Ned Blackhawk

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Ned Blackhawk | Recasting the Narrative of America: The Rewards and Challenges of Teaching American Indian History | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Recasting the Narrative of America: The Rewards and Challenges of Teaching American Indian History

With eleven federally recognized tribes, Wisconsin remains central to America's Indian past. The western center of the Great Lakes fur-trading empires, the nineteenth-century home to thousands of Algonquian, Siouan, and Iroquoian speakers, and the site of several of the most intense political standoffs in the twentieth century, Wisconsin has always been and remains "Indian country."¹	1
I knew such generalities upon appointment to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of History and American Indian Studies Program (AISP) in the fall of 1999. In fact, working in an environment seemingly so well situated for Indian history powerfully attracted me to the position. I had no idea, however, how challenging enacting curricular initiatives amid such historical currents could be. For, while recent studies of American Indian history have forced reconsideration of innumerable aspects of the American experience, translating the achievements of such scholarly profusion into accessible lectures and navigable syllabi remains a constant struggle. Indian history appears increasingly critical to nearly all epochs of the nation's past, while in the classroom reconciling commonplace assumptions about America with the traumatic histories of the continent's indigenous peoples can be an exceedingly turbulent endeavor. What follows are reflections based on my experience teaching the semester-long American Indian history survey course at Madison for the last seven years. My teaching has been uniquely rewarding, but it has sparked both challenges and concerns.	2
First, as in any recently ascendant field of inquiry, scholarly insights and public consciousness move at different speeds. What may seem to be the most important academic finding may not work so well in the classroom; given its historic marginalization, Indian history is particularly prone to such discrepancies. That American history was taught for so long without attention to the continent's original inhabitants and was written to celebrate certain chapters of the national story over others compounds this field's comparative disadvantages. The endless cacophony of simplistic media representations only deepens the challenge of engaging one of America's most complicated narratives.	3
Such challenges are in many ways accentuated by several of Madison's general education requirements, particularly an ethnic studies requirement that was introducted in the 1990s. Housed within an amalgam of ethnic studies program units, nearly all of Madison's aisp courses in 1999, including my American Indian history survey, fulfilled that requirement. From the outside, that status might seem beneficial both to the course and to the larger program. Under such initiatives, many of the nation's ethnic studies and American cultures departments have seen large enrollments and, as a result, garnered additional resources, especially teaching assistants and faculty, thus broadening their curricular impact. At Madison, however, faculty and teaching assistant positions have not kept pace with increased demand. The university's nearly thirty thousand undergraduates in twenty-one different schools and colleges demand entrance into a handful of ethnic studies courses, including mine.	4
As on any campus and as in any ethnic studies field, the currents of multiculturalism flow into the classroom, and with them, varying social and political positions. I initially designed my first lecture course for students who I assumed were somewhat interested in American Indian history. Now I have recast the American Indian history survey both to engage those with interest and to challenge those without. I see America's Indian past as one of underrecognized trauma as well as triumph, the epitome of several of the nation's darkest chapters and, recently, its noblest ideals. Students entering this class now encounter a variety of pedagogical strategies aimed at recasting various commonly held assumptions about America. Indeed, the juxtaposition between one-dimensional portraits of "America" and of its "Indians" begins the course.	. . .

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