and enhance students’ skills. [We try] to empower teachers to think creatively— to think outside the box. My husband came out o f school with such a passion and such an enthusiasm that he wanted to try to expand the curriculum. And he’s done so much just in his own classroom in terms of infusing Native American culture into his classroom. He’s taken the students to the Shinnecock Museum here on the reservation. H e’s had a group of people from Shinnecock come and speak to his class about dance and drums and


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ceremonies and customs. So he’s done that on his own just because he understands the importance o f taking things off the page and actually making real experiences for students— how that actually impacts learning. [It’s] very difficult to argue, when I teacher says, “Well, I can’t do that because I don’t have time. And I have to get these kids through this test.” People almost stop and say, “Well then I just won’t do it. I’ll just give up.” So I think that’s the greatest challenge.

Conversation with Nature Richard. February 5, 2005 Nature Richard has taught high school English. She is currently one o f the tutors at the Shinnecock Indian Education Program. I went to school from kindergarten until 8th grade in Cincinnati, Ohio, although every summer we would come out here [to Shinnecock], When I was in Cincinnati when you did learn about Native Americans, I knew that they didn’t look like me, because the Native Americans I would see in books often looked like the Western Indians. So when I was reading books, I would often see the Western image that I would see in movies and I would see that in books, and so that I didn’t really recognize that being me, a Native American. So when I lived in Cincinnati, I didn’t bring it up a lot, because people looked at me and said, “Oh, well, you’re not really Indian.” Or they might ask the question, “Well, really how much are you, ‘cause you don’t really look that Native American?” Or “Your eyes don’t look like a Native American’s eyes.” Or “Your nose isn’t like a Native American’s nose.” And so I probably didn’t bring it up a lot, because people did not associate me with being Native American. And then when I came out here, I might have looked like many o f the Native Americans out here, but then I wasn’t someone who grew up out here all her life, so then I really wasn’t Native American to the Native Americans out here because I didn’t grow up out here with everyone else. When I came [to school at Southampton] the teachers were very surprised that I was in Advanced Placement classes because you didn’t find many Native Americans who were in either AP or in Regents classes (college bound classes in N Y State). Often you hear many Native American students saying they didn’t always feel like they belonged, and not in their community, but within the school. And I’ve seen the teachers do this; they categorize the students. They see their last names and they know that they have a Native American student in their class, and some teachers tend to have pre-conceived notions o f what level of work those students can do.


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Speaking as an educator, if the students are never exposed, and not just in a slight reading, but if they’re not actually exposed to the ways and lifestyles o f Native Americans and the culture and the struggles and how they had to adapt— if it’s not talked about often in books or at school— or it’s something that’s brushed over quickly— or it’s only talked about, Native Americans, as they were being conquered, and you don’t necessarily see where they have progressed from since then— a lot of people [will] think Native Americans are just dead, they’ve never progressed, where are they today? Who are you today? It’s still a living culture. And I know when we have our powwow out here, it’s attended by thousands o f people, and often it’s attended by thousands o f people just out of curiosity. And often it’s sad because today it’s very showy— almost like a circus, because the Native Americans are dancing, there’s a lot o f food for sale, there’s face painting, and it’s a show, but [there’s] not necessarily a lot o f educating going on about who Native Americans are. It’s a celebration for us because w e’re happy to show all of our regalia, w e’re happy to show the food that we enjoy, w e’re happy to paint faces for children. But it’s a day in which people come and they enjoy all those things, but it’s the showy part o f those things that they enjoy. W e’re not necessarily showing who we are today. W e’re not walking people through our homes and through our lives, or showing people where we go to school or our graves. So these people are not necessarily seeing who Native Americans are today—they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re people who go to school. And it’s that sharing, that bridge that w e’re missing.

Emerging Challenges This chapter has traced a journey o f understanding taken with non-Native K-12 teachers as well as educators from Shinnecock. These conversations offer insight into two of the guiding assumptions o f this inquiry: •

Many non-Native Long Islanders, including teachers, are unaware of the history, culture and contemporary lives o f the Native peoples living among them, and this absence is reflected in the contemporary curriculum.

•

The voices o f local Native peoples should become an integral element in curricular reform.


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I write the above words in early autumn 2005, over eight months after my final recorded conversation with Nature Richard in February. There has been a public lull in the summer events, which found the Shinnecock tribal trustees making front-page news on Long Island as they initiated a legal battle to reclaim 3600 acres o f their ancestral lands, such as the Shinnecock Hills. While reading newspaper articles over the summer months documenting this action, I was again struck by the notion that many Long Islanders are ill prepared to grapple with such events as a Shinnecock federal land claim suit. The issues are multidimensional and complex, tangled with legal, ethical, historical, political, cultural, and economic significance. Are Long Island educators prepared to discuss these recent issues in their classrooms? Most o f the comments solicited by the press from local, non-Native Long Islanders, including public office holders, were one-dimensional sentiments reflective o f the belief that Native rights and concerns are a part o f a forgotten history no longer applicable to today’s world. To many Long Islanders, the federal suit seems anachronistic. Such a bold action goes against the generally held belief that Long Island Indians are a people of the past, not the present— somewhat pitiable and expected to quietly submit to the historic status quo, stock figures best seen from behind the safe glass cases o f a reconstructed, sanitized past. A sense that the Shinnecocks’ case is both unjustified and a losing battle permeates white Long Island. The overwhelming disparity in social power is tangible, yet after decades of frustration and relatively quiet submission to non-Native encroachment on their land, the Shinnecock Trustees have chosen a very public path toward self-determination and social justice. In the face of these contemporary events, I


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feel overwhelmed and somewhat late in my efforts to explore educational reform in this area, but more than ever convinced o f the significance o f such a project. In the next chapter I will grapple with three main challenges that have emerged through the conversations that have been shared thus far. Such a chapter contains an additional, perhaps hidden challenge: can I come to terms with my own efforts to walk a tightrope as researcher trying to provide a scholarly forum for underrepresented voices without controlling and colonizing them by the very act o f research itself?


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Chapter VI CHALLENGES

Reading Between the Lines In the scientific paradigm o f research, the “analysis” or “discussion” chapter o f a dissertation traditionally follows the presentation o f “data” or the “results” o f one’s study. In my conceptualization o f this project, however, this chapter should not focus on a scientific analysis o f my contributors’ words, but rather on providing a forum for shared understandings. Recalling Lassiter’s (1998) concept o f collaborative inquiry, my stated goal is to close the distance between “researcher” and “researched,” becoming a friend and supporter, rather than a professional stranger. Graveline’s (2000) poetic challenge rings in my ears as I struggle through this chapter: “If They want to know/ ‘What does it all mean?’/ Tell Them/ Read between the Lines” (p. 369). Now I am left to tease out meanings from many voices through the lens o f my own single, non-Native perspective. Perhaps my difficulty lies in the sense that I am not the same writer who began this study. In the previous two chapters, I have grown comfortable with an emerging sense o f fellowship and community as I listened to my contributors’ stories and shared with them the shaping o f the final drafts. Perhaps it is the singleness o f this particular chapter that has caused the most difficulty. The writing o f it, therefore, challenges me to recreate a sense o f the multiple voices engaged in this


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project by interweaving excerpts from previous conversations along with some new voices. I began this study with a review o f indigenous perspectives regarding the problematic history o f Western research undertaken in their communities. During this work, story has emerged as the vehicle for discovering, shaping, and communicating meaning. Sharing stories closes the distance between the traditional roles of “researcher” and “researched,” as well as “writer” and “reader.” Narratives turn the process o f inquiry into a journey taken together— for those o f us who lived this journey and for you who join us in the recreated world o f our words. Research stories personalize meaning. At best, they forge relationships that are respectful and ongoing. Hopefully, they keep the conversation alive. In the words o f educators Wiggins and McTighe (1998), stories “raise questions and delay answers” (p. 142). At the start o f this inquiry, I introduced the following questions: 1.

How are the history, culture, and contemporary lives o f Long Island’s Native peoples addressed in the public school curriculum?

2.

What texts are used to teach about local Native cultures?

3.

Are non-text resources used in teaching about Native cultures?

4.

Are local Native views and expertise solicited in the teaching o f Native cultures?

5.

What would Shinnecock educators, artists, and elders say about the resources currently in use to teach about their culture to Long Island’s children?

In this chapter, I will approach these questions within the context o f larger ones that have emerged during the course of this journey. I have organized these larger


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questions into three main themes or challenges: The Challenge o f Stereotyping, the Challenge o f History, and the Challenge o f Curriculum. My discussion takes as a starting point ideas informed by Banks’s (1996; Banks & Banks, 1995) conceptualization o f multicultural education as a means to embody the ideals o f a democratic and pluralistic society, i.e., to prepare students for humane lives in a nation enriched by a diversity o f peoples and perspectives. The indigenous framework articulated by Tuhiwai Smith (1999) extends this multicultural analysis by pointing to new paradigms for rethinking both educational and research practices— paradigms that go beyond merely including the indigenous perspective to reshaping our ways of knowing and researching. In the course o f this discussion, I will interweave voices already heard with several new ones as well, which will appear at the end o f each section in text boxes outside of the main narrative. The voices in these sections reflect tape-recorded conversations held with four allied non-Native professionals whose different perspectives— civil rights activist, social worker, professional development consultant, and anthropologist— will add layers o f meaning to this discussion.18 In addition to these voices, in the last section I will look more closely at some o f the non-Native teacher responses provided by the district survey.

18I have followed the same editing decisions described in Chapter IV for these textboxed narratives, and all four contributors have reviewed their texts and provided feedback.


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The Challenge o f Stereotyping Native Peoples and the Persistence o f Stereotypes Listening to the voices o f the Native and non-Native people who shared their stories for this inquiry brings to light the pervasive and destructive power o f racial and ethnic stereotyping as one o f the primary challenges facing educators today who seek to rethink their practice. Among the Shinnecock people who shared their experiences of schooling with me, the painful sense o f isolation and erasure o f their cultural identity resulting from stereotyping within K-12 schooling was a recurrent theme. Particularly disturbing was the role teachers played in reinforcing such stereotypes. According to Banks (1996), many o f the beliefs and attitudes held by students regarding different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups originate in stereotypes generated via mass media and reinforced in school. The teachers knew where I was from, but they never asked me any o f my experiences on the reservation. It was understood that once we got off the bus and walked into the school, we were no longer Indians because we didn’t look like the Indians that the teacher was teaching about. (Lucille Bosley, Shinnecock) It’s amazing today that you go into public schools and you see teachers reinforcing paper feathers and headbands— this kind o f generic approach to what Native Americans are, and all this looked at as in the past, not the present. It’s absolutely appalling to have Native children’s identity projected like that in school. (Sherry Blakey Smith, Ojibwa Cree) I didn’t bring it up a lot, because people looked at me and said, “Oh, well, you’re not really Indian.” Or they might ask the question, “Well, really how much are you, ‘cause you don’t really look that Native American.” Or “Your eyes don’t look like a Native American’s eyes.” Or “Your nose isn’t like a Native American’s nose.” (Nature Richard, Shinnecock) In Reducing Prejudice and Stereotyping in Schools, social psychologist Walter Stephan (1999) reviews over 500 studies on the nature o f stereotypes and presents recommendations on how to reduce their powerful grip on our thinking and subsequent


