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I am currently teaching a graduate course on "Contemporary American Indian Issues in Historical Perspective." We began with "Celluloid Indians" & saw videos about Hollywood portrayals. Last week we read "Dancing at Halftime" & discussed the mascot issue. The evening before OutKast subjected viewers of the Grammys to their tasteless performance. Had I known, I could have written it into the course syllabus as required viewing. My students were so bummed out on Monday morning. Native students were especially distraught that an African-American group would do this. They thought that they, of all people, should understand why this was offensive. A student who identifies as African-American, but has a multicultural background, has decided to write his research paper on African-American representations of American Indians and what is perceived popularly as their culture. I have had my own battles with our public elementary school, where I failed to educate some of the best teachers that the Los Angeles Unified School district has to offer, why it is inappropriate (too mild a word actually) to dress young children up in stereotypical fashion (IE. with long, black yarn braids, headdress, construction paper feathers, brown paper bags substituting for buckskin etc.--you get the picture) at Thanksgiving. I tried for 7 years to make a dent in this "tradition" at the school. Some native educators associated with the book seller Oyate helped me out with curricular materials. I thought a chapter titled "The Thanksgiving Epidemic" would make matters crystal clear. But I did not make a dent in this incessant stereotyping. Even parents couldn't understand the problem. If I questioned why they did not put Afro wigs on children for Kwanzaa or Martin Luther King, Jr. day, they understood that that would be offensive. If I questioned how they would feel if teachers instructed children to dress up according to Jewish stereotypes and parody Jewish rituals, they REALLY understood that. But they thought those American Indian stereotypes were real!! They thought all native people everywhere dressed & wore their hair like that. My students, both undergraduate and graduate, get very energized about the mascot issue. Moreso than any other issue we discuss (sovereignty, treaty rights, repatriation, sacred sites etc.), they become passionate about the mascot issue. My question to this list is what can we as educators do to address this pervasive problem in American society? I've made my individual stab at trying to rectify it when it impinges on my life. University students are fairly easy to reach. But the rest of American society seems absolutely impermeable. Native people ask where scholars were during the termination era. Let's make sure they don't have to ask the same question when it comes to this vast and harmful stereotyping. What can we do to address this beyond our classroom teaching? Perhaps there might be power in numbers. Thanks in advance for your thoughts, Melissa Meyer Melissa L. Meyer Associate Professor of History 6265 Bunche Hall Box 951453 University of California, Los Angeles
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