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Setting a standard in polar
opposition to the provocative Blue Heron publications, we have
been made the unhappy recipients of a new CD-ROM series from
Primary Source Media. Proudly displaying the red, white,
and blues of a colonial empire in the making, the American
Journey collection is one of the most deplorable insults
to multicultural education to come our way in the '90s.
Although the 5-disc collection
contains encapsulated versions of "The Immigrant Experience,"
"The Asian-American Experience," "The African
American Experience," "The Hispanic-American Experience,"
and "Women in America," I'll confess that 15 minutes
with just one CD-ROM was enough to put off our editors to the
entirety of the "miniseries."
We're always a little shaky
about the grand sweep to title educational resources "THE"
anything experience. One of the first lessons of post-colonial
cultural studies is that there's always a multiplicity of perspectives;
nothing falls into a single category of "the 'American'
experience." Too, as people of color, we retain a healthy
skepticism for all works touting representations of "America,"
when what is truly represented is the United States. America
is a continent, not a country, still.
But we were willing to
give this package a try. That's our job. We loaded the first
CD in the series, and found an appropriate level of technological
fanfare and ease of navigability, for the high school or middle
school student. What followed, however, was a computer-enhanced
version of the very school texts we are all hoping will one day
simply disappear, although they just keep finding new venues
and new funding sources. {Sigh.}
So, thoroughly unimpressed
and significantly annoyed by this new foray into "multiculturalism,"
we have tired of attempting to discern if the team at Primary
Source Media is presenting a history that is oxymoronic, or simply
moronic.
We'll thus let our readers
be the judges...
Here's a snippet of what
we found, upon entering this series (contextual emphasis added):
AMERICAN JOURNEY: Women
in America
TOPIC: The Earliest Women:
Native Americans
CHORES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
ARTS AND CRAFTS
SOCIAL STATUS
In the century following
Columbus' discovery of what is now the United States,
European explorers began their exploration of North America.
Leading the advance were the Spanish, who claimed large
areas of the South and West; the English, who established
colonies along the East Coast; and the French, who settled
along the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi
River.
When the Europeans first
arrived, they found hundreds of native groups scattered
around the continent. Living everywhere from seacoast to woodland,
from prairie to desert, the groups were separated not only by
geographic location, but often by language, culture, and temperament.
Some were hunters who moved regularly to follow buffalo, deer,
and other game; others stayed in small towns and farmed for a
living. Groups, or tribes, living along the seacoast generally
lived by a combination of fishing, hunting, and small farming.
While many were known for raiding neighboring settlements, others
were sedentary and peacefully coexisted.
The native women played
a key role in their families and communities, as observers such
as John Smith and Roger Williams observed. Their
influence also spread beyond tribal boundaries, as many worked
to promote peace with other tribes and with their newly arrived
European neighbors.
CHORES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Native-American women,
like European women at the time,
took primary responsibility for raising their children and taking
care of their homes. In addition to gathering and preparing food,
they made clothing for their families, cared for the old and
sick, and often helped build the homes in which their families
or clans lived. Clans were made up of family members descended
from a common ancestor.
...
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AS MUSEUM
ARTIFACTS OF NOTE [OUR SUBHEADING]
Roger Williams, the founder
of Rhode Island and a strong defender of Native-American rights,
wrote about 17th-century Narragansett life, describing men and
women working together in the fields. Among tribes where hunting
was the principal activity, women tanned the animal hides the
men brought back and used the finished leather to make moccasins,
bedding, medicine pouches, and even teepees, the cone-shaped
homes of many Plains tribes. Sir Robert Southwell, an Englishman
who observed Native American customs in the late 1600s, described
the elaborate tanning procedure followed by some southern tribes.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
... Though the names
of the artists were unknown, the skills of design and technique
they brought to their crafts were of the highest quality. They
dug for their clay, gathered reeds and rushes for their baskets,
sheared sheep, and spun wool for their blankets. Inspired by
the religious beliefs of the artists, these creations
had spiritual meaning for the community.
The many tribes that populated
the continent varied greatly in their beliefs and traditions.
In what is now New Mexico, the Pueblo village of Taos had buildings
that were like large apartment complexes. These buildings
are still occupied today. Their walls are made of adobe -- a
mixture of clay, sand, straw, and water hand-formed into bricks
by women and girls. Taos was settled by the Spanish in
the early 17th century, and when the Spanish settlers built churches
in that region, they followed the native style of adobe construction
and may have employed native women to do the work.
While European-American
settlers learned practical skills from natives, Europeans
did not appreciate the natives' artistic accomplishments. It
took a full 500 years after Columbus first set foot in the New
World for European Americans to recognize such traditional arts.
The natives, however, soon learned to incorporate European influences
into their designs. They had never worked with beads before
the white traders brought them. They had used only
bird feathers or porcupine quills to decorate tepees, clothing,
moccasins, and pipe stems. In some tribes, these works were so
highly prized that they were considered sacred. When brightly
colored glass beads became available through trade with Europeans,
Indian women worked them into their designs, supplementing the
shells, stones, bones, and seeds they were already using. All
these designs had symbolic significance, though much of what
they meant is a mystery to us today. For example, flower
or leaf-like patterns may have had something to do with plants
used for medicinal purposes.
SOCIAL STATUS
... John Smith, author
of an early history of Virginia, described another power given
to Native-American women -- that of deciding the fate of prisoners
taken by a tribe in battle. In Smith's A True Relation,
Pocahontas,
the daughter of Chief Powhatan, helped a group of early English
settlers and later saved the author from death when he was captured
by her tribe. Despite her attempts to promote peace between her
tribe and the English, Pocahontas herself was later captured
by them.
Native-American history
contains many examples of women who, like Pocahontas,
worked to build peaceful relationships between native tribes
and their European neighbors. Among the others who stood out
for their efforts in this area were Awashonks, Queen of the Sakonnet
tribe, in New England. During King Philip's War, which was waged
between the English and the Wampanoag chief Metacom, Awashonks
saved her tribe through her skillful bargaining with an influential
Englishman.
It does go on, dear readers.
Our distaste at finding Native Americans again hyphenated, infantilized,
and depicted as peaceful savages who were, according to this
account, again more dazzled by "brightly colored glass beads"
than by issues of land and treaties, is tragically puzzling.
That Pocahontas, considered at length in another article here,
is portrayed as a "woman" who gave needed diplomatic
aid to John Smith before being captured is simply and offensively
historically inaccurate.
We didn't go on to "discover"
how the lands of Columbus and his heirs are recounted in "the"
experience of African Americans, Asian Americans, or "Hispanic-Americans."
Nor did we peruse "the" immigrant experience.
The editors of STANDARDS
do, however, invite readers with access to these materials to
add further reviews to this site. Give us strength...
Canéla A. Jaramillo
Canéla Analucinda
Jaramillo
Editor-in-Chief
STANDARDS
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