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human relations, particularly within school settings. Stephan speaks o f stereotypes as strongly held beliefs that use overgeneralizations as a way o f simplifying the complexity o f our social world. Stereotypes take the form o f ingrained networks of mostly inaccurate and negative beliefs regarding such features as physical appearance, group labels, and behavioral expectations. Such false beliefs cause us to relegate those whom we perceive as different into a group category rather than relating to them as unique individuals. Stereotyping leads to prejudice, bias, and interpersonal as well as institutional racism. Unfortunately, school-age children and youth are particularly prone to stereotyping as a means to simplify a complex social world. Stereotypes, therefore, take strong hold when we are young and, if unexamined, continue into adulthood, where they are passed on through schools, families, and the media. Compare the memories o f both Native and non-Native people: You didn’t even have a category called “Indian.” It was “White,” “Negro,” and “Other.” And I remember always having to articulate that I was an “Other” to my teacher in my grade schools— that I was not the “White” and I was not the “Negro,” that I was the “Other.” (Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock) But then at the same point in time, when February would come around and it was Black History month, I was then looked to as the only person who could speak for African Americans or Black Americans as well. I guess for me it was a very difficult time when I was young, because I hated it, I just wanted to be Angela. I didn’t want to be the only Native American child or the only African American child. (Angela Hughes Johnson, Shinnecock) Our high school mascot [was] the “Chieftains,” and o f course it was the typical 1950s version o f the Indian. My total educational experience in elementary school had to come from television. I watched every Western that there was. I was in elementary school in the 1950s, and I finished high school in ’68, so— it’s embarrassing to say— it was strictly “Cowboys and Indians.” (Deborah, Cutchogue Elementary focus group) In a world filled with stereotypes regarding race, ethnicity, age, ability, and sexual orientation, institutional racism regarding Native peoples is so pervasive that,


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even in our age of political correctness, many people not only fail to recognize their bias, but even defend it. How else can we explain the fact that a popular football team housed in our nation’s capital is called the “Washington Redskins” or the Atlanta Braves' infamous “tomahawk chop,” and “Chief Yahoo” of Cleveland Indian baseball fame, among countless other team mascots and logos throughout K-12 schools, universities, villages, and towns? More often than not, pointing out such biases will call forth the label of “spoil sport” or the sage advice to “lighten up.” The fact that some Native activists who protest offensive team mascots have been subject to death threats demonstrates the malignant power of stereotypes when left unexamined. According to Stephan (1999), they are a form o f automatic thinking, a “passive process” that does not require our conscious awareness (p. 5). When stereotypes become ingrained in the dominant culture, they lead to structural racism, such as the reduced educational expectations encountered by Shinnecock children in public schools. I didn’t find out until later years that every student that came from the reservation was automatically retained one year. They didn’t test to see how bright they were and how easily they could catch up. It was an automatic thing. (Lucille Bosley, Shinnecock) They’ve [Shinnecock children] been tracked in school all these years, for non-Regents— no college— “do the best you can; if you quit, we w on’t worry about that.” At the age o f sixteen, you finish school and become a truck driver. (Elizabeth Haile, Shinnecock) But generally, they felt that I was incompetent and not able to handle more complicated course material because I was from the reservation. (Darlene Troge, Shinnecock) Despite the dominant culture’s lowered expectations, the Shinnecock people who shared their stories with me grew to become strong, competent, and innovative professionals in their fields o f art, education, and law. Many o f them revealed how the


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cultural knowledge within their strong family networks provided the identity affirming support lacking in public schooling. The school, the class, the teachers weren’t getting the information about what I knew to be the truth— that I did exist and my family did exist, this territory existed, this is where I came, this is where I spent all my significant time, this is where my holidays were, this is my identification. I knew all o f this to be true, and they were not forthcoming about validating that to be true. So for me, it really just developed into a resourcefulness that required that I had to take the extra time to do my own reading and research and put together my own narrative. (Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock) Besides what my family taught me, I didn’t learn anything in school about my culture. At home on Shinnecock, I did learn a great deal of information, history, love o f this land and spirit of my people. We pass this on to our children, knowing this is the only place they will learn this concept. But in school, no. W asn’t presented to me. Native Americans, who are they? They don’t even exist. (Tonya Bess Hodges, Shinnecock) One thing I knew was that being a Shinnecock Indian meant being interested in the world. Having a deep sense o f heritage, a deep sense of self, and one’s place in heritage, but also a deep sense o f curiosity about the world. That’s the way I was reared. (Marguerite Smith, Shinnecock) Unfortunately, not all Native children as well as children o f other underrepresented peoples are able to overcome the power o f institutional racism and the erasure o f their individual and cultural identities that occur in school and society. According to Stephan (1999), negative stereotypes often lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. The biased expectation o f low performance among children of underrepresented cultures leads to denial o f the same positive attention, high expectations, and access to culturally appropriate resources given to students o f the dominant culture (p. 12).19 But what can be done to disengage from this cycle of stereotypical thinking that leads to interpersonal and institutional biases and racism?

19Improving educational opportunity and access for their children and youth is a priority for the Shinnecock and many other Native nations. The American Indian Education


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According to Stephan’s (1996) study, stereotypes die hard, but providing “disconfirming” information that reveals their basic untruths is one way to challenge them. (p. 10). Discontinuation within the context o f schooling involves providing opportunities for students to become conscious o f the individuality and perspective of those whom they have categorized. One such means o f disconfirming hardened stereotypes is through direct experience— positive and cooperative interaction with members o f the stereotyped group. Another disconfirming activity is though the development o f empathy, which can be encouraged by “viewing the members o f other groups within the context o f their histories” (p.90). A third way is finding meaningful, engaging ways to teach the positive nature o f shared human values, such as egalitarianism, human rights, social justice, and multiculturalism. All three o f these means can be supported by the creation of educational partnerships. People are not necessarily seeing who Native Americans are today— they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re people who go to school. And it’s that sharing, that bridge that we’re missing. (Nature Richard, Shinnecock educator) I had a 5th grade teacher who I felt really cared about everyone— every individual, every person— and she was the only teacher that I remember coming to the Shinnecock Indian Reservation to visit. (Robin Weeks, Shinnecock) It seems to me it’s only common sense if you are in the business o f presenting a culture that’s not your culture, you want to get some information from the ones that still have part o f that culture. (David Bunn Martine, Shinnecock) Stephan (1996) cautions that even with the inclusion o f teaching practices geared toward dispelling bias, most people are prone to view the disconfirming evidence as exceptions to the rule and default back to their ingrained stereotypes. Therefore, it is

movement is working to improve educational opportunities and increase the number of Native people who complete high school and go on to advanced professional degrees.


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necessary to reform educational practice in P-12 schooling as well as in teacher education in ways that offer an in-depth and long-term impact, not quick fixes. The central concept driving this dissertation broadens the idea o f disconfirmation into active community building by forging educational partnerships with underrepresented peoples such as the Shinnecock. When Elizabeth Haile says that “by their very presence,” the Shinnecock can have an impact on the lives and understanding o f non-Native children, she is pointing us in the direction o f engaged and lively educational dialogues. Such dialogues can benefit all members o f our communities through the sharing o f stories, histories, and experiences— through the forging of meaningful and respectful relationships. They can be forces for awakening, rather than anesthetizing thought. In Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) work we are challenged to bear witness to a new way of thinking about research, where ways o f knowing are envisioned as fluid processes moving like tides through the human community. Indigenous projects such as remembering, reframing, envisioning, and protecting open doors to broader, more organic ways o f knowing. Insofar as stereotypes are hardened concepts, engagement with the fluid paradigms and projects explored in indigenous research methodologies can help to reshape the inner eyes o f those o f us schooled in ways that encourage stereotypical thinking. Such engagement can take the form o f educational partnerships. Similar to Tuhiwai Smith (1999), Elizabeth Haile asserts that much o f what is authentic within schooling “hasn’t got four walls around it, but it has your grandmother's knowledge.” Unlike paternalistic notions o f schooling and knowledge construction, where a single authority controls a normalized narrative, this “grandmotherly” vision of education points to respect for the knowledge to be gained from all o f the members o f our communities, regardless of whether or not they have


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letters after their names. Such a concept challenges those o f us in scholarly communities to engage in a form o f living thinking— thinking that transcends fixed and simplified conventions and roles. A partnership view o f education speaks to an organic way o f knowing that is embedded within a web o f interdependent relationships, relationships that honor the perceptual present that is always coming into being as much as the conceptual past o f fixed notions and frameworks. A partnership model also goes beyond notions o f “inclusion” and embraces the educational paradigm o f “collaboration,” discussed by Sherry Blakey Smith in our earlier conversation: I think that oftentimes “inclusion” has a way o f excluding, because in the process o f including somebody you’re making a place for them instead of collaborating, which acknowledges that everyone who sits down at a table has something to offer, and with that more value is brought. With inclusion there often is the assumption that the group already exists. [With] the process of collaboration, the group does not exist unless we collaborate together. Nobody preexists. It’s a different language, a new language, but to me it sounds a lot warmer than “diversity.” The warmer language o f collaboration ultimately challenges the dominant culture to see with new eyes those peoples among us who have been rendered virtually invisible— those whose histories have been in large part erased from our textbooks, classrooms and consciousness. Historical erasure, which emerged often in the stories shared for this study, is connected to the second challenge— the challenge o f history. As a means o f bridging these two themes— the challenge o f stereotyping and the challenge o f history— I will introduce the voice o f civil rights activist Bob Zellner into this forum. The following extract from our conversation provides another lens through which to share our understandings o f these challenges and tease out their meaning.


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I first met Bob Zellner at the Shinnecock Thanksgiving festival on November 20, 2003. Shinnecock Thanksgiving usually takes place the week before the national holiday because, according to Mrs. Haile, Shinnecock people often had to work on Thanksgiving Day cooking holiday turkeys fo r their wealthy employers. This is one o f several times fo r giving thanks in the Shinnecock year. A t this event several nonNatives who are considered “friends o f the Nation ” are invited and publicly acknowledged. Bob Zellner was one o f these special people. Having spent most o f his life as a civil rights activist— the first white southerner to serve as a fie ld secretary fo r a major civil rights organization the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)— Bob was recruited as a young man by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He now lives in Southampton and has been active in support o f the civil rights o f the Shinnecock people. Below are excerpts from our telephone conversation, taperecorded on January 23, 2005 in response to the follow ing questions, Diane:

Starting with the context o f all o f your civil rights experience, could just talk a little bit about how you think Native Americans, particularly in our area, are perceived today by the public and in school, and what role you think education can play to try to re-educate those o f us that are not Native peoples into a better understanding?

Bob:

Well, the first way that Native peoples in this area are perceived is that there are no Native peoples in this area. Because it’s out o f sight, out of mind. So unless there are a few Shinnecocks or Montauketts or other groups represented in a school or in a community, there’s almost no perception that “there are still Indians here.” So that’s the first thing. The other thing is that w e’re still, even in our diversity teaching and training, we’re still stuck in the Black/White paradigm, rather than seeing Black/White/Native American/Asian/Latino and so forth.... So they’re really the victims o f both invisibility and active discrimination.


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When we teach in school about Native Americans or Indians, it’s way in the past. It’s a romantic view, basically, o f simple Native peoples close to the earth, noble spirits, but tragically weak and not fitted for either survival or life in the modem w orld.... And it’s just an awful hurdle to get over when you have the teachers themselves unprepared to teach about modem Native American people, and you have curriculum that basically has the old view. I think that you start with the educational institutions and the educators themselves, and I can give you a little bit of experience that w e’ve had in attempting that strategy in the practical world. In 1997, we were concerned about the loss o f civil rights teachings, or teaching about the real civil rights movement in the curriculum and in schools. So we had a conference in Boston and the theme o f the conference was “Teaching Social Justice, Living Social Justice.” So then the mission o f the conference was to talk to educators and activists in the same space and to look at ways that we could put the “movement” back into civil rights teachings. And we concluded that we needed to work with the educators themselves, give them a real sense from real people having real stories and real experiences o f the civil rights movement. At this point Bob described the merger o f this project with H arvard’s Project Zero and the development o f the “Freedom Curriculum ” in the Boston area, a civil rights curriculum he hopes will be adopted by the New York City public schools. And I think that if we can do something similar on Native American rights and the Native American struggle, that at least teachers won’t have an idealized vision o f the relationship between Christopher Columbus and the Native people and so forth. They’ll have a more realistic view o f Native Americans. And just start with the simple fact that “Yes, we are still here.” When I’m on a speaking tour, I talk about the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton, and people say, “You mean there are Native Americans in the East?” And I say, “Yes, they have reservations. They’ve been there for, you know, since before the white folks came, and they’re still there.” So people in the rest o f the country are just as puzzled as Long Islanders and New Yorkers.


