15 A Unique Political Reality
The ignorance of most in regards to Indigenous peoples political status generally does not come from adversity—rather, this is again an issue related to failures in our education systems. “The racialized status of American Indians appears to be the main emphasis of most members of U.S. society; this status ignores the legal/political one, and is directly tied to notions of colonialism, because larger society is unaware of the multiple statuses of Indigenous peoples,” (Brayboy 2005, pg. 433). Studies examining textbooks have largely found that the minimal examples where Indigenous peoples are mentioned in curriculums put an emphasis on cultural contributions rather than government relations (Anderson 2012).
The lack of education on this subject is a major missed opportunity for public school education systems to teach students about government-government relations, but I argue this is again stemming from the federal and state governments being unable to recognize their own failures. “There are dozens more such examples of courses and texts in which the universals of human rights and civil rights are taught as though they have no connection at all to three hundred years of federal Indian policy or primordial indigenous rights or the historical treaty status of tribal nations in America, all of which might have resulted in problem-solving models useful to living people and existing communities,” (Cook-Lynn 1997).
The curricula taught in schools paint the picture that the United States is the strongest, most “free country,” that its histories of racism and discrimination have been left in the past, and that it is now the most superior country in the world in many aspects. Even the tradition of students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, the inclusion of an American flag in most classrooms, and the National Anthem being played at every sporting event are so common and normalized that we generally do not even question these routines, but when they are examined from an outside perspective it is clear these are methods of spreading propaganda so youth are raised to support their status as citizens of the United States wholeheartedly. If social studies classrooms recognized that there are in fact many sovereign nations existing within the boundaries of the United States, and especially that the United States Federal Government has failed to uphold promises made in treaties with these nations, this could start to crack the foundation of these student’s loyalty to their country.
“The realities of American Indian politics were also not explored in the five selected U.S. history textbooks… The struggles over the last one hundred years are ignored, as are the success and failures of tribal governments in preserving treaty rights and attempting to enforce agreements made between them and the U.S. federal government,” (Padgett 2015, pg. 164). When students first learn about what a treaty is, the lessons usually revolve around the Treaty of Versailles or Treaty of Paris, rather than the almost 400 treaties existing between the US and Indigenous nations. Because the federal government has failed to uphold its treaty obligations and this is not an issue that students can see as resolved, I argue the political status of Indigenous peoples is not discussed because it would require that students recognize that our government is continuously failing its peoples.
The fact that the politics of Indigenous nations becomes necessary to recognize in most discussions of Indigenous peoples post-1900 is another reason why so few standards include Indigenous-centered content after the 20th century. The normalization of education systems promoting American nationalism while failing to recognize the existence of the 574 distinct sovereign nations within our borders alienates Indigenous students who are proud members of their nations, and who often have a justified aversion to proudly accepting their status as a citizen of the United States—an institution which has wronged themselves and their loved ones in an immeasurable amount of ways.
