Unravelling the Colonizer's Tale: An Anticolonial Reading of Elementary Social Studies Curriculum

• In Event: Anti-Oppressive Social Studies: Pursuing Justice Through an Ethic of Incommensurability

Abstract

Social studies education in the United States has a long and problematic history in the presentation of Native-U.S. relations in curriculum (e.g., Calderón, 2014; Rains, 2006; Sabzalian & Author, 2018; Author & Colleagues, 2015). In this paper, I unpack the ways elementary curriculum (e.g., textbooks, state standards) establish a dangerous understanding of the United States. Grounded in the writings of settler colonial theory (e.g., Hixon, 2013; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Veracini, 2015, 2017) this paper works to identify and challenge the ways elementary social studies masks or otherwise justifies the U.S. as a colonial power. Additionally, this paper utilizes settler colonial theory as an analytical tool to identify how the narratives of elementary curriculum lay the foundations for students to develop settler logics (Author, 2019; Calderón, 2014, 2009). Maintaining a settler society, such as exists in the United States, atop Indigenous homelands requires the rehearsal of ideologies that normalize settler superiority (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). In this critical examination of curriculum, I ask several questions, including: 1) How does elementary curriculum narrate European “exploration” and “first contact” in relation to Indigenous peoples and Native nations? How are Native nations included or erased in curricular narratives of the American Revolutionary period? How are Indigenous peoples and Native nations included or erased in narrating the history of U.S. westward expansion? This paper ultimately challenges us to think critically about both the writing of elementary curriculum and the potential for radical change in social studies education.

Author

• Sarah B. Shear, University of Washington - Bothell