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My first involvement with the Shinnecocks was the Anti-Bias Task Force. I was on a committee that was assigned to study all the signage and emblems o f the town [Southampton] and try to bring them up to date because these emblems were mostly designed back in the ‘20s or the ‘30s o f the last century by the Daughters o f the American Revolution. And I had noticed the symbols on the village garbage cans— there was an almost completely naked Native American standing by a little canoe looking at a huge figure o f a white settler, with a big sailing ship over his shoulder and a stone. So I could see that the iconography o f the symbol was the savage with nothing and the welldressed pioneer with a ship. The iconography was all o f the powerful Whites meeting the savage Indian. And we proposed some changes to that, and the vitriol that came out in the local papers. And people said, “Who is this Zellner, this Jew? How long has he been here?” Well, they’d be very surprised to know that my father was a Methodist minister and a member o f the Ku Klux Klan. Mostly they were letters, and o f course the editorial comment wasn’t that much better. “Don’t they have something better to do than talk about our signs and running down our white heritage?” There has been a tremendous change since then in terms o f hiring. We had street demonstrations. People went into Town Council and stood under this big Pilgrim with pots and pans and banged on them and said, “You have to have Native Americans hired by the town, and the school, and the hospital.” So the Native Americans have been in the middle o f all these campaigns, plus their own campaign to save the land and to get businesses.

The Challenge o f History: Whose Story Is It?

You still have a paradigm that is basically a white, male-oriented narrative [of] the history o f the United States. It’s “HIS story”— it’s the White man’s story. That paradigm hasn’t changed yet. We haven’t made that profound shift in this society and in this culture, and I think that’s very unfortunate. And as long as that’s in place, there’s always going to be this tension to fit that other story in, to get the other perspective. Even with the dramatic kinds o f social changes that occurred over the last 50 years, in my lifetime, really dramatic social transformations that have occurred in this country— but still, gosh, it’s still a white man’s lockdown. (Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock)


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The invisibility o f contemporary Native peoples in the social studies curriculum prevents those o f us who are non-Native from openly encountering and learning from our shared, at times painful histories. These stories may be problematic to confront in classrooms, because as Loewan (1995) points out in Lies My Teacher Told Me, they challenge the “bland optimism” that dominates the public school approach to history (p. 14). Writing such words positions this study within the midst o f the culture wars that escalated in the 1990s and continues today within an increasingly politicized and problematic educational agenda. In History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching o f the Past, Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn (2000) recount the political hysteria that met them in October 1994 as the voluntary National Standards for History were being readied for publication after three years o f intensive collaboration and unusual consensus building among parents, teachers, librarians, curriculum specialists, professional organizations, and historians. These new curricular guidelines were marked by their attempt to incorporate a more balanced and socially inclusive focus as well as an integration o f critical thinking skills with rigorous historical content. In both U.S. and world history, an attempt was made to include the voices o f those usually excluded from the traditional Eurocentric story of history. Unfortunately, the new guidelines quickly came under an inflamed attack from a political Right that dangerously equates multicultural education with antiAmericanism. Before the standards were even released, Lynne Cheney had attacked them on the pages o f the Wall Street Journal as the “End of History” (p. 3) and Rush Limbaugh (cited in Nash et al., 2000) was inciting furor over the talk radio waves: History is real simple. You know what history is? It’s what happened. The problem you get into is when guys like this try to skew history by [saying], “Well, let’s interpret what happened because maybe we can’t find the truth in the facts, or at least we don’t like the truth as it’s presented.” (p. 6)


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Cheney, Limbaugh, and others could not tolerate making public and national what most underrepresented peoples such as the Shinnecock have known all along— history has always been “skewed” in our textbooks, classrooms, and courtrooms in favor o f a patriarchal, white, and Eurocentric perspective. The popular “truths” inhabiting our schools are interpretations, filled with painful gaps and erasures. But throughout American history, throughout the rest o f the book [and] in high school, they tend to have [a] “token” paragraph in each unit [about] what happened at that time period to Native Americans— which is always the fact that they were “in the way” and that the American government did terrible things and moved them off their land. (Dave, Levittown 7-12 focus group) There is no law that says we have to teach about the mistreatment, the genocide, or any part of [Native American] culture. Because it’s not— it’s not woven into our system. It’s just not. It’s just an extra-added attraction, which was thrown in sometimes and sometimes [wasn’t]. (Bob, Levittown 7-12 focus group) You’ll hear people say, “This tribe lost their language,” or “that tribe lost their culture.” They didn’t lose anything. Lost puts the onus on the nation [as though] you put it down someplace and forgot it. It was systematically, deliberately taken away, and that’s the truth. That’s what needs to be said. When my mother tried to speak her language, they beat her. They cut her hair. They totally dehumanized these little children. Now if that were to happen to an American child, it would be appalling, you know what I mean? The whole country would be totally appalled.... Education has always been a painful historical notion for Indian people. (Sherry Blakey Smith, Ojibwa Cree) Ironically, the opponents o f a more balanced history misunderstand the very nature o f the democracy they claim to defend. Instead, they hold fast to a singular perspective o f history and cling to cherished schoolroom stories. One such cherished story revolves around the “discovery” of America. This story and its main character, Columbus, recurred so often and painfully in the memories o f some o f the Native


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peoples who shared their experiences o f schooling with me that it became emblematic of the challenge o f teaching balanced history in our schools. There was never any mention o f the story o f what he did. We were taught the old version that he discovered America and never did anything [harmful] to the Arawaks before he even got here. But it was definitely negative, definitely harmful. Because I didn’t learn anything until I went to college, and my eyes were really opened. (Tonya Bess Hodges, Shinnecock) When it came to history and to identifying yourself in history— our places were so misinterpreted. All the holidays that you deal with in school— Thanksgiving, Columbus Day— all these just seemed so fake for me as a high school student. They glamorized Columbus’s discovery o f America and made him a hero, and the reality was he came here and conquered. (Sherry Blakey Smith, Ojibwa Cree) Now you can imagine that probably for most people in the United States, that was taken as a given, that Columbus discovered America. But for me I always felt uncomfortable hearing that from teachers and from other students. And I felt uncomfortable, I think, because I knew my history. I knew that we went back thousands o f years on Long Island, long before Christopher Columbus decided to make his journey to look for India and ended up coming to the Caribbean and calling the Native people Indians. So even though I couldn’t really formulate the reasons for feeling uncomfortable, I knew that we were here already. (Robin Weeks, Shinnecock) In Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, Bigelow and Peterson (1998) aptly summarize the challenge o f our excluded histories: It would be nice to think that the biases in the curriculum disappear after Columbus. But the Columbus myth is only the beginning o f a winner’s history that profoundly neglects the lives and perspectives o f many “other” people o f color, women, working class people, the poor. (p. 11) Chapter II identified several problem areas associated with research in indigenous communities. Histories can be excluded and erased through the objectification o f culture, the privileging of written over non-written sources, and the prevalence o f limited, stereotyped notions about authenticity, tradition, and cultural


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identity. Tuhiwai Smith (1999) speaks to the concept o f erasure when she encourages indigenous projects such as claiming histories, which provide both an indigenous and non-indigenous audience with an “official account” o f a people's histories (pp. 143-144). Often forged within the crucible o f a Western courtroom or tribunal, the work o f reclaiming rights, lands, and stories is one way that indigenous researchers are working to inscribe and make visible their own histories. Other projects, such as testimonies and storytelling, are means to recover, preserve, and move forward into the future. The intention o f this study is to create a scholarly home in which the underrepresented Native voices in our communities can share their thoughts on education. Insights gained through this project point to the possibility that such dialogues can grow into educational partnerships among the Native community, higher education and P-12 schools. With the power of genuine, respectful listening driving them, such partnerships can perhaps counter the debilitating aspects o f our educational system, such as the proliferation o f stereotypes and the erasure o f histories that do not follow a single, Eurocentric narrative. They may also help drive new research agendas and methodologies. The current educational context for such projects is problematic, however. Schools and universities have become the testing ground for political agendas that divide rather than unite, as witnessed by the culture wars as well as in the growing accountability movement characterized by the high-stakes standardized testing of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation. The concluding section of this chapter looks more closely at the contested field o f curriculum within the context o f standards and standardization and presents some recommendations arising from the voices shared here. Before engaging with this third challenge, I have included below a new voice, that o f Matthew Bessell, a non-Native


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social worker whose work on behalf o f Native veterans embodies the concept of collaboration and the importance of respectful listening and caring as prerequisite to the creation o f cross cultural partnerships.

Trained as a social worker, Matthew Bessell, L-CSW is the EEO Native American Indian Special Emphasis Program Manager at the Northport Veterans Administration Medical Center since the pro g ra m ’s inception in 2000. The program has a bibliography o f books and materials in the Medical C enter’s Library that is available fo r community educators to borrow from. I first met Matthew at a Native American fd m festival in November 2002, where he was speaking about the services available fo r Native veterans at the Northport VAMC. On September 24, 2004 he kindly consented, with the VAMC’s permission, to share a social w orker’s perspective on my educational inquiry. The follow ing excerpts are from our tape-recorded conversation that took place at the Northport VAMC. (Showing me a brochure) This is a national Native American Indian health council that the V.A. has been working with to try in a good way to go to Native people and say, “How can the government help you?” rather than “Here’s how we will help you.” Our role here at the VA is for employment retention and the advancement o f Native American Indian employees and veterans within the department. What w e’ve also done, though, is improved our ability to make connections with Indian country on Long Island. [During] our first year’s program here, there were staff saying to me, “You have real Indians in the auditorium there?” We are beginning to help people understand that the statement, “We are still here,” holds. At this point Matt shares a moving documentary film called Respect, done by the VA National Native Council to raise the awareness among employees and management about the need fo r cultural competence.______________________________________________


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As a non-Native person, I have really needed to step back and look at the mission o f what our committee [does], and that is the affirmative employment retention and advancement o f Native American Indian employees and veterans. Have we thought as an agency that these folk might need VA services? Do we even know about Long Island’s Native people? Who are our Native veterans? Who are our Native employees? And [as] we began to ask those questions, we began to find [that] we don’t really know, and we haven’t really made the extending o f our hand, as they said in the video, to say, “How can we help you?” versus “Here’s what w e’ll do for you.” And it is quite often humbling. I think it’s also important to [think] about trust. Why would a population that has not felt overly supported by the federal government, the state governments, and other government agencies in a long time feel like they should walk with us in a good way? And yet, I think in the last five years w e’ve come to a place where some o f that healing has begun to happen, you know, in a small way, but in a good way. It remains an honor to be invited out to Indian country on Long Island. They do honor their veterans. They have a great pride in their veteran warrior tradition. And they want to have us there [at the powwows] so that we can possibly help some o f those veterans. So that’s not primarily our mandate. Our mandate is employment, but it crosses over. And so some o f the other things [we are concerned with are] healing practices here at Northport. [We have] a group o f Native American Indian veteran elder advisors who come to our meetings quarterly. We now have three o f them who have stated to us that if we have questions or if we hear from Native people that want traditional healing ways, that we are to be in touch with [them] and they will speak with the Native community to see if they can find people to come in. If I hear from another social worker or a member o f the committee says to me, “Matt, we know that this veteran is Native American,” we will often call the elders and they will come by and do a friendly visit. And these are volunteer retired folks, but they do that out o f the kindness o f their heart. Or members o f our committee will stop by and say, “Are you being treated in a respectful way? Is there anything we can help you with?” So it’s that level o f being more culturally respectful to Native country.


