Public Education and the Doctrine of Discovery

Or, How to Kill the Indian to Save the Man in the 21st Century and What Indigenous Peoples Must Do to Survive

Published 12.2012 in Brooklyn & Boyle, Los Angeles, CA

With President Obama securely in power, it is crucial Indigenous Peoples revisit the strategic alliance many begrudgingly conceded to for fear of a tea party president. For this, some ground rules are in order and specific causes with which to measure our relative gain or loss. Take indigenous education for example. With all of the qualified caution of a Wall Street attorney, President Obama tacitly supported the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in late 2010. Clarifying that the United States would not be held to the mandates of modern international legal discourse, President Obama declared a new dawn of Indian - White relations, "The aspirations it affirms — including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples — are one we must always seek to fulfill.” Long gone are the days of John Smith, General Custer, President Jackson, Kit Carson and John C. Fremont-- only a few of the national icons whose American heroism is stained by the blood of Indigenous men, women and children. Yet, in this age of post-Cold War perennial war, Indigenous Peoples the world over continue to struggle to redefine the paradigm of human relations among nations from one of government to government, or worse yet, government to corporation, back to one of Peoples to Peoples, and Peoples to Mother Earth. In practical terms, how does the President's Indian agenda relate to the President's national agenda on educational policy in particular?  How do Indigenous Mexican Peoples and individuals intersect with this crossroad of international and national policy?

While renowned scholars in critical pedagogy have cited youth poverty, changing demographics and growing segregation as the root challenges faced by modern public schools in the educational infrastructure of the United States, these issues present only the symptoms of the White shame of America - the unintended burdens of a dominant class and People, and their government and political economy.  After the methodical fever of the Indian Wars, the War to usurp northern Mexico, the Civil War, and even the Iran-Contra wars to name a few, the American religion of manifest destiny always left residual human debts - to the multitudes of Indigenous Peoples who were unfortunate (or ingenious) enough to survive. Variously becoming either wards of the state, prisoners of war, or perpetually unwanted by the American image of herself as virgin mother of liberty, our existence as Indigenous Peoples, resounds as a reminder of the sins of America and her citizens.

As such, our surviving ancestors, or brothers and sisters, did not fit into the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant self-image of America. As time wore on, the Doctrine of Discovery, once flaunted by the Spanish Empire and quickly embedded into the legal sanctity of the state by America's founding fathers, became not only the holy ideology of the dominant class, but the beacon to White Europeans the world over, known as the American Dream. This is no quaint scene from a boring US History class -- this historical process underpins the hegemony of the modern socio-political People and class. For example, completely ignored in the California debate to rightly adopt Proposition 30 returning sorely needed funds to schools in the state in November's election, is Governor  Brown's direct benefit from the usurpation of the land of the Indigenous Peoples of California by his German immigrant grandfather who personally "settled" a ranch the Governor still owns and frequents.  This ownership by right of discovery and by force of conquest remains an ideological undercurrent and a material benefit impeding the self-determination of Indigenous children, families and Peoples to this day.

Outsiders and allies alike may wonder, don't Indigenous Peoples want to be Americans too? The fact is, that due to the colonization of this continent, we have no choice. However, we do have an obligation to set our own course and trajectory engaged in the natural right of self-determination regardless of the government state we live in, or the civil society we have been incorporated into. In many ways, self-determination is most importantly defended in the minds of our children, and the memories of our elders. Education and child-rearing in general have to be central concerns for Indigenous families and Peoples, not just as job security, or even as a step towards the pursuit of a college education, but as a conscious process of decolonization as a distinct Peoples.

There is much to be concerned about. Inheriting the Bush era Republican educational agenda better known as No Child Left Behind, President Obama's administration did little to correct the inept and anti-intellectual policy it imposed upon the children and schools of America. Instead, and true to the financial roots which put America's first African-American in office, Obama's agenda called Race to the Top, put the most draconian elements of the Bush-era policy on overdrive. High-stakes testing at every grade level every year, teacher and school performance punishments, and English-only instruction. While allowing for some relief through a NCLB waiver process for states, and attention to the confirmed violation of the civil rights of English learners as an example in Los Angeles Unified School District, the national policy currently imposes loss of language and culture against Indigenous children as a civil right.

Next on the President's agenda is a consolidation of a new norm of content and approach in public education across the country called the Common Core Standards. With the radical right-wing's specter of a one world government behind him, President Obama's policy sets the course, many think, for a better intellectual direction. Finally, public schools in America will aim to prepare students for modern college, university and international relations. Knowledge, not mastery of single non-developmentally appropriate standards, will redefine the pursuit of a complete education. America will have taken its head out of the sand and contextualized the education of children with an attention to global realities common to all humanity.  In President Obama's words the Common Core Standards are, "... a call to take the next step. It is time for states to work together to build on lessons learned from two decades of standards based reforms. It is time to recognize that standards are not just promises to our children, but promises we intend to keep." Clearly however, these are still promises.

Ultimately, we must continue to ask ourselves as Indigenous Peoples, how ought we raise our children, to realize a paradigm shift and regenerate from the root, so that our seeds may yet flower one day in the light of true freedom? While the new Common Core Standards are at least two years away in California, the content and ideological framework they present continue to justify the hegemony of might is right, and privilege the English language as the tongue of dominance. Our task is to hold the President, and the government to its commitment to a new dawn in Native - White relations as we redefine this according to modern international agreements such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On October 25, 2012, Mayan elders and traditional authorities presented themselves before the United Nations Headquarters in New York to share their message. According to a UN press release,

"the group led by Don Tomás Calvo, the highest moral authority of the Maya, delivered their ancestors’ message, calling for the end of 2012 to be the beginning of a new era of harmony, joy and peace. 'To you – representatives of the peoples who share our planet daily – I bring the voice of my people on my way towards the end of a period of time we call Oxlajuj B'aqtun and before the opening of a new era which we enter with joy and harmony,' said Don Tomás Calvo, head of the Order of the Mayan Lords."

Even international leaders across the world acknowledge that thousands of years ago, Mayan and Tolteca astronomers calculated the unique alignment of the cosmos which occurs only every 64,000 years. Mayan elders identify this new cycle, to begin on 21 December, as an epic transition and a chance to realign human priorities based on the principles of love, gratitude, care and respect for both humanity and the cosmos. Many Indigenous Mexican Peoples call this new cycle, Chikuace Tonaltzi or the Sixth Sun.  How will America's public educational system transform itself to include these values and native sciences into the educational courses and content of its children? Or will America's children remain ignorant of the Indigenous roots of knowledge at their fingertips?

Teocalli de las Serpientes Emplumadas en Xochicalco, Morelos Mexico.  Photo taken after ceremony honoring the winter solstice and renewal on 12.21.12

Whatever the case may be, Indigenous Peoples and families must set our children upon a path of insight and understanding with the clarity of vision to understand the impacts our actions have on the coming seven generations and Mother Earth, in our own languages and our ancestral knowledge of the cosmic world we originated in. Where public education impedes this, we must either transform it or disengage it from the minds of our children through ceremony, family and the establishment of indigenous freedom schools. Only through a radical regeneration of our roots of knowledge and power, can Indigenous Peoples transform the lives of our children and respect the course of the universe in the coming Sixth Sun. Otherwise we may continue to wonder impotently when a pursuit of harmony, joy and peace will guide the knowledge our children learn.