Southern California schools rethink Thanksgiving lessons

A viral video that showed a math teacher hopping astir her schoolroom successful a mock Native American headdress dispersed outrage not conscionable successful Southern California, but crossed the country.

Now, astir a period aft that country exploded connected societal media, the Riverside Unified School District is using the embarrassing incident to person conversations with the assemblage and diversify its lessons. Part of its talks with section Native American leaders impact a question that reaches further than North High School, wherever the teacher was seemingly trying to thatch a analyzable mathematics concept.

How should nationalist schools thatch astir Thanksgiving?

Across Southern California, educators accidental the accepted representation of pilgrims and Indians and the accepted story that “all was well” needs to change. Not telling students the information astir however ample communities of Native Americans perished owed to failed pacts, warfare and illness amounts to erasure of past and facts, they said.

A surface drawback from Instagram shows a viral video that began circulating Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021. In it, a mathematics teacher astatine Riverside’s North High School is seen wearing a faux Native American headdress and dancing around. The teacher was placed connected permission from the Riverside Unified School District. (Via Instagram)

Riverside schoolhouse leaders person publicly resolved to amended students astir Native American past and civilization and to amended teaching practices.

As portion of this effort, Henry Vasquez, seat of the Native American Community Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, past week sent a preliminary database of resources to the schoolhouse district. The topics included a conception astir however to contiguous Thanksgiving successful classrooms.

Historically, Vasquez said, the communicative of Thanksgiving taught to students this clip of the year, is “very bittersweet and inauthentic.”

“That benignant of thought of dressing children arsenic pilgrims and Indians, wearing insubstantial feathers and hats — that’s beauteous insulting,” helium said. “It makes Indian kids consciousness truly bad. I recognize that for many, it’s a vacation experience, a amusive experience. But, it’s besides important to deliberation astir however it affects Native children.”

In reality, the communicative of Native Americans welcoming the pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory feast is riddled with humanities inaccuracies and myths, Vasquez said. Telling and retelling these falsehoods is harmful to the Wampanoag Indians and different Native radical who cognize that lives and societies were everlastingly damaged aft the English arrived successful Plymouth, helium said.

The Riverside teacher’s actions dredged up symptom for an full community, Vasquez, said, but the caller concern and dialog with the schoolhouse territory gives him hope.

“I recognize we’re not going to hold with everything close away,” helium said. “But I americium impressed that they’re moving connected an taste studies program and that they privation to thatch much authentic history.”

Riverside Unified spokesperson Diana Meza said the concern is successful a preliminary stage.

Other Southern California schoolhouse districts besides person been trying to prominently diagnostic Native American past successful their schools.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a Native American Ethnic Studies people and is present “developing further supplemental resources and lessons that bespeak the divers experiences of Indigenous people,” territory spokesperson Gayle Pollard-Terry said.

She said the program deals with a fig of questions including the following: How did European explorers and settlers interact with American Indians? How did American Indians alteration arsenic a effect of the accomplishment and colony of European colonists? Why did American Indians combat with each other? Why did they combat with European settlers? What relation did commercialized play successful some practice and struggle betwixt and among European settlers?

The Los Angeles schoolhouse committee has besides authorized $10 cardinal for Indigenous education. The territory volition supply matching funds for schools that use to person services that enactment Indigenous students, she said.

There is an urgent request to rethink however the Thanksgiving communicative is told successful classrooms crossed California, Riverside schoolhouse committee President Tom Hunt said.

“My generation’s acquisition astir Native past was level and inadequate to accidental the least,” said Hunt, 66. “Our accepted Thanksgiving presentations and pageants person been inauthentic and offensive.”

Historians accidental that, portion the repast known arsenic the First Thanksgiving did happen, it took spot astatine immoderate constituent successful autumn 1621 successful the Plymouth colony. When George Washington declared a nationalist time of Thanksgiving successful 1789, his proclamation made nary notation of the three-day feast successful Plymouth.

In 1820, an antiquarian from Philadelphia republished an relationship of the Thanksgiving feast successful his 1841 “Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers” with the footnote: “This was the archetypal Thanksgiving, the harvest festival of New England.” In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that Americans should instrumentality clip for gratitude amid the bloodshed. It was past that the Thanksgiving vacation became linked to the communicative of Plymouth.

According to historiographer David J. Silverman, writer of “This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving,” portion the celebrated feast successful 1621 was peaceful, the demolition of Native communities that followed was dropped from the Thanksgiving story.

History teachers should instrumentality a much progressive relation successful correcting myths astir Thanksgiving, said Lindsey Charron, who has taught eighth people U.S. past astatine Horace Ensign Intermediate School successful Newport Beach for the past 16 years.

“When I was a student, I was taught the aforesaid myths arsenic everyone other astir Thanksgiving,” said Charron, who is connected the committee of the California Council for the Social Studies. “It’s important to close these inaccuracies.”

One mode to attack the contented is to commencement locally and admit the Indigenous radical who lived connected the land, she said.

“We request to deliberation astir the tribes, the Indigenous radical who were stewards of the land,” she said. “I explicate to students astir however these natives came to the assistance of the pilgrims and however the pilgrims would not person survived without that help. We besides speech astir however their narration took twists and turns. It’s bully to beryllium grateful connected Thanksgiving Day, but it is besides important to admit aggregate perspectives astir this observance.”

Some Native Americans observe Thanksgiving arsenic a nationalist time of mourning, which Charron mentions to her students.

“We tin beryllium arrogant of our country, but parts of it are uncomfortable and we cannot contradict that,” she said. “Historically, the communicative has been controlled by definite groups and Native American radical person not been fixed the accidental to stock their perspective. But, present determination is much accidental to link and determination is an knowing that these are each voices that are portion of our history.”

Thanksgiving pageants are “problematic” and should person been connected their mode retired a agelong clip ago, said James Fenelon, manager of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Studies astatine Cal State San Bernardino, who added that helium doesn’t bargain the excuse that it’s a hard contented to discuss.

“If you tin speech astir the Revolutionary War, you tin speech astir the Wampanoag,” helium said. “Isn’t that equity? If we speech astir relationship pacts, we should besides speech astir those pacts breaking down.”

These inaccurate presentations person a important interaction connected Native children, Fenelon said.

“You’re signaling to these kids that they are little than,” helium said. “If they speech astir their heritage, they are unopen down. This contributes to each kinds of traumatic behavior. Sooner of later, you’re going to person to archer the different broadside of the story.”