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Do we need to begin to learn to be culturally competent? I personally believe it’s not just “needing to”— I think having diverse workplaces diverse schools diverse faculties is a blessing that enriches the agencies that function in those ways and can be a very positive thing in healing and providing community.

The Challenge o f Curriculum: What Are We Really “Covering”?

Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort o f theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. —James Loewan, Lies Your Teacher Told You (1999, p. 100) In spring 2 0 0 3 ,1 conducted a survey o f 124 public school districts in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Although my ultimate goal was to address this inquiry through shared narratives, I also sought a broad sense o f what was happening in Long Island classrooms regarding teaching and learning about Native culture and history. The survey responses offered insight into the powerful role standardized curriculum plays in how Native peoples are represented, if at all, within P-12 schooling. In the curriculum survey, I asked teachers to indicate both text and non-print resources they used in teaching about Native American history and culture, particularly o f Long Island. Although these responses were useful in that they led me to review certain textbooks and to note the need for more information regarding non-print, community resources, I found most intriguing the respondents’ replies to the following open-ended question: “In your opinion, what is the primary reason for teaching Long Island Native American history and culture in your district?”20

20I used the term “Native American” rather than “Native peoples” or “Indigenous peoples” in the written survey and letter of introduction because I felt this term would be more familiar to most teachers. See Chapter I for a discussion of terms.


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I found many o f the teachers’ responses reflective o f the intellectual shorthand of “standardized” language. The state’s curriculum guide speaks in general to the importance o f multicultural concepts. However, in the more specific guidelines they provide K-12 teachers, the presence o f Native peoples in the curriculum is often reduced to a means to teach about geography and economics, rather than human relations and contemporary issues. Such methods replicate within our classrooms the already strong message from teachers’ own schooling experiences that the indigenous members o f our communities are somehow unrelated to the discourse on diversity and multiculturalism. Important concepts and key understandings, therefore, risk getting “lost in translation” from guidelines to practice. Such oversimplification when combined with the everyday pressures to “cover” required curricular units creates a problematic combination, particularly in already marginalized academic areas, such as Native American studies, where most teachers have little or no experience to bring to bear on their lesson planning. The survey responses as well as the comments from the school focus groups confirmed one o f the underlying assumptions o f this study: Many non-Native Long Islanders, including teachers, are unaware o f the history, culture and contemporary lives of the Native peoples living among them, and this absence is reflected in the contemporary curriculum. Let’s look more closely at the curricular guidelines in this area. The Social Studies Resource Guide with Core Curriculum published by the University o f the State o f New York and the New York State Education Department (1999) identifies eight critical dimensions o f teaching and learning to be used in the development o f curriculum, instruction, and assessment based on the five social studies standards (history of the United States and New York State; world history; geography; economics; and civics, citizenship, and government). These eight dimensions, which the guide states can be used to “establish criteria for selecting the historic, social,


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geographic, economic and political understandings that students might investigate” (p. 3), are broad enough to include a multicultural educational perspective that would introduce students to the value o f understanding multiple perspectives on history and culture. Indeed, “multiculturalism and multiple perspectives” comprise the fifth critical dimension, clearly encouraging activities that dispel stereotypes, recognize the diversity within ethnic groups, and teach a balanced and inclusive version o f history. The first dimension, “Intellectual Skills,” which the guide presents as one o f the most critical, also provides many opportunities for multicultural study and encourages the probing o f ideas and assumptions and the viewing o f the human condition from a variety of perspectives. This dimension urges educators to make use o f a wide variety of primary sources, such as original documents, photographs, popular culture, the arts, biographies, journals, folklore, and oral histories, among other resources. In its focus on discovering a wide range o f authentic resources, this dimension clearly supports the partnership model presented by this study. Additionally, the seventh dimension, “Multiple Learning Environments and Resources,” encourages educators to expand beyond their classroom walls and seek out “alternative learning sites” within the community (p. 6). After explaining the eight critical dimensions o f teaching and learning, the guide moves on to a discussion o f key “concepts and themes for K-12 social studies” (p. 8). Many of these key concepts, such as empathy, diversity, imperialism, identity, justice, power, and human rights, directly relate to a study o f the history, culture, and contemporary issues o f underrepresented peoples, such as the Shinnecock. Looking further, we find an in-depth analysis o f “social studies skills” (pp. 12-18), defined as integrated “thinking skills and thinking strategies” (p. 12) that underpin the social studies standards. They again reinforce the standards’ focus on multiple sources of


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information and a variety of interpretations. They explicitly state that students should be able to “incorporate a set o f positive learning attitudes by recognizing and avoiding stereotypes,” among other skills (p. 14). With all o f this encouragement from the state curriculum guide, why do many teachers feel they lack the time and resources to explore local Native issues, culture, and history with their students? Why do Shinnecock and other Native peoples still suffer under the burden o f harmful stereotypes, misrepresentation, and virtual invisibility? Here are some o f the teachers’ responses to my survey question regarding the primary reason for teaching about Long Island Native Americans: To recognize how various cultures have adapted to given situations based upon their geography, religious beliefs, and/or economic needs. (Nassau County School district, fourth grade, survey response) Students learn about the first inhabitants’ basic needs— food, clothing, shelter and how the use o f the environment was/is influenced by environmental and geographical factors. (Nassau Country district, fourth grade, survey response) We identify several tribes within each culture area and show how the habitat o f the area determines the tribe’s culture. (Nassau County district, seventh grade social studies, survey response) To connect human survival to the geography o f Long Island, NY. To appreciate our natural surroundings and understand how they were used for survival. (Nassau County district, fourth grade, survey response) Some o f these responses also confirm what both the Native and non-Native contributors to this project told me regarding the stereotypical notion o f Native peoples as existing only in the past. I believe it is important for the students to learn about life on Long Island before the explorers. The students can relate to the material because it happened in their own backyards. (Nassau County district, fourth grade, survey response)


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When we talk about the Eastern Woodlands we incorporate a day or two and talk about the Iroquois living in N.Y. State because they played a role in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.... In the past we did a detailed study of Iroquois culture.... Now the Civil War has been switched from the 8th grade to the 7th and we said goodbye to the Iroquois. (Nassau County district, seventh grade social studies, survey response) When they learn about artifacts such as “paint pots” and then create them as class projects, the experience creates an authentic bridge to their L.I. cultural past. (Suffolk County district, fourth grade, survey response) In reading these responses, I am reminded o f Loewen’s (1999) lament regarding the teaching o f history, “By stressing the distant past, textbooks discourage students from seeking to learn history from their families or community, which again disconnects school from the other parts o f students’ lives” (p. 301). And what o f the textbooks in use on Long Island? The Long Island Story by Sesso and White (1997) was one o f the more frequently cited fourth grade textbooks in the survey. In their chapter on “The Algonquians,” the authors present the following topics: “Family Groups,” “Clothing,” “Homes,” “Growing up in an Algonquian Village,” and “Religion” (pp. 24-28). At the end o f this chapter, there is a review section with fill-in-the-blank questions on “Recalling What You Read,” a means o f preparing students for one o f the skills covered by the fourth grade standardized test o f English Language Arts. There are five words at the top o f the page: “sign language,” “wigwams,” “Algonquians,” “school,” and “dances.” The first fill-in-the-blank question is: 1. Algonquian children did not go t o ______________ . (p. 29) Most likely the authors did not intend the subliminal message implied by this question. Yet here in a seemingly innocent exercise using the fourth grade Native American unit to teach about Long Island’s history while reinforcing literacy skills, we have passed on a cultural stereotype in the very act of trying to teach about culture. For what do we ask


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a young child to recall about the Algonquian peoples, such as the Shinnecock? That they did not go to school. Such exercises underscore the need to take the principles of multicultural education, reinforced in the State’s own curriculum guide, to heart. The pain o f misrepresentation and o f being forever relegated to the past was a recurring theme among the Shinnecock contributors to this study: Because they’ve been [taught] that the Indians are long ago, they don’t get it— that Shinnecock is current and these students sitting right next to them are Shinnecock children, and this is their history. (Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile, Shinnecock) And certainly in those days anything that started with an American history lesson started with the arrival o f the pilgrims, and maybe one line about the helpful Indians towards the first Thanksgiving, and that was the end of it. There was no sense o f any contemporary, alive presence o f an indigenous person. (Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock) On one level, I think as a nation w e’re intrigued with folklore— the Wild West and old war stories and so forth. But I think on another level, if you address Native Americans, especially on Long Island, as if they lived [only] in the past, then you don’t have to address the needs, the concerns, the rights that we have as people who are here in the present. (Robin Weeks, Shinnecock) An additional chapter in The Long Island Story (Sesso & White, 1997) continues the authors’ discussion o f the Algonquians o f the past. It includes this final short section as conclusion: Very few Native Americans are left on Long Island. Many died from smallpox, a disease brought by the white settlers. The land o f the Native Americans was taken over by the Dutch and English colonists. Many of the remaining Native Americans moved to new areas where they hoped to live undisturbed. Some o f the Native Americans who stayed on Long Island were moved onto reservations. A reservation is an area o f land set aside by the government. Two small reservations still exist on Long Island. One is the Poospatuck (POOS pa tuck) Reservation in Mastic. The other is the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton. Native Americans played an important role


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in Long Island’s history. What reminders of the Native American way of life can you find in your community? (p. 35) Although the authors take care to communicate elements o f colonial/Native contact that were previously excluded from history texts, such as the spread o f disease and the “taking over” o f Native lands by white settlers, the prevailing mood o f this conclusion is one we often hear in “sympathetic” accounts o f Native peoples— melancholic resignation to their demise. Even though this passage includes brief factual information regarding the two Native reservations on Long Island, the teachers and students reading it, most o f whom most likely lack personal experience o f contemporary Native cultural renewal on Long Island, would be left with a reinforcement o f the “last o f the Mohican” stereotype. One message that seems to be passed on through the ages by mainstream media in America is that you always hear this discussion about the last of a particular nation— the last o f the Mohicans, for instance— is probably the most well-known one. But there’ve also been articles— the last Shinnecock full-blood Indian just passed away, and I think you hear these things periodically. What does that mean? What they’re trying to convey is the message that that particular nation, that particular group o f people no longer exist, when in fact those types o f statements [are] completely misleading. I think it was a way o f trying to place Native Americans in the past as opposed to dealing with the fact that they are still here. [We] still have rights and privileges. We still own land, we still have issues and concerns that have to be addressed, but o f course if [we] no longer exist, then you don’t have to deal with [us]. (Robin Weeks, Shinnecock) Looking again at the New York State curriculum guide under “Grade 4— Content Understandings,” we find the following topics and key concepts (in parentheses) under the “Native American Indians o f New York State” unit: Native American Indians were the first inhabitants o f our local region and State (Culture). The Iroquois and the Algonquian were the early inhabitants o f our State (Culture). Meeting basic needs— food, clothing, and shelter (Needs and Wants).


