Module 2

I visited the American Indian Civic project site which was set up to provide educators with a curriculum to teach about Native American History. The site had history lessons for grades k-12. The Curriculum guide was very useful to teachers because it had a step by step method in which the lesson can be taught. I immediately began to think that I would love to see this information in a textbook format.  We don’t have textbooks that strictly cover the Native American History/experience on a middle school, high School level.  I found this web resource holds reliable information about the different tribes. This is important because some of the ones that I searched may not have been factual because of the ability to add information by anyone. One of the publishers of information on this site is Dr Gayle Olson-Rayner, adjunct professor in HSU’s department and School of Education. Being an educational site for teachers the purpose is to provide factual information about historical information regarding economic, political and social ways of particular Native American societies. 

 The lessons also included what I thought were current events. What I was shocked to learn was the debate about using Native Americans as mascots went back to 1970. It has been at-least thirty-five years of disputes and what do we have? Well, Sports teams that proudly wear the mark of Native imagery and large mascots that run onto the floor at half-time.  It certainly adds to the stereotyping that is still present in today’s society. Let’s not revisit the days of offensive names that were called to various ethnicities. Oh, but wait… the Washington Redskins are still allowed to carry on as if their name has no offensive connotation.  

http://americanindiantah.com/lesson_plans/ml_mascots.html