A Random Survey: The Closing of the AmericanHeritage: An Essay on American Indian Studies in Higher Education

Abstract

President John F. Kennedy once wrote that It seems a basic requirement to study history of our Indian people...Only through this study can we as a nation do must be done if our treatment of American Indian is not to be marked down for all time as a national disgrace.1 However, true history of America's aboriginal heritage has been tightly guarded, not by indigenous, but rather by conquering masses. Ever since Euro-Americans' imperialistic aspirations took them onto Indian land, there was a slow but continual drain of real estate and natural rights from latter to former. In order to create illusion that this acquisition was justified, white race has forever since padded annals of American Indian history with canard,2 intending to persuade all readers that their ancestors had been victims of a savage and violent people who murdered their children, raped their women, and burned their homes. As an ongoing result of America's attempts to sweep history of Native Americans under carpet, our higher education curricula has foregone providing competent programs of American Indian Studies. Although many scholars realize deficiencies of both fabricated histories and lack of programs for studying, teaching, and researching Indian history, most scholarly accounts employ four methods for creating false impressions about Indians-obliteration, defamation, disembodiment, and disparagement.3 They indicate that what our forefathers conquered...was an almost empty land whose tranquility was disturbed by a few scattered groupings of wild savages whose chief vocations were scalp-collecting, pottery-making, and dancing4. Therefore, Indian, not unlike some other minorities, is considered to be lazy, shiftless, and culturally inferior to white race.5 These perceptions have been altered little over years, and, as a result, Indian continues to be thought of as a blood-thirsty savage, not as an important contributor to American way of life. For example, percentage of non-Native American students would know that most of our farming methods were acquired from Indian, that pattern for American democracy was established along before 1776, or that American history did not begin in 1492? Not many, I would guess. Until American higher education system accepts responsibility for correcting pretenses being taught to our students, then real importance and impact of Indian culture on American society will remain a mystery to most people. The history of America is history of Indian culture, but true historical accounts of white-Indian relations are eschewed; Indian is portrayed as nothing more than another part of wilderness that needed to be tamed. Indian scholars have sought to counter their ancestors' past as it is represented by traditional histories, yet their attempts have not gained wide acceptance. Although new perspectives did arise in 1950's, when ethnocentricity waxed large in American education, and continued until 1970's, the mainstream of historical professions still tended to slight Indians.6 I must add that a tremendous factor influencing authors, especially those writers of mid-century decade, might very well have been Hollywood's portrait of America's ignoble savage. After all, how could Randolph Scott and John Wayne have been wrong?