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Uses o f the environment and how Native American Indian settlements were influenced by environmental and geographic factors (Needs and Wants). Important accomplishments and contributions o f Native American Indians who lived in our community and State (Culture), (p. 28) The emphasis here is clearly on the past (who “lived” in our community and state) as well as on the economics standard that includes the concept o f “needs and wants.” Considering the richness and breadth o f concepts that provide the foundation for the content understandings in social studies, it appears that educators are truly missing an opportunity to deepen their understanding o f the living resources and multiple perspectives available to them. Such deeper understandings are increasingly lost in translation as a result o f the drive toward standardization and the federal government’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate to test all children. Unfortunately, when politics drives education, as is the case with NCLB, the in-depth understandings necessary to prepare children for lives in a complex and diverse world risk being transformed into sound bites for test preparation. The time pressure to cover state-mandated topics for tests was a recurrent theme in my conversations with both Native and non-Native educators. I think in most o f the country, certainly in New York State, there’s been an emphasis in recent years on testing. And with such a tremendous emphasis on testing, I think you have assembly line education as opposed to being able to address individual needs and concerns. And I think that’s been to the detriment o f education as a whole. (Robin Weeks, Shinnecock) But the reality is that you have to finish the curriculum. You have to. You can’t leave out the Cold War so that we can study Africa a little more— we can’t do it. So anything that we do that would be in any kind o f depth would have to be part o f an elective curriculum. (Tonie, Levittown 7-12 focus group) It would be wonderful to include a true history study, but the curriculum is jam-packed and each topic gets touched on. We need to cover assessment topics! (Nassau County district, high school chair, survey response)


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Don’t you know that Indians were contributing? And for the most part, you sense that the answer is: “I don’t care.” This is when w e’re doing Indians. They’re not people; they are subject matter. (Marguerite Smith, Shinnecock) Due to curriculum and time constraints we do not teach a separate unit on Native Americans of Long Island. (Nassau County district, seventh grade social studies, survey response) In calling the districts that had not responded to my curriculum survey, I received further insights into the absence o f teaching and learning about Native peoples on Long Island. Native Americans are not part of the curriculum other than during holidays. (Suffolk County district, social studies department) As you know we are guided by the New York State Core Curriculum, which includes a unit on Native Americans locally and statewide only in the fourth grade core curriculum. No other curriculum, grades kindergarten through twelve, includes a unit on local or state Native American Indians. Teachers, however, may teach lessons on local and state Native American Indians either in electives or in the seventh, eighth and eleventh grade American history courses. (Nassau County district social studies curriculum supervisor) When it comes to understanding the Native peoples o f our communities, it would appear that, aside from a generalized overview in the fourth grade, educators are left on their own to either “check o ff’ this topic from a burdensome list o f content areas or to use it as a springboard for deeper understandings. Although a majority o f the educators who responded to my curriculum survey selected language from the curriculum guidelines that steer teachers toward keeping Native peoples firmly fixed in the past, approximately one-quarter of the survey respondents expressed the concept that a study of our Native neighbors sheds light on contemporary issues pertaining to diversity. Rather than focusing on geographical or economic concepts, these educators focused


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on empathy, diversity, and rights when discussing the primary reason for teaching Long Island Native American history and culture in their district:21 I think it is important that students learn the history o f Long Island. I also believe that understanding different cultures and traditions are im portant.... Students often express concern over the treatment o f Native Americans over the course o f our nation’s history. (Nassau County district, middle school social studies, survey response) Often children develop misconceptions about the Native American people. It is extremely important for children to see the vast differences in early Indian cultures from ours today. Respect for others and different cultures will develop from teaching this topic. Student awareness that Native Americans and their culture exist today. (Nassau County District, elementary school principal, survey response) To help students understand how the past influences the present. It also helps them understand that the Native American culture and customs are still alive today. (Nassau County district, fourth grade, survey response) Perhaps more educators, if given the choice, time, and direction, would elect to focus on a more meaningful, less “standardized” approach to social studies education. What emerged in my conversations with non-Native educators was the difficult mix of their own gaps in knowledge in combination with lack o f time and support to explore these areas. I was impressed with their honesty and willingness to grapple with these issues and consider alternatives: And I think it’s a very viable point that many teachers, including myself, don’t know enough about local Indian issues to even feel comfortable [teaching about them]. We have never even been educated much about [them], (Dave, Levittown 7-12 focus group) W e’ve been De-Stalinized— people who are in their 30’s to 50’s. When we went through our educational process, [genocide] didn’t exist except maybe for 20 minutes [when] the teacher told us, “Well, we treated the Indians poorly, and we broke a lot treaties and killed a bunch o f them,” and now [on to] the Reform Era or the Progressive Era. So it really is a

21Eleven out of 41 total individual responses reflected these concerns.


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gap for teachers, and a gap that is difficult to fill because so much o f what we do is driven by Albany. If Albany doesn’t say this is going to be a focus, then it’s hard for us to make it a focus. (Steve, Levittown 7-12 focus group) The gaps in teachers’ knowledge regarding Native peoples are not limited to Long Island. Such erasures in our institutional memories pervade teaching and learning about Native peoples throughout the United States. These gaps and erasures have been institutionalized in our core curricula. In The Excluded Past, Shirley Blancke and Cjigkitoonuppa John Peters Slow Turtle (1990) discuss the results o f a questionnaire they sent to the social studies representatives o f all 50 states in an effort to gain information on the ways Native Studies are taught in K-12 public schools across the nation. The survey was divided into four topics: prehistory, post-contact, customary beliefs, and current issues. They found that o f these four areas, “current issues” was least addressed. It should be noted that New York State only responded to questions pertaining to when Native topics are addressed, not to the four topics asked. The researchers found that most o f the Native units were concentrated in the lower grades, leading them to suggest that Native Studies “are viewed as lacking in complexity and therefore more appropriate for younger children, an enduring stereotype o f the uncivilized savage” (p. 118). Their recommendations for best practices in addressing this content area speak directly to the partnership model: “It would o f course be best if schools learned about Native people directly from them, but the social separation between Indian and non-Indian is such that they rarely do” (p. 125). Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) concept o f celebrating survival is one way to counter the false notions o f cultural demise: Celebrating survival is a particular sort o f approach. While non-indigenous research has been intent on documenting the demise and cultural assimilation o f indigenous peoples, celebrating survival accentuates not so much our demise but the degree to which indigenous peoples and


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communities have successfully retained cultural and spiritual values and authenticity. The approach is reflected sometimes in story form, sometimes in popular music and sometimes as an event in which artists and story tellers come together to celebrate collectively a sense o f life and diversity o f connectedness, (p. 145) Celebrating survival as research method is significant not only for its focus on the living, self-determining aspects of indigenous cultures, but also for its acceptance of the arts as valid means through which to conduct research and take a stand against the limitations o f salvage ethnography. Throughout this dissertation’s journey, I have been struck by the ways in which the arts in their many forms— dance, song, painting, carving, and film making, among others— are vital, generative means through which the Shinnecock reclaim, inscribe, and embody their cultural heritage, current experiences, and future visions. The act o f telling and retelling stories is itself a form of artistic practice as well as knowledge construction, and the primary method driving this study. In drawing this discussion to a conclusion, I am left with a sense that many o f the Native and non-Native educators who shared their views with me experience both hope and frustration regarding education and the future— the hope that the world will change to embrace a more profound appreciation for all o f the peoples that make up our towns, states, and nation— and a frustration that despite progress made, they may not see this shift in their lifetimes. I think that there have certainly been very big changes in how that story is being told. Are there improvements to be made? Absolutely. But I think that it’s not starting out the way it was [when I was in school] as a total negative— nothing being said. Because there’s just too much information that’s out there now, and people have access to the information. Movies have changed. TV has changed. So it’s not starting in the same place, and that’s a good thing. But is there still a long road that we need to be on in terms o f what I’m calling “equity narrative?” I think there still is a long way to go. I used to think that I was going to be able to see this in my


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lifetime, that paradigm shift, but I’m not thinking any longer that I’m going to see it in my lifetime. (Roberta Hunter, Shinnecock) And it’s an evolutionary dialectic— where [first] the genocide occurred, and then w e’re not going to, as a culture, institutionally look into the culture o f the people that we just devastated. I don’t think that it’s possible for us institutionally to look into their culture within the first century o f us wiping them out. I think it’s a progression. And then if we look down the road— I mean if we had a crystal ball, my guess is that in twenty years there will be a lot more. (Steve, Levittown 7-12 focus group) In his chapter in Banks’s Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action, Gary Howard (1996) questions the role o f white America in transforming the future positively: “How does an ethnic group that historically has been dominant in its society adjust to a more modest and balanced role? Put differently, how do White Americans learn to be positive participants in a richly pluralistic nation?” (p. 323). Howard goes on to discuss the increase in racism and hate crimes, which he attributes to the discomfort of the white population with the country’s growing diversity. We have also seen this discomfort expressed on the academic and political spheres in the strident responses to the voluntary national history standards discussed earlier. Situated himself as a white American, Howard asks, “What must take place in the minds and hearts o f White Americans to convince them that now is the time to begin their journey from dominance to diversity?” (p. 324). It is my profound hope that the stories presented in this journey toward understanding, which is drawing to an end, will represent a partial answer to this question. I have tried to explore “research of the heart” as well as o f the mind— research that seeks to listen respectfully and find ways to support and work in equal partnership with some o f the most underrepresented peoples in our nation. The insights gained as a consequence o f this study point to the need for respectful and caring partnerships as a means by which we may become the


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co-authors o f our shared histories and futures. The words of one o f the contributors to this study speaks most eloquently to the hope behind this journey: We can really bring out some very powerful young people o f all cultures into the world ... so that we can raise a generation o f people that will not repeat the atrocities that have happened, that will be aware when they’re looking at our world, how to look at things from a different perspective. (Sherry Blakey Smith, Ojibwa Cree) I will end this chapter with excerpts from two final conversations with nonNative educators. Their voices provide additional perspectives on the challenges presented here. In the final and concluding chapter, I will look at the educational and research implications o f these intertwining narratives and tell the story o f a collaborative project that emerged from this inquiry.

On July 18, 2004, I sat down with Angela Lalor, a form er social studies teacher and currently an educational consultant fo r Learner Centered Initiatives. She provides professional development fo r several Long Island schools, including Cutchogue East Elementary. Sitting together with State curriculum guides and sample lesson plans spread out on her kitchen table, I asked Angela to talk about her approach to the core curriculum in social studies, particularly as it pertains to the study o f Native peoples. This guide has 26 different concepts and themes, and “culture” and “empathy” happen to be one o f them. A lot of teachers will [look at the curriculum] chronologically, but you can also do it conceptually. So throughout the curriculum, if you’re teaching 4th grade, you may approach it through “empathy,” trying to do your activities to develop an empathy in children, which is very hard to do. How does viewing the culture of other people help you to appreciate others around you? Knowing about the Native Americans, the way that they lived and everything they went through, how does that help you appreciate their history and understand them better today? Unfortunately, teachers don’t always ask those kinds o f questions._______


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They’ll stop at the point where they ask about the Native Americans— what happened to them— but not an understanding or an appreciation o f how knowing this helps [our] understanding [of] who they are today. With all the documents that the State comes out with, someone [needs to] spend time with teachers really unpacking these [concepts]. I think the key to teaching social studies is making a connection between what happens in the past and what is happening now. It’s one thing to learn about Native Americans in the past, and it’s another to understand their experiences now. One o f the things I used to do when I was a teacher, and I encourage other teachers to do now, is to look for current events articles that deal with the concept or the content that you are trying to get kids to understand. When teachers say to me, “Well, I use the textbook,” I almost feel like saying, “You don’t really need a social studies textbook.” Because the textbook isn’t going to do it. You really need to take a look at those around you. Unfortunately what’s happened is that lots o f teachers are guided by the State exams. The misunderstanding about the way the State exams are structured is that these Standards came out first, and the idea was that this was the expectation. And so the tests were used to measure whether or not students were achieving New York State Standards. So the expectation came first and the assessment was there as a measurement o f it. Unfortunately, school districts and teachers didn’t spend the time unpacking and really aligning instruction with the State Standards until after the tests, so when that happens, for a lot o f schools, the tests drive instruction. And if you take a look at the 4th grade social studies test that’s actually given in November o f 5th grade, you take a look at that social studies test, there [are] always questions about the Iroquois and the Algonquian. So a lot o f schools will use that as the reasoning as to why we focus on those peoples. But really, if you look at the Standards, they are talking about your local history. Teachers need assistance in trying to make those connections and to realize it’s okay to look into the lives o f the Shinnecock people as a way for students to learn about “New York State Native Americans.”


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Teachers will give you the idea that there’s not enough time. Well, there’s not enough time if you do everything in isolation. You have to make connections. So when you talk about the storytelling piece, that’s a wonderful connection to English language arts and social studies. [If] you open up the list and just check off the things [you] need to cover without looking at the column that says Concepts and Themes, without looking at the Standards, which is your reason why you should be teaching, then it’s going to seem overwhelming.

