I was working in a restaurant in my hometown about four or five years ago when a woman who was fascinated with American Indians asked me if I knew of where she could find some “real Indians”. She wanted to see a tribe in action, and specifically wanted her picture taken with an Indian. I informed her that I was Indian. She looked at me in disbelief, as if I were lying about the whole ordeal. The next question made me realize just how sheltered some people are.
“Do you live in a teepee?”
I had to hold back my laughter. I couldn’t believe that a grown woman would think that in modern, American society a girl wearing modern clothes would live in a teepee. I paused for a minute to withhold my laughter, and replied, “No”. Before I could go on to give her an update about Native American, culture, she blurted out, “Oh, so you’re one of those wigwam or longhouse people?” as loudly as she possibly could.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. The laughter came, and several bystanders joined in. “No, I live in an apartment downtown, just like most of the other employees here”. The poor woman’s hopes and dreams of witnessing pre-assimilation era Indian culture crashed to the ground. It was a wakeup call for me. I had never realized that many people in the US were unaware of Indian culture, our story, or the way our governments work. I had always assumed that people knew Indian history, but had never stopped to think that the only reason I knew it was because I had sought it independently.
This scenario was one of the first times I started to think about others in the world, and my perceptions of them. If I don’t live in a teepee, perhaps people in England don’t just sit around and drink tea all day. Maybe Chinese people don’t spend their days in rice fields hugging pandas, and maybe the Japanese no longer wear kimonos everyday. Once I started to think about the situation, I realized that I was almost as ignorant as this woman. The only difference between her and I was that I didn’t ask questions that promote stereotypes at the top of my lungs in a busy restaurant. It made me want others to be more aware of the world.
I think that we need to start teaching our children about other cultures and their history. In schools, the history lessons that are given are full of ethnic stereotypes. My school taught us about the friendly first Thanksgiving, and how kind and peaceful the settlers were. We were never taught about relocation, the Holocaust, or the attitudes towards Asians in the early 1900s. We heard a selected piece of history, and that was it. The bits and pieces of tragic events in history that we did get to hear were a result of the teachers’ preference for the story of interest. Schools should focus on teaching a more complete history so that we can understand the history of all races and cultures, and appreciate their trials and hardships. I believe that this could help us understand each other, reduce hate, and eliminate stereotypes.
Thanks for reading, and as always, please take the time to rate my work even if you didn’t like it.
It's true: we all have stereotypes that we never question. While we don't learn the complete history in school, we also don't learn as much about modern culture as we should. While schools need to do more to fix this, it is also up to the individual to challenge their own stereotypes.
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with bias.
I agree. I think it is very biased in America up until recently because not everyone was literate.
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It's an unfortunate consequence of the American educational system. Many schools like to gloss over all the negative parts of history so the youth will have a more positive image of their country's history and be more easily apt to defend it (in my opinion). Now that you've brought it up, I can't remember hearing the Holocaust ever being discussed very thoroughly in the public middle school I went to in Florida. I was already aware of this though as I've always been apt to educate myself, and the fact that my mother had my sister and I watch "Schindler's List" with her while in the 5th grade, lol... The American education system has many, many faults...
On a side note, I have a friend of Native American descent and she lives in a very nice apartment by the river ;).
Hehe, I live by a river as well!
Schindler's list is one of the greatest movies ever in my opinion. It's interesting enough to keep the viewer's attention, but it is also educational. It's a win-win.
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While a commendable idea, it would be largely improbable to impart much knowledge of the history of all races and cultures. The only way to do this would be to take the encyclopedia approach and highlight bits and pieces of the most catastrophic events of the "major" cultures in the world.
A better approach to teaching world history would be to teach a little bit of as many cultures as possible while still in the school system and pair it with teaching critical thinking and research skills. This way, students could pick the culture(s) they are most interest in (or any subject, for that matter) and learn as much about it to their heart's content.
As to the topic of American schools lacking in the area of teaching history: this is not just an American school system problem. Every nation decides what to put in their history books and what to teach their children. For example, people in Korea have no idea what World War 2 was really like; they don't know about the Holocaust or D-Day, etc., etc. If they do know about any of this, they know very, very little (even less than our generation does).
Overall, a good post. I find it humorous and well-written. Thank you for enlightening us with your own personal experiences and the deep thinking that occurred as a result.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. My friends always enjoy the story.
I like the idea of doing a survey of the more negative events around the world. I think it would be hard to go into detail with all of them. One of the biggest problems that I have, however, is when elementary teachers spend an entire week about Thanksgiving, Indians moving to Oklahoma, or World War II without ever mentioning the reasons behind it all. It's like they have a week to candy coat the lesson, but they don't have an hour to tell about some of the horrible events that happened. In my opinion, I think this hides the idea that negative events happen, and makes us less likely to believe that genocide in Darfur is happening right now. We need to be realistic and show children the past to avoid bad things in the future.
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I know it's shocking when you realize how little other people know about your culture. Once I was talking to my friend and I mentioned Alice Walker. My friend said "who's Alice Walker?" I just looked at her in disbelief. I talked to my mom about it and she said that I can't expect everyone to know about Black culture, especially with the current education in schools. That the way children are taught in school leaves A LOT out. I don't think we even learned about the Holocaust in high school. I guess I just learned about it from the History Channel. It wasn't until I took a required course at my college called American Experience that I was taught about the Women's liberation movement, Slavery, Jim Crow, the Irish Americans, Native Americans, etc. It was my first real American history class.
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed...nothing shall be impossible unto you. - Matthew 17:20
That's interesting- I dont even know who Alice Walker is, and I actively try to pay attention to others' history. I'm looking her up right now. :)
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Yes kids do need to know more about culutures and the update on them too. One of my friends used to think that Chinese people ate rice no- stop, mexicans all lived together in one small apartment, black people are extra loud, and white people act snobby because they are rich. I tried to explain to her that she is believing what is called "heresay" or "stereotype" but she begs to differ.
Wow! What culture was she?
On a lighter note, rice all the time would get really boring. This sterotype isn't as bad as others that I have heard, but it might be the worse one to live through, if it were true! lol.
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That woman should come to Wyoming and Montana. You can find lots of unassimilated Native Americans here including some who live in TeePees. To me it seems like they are living somewhere between Indian culture and modern American culture and it seems like they are ending up with the worst of both.
Particularly drugs are a a scourge for them.
Wow, I was unaware that there were any people still living in teepees, but then again I did see people living without electricity in the deep south. I guess I shouldn't be so assuming!
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So I've never had anyone question me on my Native American heritage, but I did get a bit on my Japanese history. I'd just moved back to the United States, and someone asked me where I'd come from. I told her my last high school was in Japan, and expected her to "ooh," and "ahh" like most of the other students had, maybe ask me if I spoke "Chinese." I was in a small, unknown panhandle town at that point.
Instead, she furrowed her eyes and looked at me intently. "Japan?" She paused. "Is that in Alabama?"
I think I took my education for granted as well, but I never dealt with much sheltering, because I was always craving the answers to my questions. The trail of tears, Japanese American camps in the states, the holocaust... I wanted to know all of it, whether or not it related to my ancestor's lives. It hurts me to see the limitations in some schools, a lot of teachers are afraid to let their young students know about all the horrors of our world's history. But it's a big part of us, and I think all the good and the bad should be known.