New Voices

American Indians Are Not "People of Color"

Debbie Reese

One outcome of the civil rights movement of the 1960s was the emergence of multicultural education and multicultural literature, both of which strive to provide children with a broader range of materials that reflect the diverse populations within the United States.

Beneath the multicultural umbrella are four specific populations: black, Latino, American Indians, and Asian Americans. Terms often applied to these populations are "minority" and "people of color."

I'd like to use this opportunity to introduce educators to the idea of American Indians—not as people of color, but as citizens of sovereign nations. We may have characteristics of minority peoples or of ethnic or racial peoples, but American Indians' primary characteristic is political.

Treaties Codify Relations

When Europeans arrived in the 1400s on the land we now call the United States of America, they found native people living in organized nations. They were not—contrary to popular belief—primitive savages roaming the land, hunting and gathering their food. Rather, these native people had well-established trade networks with one another that spanned the entire continent, from north to south and east to west, and they had well-established political systems.

Leaders of sovereign native nations entered into political diplomacy with European nations for the shared use of the land through treaties and trust agreements. In exchange for land, native leaders negotiated for federal funding for things like health care, education, and housing. Native nations that have treaty or trust agreements with the United States are federally recognized sovereign nations.

In that framework, we are not people of color. We are citizens of sovereign nations. This is an important difference from other minorities in the United States. At present, there are over 500 different federally recognized native nations, but most students in U.S. schools are rarely taught about tribal governments like they do federal and state governments

Native children, however, know a lot about their respective tribal nations and are proud of their identity and heritage. They maintain traditions, and languages are being revitalized; there are even digital apps to practice and learn many native languages. When elders pass tribal ways on to younger generations, they are engaged in native nation-building.

Best Practices for Learning About American Indians

Best practice in education means teaching students that American Indians are federally recognized sovereign nations that are still in existence. Rather than introducing students to American Indians in a historical context, a best practice is to start with the lives of native peoples and nations in the present day, including issues native leaders confront today. And, finally, another best practice is to use specific names of native nations rather than the overly broad "American Indian" or "Native American."

Too often, children are introduced to American Indians by way of myths, legends, or folktales. Though teachers mean well, that method situates American Indians as people in a long-ago, far-away, not-like-me context. Instructional activities can often border on the sacrilegious because native creation stories do not receive the same respect as the creation stories of world religions, like Christianity. For example, lessons where students make kachina dolls, sacred figures venerated by the Pueblo (much like saints are by Catholics), out of toilet paper rolls.

Reconceptualizing American Indians as citizens of sovereign nations, which simply acknowledges reality, can radically shift how we think about American Indians. There are excellent resources to help educators with this reconceptualization. The blog American Indians in Children's Literature lists recommended books, like Do All Indians Live in Tipis? (a question-and-answer book published by the National Museum of the American Indian); links to articles on teaching children about American Indians; and lists in-depth analyses of popular and classic works of literature, such as Little House on the Prairie, that take into account American Indian perspectives.

Debbie Reese is assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Reese, an enrolled member of the Nambé Pueblo Tribe in northern New Mexico, also writes for several blogs, including American Indians in Children's Literature.

ASCD Express, Vol. 6, No. 15. Copyright 2011 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.