Robert Vetter is an anthropologist and educator whose presentations in schools throughout Nassau and Western Suffolk County address the fourth grade Native American unit. As some o f the teachers who responded to my curriculum survey mentioned his program, I contacted him fo r an in-depth conversation about his work. We talked at his home in Eastport on a hot summer afternoon, July 31, 2004. What I think is wrong in education is what I call an “object of history” approach. And in an “object o f history” approach, you deal with Native people as an object in the course o f U.S. history. Most textbooks that I’ve seen talk about Indian people as an artifact o f the past. They will go into great detail about how they lived, how they survived, how they got their food, clothing, and shelter, and then say nothing about contemporary people, or if you’re lucky, there’ll be a line at the end: Well, they live on reservation in ... and not say anything about them. So the first thing that I do, whether it’s Plains or Woodlands, or whether it’s a program with teachers, adults, whatever it is, I talk about people today. Then I may have to go back to how they survived a long time ago, but I start with that, because I think that’s the most important thing to begin with— for the average person to know that there are over 2 million Native Americans living in our country today and talk about who they are. So that’s how I start._________


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And then I may have to say, “Today w e’re going to be talking about the way that they used to live back a long, long time ago,” but I try to add in the course of doing that, “There are elements o f these cultures that do exist today.” And I try to add to it everything that I can that bridges it to the present day. I’ll try to bridge the past to the present, because if you look at Native cultures in the present day, they are a combination o f old and new. And Native people today have a unique challenge to walk in both worlds, and I want kids to understand that. One o f the things that I try to do is to have Native presenters work with me. And I encourage them to share stories o f their own childhood whenever possible about how they learned their culture, because that’s something that really sticks with kids. That encounter by itself, I hope, will break down some stereotypes. Because I’ve even had kids ask me after I introduced one of my presenters, “Moses isn’t really an Indian, is he?” And I’ll say, “Well, I just told you that he was and he said he was.” And they’ll [say], “Yeah, but he was wearing glasses, so he couldn’t really be an Indian.” It brings up the stereotypes, but that’s what you have to do in order to work beyond it. I’d like to hope that they leave changed. That’s what gives me the incentive to get up and go to work everyday. I don’t know if we can change everybody, but I know that we can leave a lasting impression on some. I think one of the things that Native people want is to know they are being treated within academia in a respectful way. I believe that historically we have seen what has happened when Native and nonNative people didn’t understand one another. What we don’t know is what can happen if they do sit shoulder to shoulder. That’s what I believe my life work has been about— setting the stage for that to happen.


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Chapter VII SHARED VISIONS

Desegregating Hearts and Minds I can still remember the mountain of dirt silhouetted against the few remaining tall trees at the bottom o f our yard. On top o f it my brother stands, tossing handfuls of soil that explode in dusty sprays in all directions— “dirt bombs.” Growing up in Suffolk County in the 1960s while new suburban housing developments were spreading eastward from Nassau County meant that building lots became our early playgrounds. In those days, there were still some woods left that had not been tom down for houses— woods that became the borderland o f our childhood wanderings, the places where stray dogs roamed, tree forts were built, and a legendary tiny “shrine” to the Virgin Mary lay shrouded in vines and mystery. Sunday morning church services were held in the local movie theater, the elementary school that we eventually attended was still under construction, and farm stands and riding stables bordered the emerging neighborhood, which, when the breeze blew in, would be permeated by their rich, earthy smells. Today all but the housing developments have disappeared from Hauppauge, replaced by odorless industrial “parks” and strip malls. O f all these early memories, however, there is one remarkable absence: I have no memory o f seeing in my neighborhood or in public school classrooms, or in local stores or church services, a


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child that looked different from my family or neighbors, a child o f color. Driving through my old neighborhood in 2005, this impression has not changed. Long Island is one o f the most racially segregated suburbs in the nation. According to a 2002 report, Racism and the Opportunity Divide on Long Island, produced by the Institute on Race and Poverty, 90% o f Long Island’s people o f color live in 20% o f its communities. Additionally, over 50% o f non-white students attend just 13 o f its 124 school districts, and a majority o f these districts have a white student body o f 80% or higher (p. 11). The same report cites a history o f “structural and institutional practices that privilege some communities and isolate others,” practices such as racial steering in real estate, white-only subsidized mortgages for suburban development, and a fragmented system of school districts that falls along racial and economic lines (p. 3). Such patterns o f segregation, although strong on Long Island, are not unique to it, but reflect a similar racial and economic segregation in many northern metropolises dating back to Black migrations from the South at the end o f World War I (p. 4). Such migrations stimulated the fear and racial stereotyping that propelled “white flight” to the suburbs and such exclusionary real estate practices as Levitt’s infamous lease agreements. Significantly for this discussion, the report points to the impact of such structural and institutional racism on the quality o f education for Long Island’s children: Virtually all Long Island school children, including most White children, are currently denied the benefits of an integrated education. These benefits include reductions in racial prejudice, stereotyping, and preparation of students to live and work in our increasingly multicultural and international society, (p. 28)


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Honoring First Voices: Implications for Educational Practice The educational implications o f this project lie in demonstrating ways in which to desegregate our hearts and minds— a task growing increasingly more urgent within a national context where, political correctness aside, difference is often seen as a deficit or threat rather than an abundance o f human stories to be shared and an opportunity to teach respect and compassion for all members o f our communities. Our national discourse is increasingly ruled by “either/or” choices. Within educational policy, the pendulum swing toward standardized testing reinforces a “one right answer” approach to the questions posed by a complex world. In answer to my original questions regarding the nature o f teaching and learning about Long Island’s Native peoples, many of the contributors to this inquiry point to the need to address complex educational challenges: the malignant persistence o f stereotypes, the continuing biases o f history teaching, and an increasingly standardized curriculum and testing system that, in the rush toward “coverage,” often “covers over” difficult questions and important perspectives. One way to address these challenges is suggested by the title o f this dissertation, By Their Very Presence, representing a shared educational vision and the honoring o f first voice. The educational implications o f this study, therefore, point to a need to create mutually beneficial, equal partnerships among public school educators, local teacher preparation programs, and members o f underrepresented communities. This project focuses on the Shinnecock Nation, one of the most invisible communities on Long Island, yet a community with a wealth of untapped cultural and educational resources. A partnership with Shinnecock artists and educators has the potential to transform the ways in which public schools present the New York State curriculum standards that


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address Native peoples and local state history. According to O ’Loughlin (2001), such partnerships have implications for teacher education as well: We need to abandon the notion o f generic teacher preparation, and opt instead for partnership models in which we co-construct contextually sensitive teacher education programs with interested groups.... In view of the chasm between public schools and universities on the one hand, and the even greater chasm between educational elites (i.e., public schools and universities combined) and poor communities o f color in many areas, this will not be an easy task. If teacher education is to exert any leadership in educational reform or social change, however, this is an essential step. (p. 62) Such a goal can be framed within the larger educational discourse regarding diversity. New York State has recently passed new educational regulations that require all institutions o f higher education that prepare teachers for state certification to achieve national accreditation by December 2006. Proving an institution’s commitment to diversity is one requirement for national accreditation. Thus, the debate about multicultural education has entered into the national regulatory arena for higher education. The operative question here, however, is how institutions define their commitment to diversity. Citing her volatile experience in New York City’s Bank Street College’s School for Children, Virginia Chalmers (1997) demonstrates the importance o f how educators engage in a discourse about difference. Chalmers documents the powerful reactions to a social potluck she had arranged for parents and staff o f color that she believed were feeling excluded despite the school’s stated commitment to diversity. Some o f the school’s white and non-white parents and staff members were upset at Chalmers’s potluck meeting because it implied that, despite good intentions on the part of liberal educators, race is still an issue. Once free to do so, however, some parents o f color expressed to Chalmers their sense of being permanent guests at the school rather than


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true partners, despite its stated emphasis on multiculturalism and inclusion (p. 69). They felt relieved to discuss these suppressed feelings at the potluck. Through the course o f this three-year inquiry, I have come to believe in the power o f heartfelt listening without judgment. Respectful listening may perhaps help to heal the tom places in our histories and, most importantly, prevent such ruptures in the future. It can lead us to those places in our histories that need to be uncovered and lived with. The stories begun here, if continued in our schools, can shape our classrooms into forums for understanding the multiple perspectives that inform the present and shape our shared future together as a nation of diverse peoples. Such listening is particularly crucial in our relationships with those whose voices and perspectives have been most often absent within our classrooms, textbooks, and research journals.

Walking a Tightrope: Implications for Research On a rain soaked Columbus Day in 2 0 0 5 ,1 had a conversation with my dissertation sponsor, Graeme Sullivan, regarding the final revisions to this manuscript. It seems only fitting that on a day set aside to celebrate the “discovery” o f America, I should be grappling with issues related to the ethical representation o f indigenous peoples for whom research is often a dirty word (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). Graeme, who has respected my approach from the start, has challenged me to address twin responsibilities: to the Native people who contributed to this study as well as to the scholarly community in which it will find a home. This is the tightrope that I must walk— to write in a way that honors my contributors’ voices and ethically represents their concerns, perspectives, and well-being and also to honor the academic


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community, with its own cultural expectations and traditions. An ongoing question remains— can I bridge these two worlds? Is it even possible? As a non-indigenous person, I am challenged by indigenous research paradigms such as Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) notion o f decolonization. As I reflect upon the various twists and turns o f my own scholarly journey, I realize that much o f the work o f this project was inner— by that I mean the struggle was chiefly with my own intellectual and cultural preconceptions and need to feel in control. When I sensed that Elizabeth Haile and her colleagues were leading me in new directions that I had not foreseen, such as a shift in focus from artistic practices to educational reform, I began to experience Tuhiwai Smith’s metaphor o f research as moving tides rather than fixed notions. Perhaps the most significant insight I gained as a scholar was from the slowly growing experience that the act o f research itself could foster community and relationship. During the past few years, I often felt the warmth and support o f my contributors, and a growing sense o f fellowship beyond the writing o f the dissertation. In Chapter II, I explored two specific ways o f knowing— the mechanistic paradigm that underlies much o f modem social science and the organic paradigm that is related to indigenous ways o f knowing. In the Western world, we breathe in mechanism seemingly from birth and throughout our educational system, where we are taught to compartmentalize knowledge and to objectify experience. Even though we tiy to fashion alternatives, such as constructivism and critical theory, aren’t we still breathing the atmosphere o f mechanism as we go about our disciplinary tasks as graduate students, educators, and scholars? Perhaps it is possible to breathe a different air than the one in which we have been raised, for organic ways o f knowing the world are not limited to indigenous peoples. They are here in the West, only in marginalized forms, living at the borders of our consciousness. This project has offered me insights


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into the research act that can be summarized by three interrelated concepts: respect, relationship, and the arts. Respect embodies an understanding and appreciation for the holistic interrelationships surrounding certain Westernized concepts, such as culture, identity, and knowledge. Respect also implies a relinquishing o f the need to control as well as an honoring o f wisdom to be found and appreciated outside the academy, within the circle o f relationship. Relationship implies the mutual sharing o f perspectives—Native and non-Native; and trusting, as did Martin Buber, in the power and creativity o f the space between two individuals. It challenges me to look for I-Thou encounters rather than I-It exchanges. And finally, I look to the arts as that bridge out o f the dark wood o f Cartesian dualism. Artistic activity bridges Western and indigenous perspectives in its focus on direct experience and the unity o f percept and concept in the act o f creation. The arts more often than not make central non-literal renderings o f experience. My experiences as an arts educator have offered me the clearest alternative to this mechanistic view of human knowing. Artistic sensibility presents a view o f human cognition that reunites the world o f the senses with the world o f thought and acknowledges the realms of human emotion, imagination, and perception as integral parts o f a deeper human knowing that is many-layered, ambiguous, and at times uncomfortable. Artistic knowing challenges us to look below the surface and to read between the lines— to engage in living thinking. It is this artistic knowing that I have tried to engage in the conduct and writing o f this dissertation. The final methods that shaped this study— surveys, conversations, focus groups, participant observation— are those o f traditional qualitative approaches to research. I have attempted to carry out these methods in ways that align with an indigenous or


