Recasting the Narrative of America: The Rewards and Challenges of Teaching American Indian History

Abstract

With eleven federally recognized tribes, Wisconsin remains central to America's past. The western center of the Great Lakes fur-trading empires, the nineteenth-century home to thousands of Algonquian, Siouan, and Iroquoian speakers, and the site of sev eral of the most intense political standoffs in the twentieth century, Wisconsin has always been and remains Indian country.1 I knew such generalities upon appointment to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of History and American Studies Program (aisp) in the fall of 1999. In fact, working in an environment seemingly so well situated for history pow erfully attracted me to the position. I had no idea, however, how challenging enacting curricular initiatives amid such historical currents could be. For, while recent studies of American history have forced reconsideration of innumerable aspects of the Amer ican experience, translating the achievements of such scholarly profusion into accessible lectures and navigable syllabi remains a constant struggle. history appears increas ingly critical to nearly all epochs of the nation's past, while in the classroom reconciling commonplace assumptions about America with the traumatic histories of the continent's indigenous peoples can be an exceedingly turbulent endeavor. What follows are reflec tions based on my experience teaching the semester-long American history survey course at Madison for the last seven years. My teaching has been uniquely rewarding, but it has sparked both challenges and concerns. First, as in any recently ascendant field of inquiry, scholarly insights and public con sciousness move at different speeds. What may seem to be the most important academic finding may not work so well in the classroom; given its historic marginalization, history is particularly prone to such discrepancies. That American history was taught for so long without attention to the continent's original inhabitants and was written to cele brate certain chapters of the national story over others compounds this field's comparative disadvantages. The endless cacophony of simplistic media representations only deepens the challenge of engaging one of America's most complicated narratives. Such challenges are in many ways accentuated by several of Madison's general educa tion requirements, particularly an ethnic studies requirement that was introducted in the 1990s. Housed within an amalgam of ethnic studies program units, nearly all of Mad ison's aisp courses in 1999, including my American history survey, fulfilled that