I look at many of our students and I see threads of their people’s past still living in them, through them, often hard for me to be sure what I’m seeing. So many languages and histories lost when a people is overpowered by another. Then what may follow them are the remnants. We need to be aware when we only know remnants. The more we can understand of the past that scientists now acknowledge lives on in our cells, the more we can fully see the students who we want to reach. So here are some quotes to crack open our usual stories a little bit.
“That historians should give their own country a break, I grant you; but not so as to state things contrary to fact. For there are plenty of mistakes made by writers out of ignorance, and which any man finds it difficult to avoid. But if we knowingly write what is false, whether for the sake of our country or our friends or just to be pleasant, what difference is there between us and hack writers? Readers should be very attentive to and critical of historians, and they in turn should be constantly on their guard.” Polybius (Arcadian historian, 208-126 B.C.)
“Sometimes in the evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I seem again to see our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth lodges, and in the river’s roar I hear the yells of warriors, and the laughter of little children as of old. It is but an old woman’s dream. Then I see but shadows and hear only the roar of the river, and tears come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.” Waheenee (Hidatsa, 1839-1932)
“We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured and carried off to this land. We smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth. We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite. We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.” Richard Wright (U.S. novelist, 1908-1960)
” Take away black studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, Jewish studies, labor history, Chicano studies, Native American studies: what is left is what has passed for “history” with no qualifying adjective, the story of those whose belonging we never disputed.” Susanna Sturgis ()
“Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pcanet, and other powerful tribes of our people?” Tecumseh (Shawnee chief, c. 1768-1813)
“Today the children of our public schools are taught more of the history, heroes, legends, and sagas of the old world than of the land of their birth, while they are furnished with little material on the people and institutions that are truly American.” Luther Standing Bear (Oglala Sioux writer, 1868-1939)
“Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families that we loved was it “wild” for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the “Wild West” began.” Luther Standing Bear (Oglala Sioux writer, 1868-1939)
“They say the Pharaohs built the pyramids Do you think one Pharaoh dropped one bead of sweat? We built the pyramids for the Pharaohs and we’re building for them yet.” Anna Louise Strong (U.S. journalist, 1885-1970)