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organic worldview, particularly through the interweaving o f many stories and voices. I have also tried to limit editing, categorization, and quantification o f our shared content and write in a style that can speak to those outside the academic world. Narrative inquiry views the act o f writing and rewriting, telling and retelling stories as an often overlooked method o f discovery, placing personal experience at the heart o f the research act (Clandinin & Connelly, 1998; Richardson, 1998). Such narratives are centered on the stories people tell and can incorporate many forms, such as oral histories, autobiography, and conversations, which are characterized by listening, caring, respect, and relationship. Therefore, for a dissertation seeking to find ways beyond the confines o f social scientific analysis and objectification, writing, sharing of writing, and rewriting have been my primary modes o f meaning making. In addition to narratives, future inquiries can explore other modes o f representation, such as the performing and visual arts. For individuals and communities share their presence and shape their living histories through music, dance, theater, film, sculpture and other art forms that tell powerful stories to those willing to listen and learn. Another distinguishing feature o f indigenous methodologies that seek to decolonize the research act is to provide a benefit to the community via projects that support healing, survival, remembering, reframing, storytelling, and protecting, among others (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). Supporting the work o f self-determination in Native communities by respecting indigenous ways o f knowing and by taking a secondary, supportive role, has, therefore, been an emerging theme and integral to the discovery process o f this dissertation. Although I was able to continue the conversation during the write-up o f the dissertation, my hope for future projects is to more fully embody collaboration and shared meaning making throughout all phases o f the research process, from start to finish. Throughout this three-year journey, I have been troubled


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with the notion o f whether or not I was truly finding ways to support the Shinnecock people in their own projects, particularly since providing a benefit to the Native community is a primary goal o f indigenous methodologies. Fortunately, my partnership with Elizabeth Haile has been characterized by our mutual learning together to seek ways to improve education about Native peoples. The first step in this emerging partnership is the last story that I will recount here.

An Ending and Beginning Story On a brisk afternoon in early March 2 0 0 5 ,1 arrived at the Shinnecock Museum with a satchel full o f folders, sign-up sheets, and pre/post-test materials. It was hard to believe we had gotten it off the ground in such a short time since the winter holidays— the first professional development workshop for teachers organized and hosted by the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum. The title o f the two-hour workshop was “Teaching and Learning with Long Island’s Native Peoples.” Using funding awarded by the Teachers College President’s Grant for Student Research in Diversity, I was able to support the Museum in preparing and presenting their first professional development workshop for teachers. I will always remember this particular process for its confirmation o f the underlying indigenous principles of this dissertation— namely, as a non-indigenous scholar, I was able to provide a secondary, supportive role, as I watched the Museum itself, with Mrs. Haile’s able coordination, take charge o f the project and make it their own. We had 13 participant teachers that day, most o f them from Cutchogue East Elementary School. Clarissa, Jeanne, Deborah, and Peg, whose contributions appear in this dissertation, were among those in attendance. The program itself reminded me o f


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some o f the pivotal points o f my own journey. After Winonah Warren, the Museum’s President, welcomed the teachers, Lucille Bosley shared some o f the salient features of my conversation with her, regarding her memories o f schooling. Next we moved upstairs, while artist David Bunn Martine provided a detailed walk through the Museum’s historical murals. When this was done, we moved back downstairs. Next on the program, Denise Dennis shared the experience o f Shinnecock children in the school system and presented a picture book demonstration that graphically demonstrates the inappropriateness o f alphabet books that use “I is for Indian.” Based on the teachers’ post-test comments and my own conversations with them immediately after the workshop, this rendering o f the currency of cultural stereotypes was particularly powerful. (Results o f pre/post-testing appear in Appendix C.) Lisa Bowen, Assistant Librarian for Southampton Middle School, completed the program with a detailed presentation o f culturally appropriate literature available for teachers. All participants received bibliographic materials prepared by Ms. Bowen, as well as a notebook of other resources prepared by Mrs. Haile and other educators from Shinnecock. Mrs. Haile then closed the program by asking me to say a few words about the concept behind the workshop. In preparing these words, I tried to summarize in a few sentences what I had gathered on this journey that began with Fiona’s challenge to learn something about the people on whose land I was living. I thanked the Shinnecock Museum for hosting the event and for welcoming us to territory on which they have lived for over 10,000 years. I then challenged the participants to consider beginning their teaching of Native history in the present, so that they can collaborate with our living indigenous neighbors and put an end to the myth that history is only about the past, rather than something that reverberates into the present and helps to shape our shared futures together.


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In conversations afterwards and in reading the pre- and post-test responses, I have found encouragement for the partnership approach to balancing and deepening curriculum and instruction. I believe that this model can be replicated in other regions and with other underrepresented peoples. For with few exceptions, most of the teachers expressed the impact that such a workshop will have on their teaching as well as a desire to continue this kind o f study in the future. I think that it has helped me to question history and continue looking at it through multiple perspectives. I would like to examine the idea o f teaching social studies in a more integrated way, as well as with the idea o f starting from the present! The students will get a chance to learn just how interconnected we all are and just how much the past influences who we all are. Thank you for such an educational and enlightening experience. I was surprised that books being published are still not appropriate and reflective o f the true N.A. way o f life. What impacted me the most was the thought that stereotypes are still being taught. Responses such as these confirm that “by their very presence,” Shinnecock artists and educators can open doors whereby Long Islanders can grow to understand and respect Native histories and cultures. Perhaps the very notion o f presence itself embodies the conceptual tides through which this inquiry has traveled. For it is in the very act of being present, as scholars, educators and artists, that we can forge a relational space between where listening, respecting, and bearing witness become our new research tools— a space where we are no longer professional strangers, but partners. This inquiry was not only an exploration of Native perspectives on education, but also an inquiry into the nature of research itself. In my role as “researcher,” I have experienced firsthand the power o f the indigenous principles and theories cited earlier as alternatives to traditional scientific research methodologies. In my writing, I have tried to capture the organic process of this project— to show how working in


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partnership with those I consider “colleagues” rather than “subjects” allowed the study to change and grow along with the people with whom I spoke. Through relinquishing control and allowing myself to take the time to be led, I believe I have experienced firsthand the power o f the partnership model o f inquiry. I hope this study will contribute to the empowering o f First Voice (Graveline, 2000) with an eye to forging partnerships that affect change in our Long Island schools and teacher preparation programs. At the same time, I hope it will encourage other like-minded writers to trust in and explore organic and personal methods o f inquiry. Most importantly, I hope to keep the conversations alive, because, at the end o f this arduous and enriching process, I realize our work is just beginning.


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REFERENCES

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Appendix A SURVEY MATERIALS AND IRB APPROVAL Dear I am writing to ask your assistance in completing the enclosed short survey, which is the initial stage o f a research project examining the educational resources used to address Native American lives, history and culture, particularly o f the Long Island region. This project has three phases. The preliminary phase is part o f my doctoral dissertation research at Teachers College, Columbia, and will be carried out in collaboration with my colleagues at Adelphi. In this phase I will collect information on textbooks and other resources currently in use in teaching Native American history and culture, particularly local Native peoples, such as the Shinnecocks. In the second phase o f the research I will invite interested teachers from selected districts to be interviewed about how they currently address local Native American lives, history and culture in their classrooms. The third phase will consist o f applying for funding in order to support the development o f additional resources and staff development to enrich the social studies curriculum pertaining to local Native history, lives and culture in selected districts. May I ask that you take twenty minutes to complete this survey and return it to me by April 30, 2003. A postage-paid envelope is enclosed. Please be assured that the results o f this survey will be kept strictly confidential. At no time will the names o f districts or district personnel be cited in any publications, reports or proposals that result from this study, which has been approved by Adelphi University’s Institutional Review Board.


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Thank you for your attention to this request. Your responses are an important and valuable contribution to this project. If I do not receive your survey I will contact you by phone. I look forward to sharing the results and potential rewards o f this project with you. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at (516) 877-4099 or email me at [email protected]. Sincerely,

Diane Caracciolo Associate Dean, School o f Education



LONG ISLAND NATIVE A M E R IC A N C U R R IC U L U M SU R V EY

NAM E:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ POSITION:____________________________________________________________________________________________________ DISTRICT:____________________________________________________________________________________________________ PHONE:_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ EM AIL:_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ T here are five num bered sections in this survey, totaling nine individual questions. 1. Please list w ritten resources (such as textbooks, photocopied m aterial, curriculum guides) used by you r d istrict in teaching Long Island N ative A m erican history and culture.

A U TH O R (S)

PU B L ISH E R

GRADE LEVEL

N>


2. Do you incorporate non-w ritten, com m unity resources, such as N ative cultural consultants, guest speakers, local artists, field trips in y o u r lessons about Long Island Native A m erican culture and history? If yes, please com plete the follow ing. If no, please skip to question # 3 on page four.

Yes No

2a. guest speakers, cultural consultants, artists (please give nam e, affiliation, and grade level)

Nam e

A ffiliation/C on tact Person

G rade Level

's O

u>


2b. field trips (please list name and location o f field trips and grade level)

Nam e

2c. How did you learn about these com m unity resources?

Location/A dd ress

G rade Level


2d. In your opinion, what are the educational benefits in y o u r use o f com m unity resources in the teachin g o f Long Island N ative A m erican history and culture? ____ _____ _________________________________________

3. W ould you be interested in learning m ore about how to in corporate com m unity resources, such as N ative artists and storytellers into your social studies curriculum ? Yes No 4. In your opinion, what is the prim ary reason for teachin g L ong Island N ative A m erican history and culture in your district?

SO CO


Please describe a typical assignm ent given to students to help achieve cu rricu lar goals in this area o f the curriculum Island N ative A m erican history and culture).

G rade Level:

I w o u ld be in terested in p a rticip a tin g fu r th e r in this study, (please circle one)

Yes

No

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION

10/14/04-10/16/04: Native American Indian Education Conference of New York (NAIEA/NY); Islandia. Hosted by Shinnecock and Unkechaug peoples and Southampton and Middle Island School Districts. First time on Long Island. “Listen with Care, Speak with Care: Honoring Traditions and Mastering the Tools of Expression: N. Scott Momaday, keynote speaker. ❖ 10/30/04: Symposium at Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center: “The Reemergence of Charles Bunn, America’s Greatest Shore Bird Carver and The Bennett/Cuffee Reattribution; field notes; conducted interview after program ❖ 11/01/04: Meeting at Cultural Center with David Bunn Martine, Elizabeth Haile and Josephine Smith, re: Long Island Native American Studies proposed curriculum/syllabi. ❖ 1/29/05: American Museum of Natural History, E. Haile’s film Native American Neighbors and preview of in production The Last Piece screened ❖ 3/3/05: Professional Development Workshop jointly hosted at Shinnecock Museum


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Appendix C PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT and RESULTS OF PRE- AND POST-TEST


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Special Professional Development Workshop for Teachers Teaching and Learning with Long Island’s Native Peoples Hosted by the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum Thursday, March 3, 2005 4:00-6:00 pm You are invited to a unique workshop created and presented by Shinnecock educators to help Long Island teachers discover new educational resources and approaches to teaching and learning about Native peoples. Workshop will address N.Y.S. standards for elementary teachers and how to incorporate a culturally sensitive, interdisciplinary approach about indigenous peoples into the curriculum while enriching students’ awareness of Long Island’s living Algonquian heritage. Participants are invited to share in a traditional Native meal. This pilot workshop is being sponsored by the Teachers College President’s Grant fo r Student Research in Diversity, and will be videotaped fo r educational purposes. Date Thursday, March 3, 2005 Time: 4pm-6pm Cost: Free. Participants will be provided with a $10 travel stipend Location: Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum 100 Montauk Highway, Southampton, NY 11969 (631) 287-4923; http://www.shinnecock-museum.org Travel east though Hampton Bays on Old Montauk Highway; cross Shinnecock Canal and continue east; pass Southampton College on left. Cultural Center is ‘A mile east on right comer o f West Gate Road and Montauk Highway. Parking in rear o f Center. Workshop limited to 30 participants For further information and to register, please call or email Diane Caracciolo Associate Dean, School o f Education, Adelphi University 516-877-4099; caraccio(cp,adelphi.edu


205

Pre and P ost T est R esu lts, M arch 3, 2005 p rofession al d evelop m en t w ork sh op

# participants: # completed test: 11 response rate: Pre-test Q1= Pre-test Q2= Pre-test Q3= Post-test Ql= Post-test Q2= Post-test Q3=

13 85%

Please summarize below everything you currently know about the indigenous peoples of Long Island past and present What approaches (key questions, themes, activities) and resources (texts, speakers, field trips) do you use to teach about the indigenous peoples of Long Island? What do you hope to learn at today’s workshop? What have you learned about Long Island’s indigenous peoples that you didn’t know before today? Which aspect of today’s workshop impacted you the most? Why? As a result of this workshop, what new approaches and ideas would you like to implement when you return to your classroom? Do you think your students’ learning experiences will benefit as a result of your participation today? How? what suggestions do you have for follow-up to enhance today’s workshop? Any other comments/suggestions?

