"They Can't Even Read Maps!" Resisting Settler-Colonial Perceptions in Social Science Education

• In Event: (Re)Mapping Sovereign Imaginaries for Indigenous Publics: Examples of School and Community Education

Abstract

The first paper, examines the acts of tribes their restore and reclaim their histories in the formal education of their children. This effort requires a deep unpacking of settler-colonialist content and attitudes that pervade both contemporary curricula and teacher approaches to classroom teaching (Calderon, 2014). Settler colonialism is a system which ignores or erases Indigenous history and relationship to landscape, while elevating EuroAmerican westward expansion, rendering Native conceptions of place invisible (Tuck, McKenzie & McCoy, 2014). This paper reflects on my experience in a tribal-state educational effort aimed at decolonizing a state history curriculum by reinstating Indigenous knowledge. The process has engaged tribal staff and local public school teachers in developing curriculum units for the state’s 4th grade elementary history curriculum. During the course of this effort, uncovering hidden pockets of settler-colonialist attitudes has presented opportunities for resistance through what Hunt and Stevenson (2017) refer to as “guerilla-“ or “counter- mapping,”: disrupting colonial narratives by restoring Indigenous land representations.
Maps as a visual conception of information, convey understanding of orientation, boundaries, land use and jurisdiction. Beginning in early elementary education, students are expected to use maps to “analyze spatial organizations of people, places and environment” (Idaho State Department of Education, 2016). Mapping skills are a core component of social studies curriculum, and remain a significant means to communicate power relationships (Hunt and Stevenson, 2017). Absent from the curricula are tribal names, orientations, representations of aboriginal territories and historic settlements. These types of seemingly mundane, daily educational efforts to bury Native relationship to land are part of the ongoing destruction of Indigenous peoples (Tuck & Yang, 2012).
Over the last two years, my colleagues and I have collaborated with educators and curriculum specialists to (re)create a curriculum from an Indigenous perspective. We have used the framework of Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP)(McCarty and Lee, 2014) to imagine how materials promoting Indigenous self-determination and cultural teaching methods, and Indigenous language revitalization can impact students. However, despite study of CSRP, as well as a course on tribal sovereignty for the non-Native participants, the group continues to encounter settler-colonialist tendencies. In response to a school teacher’s unanalyzed remark about her elementary students’ inability to “read a map,” I worked with tribal colleagues to create a poster depicting significant water bodies for the tribal community demonstrating multiple historical representations and orientations. These historical maps displayed the tribe’s alternative orientation to North-South, and illustrated place and family names around those water bodies that were central to their lifeways. Through reflection and discussion of this decolonizing process, this paper explores how counter-mapping can support communities in pushing back against geographic hegemony by changing how users conceive of land and place. I examine lessons from the front-lines of settler-colonialism in curriculum, and propose that future research examine the ways Indigenous communities engage in powerful, yet messy acts of (re)mapping their relationship to land, place and space.

Author

• Laura Anne Laumatia, Coeur d'Alene Tribe