Teaching Charles Alexander Eastman’s “The North American Indian” in Dialogue with Elaine Goodale Eastman’s Yellow Star

Abstract

AbstractCharles Eastman’s “The North American Indian” address for the 1911 Universal Races Congress (URC) in London provides multiple pathways for teaching in a comparative context. One productive approach involves setting the lecture in dialogue with Elaine Goodale Eastman’s Yellow Star, published in the same year. Another entails asking students to situate Charles Eastman’s talk in the context of the URC as a vital milestone in global thought leaders’ engagement with questions about race. This approach could include juxtaposing Eastman’s lecture with one by W. E. B. Du Bois delivered at the same convention. Pedagogy for Eastman’s speech can also locate this text in the context of his larger oeuvre, including more assertively anticolonial discourse in later writings for Indigenous readers.