Respondents Respondent R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 RIO Rll

Institution Cutchogue East Cutchogue East Cutchogue East Fort Corchaug Cutchogue East Blank Blank Center Moriches William Floyd School District Cutchogue East Cutchogue East

Level/Subject Taught Special educ. Science, K-6 Grade 4 Educator Grade 4 Blank K-5 Grade 4 Grade 4

Did you go to school on L.I.? yes yes yes no yes Blank yes yes yes

Grade 4 Library

yes No (Mississippi)


206

RESULTS (verbatim: kept original spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.) Responses R1:Q1

Pre-Test Over the years I have been friendly with members of the Shinnecocks. I have learned various things from them and have attended one of your pow-wows years ago

R1:Q2

As a new teacher, I don’t have a lot of experience teaching about indigenous peoples of L.I.

R1:Q3

-What facilities you have available here? -What were your traditions-fact vs. fiction? -A better understanding of Native Americans Very difficult—being local and teaching this topic for 25+ vears I have a good basic general knowledge! From shelter, to food (hunting, gathering and farming), to customs—just here to gather more knowledge—

R2:Q1

R2:Q2

R2:Q3

R3:Q1

4 grade field trio to Ft. Corchaug site— focus on “How were these local [Indians, Native Americans] dependent on their nature resources? “Why did they pick this location for their village? More information, more ideas/activities to add to my day field trip.

• • • •

R3:Q2

• • •

Algonquian Lived in wigwams or longhouses Used natural resources for clothing, shelter, tools, & food History as hunter/gatherers to present artifacts found locally (paint pots)

Post-Test I had no idea that there is such a wonderful museum here-so close to our school district. This would be a great field trip. I knew the colonists changed native american life, but had no idea how abusive they were in terms of language, traditions, etc. Yes! I think I am better equipped to give my students a more authentic understanding of the history of the Shinnecocks and Native Americans in general. -Very well organized, wonderful speakers -great resources -nice pens! Thank you! Great resource in the notebook and lists of bibliographies! I’ve added some new tidbits of info, to my prior Knowledge. I’ve always used HANDS ON Food to get children to leam! It works so well—I would have liked more authentic recipes and craft ideas— I’ll add to my 4th grade field trip to the Ft. Corchaug the new info. I learned today-

The information was very general—much of it I was familiar with—I would have liked to gain more specific tidbits of information—how did they make rope—did they make wampum prior to the settlers, etc. How wonderful & informative your museum is. The relationships between Native Americans & the local people.

Incorporate literature & philosophy

f ie ld tr ip s (F t. C o rc h a u g )

Science labs (incorporating the Three Sisters & plant growth)


207

Responses R3:Q3

Pre-Test * More information to bring into my classroom

R4: Q1

Main study Haudeneshone (Iroquois) Just now studying Algonquian Books Iroquois Musuem, How Caves Onchiota Museum, Adirondacks Friends at Shinnecock Anything

R4: Q2

R4:Q3 R5: Q1

R6: Q1

-live from land & preserve as much as possible -Algonkian -fort Corchaug -Hunt & use animals skins -Grow crops -NY Soc. Studies Weekly -NY text (published?) -Fort Corchaug trip -Add’l info. -Misconceptions Blank

R6: Q2

Blank

R6: Q3 R7: Q1

Blank PAST Well -known for wampum production Not on good terms w/some New England tribes Stationary village life except for hunting trips farmers, com, beans, squash PRESENT

R5: Q2 R5: Q3

Post-Test Send out brochures (informational) telling dates & times of tours & events at your wonderful museum! All of the sDeakers were wonderful-thank vou No response

I would be interested in any future workshopsPossibly language? Luckily, from Mrs. Caracciolo’s work at Cutchogue East I was able to clear up some misconceptions. The genuine & welcoming nature of the Shinnecock people impacted me greatly! Some of the literature. A field trip here. Fabulous! I think that it has helped me to question history and continue looking at it through multiple perspectives. I would like to examine the idea of teaching social studies in a more integrated way, as well as with the idea of starting from the present! Yes! The students will get a chance to learn just how interconnected we all are and just how much the past influences who we all are. Thank you for such an educational and enlightening experience! blank Didn’t realize the teaching and outreach available at the Shinnecock Museum

V ia b le n a tiv e c o m m u n ity


208

Responses R7:Q2

R7: Q3

R8: Q1

R8:Q2

R8: Q3 R9: Q1

R9: Q2

Pre-Test Connection w/the earth that native peoples were the epitome of recycling. 1. using as much of a hunted animal as possible 2. having communication w/plants, animals, stones There is contusion about the 13 tribes were they truly distinct tribes? Interested in the charter that the tribe had w/England How is the progress on being federally recognized -local tribes-Algonquian; NY Algonkian & Iroquois -wampum, wigwams, Unkechaug, 13 families, spirituality (Creator), used all parts of animals, technology, clothing, powwows -Use NY standard questions. Talk about need inspiring inventions, cause & effect. -Poospatuck Reservation did a presentation @ our school -video (don’t know name) -Suffolk Archeological booklet -Textbook (not much) Resources-authentic /truth

Post-Test Talk more about native people in the present.

Information of tours for classes, Information on crafts & activities for classroom.

-Shinnecock Golf course -Reparation -went on whaling expeditions w/Europeans

I think it will be more beneficial for students to understand how N.A. lives changed & were robbed of their culture because of colonialism.

I liked Denise’s discussion about alphabet. Maybe could create a list of false info, or what you shouldn’t teach & more about stereotypes First Americans to live here. Used only The different periods that Native Americans what they needed from the land. developed through. The difficulty of keeping their culture alive today even within their own Respected nature. Move from place to place as not to use all the resources in one community. The lack of knowledge amongst area. Used birch trees to build homes. Long Islanders in general. Used bigger trees to build canoes to fit I was surprised that books being published are many people Grew corns, beans & still not appropriate and reflective of the true N.A. way of life. squash., The three sisters. Used rocks to What impacted me the most was the thought make knives and arrows. Made everything they needed. When an animal that stereotypes are still being taught. was killed every part of the animal was used, meat, bones, skin & fat. Nothing was wasted.. This workshop has (been?) me more aware of Use text book, internet, and nonfiction how much I need to stress the present. I do talk books to teach. Have had guest speaker to students about the existence of reservations from Shinnecock come to class. Have an N.A. I do not do it justice. taken field trips to Museums. At times I My new knowledge will help my students have will use video tapes if appropriate. a greater understanding of N.A. and their Students each chose & study one group cultural. And the importance to fight to keep that lived on L.I. Report and make our cultures and traditions alive in our families artifacts.


209

Responses R9: Q3

RIO: Q1

RIO: Q2

Pre-Test

Post-Test

and communities. The workshop was well presented with a lot of useful information. We don’t always have the funds for field trips. How could we locate more people willing to come to schools More about the lifestyles of indigenous peoples Past 13 Algonquian family groups-not the only of Long Island—the incredible murals and the Algonquians, however. Importance of use artist’s accompanying presentation gave a tremendous amount of info, about people here of land, water, all natural resources. through different historical periods. The visuals Spiritual components, appreciation & and the verbal presentation were excellent. I respect for all forms of life. Wide range have a much better grasp of the shifts over time of storytelling techniques, richness of and the reasons for these shifts. The teacher’s tales/creation myths. Structure of hierarchy, importance of sachem, roles of presentation (I’m sorry I’m blanking on female, male, children & the way children names—I think it was Denise) had great impact and provided me with even more ways to learned through doing. discuss indigenous peoples of this region—their Present roots, their ancestry, their lives today as it Some still here & keeping traditions going—many pushed out or assimilated relates to their cultural history, as well as key concepts and aspects of indigenous peoples’ by necessity. Many N.A. indigenous to region. Still active members of their tribal relationship with the European outsiders who imposed themselves here. communities and larger Euro-based, etc. community. As much as possible told in 1st person My students will reap many rewards as a result of my experience with you today! from N.A. perspective—use of N.A. legends, historical tales as well as New stories to tell and to read, new points to make (or new ways to make certain key points contemporary. A lot of Joseph Bruchac. Always connecting geography to lives of effectively), new literature to bring culturally people—looking forward to trips here sensitive and more accurate history to light in and hoping to get to Mashantucket classroom discussions. I am very intrigued with Pequot Museum as well. the idea of starting w/a study of indigenous oeoDles todav and then eoine back in time. This is more developmentally appropriate for kids (start here and go back gradually) and ensures student awareness of the impact on Native Americans (brought to bear over the centuries from newcomers to this land as well as knowledge of indigenous peoples lives today— to recognize they are not only a part of the past in this land.

New ways of teaching students new ideas away from typical stereotypes. Teaching with as many real concrete examples.


210

Responses RIO: Q3

Pre-Test More sensitive & accurate resources, ideas for discussions in class, overview of this center in preparation for future class trips.

R11: Q1

The names of many towns on L.I. are adapted from the original languages. The original people were fishermen and farmers. The Shinnecock are a state and federally recognized (?) tribe residing on the south shores. Because the tribal lands are separate from the USA governmental controls to some extent, the properties are not individually owned but area a “collective”. I use storytelling to teach Native peoples’ cultures. Although I have stories from several “New York” tribes, I don’t currently have LI stories. Factual Materials for sharing with students and faculty. Are Native storytellers available for school visits? There’s obviously much to learn, and I welcome this wonderful opportunity!

R11: Q2

Rll: Q3

Post-Test An ongoing collaborative teacher workshop offered for credit that would support and enhance our curriculum development—a course of study grounded in key concepts and projected through multiple culturally sensitive lenses! A kind of seminar format where teachers collaborate with guidance from your staff, go back to the classroom, return, share ideas and then go back again to teach further. I learned many new things-I took many notes. The greatest impact is to see and sense the pride that these people have even through the hundreds of years of hardship perpetrated upon them-

Many books will be added to our library collection thanks to the bibliographies provided. The program needs 3-4 hours!--


211

Appendix D PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIS WORK BY DENNIS KING


212

o

Dennis King and His Work


ii*4

“Prayer is Strong Medicine” (Alabaster)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission

“Golden Eagle and Trout” (White Cedar)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission

Alabaster Lamp


Sassafras Carving


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